All those times they've trained together are paying off. Rin takes up a position in Danzou's blind spot, and while Sakumo faces the elder head on, the sealing team sneaks over to carry Fugaku to safety.
Sakumo knows that he will have to make full use of his new abilities in order to win this fight. His instincts and reflexes are the valuable product of a lifetime's experience on the battlefield but now he will have to discard them. The human limitations which have shaped his fighting style no longer apply. As long as he allows himself time to regenerate, losing a limb is of no import and a fatal wound hardly deserves a moment's consideration.
He sees the elder eyeing him, the cogs of his brain turning behind his single narrowed eye before the man straightens and relaxes his shoulders. "Well, this is unfortunate," Danzou sighs, letting his katana slip from his fingers.
Sakumo's eyes widen – 'He's surrendering?' – but it's a feint. Just as Sakumo pauses, the elder claps his hands together in the rat seal, quickly transitioning into the ox, then the monkey, the tiger— As fast he can, Sakumo throws his katana at his hands and bursts into a shunshin. The katana misses but Danzou is forced to pause and duck; then Sakumo is behind the elder with the hilt of the katana slapping into his palm and his fingers snapping closed around it.
The blade falls and buries itself in Danzou's shoulder, severing muscle and tendon as the elder lets out a muffled grunt. His fingers fall limp before the next seal can be formed but Sakumo doesn't hesitate before going for the next blow. He hadn't expected Orochimaru to give Danzou the seals to release the Edo Tensei, not when either of them could turn upon each other in an instant, but he had felt the way his paper-and-ink body had responded to the hand seals.
At this rate, he cannot allow Danzou even an instant's reprieve.
Sakumo flicks off the blood on his katana and looks up from the corpse at his feet, ready for the Danzou's next appearance. Already the stench of blood is dissipating as the Izanagi does its work. He looks around, vigilant against Danzou's next appearance.
The whisper of air against Sakumo's nape gives Danzou away a heartbeat before he strikes. The hilt of Sakumo's sword blocks the blow at the cost of a few fingers, but Sakumo keeps his head. He whirls around and anchors his grip on the hilt with his other hand, shoving hard to throw Danzou off before sending him flying with a kick in the guts. From thereon, it is a flurry of steel and jutsu, with Danzou dying only to be revived and Sakumo losing limbs only to regain them.
Sakumo kills Danzou four times and watches two Sharingans shut before he takes a sword between the ribs. But he leans into the blade, grabbing the startled elder and keeping him still as Rin flashes up from behind and jabs him in the neck with a poisoned senbon. If he can hurt Rin; she can hurt him too. Sakumo wrestles Danzou to the ground as Rin darts away, keeping him down until his struggles weaken and another Sharingan shuts.
The Hatake smiles grimly. He can play this game with Danzou for as long as he wants.
"This is going nowhere," Danzou spits, a snarl curling his lip when he revives further along the street. He steps away from Sakumo instead of charging at him, having finally realised that facing Sakumo head-on isn't a strategy in his favour. "Tch. Looks like I'll have to try using that doujutsu… If I can't make kill your undead body, I'll just make you human again before doing it."
Sakumo doesn't know what that means, but if there is anything more powerful than the Izanagi, he needs to stop it before it manifests. He casts a wary glance towards Danzou's arm when it ripples and warps beneath the skin, the remaining two Sharingan eyes blinking and rolling about as Danzou's chakra pours into the limb.
There's no time to wait.
Another shunshin brings Sakumo up in Danzou's face, his blade going as far as touching his skin before Danzou tries to twist away. It's should be too late for the elder, but his strange arm hardens and bursts into sharp wooden spikes, stabbing Sakumo's forearm and piercing into his shoulder.
Sakumo grunts in surprise as he's pushed away but he throws out his uninjured hand, lunging for the eyes even as Danzou kicks his legs out from under him. He brushes one of the Sharingans just as he falls and it bursts in an overload of chakra. Pop. Sakumo gags as the warm liquid oozes between his fingers.
Danzou swears as Izanagi ends, leaving him vulnerable.
The one beside it, however, twitches and changes. The tomoes swirl and meld together into rings, spreading outwards from the pupil as they form thin bands of black upon the purple iris.
"W-What?!" Sakumo stutters, pushing himself up onto his hands and knees. This is not the Mangekyou.
An incredible force blasts him back, sending him skidding across the ground until he plunges his katana into the ground. When he looks up again, Danzou has his arm raised triumphant. Sweat trickles down his grinning face as he clenches his fist. "Yes!" he shouts. "Now, to use the power over life and death itself...!"
Sakumo struggles to get onto his feet, urging his shattered leg to reform faster as Danzou clasps his hands together in a seal, but he spots the flash of brown behind the elder too late.
"Rin!" he bellows.
Her hand passes through Danzou's arm just as the jutsu activates, a Raiton sparking from her fingers in a desperate attempt to disrupt the doujutsu, but—
There's a bright green flash. A shot of light slams into Sakumo's chest with inescapable accuracy, and suddenly it's as if he's waking up in Orochimaru's lab all over again. In the distance, he hears Rin's scream, short and cut-off.
It's overwhelming: his lungs inflating and heart squeezing, skin stitching together over muscle as muscle binds to bone… Sakumo's eyes snap open and immediately he winces at the painful glare of the sun. Everything is a blur, his ears ringing and his throat stinging from the dust in the air. Coughing, he climbs onto his feet, stumbling a little as the ground shifts under him. He's aching all over—and that's what tells him that he's alive once more.
"Watch out!" He's sent stumbling to the side by Kakashi's hard shove, a split second before a twisting trunk of wood bursts out from the ground and grazes his forearm. Sakumo gasps at the sting, shocked by the sudden burst of pain after years of nothing, but he quickly finds his bearings and darts after Kakashi. Rin's unconscious body is clutched in the younger Hatake's arms, her head lolling against his shoulder as he cradles her close.
Branches whip against Sakumo's face as he dashes after them, zig-zagging about as he swerves away from the trees bursting out of the ground. All around them, the other shinobi are fleeing too. Sakumo is in shock as he wipes at the blood dripping down his arm. If Kakashi hadn't gotten to him, Danzou would have already succeeded in killing him. Glancing back, he sees the elder clutching his arm as he struggles against the wild growth of his mokuton implant. His limb has become embedded in the trunk of a tree, which only grows in height and girth every second. All around it, roots embed themselves into the ground and burst out as new trees.
The elder lets out a bellow of anger and fear, but soon even he is swallowed up by the forest, his voice petering off into a groan. They escape to the end of the street, slowing only when the thick forest stops advancing upon them. Sakumo looks back, but he can't see anything through the thick growth. He thinks he spots a smattering of faint light in the distance – Kagami, perhaps – but it disappears before he can make sense of it.
Casting those worries to the back of his mind, Sakumo staggers over to where Kakashi has set Rin down on the ground. There are more important things now.
"Otou-san," Kakashi mouths, too shocked to speak as he kneels over Rin. Falling to his knees beside Kakashi as well, he wraps an arm around Kakashi's shoulders and tucks his trembling form close. Checking Rin's pulse with his other hand, he sighs in relief as he feels the strong beat of her heart.
"Rin," Kakashi whispers, reaching out to shake her gently.
Her head turns weakly and she groans. "Ka-kashi?" Her eyes blink open, a wince coming over her face as she pushes herself up on shaky arms. "What…?"
Kakashi lets out a wordless sob of joy and throws his arms around both of them, squeezing them together with all his strength. When Rin realises that she's being held, she lets out a startling scream of excitement and reaches for them too, dragging them both down onto the ground. They're laughing and crying and Sakumo hugs both his children close, unashamed to admit that there are tears streaming down his face too.
"I must thank you all for your indispensable aid," Fugaku says as he holds an ice bag to his forehead, his eyes squinted with pain as he peers at Sakumo, Kakashi and Rin. Beside the Hokage, Shikaku stands straight despite looking very much battered too. "For that, I think we can afford to give you the benefit of the doubt regarding your loyalties."
It's hard to keep a straight face when his head is still spinning from the possibilities of being alive again, but Sakumo sobers quickly when he's reminded all those who had fallen victim to his blade while he was being controlled by Orochimaru. "You can be rest assured that I am still loyal to Konoha. I fully understand, however, if you need to do further investigations."
Fugaku nods. "You can expect several ANBU to trail you. But otherwise... I trust you all will be comfortable staying in Kakashi's hospital room for the time being?"
They agree readily. Fugaku dismisses them, wincing again as he slides the ice pack over his eyes, and they file out of his office. People are doing double-takes when they see who's flanking Kakashi on each side; staring blatantly and whispering, but Sakumo tells himself to ignore them. Despite all the terrible things that have happened, he's alive again and he's feeling alive.
They walk out of the Hokage towers together, sticking to each other close enough to bump elbows as they hurry towards the hospital. Kakashi's and Rin's gazes often slide to each other, meeting for a brief moment before they both quickly look away, faces red. Sakumo chuckles to himself and Kakashi glances at him too, a whole array of expressions flitting over his face before it settles on the sweetest smile of relief Sakumo has ever seen. Sakumo knows that Kakashi had a reputation to maintain so he doesn't hug him again until they're safely back in his hospital room, but once the door closes, he's squeezing the breath out of his son again, marveling at how tall he's grown.
And Kakashi hugs back.
Chuckling, Sakumo looks up. "Don't just stand there," he tells Rin, who beams and jumps at both of them again. 'I can die happy now,' is Sakumo's first thought, but he corrects himself. He's not going to do any dying; not when he's been given a second chance.
It's a while before they manage to untangle themselves from each other; Sakumo and Rin both fussing over Kakashi when he staggers. Kakashi looks happily bemused as they tuck him back into the hospital bed. "You should be taking care of yourself!" he protests. "Are you both sure that you're alright?"
"Quite," Sakumo assures as he pours Kakashi a cup of water from the pitcher by his bedside. "This is only a scratch," he says, lifting the arm that had been bandaged by the med-nin earlier. While they'd been getting checked over after the battle, Sakumo had taken a peek down his shirt and seen the scar across his belly. A quiet word with Rin confirmed that she has scars as well - a branching starburst right across her heart - but otherwise, they are perfectly, miraculously fine.
"Trust me, I'm a med-nin," Rin says, sitting down on the side of the bed. Leaning forward, she pats his hand. "We're both fine."
Kakashi smiles and sinks back against his pillow, staying enraptured in each other's gazes for a long while before he has to avert his eyes. "I'm sorry."
As if a dam had broken, they're trying to apologise to each other all at once - Kakashi, for putting a Chidori through Rin and Rin, for making him do it; then Kakashi, for not realising how hard Sakumo was taking things and Sakumo, for leaving Kakashi so early - before they all stutter to a stop.
"No more apologies," Rin says fiercely. "It's all in the past, right?"
Both Hatakes nod sheepishly, tentative smiles spreading over their faces again. "Who would have thought that we'd have Danzou to thank for this?" Kakashi makes a face. "That madman."
"Who would have thought, indeed," Sakumo murmurs, wondering if that purple eye had been destroyed together with the elder. "I still can't believe this is real."
Kakashi reaches out and grasps both their hands. "I've missed the both of you."
"Me too, son," Sakumo whispers as Rin wipes at her eyes. "Me too."
A/N: This is where the final arc ends, friends :') The last chapter will be an epilogue (sort of) taking place a short while after this. I will save my comments and my thanks until then! :')