A/N: What even is a logical, canon-coherent storyline anyway.

I don't own anything and am making zero money off this work.

Kakashi

The fighting stopped when Sasuke (maybe, probably) punched Naruto awake.

Which was all for the best, really, because trying to get past Minato-Sensei while he spouted earnest and shockingly in-character apologies had filled Kakashi's limbs and lungs with the quiet, wet-edged burn of something he'd lost and could never, ever have back. Honestly, fuck Madara and his apparently hidden talent for mimicking the voices of people he'd never met.

He supposed Madara had met Minato-Sensei once, the disastrous night of Naruto's birth, which two separate Hokages had kept the details of from Kakashi for years before Lady Tsunade finally revealed them, bluntly stating 'listen, there's so much tragic bullshit going on in your head already, we didn't want to add anything else for you to cry silent ninja tears over unless it was absolutely necessary' with a half-empty liquor bottle swinging from her fist.

Honestly, she was Kakashi's very favorite Hokage. And that included the man standing in front of him, wincing apologies at Kakashi's block-battered face.

Naruto and Sasuke emerged from the living room, Naruto beaming a kind of sunrise-soft smile of wonder, all peachy-pinks and the golden yellow of quiet amazement (which: why—this was an actual nightmare scenario and Kakashi despaired of ever really understanding his sunflower child). Sasuke looked twitchy and tormented and like he'd somehow unlocked a newer, deeper level of 'dead inside', which wasn't that unusual, except for the way Naruto looked like he was about to burst into song about it instead of demanding Sasuke 'stop it with the creepy shark eyes before I Rasengan you into being a different animal'.

"Good job," Kushina said and tackled Sasuke in a hug that probably wasn't another attack.

Probably.

"Good job, Baby Panda," she repeated, and squished him close. "I'm proud of you! Sorry about the…oooh, is that bruise on your jaw from me? Did I knock out any teeth?"

"Two," Sasuke mumbled around Kushina's boa constrictor embrace. He sounded resigned to the sacrifice of his teeth, which was fine, because he'd still have them outside of the genjutsu.

He sounded a lot less resigned to whatever he'd obviously sacrificed to wake Naruto up. He might have been trying to hide it with his trademark Sasuke Uchiha Preemptive Glare of 'Ask Me About My Emotions, I Absolutely Dare You'. But Kakashi understood his murder child a lot better than his sunflower one, and he'd had a lot of time to understand what 'loss' looked like on Sasuke's face. It was his default expression, after all—the one he wore more than anything else. And Kakashi could see it now, in the way his eyes wanted to wince, in the lips he'd pressed tight because he'd learned not to let them tremble, in the way he shielded his left side—not to protect his dominant hand from an attack, but because of the way his left hand connected to his heart and Sasuke wanted to hide the way it was hurting.

"Naruto," Sakura said, appearing quietly at his side.

Naruto smiled at her. A pitiful attempt, really, because he'd lost the sunrise in it after looking at his parents. "I'm fine, Sakura. I'm better than you guys, I think. Kakashi-Sensei, who kicked your non-Uchiha'd eyeball shut?"

"Your father!" Kakashi sang out, and refused to show the way that eye-smiling around his wicked shiner made his entire face scream. "And it wasn't actually a kick. He blocked me into the edge of a table."

"Sorry, again," Minato said, with a firm pat to Kakashi's shoulder, before heading over to wrap Naruto in a hug.

Kushina released Sasuke to pile on to the family hug, Sakura stepped a polite distance away while also monitoring Naruto for signs of distress, and Sasuke slunk toward the nearest shadowy corner, because having his emotional crisis where no one could see it was his coping mechanism.

Except that Kakashi followed along right after him, stealing a piece of Sasuke's shadowy corner for himself, resting his shoulder against the structurally unstable wall and grinning at Sasuke's furious glower, because being a dick to his beloved students was Kakashi's coping mechanism.

"The fight suddenly stopped mid-punch," Kakashi confided to Sasuke, cheerfully ignoring his hateful look. "And Minato-Sensei started weepily talking about the overwhelming power of friendship." Kakashi slid Sasuke a sideways look that made Sasuke' spine stiffen minutely. Ah, the defensiveness of youth. Adorable. "What were you doing in there, student-mine?"

"Nothing."

"Hmmm."

"Shut up."

So adorable.

Kakashi didn't push, because he knew he'd get the full story later. Probably not out of tight-lipped, tight-assed Sasuke, but most definitely out of Naruto, who would happily spill any secret Kakashi was after so long as ramen was involved.

He really was the worst ninja in so many ways, and Kakashi loved him for it.

"We should go," Sasuke murmured.

Kakashi studied the little hug-knot of Naruto's family and said, "Give them a minute."

Sakura, who had apparently heard every word exchanged in the Sasuke and Kakashi Corner of Shadows and had zero interest in pretending she hadn't, said to the room at large, "We may not have a minute. Sai may not have a minute. Naruto, I'm so sorry. But there's still a battle outside, it doesn't stop here, and we left a teammate alone to hold the line."

Ah. Kakashi's practical child.

The reminder of a teammate in need worked where Sasuke saying 'Oi, moron—stop crying and get a move one' would have started a fight (it still would have worked, there just would have been further structural damage first). Naruto stiffened a little, and then nodded. He took two wobbling steps away from his parents, who let him go without trying to grab him or stitch him into anymore genuinely upsetting knitted restraints.

He attempted a smile for his parents that ground inside Kakashi's skin like jagged stones and said, "Ne, Mom. How many times did you say?"

Kushina sucked in a breath that looked like it burned the entire way down. But she smiled, too. "Let's make this the last one, yeah? The next time I see you, I want it to be 'hello, happy family reunion time in the afterlife'. And kid, that better be a long, long time from now, or I'm going to kick your ass."

"Oh, awesome. I totally want to turn up in the afterlife and instantly get kicked in the face. What the hell, Mom."

"It's just a warning, Bitchcakes. A fair warning. Afterlife turn-up before what I consider an acceptable age equals immediate and unthinking takedown, okay?"

"Kakashi." Minato appeared at his side. "You—I—"

"What, Sensei?" Kakashi smiled like the thought of saying goodbye to his teacher, and probably for good this time, wasn't eating away at his heart and soul like emotional bacteria. "You going to promise me a kick in the face, too, if I turn up in the afterlife too early?"

"I—no. That's not really…my style, I think?" Minato shrugged at him. "But I can think of someone who would, and then probably heal you so she could do it all over again. So maybe keep it in mind, anyway."

Kakashi had a single second of shocky, airless hurt that ripped down his spine like claws when he realized who Minato-Sensei was talking about, before Minato-Sensei pressed forward, his face strangely urgent.

"There's…" he said. There were frustrated folds in his forehead, around his eyes. "There's something…"

Sasuke made a tiny noise on Kakashi's right, like 'hn'. "He's trying to tell you something. Obviously about the genjutsu, or its creator, but he can't. Because he's a figment of it and bound by its rules. The echoes can push against the world they've been created in. Drop hints. But they can't go against what's explicitly forbidden."

Minato-Sensei managed a weak smile. "Smart boy. I see why the two of you have such an obvious father-son relationship, Kakashi."

Sasuke and Kakashi froze in unison.

Naruto snorted out something like, "Ahahaha, imagine Kakashi-Sensei raising Sasuke! Like bedtime stories and family dinners and not just taking Sasuke out into the desert and teaching him an assassin jutsu at twelve years old!"

Minato-Sensei said, "What? Kakashi, you did what?"

But Kakashi was busy really appreciating the incandescent horror of being any kind of parent to Sasuke. An actual parent, not just the nebulous, occasionally convenient shadow of one. He glanced to the right and found his feelings on the subject perfectly mirrored in Sasuke's appalled facial expression.

"Aw," Kakashi said. "He would have been so cute and I would have been so incompetent and we would have blown the house up within a week!"

"A day," Sasuke corrected darkly.

"No, you wouldn't have," Sakura cut in with brutal efficiency. "You would have loved each other to the bottom of your angst-riddled hearts and expressed that love in increasingly stunted and probably hostile ways that would have seriously alarmed those of us forced to witness them. Are we ready?"

Naruto took another painful step back, toward his team, but Minato-Sensei caught Kakashi's wrist before he could form the seals to release them from the genjutsu.

"Sasuke's right," he breathed, all in a rush. "I can't…the genjutsu won't let me tell you. But I can…what I can say is…" Minato shook his head, obviously frustrated with himself. But the look he pinned on Kakashi was familiar—the immovable, all-seeing, crystal clear look of Kakashi's teacher that cut everything else away. It always had. "Kakashi. Remember what I taught you." He glanced at Sasuke, at Sakura. At Naruto, where his eyes lingered for a painful second before returning to his student. "Remember what they taught you. Okay?"

Kakashi swallowed hard behind his mask. "I…yes, Sensei."

Minato smiled a little and stepped back toward Kushina. Sakura gripped Naruto tightly around the wrist, and Sasuke's face was impassive but his eyes were watchful, taking in Naruto's paper-thin inhales and absolutely fake smile like he was fooling anyone who knew him at all.

"Last time," he said to Kushina.

"Only hellos after this," she promised back.

And Sakura, because she was practical but also kind, said, "Kai," before Kakashi could, just like the last time they'd been sent to this hellscape of everything they'd ever wanted, because it was less painful for her than it was for him.

The world melted around them, walls running like candle wax, colors bleeding together until everything was black. The last thing Kakashi saw was Minato-Sensei's strangely urgent face in the red light of the setting sun and that horrifically sad look he used to get sometimes, when he worried that Kakashi might fail the lesson he was trying to teach.

##

Kakashi landed back in his physical body with all the grace and good feeling of getting trampled by a tailed beast. His bones ached. His skin hurt. He was suddenly, aggressively reminded of the fact that he'd only recently been tap-dancing his way to death's door in the physical world. All the hurts that Sakura hadn't been able to heal, the ones that he'd hidden for her sake, roared through his nervous system like a summer fireworks display, pain popping behind his closed eyelids in dizzying bursts of red and yellow.

"Ha," he said. "Hahaha. Ha."

Making it funny in an attempt to hide how absolutely decimated he felt from his kids. It wouldn't work on Sakura, and Sasuke had already responded with a forcibly level, "Sakura," which translated to 'yeah, he's just amazingly broken right now, fix him, please'. But it might make Naruto laugh along with him.

Or maybe it would have, if Naruto hadn't opened his eyes in the middle of groaning out, "Oh fuck, my intestines, Sakura I think my intestines are gone," and seen Madara perched at the edge of their little circle, calm and placid and holding Sai off the ground by the hair.

Kakashi continued to smile around the pulse of fear that contracted every single muscle in his body, because it was instinctive by now. Muscle memory.

Sai's face was bloodied and swollen. His right arm was lying wrong, strange and disjointed. His clothes and skin were a horrific tapestry of rust-colored blood, brown dirt, purple bruises, and his own black ink. Two of his brushes were broken, and his scroll was torn in half. The clearing around them was a riot of uprooted trees, scorched earth, smears of black ink that heralded the brutal ripping apart of Sai's monsters.

"Ah," he said, serene like he didn't have the hand of their worst enemy tangled in his hair and wrenching him upright, like he wasn't visibly breathing around broken ribs, like Naruto wasn't vibrating and leaking murder-red Nine Tails chakra at Kakashi's side, like Sakura wasn't one second of quiet contemplation away from attacking Madara with her bare fists and fury in her eyes. "You're back."

"Madara," Naruto growled, his voice several octaves deeper, vocal cords rattling with the echo of the Nine Tails' roar. "Let him go. Now."

"Naruto," Madara said back, all pleasant politeness, like they were at a tea party. "How…unfortunate to see you conscious again."

"Sai," Sakura said. Her voice was steady as steel beam in comparison to Naruto's patchy, uneven rumble. "What did I say. What did I explicitly and specifically say to you before we went under?"

Sai smiled that serene smile that made Kakashi want to thoroughly, cheerfully, smash Danzo's face into a mountainside. "Apologies, Sakura. I did make an effort to, as you said, 'stay in one piece'. I believe only my ribs are in pieces, if that helps. Possibly the bones in my right shoulder as well."

"That does not help," Sakura informed him, leather gloves creaking dangerously.

"Ah."

Naruto's voice dropped another octave. The barest edges of his red chakra brushed against Kakashi's hand, and stung like he'd just been exposed to a swarm of bees. "Madara."

"There is something about you, I'll give you that." Madara tightened his fist in Sai's hair and gave his head a little jerk. Sai refused to make a sound or even a facial expression, because fucking Danzo, but the pain was evident in the strain of his neck, the tendons standing out in sharp relief. Naruto's entire body jerked along with him. Madara tapped a thoughtful finger against Sai's skull. "Something indefinable. Something bothersome. Who else could have persuaded Pein, who I considered my most loyal follower, into bringing back over half of a decimated village before he died in that cave?"

Kakashi caught this information and filed it away with the forced prioritizing that being a battle commander had bred into his bones. He felt Sakura catch it as well, in the way she exhaled quick and quiet at Kakashi's side.

"This would have been easier inside the genjutsu," Madara continued, all disappointed sympathy. "Gentler. Kinder. You could have surrendered the Nine Tails without putting yourself, or your teammates through this." Madara's visible eye shifted to Sasuke. "Is this a final act of vengeance against your former teammates, Sasuke? To make them hurt like this? I really can't think of another reason why you would have disappointed me so completely."

"Hn," Sasuke said, which Kakashi translated as 'I don't have any positive feelings regarding Sai to be defensive of him with, but reluctant solidarity with the idiots I have chosen to protect'.

Madara sighed like a kindly uncle lovingly disappointed in his favored nephew (the world would have been spared endless amounts of bullshit if the Uchihas had just gone into theater or expressive writing, as the powers above had so obviously intended). "No matter. You should always plan more than one way to accomplish a goal. You understand, Sasuke?"

"Tch," Sasuke said. Or, 'please stop pretending to be my concerned relative, because it's exhausting and annoying and also triggering my many and deeply murderous feelings regarding the topic of family'.

"The genjutsu would have been the easier way to get what I want, but that doesn't mean it's the only way." Madara's voice leaked out around his mask like poisoned honey, sweet and sweetly vicious. "Unlike certain other people currently present, our dear Naruto has always had a well-observed weakness for taking care of his teammates."

And that was….something about Madara's words, the acidic sweetness of them, clicked in Kakashi's brain like a key sliding inside a lock.

But he didn't have a chance to turn the key and open the door of understanding, because three things happened in rapid succession.

Madara slammed Sai's face into the dirt hard enough to displace it.

Sai went totally, heart-stoppingly still.

Naruto burst off the ground in an explosion of red chakra and roaring shouts that scraped through the air like claws.

"Fuck," Sakura muttered, which was uncommon enough that Kakashi wanted, for a single wild second, to laugh.

"Fuck," Sasuke agreed, which was far more common, and rocked to his feet as well, speeding to Naruto's side with lightning already singing around his wrist.

Sakura took a second to analyze the brawl between Naruto, Madara, and Sasuke (which was somehow both ugly—in the terrifying rage contorting Naruto's face—and beautiful—in the dance-like fighting style of the Uchiha, Madara's honestly stunning use of jutsu) and made the grimly resigned face of a practical person who wanted to join in but who also knew that she'd be more useful doing something else.

"I'm going to Sai," she said. "Kakashi-Sensei, you have to help them. But not with your jutsu, okay?"

"Oh, of course not my jutsu, dear Sakura," Kakashi said. "And what weapon would you like your sensei to use against our most dangerous enemy? My bare fists? A manly hug?"

Sakura's green eyes were level and perfectly clear. Her head cocked just a little to the left, the way it always did when she was stripping a problem down to its barest components in the space of a second, assembling a solution from the act of taking it apart. "With your words, I think. There's something…Kakashi-Sensei, fight this fight like Naruto. Okay?"

She'd heard it, too, then. The click of the key.

Kakashi would be ashamed, every day for the rest of his life, that he hadn't seen the true worth of this girl until unforgivably late. He'd be grateful, immediately after, for the opportunity to feel that shame, as it meant she hadn't left him like she probably should have.

"Anything for you, apple of my eye, cherry blossom of my heart."

"Stop wasting time being weird," Sakura shot back, which made Kakashi beam smiles of genuine affection. She took off in Sai's direction during an opportune moment, when Naruto and Sasuke had Madara well distracted. Which left Kakashi to join his still beloved but way less well-adjusted children, as evidenced by the fact that they were wasting precious oxygen to bitch at each other mid final-battle.

"Back off, Sasuke," Naruto growled, voice muddied by the fangs that were peeking out alarmingly from behind his upper lip. "I'll fight this guy myself."

"You're such a fucking moron," Sasuke shot back, even as he guarded Naruto's flank like he'd never been away from it, the two of them moving in instinctive, nearly hilarious harmony.

A Sensei was allowed very few honest joys in his otherwise exasperated and stressful existence. Fortunately, one of them was the privilege of using his superior age and skill to make an entrance.

He waited for his opening, met Madara's kick with an expertly timed blast of chakra that actually managed to send the man flying, and turned dramatically, sunlight hitting his profile and wind ruffling his hair in a satisfying manner, as he intoned with well-practiced nonchalance, "This is why Sakura is my favorite."

Except that his boys hadn't had the decency to be impressed with Kakashi's pain-stakingly crafted entrances even when they were twelve years old and full of unbridled chaos and inner pain, respectively. And so, Sasuke just said, "Tch," in a way that meant 'I didn't want to be your favorite in the first place but also fuck you for not recognizing me as the clearly superior choice'. And Naruto just howled, "Sensei, you get out of the way, too!" and tried to dodge around Kakashi like the moron Sasuke had named him to be.

"Naruto," Sakura snapped from across the clearing. "Knock it off before I knock your head in."

"Sakura," Kakashi said, half-turning in alarm at the sheer amount of healing chakra Sakura was siphoning into Sai's unresponsive body, her hands glowing greener than her eyes and sweat beading on her brow. "Maybe you shouldn't—"

Sakura bared her gritted teeth at him. "Maybe you should focus on your disaster children instead of your functional one, Sensei!"

Kakashi could see in the minute twitch of Sasuke's face that Sasuke was about to have an opinion about being classified as a disaster child, despite the obvious and inarguable truth of it. Except that Madara reappeared by way of a devastating jutsu delivered directly to Sasuke's chest. It was his turn to go flying. He hit the dirt across the clearing, and didn't move.

Naruto's howl this time was wordless, sonorous with the devastating roar of a tailed beast. The outline of a tail appeared in the bubbling shroud of his chakra. Then two. Then three.

Panic curled around Kakashi's throat like clawed fingers.

"There's more than one way to force a beast to the surface. And the boy's weakness has always been his teammates," Madara murmured. "You might have done a better job of shoring up that weakness, Kakashi. After all, failing to value your teammates has always been a specialty of yours, hasn't it?"

The key clicked in Kakashi's head again, louder this time, even over the furious and agonized bellowing of Naruto as the Nine Teals attempted to emerge from his skin and blood and bone like a flaying in reverse.

Kakashi smiled his widest. "Mah, mah, Mr. Uchiha, sir. Should I be flattered by your obvious interest in me?"

"I have no interest in you."

"Ah, but see, you've been shit-talking my teammate skills for ages now. It's an Uchiha-style shit-talking, I know, so most of the work is done with insinuation and pointed silence. But I've been around enough Uchihas to know it when I hear it."

"Have you? Are you referring to my disappointment of a blood relation over there in the dirt? Or the boy you allowed to die in that cave so many years ago?"

Kakashi refused to buckle under the memory of falling rock, the terrifying rattle of Obito's voice as he said, 'Take it. Take it, Kakashi, and get her out of here'. "See, it's so unforgivably rude of me to know so little about you, when you obviously know so much about me."

Behind them, Naruto screamed, his back hunching and his features blurring into something fanged and foreign and absolutely terrifying. Sasuke was stirring, but only just, and with obvious effort. Sakura had hunched herself protectively around Sai's limp figure, stubbornly channeling healing chakra even as things fell apart around her. This was the worst time for this chat of weirdness. Kakashi should fight. Should put his fist in Madara's face and make an opening for his kids to get away. He could do it. Battle strategies shuffled through his head like playing cards—he only had to pluck the right one, to pull the right combination out of his endless repertoire.

But there were keys and locks and Sakura had looked him in the face, green eyes level, and told him to fight with his words, this time. To fight this fight like Naruto. And Kakashi would not make the mistake of failing to trust in Sakura again.

"Sasuke," he called, instead of executing any of the strategies streaking through his bloodstream like quicksilver. "Get up. Let Naruto see you."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sasuke climbing to his feet, trying to pretend like Madara's attack hadn't dislocated his right shoulder, and giving Kakashi the blank-faced look that meant, 'what'. No question mark at the end, because he was always and eternally a little shit.

"I want you to go over," Kakashi repeated patiently. "And I want you to get in Naruto's face."

Let him see you, Kakashi added without words, because he knew that Sasuke would catch it. Even in spite of everything they'd lost, they'd always been able to do this. Let him know that you're okay. That Sakura's okay, and that Sai will be. But only if he doesn't hurt you himself by accident.

"You're instructing your students to get in each other's faces," Madara repeated, the barest edge of bafflement in his Uchiha-smooth voice.

Of course. Because this was an impossible, possibly apocalyptic situation. And Team 7's response to this kind of problem had been, and apparently always would be, inadvisable impulsivity, way too many emotions, and winging it like champions.

"It's what they're best at," Kakashi explained. "And I am just the greatest Sensei, tailoring assignments to my students' strengths."

Sasuke actually took the time in this life-or-death situation to say, "Ha," totally flat and inflectionless, before blurring to Naruto's side, fearlessly stepping right past his bleeding chakra and the membranous cowl of the fox trying to swallow Naruto's body whole.

"Oi," he said, like they were out on the Leaf Village training fields and not alone in a forest with their worst enemy, a grievously injured teammate, and an anciently powerful beast a heartbeat away from devouring Naruto's very self like a hungry wildfire. "Dumbass. Knock it the fuck off, already."

And then he punched Naruto in the head.

"I want to be surprised," Sakura mourned over Sai's broken body, as Sasuke calmly shook out his the fist that Naruto's chakra had burned an ugly red. "I really want to be surprised. And yet."

Naruto's howls spluttered to a stop. Possibly because he was regaining some semblance of self. Possibly because he was still the partial embodiment of the Nine Tails, and the Nine Tails was honestly baffled that someone would respond to its massive and majestic presence by punching it square in the head.

Madara shifted his weight, like he was about go over there and interrupt this lovely bonding moment between Kakashi's boys. Kakashi moved to counter him, taking a page from genjutsu Minato-Sensei's book. Blocking could be just as effective as fighting.

"I think we do okay with the concept of team," he said, beaming smiles, even as Sasuke pulled back his fist again and Sakura bellowed at him to, 'stop punching the legendary beast in the face, Sasuke, what the hell'. "Despite what you may think."

"You would save them."

There it was. That note. That tone. The barest intonation of something in Madara's voice.

"Of course."

"You would save them."

"That's what people do when they have a weakness for their team, as you keep pointing out, Mr. Uchiha."

Madara quivered a little, a strange tension rippling down his frame. The key in Kakashi's head turned a little more, nearly there.

Madara moved. Kakashi countered.

"Naruto," Sasuke insisted in the background. "Seriously. Knock it off."

Naruto howled in response.

Madara said, "You would lecture me."

"Well. Being confronted with an ancient and possibly immortal being has never stopped Naruto from attempting the Heroic Speech Attack, so."

"You're hurting me," Sasuke carried on behind them. "You're going to hurt Sakura, Naruto."

Going right for Naruto's weakest point. Kakashi was just so proud of his murder-child.

"You would lecture me," Madara repeated.

"Sure." Kakashi's skin itched. The key in his head, and that elusive final turn, was driving him crazy. He felt like he could see something, but only the shape of it. The details weren't there, but that didn't stop him from feeling like he should know them.

"The man who left his teammates behind to complete a mission. The man who took one teammate's eye and then stabbed the other through the heart." Madara quivered again, and more than an intonation crept into his voice. "The man who said that we were a burden, a weight around his neck, holding him back. He would lecture me about teammates."

We.

The man who said that we were a burden.

Click.

The lock in Kakashi's head turned, the door opened, and Kakashi's entire being rattled with the force of what it had been concealing, the weight of it settling across his frame and obliterating his bones and knees and muscle fibers to ash.

It couldn't be possible. Couldn't.

But.

"Obito." It was a whisper, a wish, a familiar weight on the grooves of his tongue from how long he'd been carrying the name inside his mouth, his heart, his skin. "Obito?"

The single red eye behind the mask fluttered slightly.

A single red eye. Only one. Because Kakashi had the other.

Somewhere in this same clearing, Naruto was still caught in the throes of holding back the fox, Sasuke was a millimeter from danger and inching even closer, Sai was bleeding out on the forest floor while Sakura held him together with sweat and effort and her own rapidly dwindling supply of chakra. Somewhere, it was noise and chaos and the bright, garish colors of blood and violence and hostile chakra.

But it was gone. Muffled and distant. It was…away. All Kakashi could see was gray and white. Blinding. All he could hear was his own heartbeat in his ears, thundering loud like falling rocks, and the voice of the man in front of him.

"Kakashi," he said—Obito, Obito said. "You killed her. You killed Rin."

A/N: And here I am, just back-flipping away from writing any kind of story that makes sense. Sorry about it. Next up: Sakura's POV: Managing multiple tragic backstories at once is a resume-boosting skill that I never actually wanted, okay? Happy Reading!