A/N: The aftermath... warning for depressed Sakumo.

The warm, fragrant scent of steamed rice draws Sakumo into wakefulness and he blinks, his lashes sticky from a long sleep. "Yoriko?" he asks hoarsely, the threads of a forgotten dream still clinging onto him.

His wife's gentle smile greets him and he can't help but smile back. "Morning, Sakumo. Why did you sleep on the couch—mmph." She sighs as he kisses her, his heart full just from the sight of her yet aching with a sorrow he cannot name. Her hand threads into his loose hair as she laughs against his lips. "The soup."

"What?"

She laughs again, drawing away to peck at his cheek before standing. "The soup, Sakumo. It's going to boil over."

Sakumo's disappointment must have shown on his face, because she bends down to kiss him briefly again. How she indulges him. "I'm not going anywhere," she says, turning away.

'Yes, you are,' he realises with sudden desperation, but he finds himself paralysed where he's seated on the couch. 'Wait, wait...!'

Sakumo watches as she walks away, his protests stuck his pained throat. It's just a short distance from the living room to the adjoining kitchen, but time and distance stretches like a rubber band and the sun glows far too bright. Helpless to intervene as she blurs into the too-bright sky and disappears into the glare, he tries to stand, but his legs are filled with lead and his hands frozen numb.

There's blood in his mouth as he cries out.

"Yoriko!"

"I'm not going anywhere, Sakumo."

He turns towards the faint whisper of her voice, his abdomen aching something fierce with the movement, but sees nothing but the gauzy curtains drifting in the breeze.

"Our son still needs you."

"SAKUMO-SAN!"

He wakes up to Rin screaming at him, her hands pressed hard against the wound in his stomach, and promptly faints again.

"How could you!" she sobs beside him, pale with exhaustion after performing so much healing. "Why! Why didn't you tell me?"

'I'm sorry,' he tries to say, but nothing comes out but a wheezing sound.

She raises her head, fixing accusatory, swollen eyes on him. Fat tears spill down her cheeks as she glares.

His vision blurs as guilt crashes down on him. 'I'm sorry,' he mouths with blood-caked lips, meaning every word of it and more. He hadn't meant for her to see this. She grasps his hand when he tries to reach for her, pressing it to her tear-stained cheek, her whole body heaving with sobs that seem larger than her.

"Sakumo-san..."

Unable to do anything but lie there as his body screams in pain, he glances around. To his alarm, they're just outside Danzou's room. The man himself isn't there, but there's a ROOT agent guarding the door.

"How did he hurt you so badly?" Rin hiccups, leaning over him protectively. "I thought I would have to fight him, but he didn't see me."

She had probably started healing him immediately after realising that. If Danzou's technique - whatever it was - had lasted one more second, he might have seen Rin and hurt her. Sakumo's blood runs cold at the thought.

"You'll have to rest here for a bit," she says, still holding onto his hand tightly. "I used as much chakra as I dared to, but with Kakashi stuck in that cell... I'm scared of draining him too much." She breaks off into a sniffle. "Luckily Kagami-sama sent a med-nin over pretty quickly."

Sakumo frowns in confusion. 'Kagami...?'

"Kagami-sama says he'll make sure Danzou doesn't come back to hurt you anymore. So rest here. Don't move or you'll tear the stitches. I d-don't—" She stifles another sob and wipes her face. "I don't even know how you're alive."

He squeezes her hand. 'Because of you.'

She just sobs harder.

"Kagami-sama," Sakumo wheezes as the Uchiha appears before him the next morning, looking slightly dishevelled. "Why...?"

The ghost sighs. "I suppose those are multiple whys."

Rin glares at him with much more bravado than Sakumo can muster. "You know about Danzou's ability to harm ghosts?" she asks sharply.

Kagami winces. "I did try to kill him as well. So I've been in the same position, though Danzou was much more reluctant to harm me after striking that first, reflexive blow. We spent a few moments speaking to each other after that."

"What do you mean?" Sakumo croaks. Rin puts a quelling hand on his arm, frowning.

"It's a forbidden technique... which is also why I did not want to reveal all this business to you. I'm sorry for threatening you, Sakumo-san, but I won't apologise for why I did it. I have an obligation to my clan to protect its dangerous secrets. I do not need ghosts trying to steal my eyes in order to attempt the Izanagi." Kagami smiles humourlessly. "It rewrites reality, you see. With the Izanagi, you have the power to bridge the worlds of the living and the dead, and change your fate as many times as you want. All within one minute, of course, because that's how long the Izanagi can last before it destroys the Sharingan permanently."

Sakumo's mind is spinning. Izanagi! Does that mean that with it, he could appear before Kakashi and finally speak to him? A surge of painful longing hits him hard. Even if it is just for one minute... the things he would do for a chance like that. All his thoughts must have shown on his face, because Kagami sighs.

"You could have told me this," Sakumo protests. "I won't go after your eyes."

"Perhaps not, but that's not the only reason. How do you think Danzou reacted to me trying to kill him? Friend or not, he's not going to just lay down and die. For every Sharingan that he uses to defend himself, he promised to take another from my clansmen to replace it. There are so many ROOT agents willing to die to defend him too— if enough of them become ghosts..." Kagami drags a hand down his face. "I'm a little selfish too, Sakumo-san. I don't want my clan suffering for this. Danzou has a lot of Sharingans, all implanted in an artificial mokuton arm that he keeps hidden under his robes. Even I can't defeat him before he guts me. I only have two eyes to sacrifice."

Sakumo feels sick at the thought of eyes implanted in an arm. That cunning man, hiding away his arm as if it were disabled, but making in a frightful weapon in reality. Orochimaru must have helped him; it seems like something mad enough for the man to consider.

"Orochimaru and Danzou been attempting to bridge life and death ever since that incident. It's been a long, long time. What else they may have already come up with... I'm afraid to even consider."

"But why don't you use Kotoamatsukami?" Rin demands. "You're famous for it!"

Kagami falls into a silence. "I have," he admits. "I commanded him to do all things for the good of Konoha. And this is what he truly believe is for the village's benefit. He believes that he has to stay alive at all costs in order to ensure that Konoha stays strong. He told me that himself."

Sakumo is stunned. How can someone's truly believe that all this is truly right...?

The twist of Kagami's mouth says everything. "That's just the kind of man he is."

Sakumo spends the rest of the day contemplating his failures as he lays in one of the lesser travelled hallways of the Shimura estate. Rin had instructed him to stay put, after all, and he doesn't want to make more trouble by pulling his stitches. There's nothing he can do for Kakashi in this state, anyway.

There's a whole laundry list of failures in his head, some big enough to ruin a life, others small moments that he bites his nails over. This incident certainly ranks quite high up the list, however. Sakumo had once thought that he'd stop adding to them once he was dead, but it seems that not even stabbing himself could put a stop to his disaster of a life.

If he'd died taking Danzou down with him, then this whole incident might have been worth it. But now, he has not only failed to help Kakashi, he'd hurt Rin in the process too. None of this had been fair to her. He'd taken her under his wing and then he'd abandoned her.

'How unreliable can you be?' Sakumo castigates himself as he lays there, letting the pain of his wounds torment him along with his thoughts. 'To repeat your mistakes twice… unforgiveable.'

Rin is still angry at him and rightfully so. She still stays by his side and treats his wounds with care, but after she'd recovered from her initial fit of tears, she has become cold.

'You deserve it,' Sakumo tells himself, stumbling into the familiar quicksands of his mind. He lets himself sink, too exhausted to pull himself out. 'She should have left you to die.'

He tries to thinks of Yoriko, whose face he'd seen so clearly in that vision. But he can't remember her now. Her face is blurry like the remnants of a fever dream instead of the face of a woman he'd lived for years with. 'Kakashi doesn't need me, Yoriko,' Sakumo muses. 'I'm no father. Just a disgraced shinobi.'

No-one answers him, not even in his own mind. He closes his eyes.

"Do you know why I'm angry?" Rin says, her gaze downcast on her lap. Her mouth is a thin slash across her face.

Sakumo nods. He's sitting up for the first time in days, his wound nearly healed after the multiple rounds of treatment from the other med-nin, and it seems that Rin has deemed him strong enough for this conversation. "I'm sorry I left you alone like that," he murmurs.

"It's not just that. I wish," Rin says, choking up a little before she carries on. "I wish you could have taken me along! We're a team! I might look like a young," she gestures at herself in frustration, "but I'm nineteen. I'm a chuunin. Let me help you!"

"I didn't want you hurt, Rin."

"But you could have died if I hadn't sensed that something was wrong and followed you. We've both died once already, I know what it's like. I've nothing to lose, but if you'd died while I was happily sitting about somewhere, I'd regret it forever." She runs her hands through her hair in frustration. "I'd have spent days and months and years wondering whether I could have saved you."

Sakumo understands that feeling of helplessness all too well, but he can't bring himself to put her in danger. Not when he should be protecting her.

Her eyes meet his, dark with regret. "I've been useless at every battle. Obito died and Kakashi lost his eye because I was kidnapped. Then Kiri got me and there was nothing I could do but jump in front of Kakashi's Chidori. I know I've have left Kakashi to you more and more often because I can't bear watching him suffer, but please. I can't sit around and watch the people I love die again." She sets her jaw. "There's only so much I can do, but I want to do it. So please, Sakumo-san. Don't do that again."

Every kind of emotion swirls in him, churning into an aching mess in his chest. "I would have never forgiven myself if something had happened to you, but in the end I've hurt you too. I'm sorry, Rin." Sakumo reaches out his hand, palm upward. "But you'll have to let me protect you too, at least sometimes. Otherwise, this old man will be even more useless."

She takes his hand, giving him a wobbly smile. "I'm sorry too, Sakumo-san. I know you had the best intentions in mind..." Her lip trembled and she shuffled closer, gently wrapping her arms around him again for the first time since he'd been injured. "I'm glad you're alive. I can't lose you too…"

Sakumo hugs her back, sighing.