Time Flows Like Ink

Summary: After a fuinjutsu experiment gone wrong, Minato is yanked into a future where his family is dead, his team fell apart and the Uchiha were slaughtered. With the defective seal burning in his palm, Minato struggles to stay afloat in a Konoha that isn't his.

Chapter 20

Minato arrived in the past to find his team already gone.

He pressed down the rush of panic and forced himself to feel nothing. If he activated the seal now, there would be no way for him to return in time again. He would come back days or weeks too late to make a difference. Once Obito died in the past, it would be impossible for Minato to reverse it.

So, Minato locked it all away. He talked to the chūnin at the mission desk as though he was sating casual curiosity instead of trying to save the life of one of his students. He set out quickly but not frantically, and he took the time to put on his uniform and fetch basic supplies before reaching for the special kunai he'd insisted his team take along wherever they went.

They hadn't gone far enough to leave his range. Minato grabbed hold of the seal and pulled, flinging himself across miles and reappearing inches besides Obito.

Obito flailed and let out a high-pitched noise of surprise. "Sensei!"

"What are you doing here?" Rin smiled at him – surprised, but pleasantly so.

Kakashi gave him a look of deep wariness. "We're already on our way. You can't pull us off the mission."

He could and he would, if Minato had absolute confidence that his students wouldn't sneak away in the depth of night to complete their assignment anyway.

Minato wasn't willing to leave it up to chance. He was even less willing to selfishly send someone else into danger in order to keep his own team safe. "I'm not going to," he said, trying to lower Kakashi's raised hackles. "But I'm coming with you."

"Really?" Rin's face lit up. "It's been ages since we've been on a mission together."

His team seemed satisfied as long as Minato wasn't trying to make them stay home. They'd be fine. As long as Minato was there, he could keep them safe. He'd protect them. Everything would turn out alright, and all three of his students would wait for him in the future he was creating right this moment.

Obito was being uncharacteristically silent. A frown marred his expression and he tugged at his hair as though to comb out knots. Minato couldn't put his finger on what the gesture reminded him of.

"What was the future like, this time?" Rin sounded interested but not excited – curious, but fully aware that the last few futures had not brought them their happily-ever-after.

Minato felt his expression soften. "It was lovely. Far better than the earlier ones."

"We were there?" Kakashi asked, interest piqued despite himself.

"For the most part. Kushina was."

"Oh! You met Kushina-san?" Rin's face lit up. "What was she like?"

"She hasn't changed much." Minato winced. "She punched me for leaving without her."

Rin laughed while Kakashi turned to hide his expression.

Obito didn't react at all.

"Obito?" Minato asked. "Are you okay?"

Minato had tried steering the topic away from Obito's continued absence in the future, but his student must have caught it. It couldn't have gone over his head that in all the versions of the future Minato had referenced, he hadn't made an appearance once.

"Obito?" Rin asked, slowing down.

Obito's eyes were stuck somewhere in the undergrowth of the forest. "Huh?"

"You're distracted," Kakashi accused.

"I'm not! I was just..." Obito trailed off. A tiny mewl sounded from in between the branches, and Minato's eyes found a feral kitten upon following the sound.

Kakashi's glance warped into a scowl. "You're letting a dumb animal influence your performance during the mission."

"Our mission hasn't even started yet," Obito protested. His eyes twitched back to the cat almost immediately. His pout was audible. "She's adorable."

Exasperation was drowned out by a deja vu so strong that it took Minato's breath away.

"Will you leave the stupid cat? We're busy!"

"We're not doing anything right now."

"You should act more like a proper shinobi."

"Well, I don't want to."

The airy, exaggeratedly sulky tone. The easy distraction. The jarring change from dead-serious to whimful and childish. The last sentence had sounded almost exactly like it had when the stranger had uttered it. Exactly like... Obito.

"Boys. Really," Rin sighed.

Obito and Kakashi's retort turned into meaningless background noise. Minato saw Obito's mouth move, but couldn't make out any words.

How could it be?

The Sharingan. Minato had caught a glimpse, but hadn't been able to place it. How hadn't he realized? How hadn't he put together the dots?

Obito was the stranger. The stranger was Obito. The stranger had known his and Kushina's fighting moves because they'd both taught him. The stranger had felt drawn to Minato because he used to be his student. The stranger had... Obito had... murdered his own clan?

"Sensei?"

Why would he do that?

(A familiar face and familiar eyes. No wonder he'd managed to kill so many members of his own clan, carrying the worst kind of surprise on his side.)

The last reality had been the only where Kakashi and Rin had carried back Obito's body. It was the first in many that the stranger hadn't made an appearance in. Of course it had been. Without Obito, there could be no stranger.

(All the other times, there had been no body to carry back to Konoha. Rin and Kakashi had mourned, but Obito had been alive. He'd been working against them the entire time.)

Someone had tugged at the stranger's strings from the background. Someone was controlling Obito in the future. Someone had gotten their hands on his student – and Minato hadn't prevented it.

Minato felt adrenaline flooding his chest even before he felt the corresponding tug in his palm.

"We're going back," he said, his voice coming out hoarse. "Right now."

His students stopped dead in their tracks.

"What?"

"Minato-sensei?"

"Are you jumping again?" Kakashi's eyes narrowed at Minato's palm. Minato held it away from his body as though it might blow up in his face. "You only just came."

"You're not finishing the mission," Minato said, ignoring his students. "Go back to Konoha, right now."

"You're not serious." Kakashi redirected his frown to Minato's eyes. "We're not going back now."

"Yes, you are." The seal burned in his palm. Minato looked directly at Obito and talked more quickly. "I realized something. Something will happen – something bad – and I might not be... I won't be here to–"

"... Am I going to die on this mission?"

"No. I don't think so. There's other things just as bad, and I don't know for sure, but..."

"We already had this conversation," Kakashi interrupted. "We're at war, sensei."

"What's going to happen?" Rin matched Minato's talking speed. Her eyes kept twitching towards his palm as though to gauge the time they had left. "What exactly? If you tell us, we can change it."

"I don't know!" Minato forced himself to lower his voice. "Not for sure. I can't... I don't know the details." He didn't know anything other than that the mysterious figure he knew next to nothing about was somehow his believed-dead student.

"If you don't know, how can you say for sure it'll happen this time?" Rin asked. "How do you know it'll be this exact mission?"

Minato didn't. Not for sure. He couldn't claim so without lying to get his students to do as he said.

There was defiance in each of their eyes, and Minato realized he wasn't convincing even one of them. Something like despair flooded his chest and Minato was dragged away before he could make a difference.

Minato's knees buckled upon his arrival and his breath got stuck in his throat. He squeezed his eyes shut. He let out a deep breath.

His fist drove into the nearest boulder and he flinched, only to do it again. And again. Blood trickled down the fingers of his clenched fist, and Minato didn't feel an inkling better.

A deep sense of failure crashed down on him in waves. He'd lost his opportunity. Whatever would happen at Kannabi bridge – whatever had happened – was now set in stone. Minato would return days or even weeks after it was over, and there was no way to undo it. He'd failed. He'd screwed it up.

There was pressure behind Minato's eyes. He took another deep breath. And another.

Minato had been too slow to realize, and he'd have to learn to accept it. The first step to accepting it was to learn what consequences his failure had caused.

For lack of anything else to do, Minato headed back to Konoha. He took a hold of one of his remaining markers and teleported the rest of the way as soon as it was within range.

Minato's breath stuttered in his throat. He resisted the urge to screw his eyes shut.

Oh no.

Rin forced herself to stop gnawing on her already bloody lip. She succeeded only until she realized that she'd taken to fidgeting with a senbon – one of her sharpest, poisonous ones, the kind one oughtn't risk pricking one's finger on.

Minato didn't want them to complete the mission. They didn't know why – neither, so it seemed, did he – but whatever fragmented pieces he'd put together in that distant future, it had shaken him up worse than any other situation had managed to before.

"We agreed that we'd finish this," Obito warned.

Rin must have been scrunching up her face in discontentment. It was a habit of hers she'd been trying to get rid of. "I know."

"This doesn't change anything."

"I know."

They kept going. Rin chewed her lip and tried to ignore the churn of worry in her gut.

Iwa nin ambushed them. They held their own. All their training sessions drilling in the importance of teamwork finally paid off.

They decided to follow the enemy to their hideout. If there were too many for them to handle, they could still go back and return with backup.

The cave collapsed. Nobody was crushed.

Zetsu revealed himself, unwilling to accept the lost opportunity in the face of his dying master.

Kakashi was a dead-weight over Rin's shoulder. He kept sliding down no matter how often she pulled him back up. Only the concentration and effort needed to carry him kept the pressure behind Rin's eyes at bay.

"Wh're we goin'," Kakashi mumbled, a slur in his voice and confusion clouding his gaze. He looked around, head rolling limply on his shoulders as he tried peering past Rin. "Whe's Ob-ito?"

Rin didn't answer. She tightened her grip when Kakashi struggled to be let go.

"Where–?"

"Keep going."

"Wha– S-Stop!"

Rin bore the clumsy punch to her stomach with a grimace. She held on tighter. There was pressure behind her eyes and in her throat, making her eyes itch and her breathing turn ragged and painful.

She couldn't dodge the elbow to her flank without letting Kakashi go. "W'need t' go back!"

"If I'd known a concussion makes you a teamplayer, I'd have given you one myself a long time ago," Rin snapped.

Kakashi paused. He either didn't understand what Rin had said or chose to ignore it. Rin grunted at a particularly harsh punch. She didn't care. She'd hold onto her remaining teammate if it killed her.

"He took Ob-ito!" Kakashi stumbled over the name and the forest ground. Only Rin's arm around his waist kept him upright.

She told him as such. "You can't even stand."

"Need to g' back."

Rin screwed her eyes shut. A tear slipped past her eyelid, treacherous and unhelpful. "If he'd wanted to kill Obito, he would have done it from the start." She breathed out deeply, riding out the wave of fury, frustration and hopelessness. "We'll go back. But not alone."

The answer seemed satisfactory to Kakashi's concussed brain. He ceased his struggles and allowed Rin to carry him along.

Rin wished she could placate her own brain as easily. Minato had taught them to never leave behind a teammate. He hadn't taught them what to do when the choice was to save one but abandon the other.

Rin insisted on tagging along on the rescue mission while Kakashi recovered. By the time they returned (far too small of a rescue party, all the shinobi the village had been able to spare) there was no trace of Obito or the creature that had taken him.

There was nothing more they could do. They went back. Rin swallowed the sensation of failure and imagined what she was going to tell Minato-sensei.

Kakashi and Kushina came to her rescue when Kiri nin kidnapped her.

They weren't alone.

"Obito!" The churning in Rin's gut dimmed. She could almost ignore the sensation of something other than herself inhabiting her body, curled up tightly and pushing at her body from within, fitting in all the right and even wronger ways. "You escaped!"

"How did you–" Kushina's breathless question cut off in a gasp.

Obito pierced Kakashi's gut and the something underneath Rin's skin howled.

Kushina brought them both back and fixed Rin's seal. Whatever Obito had planned by turning Rin into a jinchūriki – whatever his captor had planned, whoever was pulling his strings – failed.

Kakashi died in the village. They put his gravestone next to his father's.

Obito came to see her. Rin didn't make the same mistake twice.

"Stop fighting," she said tonelessly, holding out her hand in a gesture that felt practiced and hollow. "We can help you."

"No. You can't." Whatever was steering Obito made his eyes look empty.

"Okay." Rin dropped the offered hand. She allowed herself to be flooded with rage.

Rin hurled herself at the creature wearing Obito's face and let the thing inside of her take over.

Minato would have tried harder to get Obito back. He would have wanted her to try harder, too.

Minato wasn't there, and Rin was beyond caring.

"She lost control," Jiraiya said, his voice dull and his face blank. "The creature – the Tailed Beast – it didn't care about Obito."

And so Obito had gotten his way after all. A wild beast, run amok in the middle of the village because he'd provoked Rin into letting herself go. Minato closed his eyes and breathed through the gruesome images Jiraiya's narrative was painting.

He could see it all before his inner eye: two of his students razing the village to the ground over the death of the third.

"I assume she didn't survive it."

Jiraiya's eyes were pained. "I'm sorry, Minato."

Minato waved him off. He let his eyes stray toward the cordoned off portion of the village they'd never bothered to rebuild. Ruined buildings and piles of debris served as a reminder of the lives that had been lost that day.

"What about Obito?"

Jiraiya avoided his gaze. "He's... around."

"You didn't defeat him."

"Not for lack of trying." Jiraiya's mouth tugged into a humorless smile. "He's part of a group of terrorists. Mental, the entire bunch. We've fought with them off and on, but..."

"But what?"

Jiraiya shook his head. "We were already weakened by... after Rin. They kept draining our resources. At some point... they lost interest when Konoha no longer posed a threat."

They sat in silence. Jiraiya hadn't mentioned any of the names Minato desperately wanted to hear. He didn't ask.

"What are you going to do to fix it?" Jiraiya asked.

Minato dragged one hand over his face. He felt like he hadn't slept in days. "I don't know."

"Come now," Jiraiya said. "I didn't go these past years the long way around just for you to act like there's nothing you can do."

"It hasn't even been an hour since I found out about Obito."

Jiraiya sobered up. "I'm sorry."

"It's just," Minato pulled a face and carded through his hair to give his hand something to do, "how didn't I see it before? There were clues, I... I should have realized. I should have done something."

"You're doing something now. Besides, nobody else realized, either."

"Nobody else taught Obito. Or spent this much time with the 'stranger'."

"Knock it off." Jiraiya bumped his shoulder with his own. "Self-deprecation doesn't suit you."

Easy to say for Jirayia when gruesome images of Obito and the life he'd lived these past few years kept playing on repeat in Minato's mind. What had been done to him to make him turn traitor? What had he endured until he'd cracked? Minato had failed, again and again to save him from his fate. What consequences had he been forced to bear?

Had he waited for him? Had he waited for Minato to save him only to be disappointed again and again, anew whenever Minato reset the timeline?

"I'll ask again," Jiraiya said, dragging Minato out of his dreary thoughts. "What are you going to do to fix it?"

Anger tugged at Minato's brows and pulled them into a frown. "I'll track down Obito and find out who's controlling him."

"And how are you going to do that?"

Minato hesitated. "It won't be hard," he half-guessed, half-predicted. "He's the one who kept finding me, not the other way around. Something's pulling him to me."

"You think he'll pay you another visit." Jiraiya gave a slow nod. "What will you do once he does?"

"I'll improvise," Minato muttered.

Waves of anger and helplessness coursed through his body with every thud of his heart. He'd need to work on his control while he waited.

Minato wouldn't allow his emotions to dictate success or failure any longer.

A/N: We're nearing the finale! :D I hope you're as excited as I am!

My betas are To Mockingbird, Igornerdand PyrothTenka! Go check them out, they're all wonderful writers!

Please let me know what you think!

~Gwen