Colors of tears

White

Kakashi both liked and despised the color. It had no place in the shinobi world, where everything was immersed in shadows. The color of purity, hope and goodness should be completely foreign to him and his brethren. And yet thanks to the light mop on his head the boy couldn't think about anything else of this color but his father's shiny tresses. If not for that ridiculous tradition of Hatake clan, even his name could mean exactly that. His mother didn't want to call him Kakashi or anything else what related to fields or farming. She much more adored the silver hair he and Sakumo shared, but tradition was sacred and so the only son of the White Fang was named as a scarecrow, and Kakashi's mom's whishes became nothing more than an anecdote about the dead woman.

Now, some white object was the only thing he could see, and something that seemed to save his life. It had an odd, somehow wooden texture which surface so pale it felt like a ghostly echo of the lustrous wood it once should be, freshly felled with the scent of the forest. Kakashi blinked and moved away to better see the object that now resembled an arm disappearing under a black, tattered cloak. It belonged to a… person? The boy didn't know if this humanoid shape could be called that, while looking at it a word monster involuntarily came to mind – especially when you regarded its head. It looked as if formed with old twisted tree branches, centered around a single hole where normally an eye should be located. In short, it was truly ominous figure.

"Are you alright, Kakashi?"

That apparently knew his name.

"Whaaa, what the…?" The young jonin couldn't finish his sentence because the mysterious creature screamed Rin's name and kicking away their attackers ran to the lying girl. Flabbergasted, Kakashi followed it only to find how much pain his last teammate was feeling.

Rin lay on the ground with her face in a grimace and skin pale and clammy. Every few seconds she would scream. It had a raw quality, the genuineness of a person consumed by a pain that knew no end or limit. Then she would get quiet, just panting. Kakashi knew he should have been there at her side, but instead he stayed a few steps back, unable to bear it, leaving the creature to kneel by her side and stroke her hair at the same time trying to locate the cause of Rin's suffering. There was unexpected gentleness and concern in its movements as if the mysterious being cared deeply for the girl. It was clearly visible just like the additional panic.

"Kakashi, the heck happened to her?"

"I…" He could have sworn he knew that voice. It was deeper now, more rough and mature but some part of Kakashi's brain that wasn't going into shock right now, was screaming at him that he should recognize it. "Who are you?"

This clearly agitated the creature.

"What the hell you mean by who are you? It's me, you jack ass!" During excessive gesticulation aimed at showing its growing frustration, Kakashi's rescuer seemed to notice its own hand for the first time and facepalmed. "Right, I'm in Guruguru. Just wait a moment."

And saying that, the creature proceeded to open its… face? The young jonin understood it had to be something more like a mask than actual face but nothing prepared him for the sight of what was hidden under it.

It was Obito.

Since Kanabi on some days, Kakashi felt everything at once. Other days, in his heart there was nothing at all. The teenager didn't know what's worse; drowning beneath the waves or dying from the thirst. Now he was feeling both these things, no matter how impossible it appeared. His normal as well as his gifted eyes were still seeing, yet the world that was so close around him seemed far away. His mind began to shut down, unwilling to think anymore. Perhaps this was the beginning of a panic attack? Kakashi really wasn't sure. All he knew was that he kept hoping for the day he would earn redemption for his crimes, based on nothing but wrong opinions. He never ever hoped that his biggest crime would turn out to be untrue.

The boy's mind was reeling, unable to comprehend or process the images that were sent by his eyes. He looked away, then looked back to see if his supposedly dead friend was still there. He was. Then his shinobi training kicked in. Kakaski was trained to deal with this kind of emergency… well, at least sort of. No one trained him in case of a zombie uprising, or whatever it was, but they were still surrounded by the enemy forces, and with that he could work.

However, all kiri-nins were somehow reluctant to attack. Sure, seeing how their comrades were just beheaded and sent flying over sixty feet by single kick could make an impression, but Kakashi had a feeling that their indecision was deeper. It was as if their brains crashed. Their eyes were vacant, not unlike Rin's.

"Please," the soft, barely audible voice brought him back to reality. His, their, teammate was trembling, squeezing Obito's hand as if to ground herself to reality. "Please, kill me. You must. Please, Kakashi."

"What are you talking about, Rin?!" Screamed the young Uchiha. "No one is going to harm you! Everything will be alright, I prom... OW!"

The boy let go of her hand, which seemed to sting him.

"Rin!"

Kakashi managed to pull him away in the last moment. The girl screamed while her body curled into something fetal, something primeval what seemed to burn. And then she really started to radiate heat or was it just chakra? Apart from being red it also made all his body scream wrong. His instinct told him to run but for now he was trying to subdue the struggling teenager.

"Let go of me, you moron! We have to help her!"

Obito elbowed Kakashi's stomach and kicked his leg sending the fair-haired boy to the ground, freeing himself. He made no more than three steps before he abruptly stopped.

"Something is wrong with the seals." A new voice boomed across the sky. It came from Uchiha's direction, but there was no one who could have said it. At least Kakashi thought so until the white branches making Obito's mask unbend and formed another head-shaped mask away from the brunet's face.

"Guruguru, what are you talking about? You know how to help Rin?" Obito's voice was full of hope. Kakashi could swear that the creepy thing hearing it, despite the lack of mouth, grinned ominously.

"I'm afraid the plan just changed. Pity, Madara won't be happy. But tough times call for tough decisions!" Obito's arm shot in the air in a triumphant gesture.

The dark-haired teen began to demand answers but his whole wooden body shook and melted away from him, leaving him kneeling on the ground, while it molded back into a humanoid shape. The monster grabbed Obito's neck and raised him over the ground.

"What are you doing?! Let me go!"

"Sadly, no can do. I've got to like you however you turned out to be a waste of time. Now, we have to go back to our original plan but firstly…" Kakashi attacked the thing but it effortlessly ducked his kick and managed to immobilize him with branches shooting out of earth.

"Stupid Kakashi is a feisty one - cute. I'll take care of you in a moment but now I'm taking it." The creature mirth didn't diminish, even when it drowned its fingers in Obito's eye socket and squeezed, extracting the sharingan and a painful scream.

Obito dropped to the ground with a loud thud, still clenching his vacant eye. His tongue was soaked in the taste of blood, his head was pounding, and he couldn't do anything to stop Madara's monster from inflicting the same pain on Kakashi. The boy had no strength left in him, only agony. But he had to try.

Using his hearing, Obito started to crawl to the place where Guruguru stood in front of Kakashi, caressing his face.

"Such a handsome boy. Pity I have to brake you so fast but I really don't have a choice. At least you'll have one eye left! That's great, no?" The creature stopped trying to cheer the teenager up. It hmmed and seemed to think hard about something. "On the other hand, you won't live too long so I suppose it doesn't matter."

Kakashi stopped breathing when the white hand neared his red eye; he heard Obito had been screaming something, probably threats and curses, but at once everything stopped. The world held its breath when it was flooded with an ominous intent. With all this commotion not only surrounding them Kiri forces were forgotten. During the few seconds, when the current horror took place, Rin's screams subsided only to now return with vengeance. That's if those roars had anything in common with the sweet medic beside the fact they came from her throat. The girl was burning – literally. Her skin melted under the heat of crimson chakra radiating from her body. Obito saw none of it but he felt - just like everyone in a few miles radius had to feel - power surging from her petite form.

The last roar created a sonic wave, so powerful it threw everyone back as it they were nothing more than rag-dolls. Branches binding Kakashi broke like twigs, but they gave the boy enough maneuver to catch his friend so they wouldn't end separated by the surging air. Before they were totally caught by the wave, the teen managed to see how the wooden creature sank into the ground. He hoped it fled. Honestly, he would have been more than happy to never in his life see it again. How long this life would last fast another matter.

Kakashi was left with one practically immobile, blind and immersed in anguish teammate (who should be dead for a long time); and the second, which brain was almost certainly already gone, while her body was boiling, transforming into a rock with spikes, two tails and single worryingly glowing eye. Oh, and it was still growing. As if it was not enough, he just succeeded in protecting Obito from a hard landing, hitting his own head in the process. And he wasn't being cynical because of it, not at all. He was just slowly slipping into unconsciousness and couldn't stop hoping that at least this time he wasn't going to be the one left behind.

Ω

Blue

In her old life blue was just blue. It was the color of a train she rode to work every day, her jeans jacket or, at best, a little cunning flower next to her apartment, growing where the sidewalk slabs had become uneven enough to trap mud. There was of course a sky over her head or some sea outside a car window, but the reborn woman never before her death was one to contemplate such trivial things. Here blue was different - more deep and diverse. Or maybe she just looked at it, contrary to before?

In the big shame of things, it didn't really matter. What mattered was the fact that out of the fucking blue, Shiori stood before a masked man that shunsined exactly in front of her. It wouldn't have been so bad if he didn't land on the table when she was eating breakfast, stomping into her carrels, and hence, staining her pajamas.

Maybe another six-year-old would be afraid of an Anbu black ops, but Shiori was the certified adopted daughter of one of the most serious candidates for Hokage; and the well-known cute and precious sidekick of the second candidate, so she felt rather secure. That's why she took a spoon and stabbed him in the foot with all her strength. Not that it had too much effect. The masked shinobi looked at her with what Shiori guessed was a stupefaction.

"What are you doing?"

"It's me who should be asking it, gods dammit! What the fuck are you doing in my carrels, fish-face?"

"I…" The Anbu apparently remembered his duties and straightened. "I have a message for Uzumaki-san."

"And delivering it requires tramping my breakfast and making a mess?" Shiori swung the spoon again but the ninja caught her hand.

"Don't."

"Bite me."

"What's going on here, dettabane?" Asked Kushina, more for the sake of keeping appearances than because of curiosity. Shiori was in a truly nasty mood the last couple of days and the older Uzumaki didn't want to even muse what the little devil did to irritate an Anbu.

The masked man saluted and with one hand swiftly started a barrage of signs the reborn woman couldn't properly see, not to mention understand. That pissed her off, royally. Obviously, her shaming had finally born fruits, but she needed to know if those fruits were some rotten apples or delicious, juicy oranges.

Judging Kushina's distressed face it was the first. But why the heck no one was saying anything?! The girl was mad and so she generously shared the aggravation with her surrounding, biting the Anbu's fingers.

"Enough, Shiori! It's not the time." Kushina's tone was adamant. The older redhead was pensive. It couldn't mean anything good.

Shiori loosened her jaw and freed the frustrated man.

"What's going on, Kushina-san?"

"I don't know any details but we need to go. Pack yourself."

The girl did as she was told without further protests. Wherever they were heading their destination held answers, and right now the reborn woman wanted nothing more.

It turned out that wherever Kushina was going wasn't the same place where she took Shiori. The small hellion was nonchalantly pushed into Shisui's arms and without any explanation left on Uchiha's porch.

The curly haired boy, who was rather surprised by all the haste, blinked a few times and asked, echoing Shiori's main problem.

"What's up?"

Shiori's eyes gained intensity and fervor of a pit of boiling lava.

"I have no fucking idea. For now."

Shisui loudly gulped. He knew that whatever was going on wasn't good and somehow, he would end in the middle of it. Most likely because of those golden pools.

Not even two hours later he knew he was right. Unfortunately.

"Can anyone explain me once more what we are doing here, exactly?" Asked the older boy, rolling his eyes.

"We are investigating a distress situation which requires Uzumaki-sama's attendance. Senpai believes that most probably it has something to do with the wellbeing of Namikaze-sama's students. That's why we are here." Explained Itachi with a straight face. Shisui wasn't sure if he should hit the smaller boy or himself. Maybe that would help them see reason once again.

The three of them were sitting on the hospital roof because Shiori insisted that the suspense was killing her, and not even his reasoning that eventually she would be told everything, seemed to convince her.

"And how we are going to investigate? The whole building is crawling with Anbu."

"You're going to find the room where Kushina is and put a bug there, so we can hear what they say."

Shiori's plan was so simple and straight forward Shisui wanted to cry or tear out his hair. Probably both.

"Why I have to find her? It's your plan. And where are we going to find the bug? I have to let you know that surveillance equipment is quite hard to get."

"You're far less recognizable than Tachi-chan or I. He's the Uchiha heir and I look like my cousin, while you're just one more dark-haired brat who is looking for his mommy. Totally unsuspicious. As for the bug… " Shiori opened her bag and presented him a notebook. On the page she shoved into his face was a seal. There was something about wave transmission and concealing. It was way too complicated for him to understand but he knew a S-class seal when he saw one.

"Where did you get this?" He hissed, making sure no ninja was observing them.

"From Orochimaru-sama." The girl answered with a shrug. "I saw it in his notes, thought it can be useful and copied it."

"He didn't saw you, right?"

"I doubt it."

All the air came out of Shisui like from an inner tube.

"One of the legendary Sannins saw you stealing an Anbu seal?!"

Itachi blinked. He never heard anyone scream so loudly while whispering. Watching these two resembled watching a Ping-Pong match, but he knew his senpai would win. She always did.

"Take it easy, Shisui-san, or your vein will pop or something." As the younger boy knew, Shiori kept cool. "Even if he saw me, Orochimaru-sama knows I would never spy on him so he doesn't care. Now, you only need to apply it to a flat, vertical surface leading to the room – door or wall, it doesn't matter – and we'll hear everything. Meanwhile I'm gonna make a receiving seal so it would look like a hopscotch grid."

Shisui knew he had lost. He lost in the moment, when Shiori was involved in the matter, because she had always been an extremely effective siege machine against his fortified walls. Itachi's blind adoration for the girl wasn't helping. It was two against one.

"Shiori-san, do you even know what kind of stunt we are trying to pull off?"

"Magnificent one?"

Ω

Yellow

Minato's blond locks were widely regarded as one of Konoha's greatest wonders. They were reflecting the color of happiness. The color of the sun. The feeling of hope, bubbling under your skin. The sound of merriment and the feeling of joy. For Kakashi they were all that and so much more.

The moment he woke up in the hospital bed with the golden mop hovering over him he started to cry. With every tear, he was losing the… heaviness was the only way he could define it. Since Kanabi or maybe even before, Kakashi had to carry it around, even though he never wanted to. It was always over him, casting its shadow on his life. It was hung by a thin cord, too breakable to hold something so heavy. It crushed his ribs, made it hard to breathe. The boy tried to scream but a cry for help was of no use. No one else could see it - the weight that had been slowly crushing him to death.

And now it was gone.

It could come back. Probably it was going to the moment Minato would tell him about fate of his friends however for now Kakashi knew only about a mop of golden locks that made everything right.

Somewhere between his sobs a glint of red covered his vision, shortly followed by warm hugs, light kisses and words of encouragement. The river of tears slowly dried out and Kakashi was eased in the present situation.

Apparently, the large demonic chakra coming from Rin alarmed every shinobi in twenty-mile radius. Among them was Yuhi Shinku, commander of nearby stationed forces, who decided to intervene. His team managed to rescue the two boys before they would have been trampled or burn alive by the raging monster. They were evacuated back to the Leaf, while the tailed beast being too unstable to fully form dissolved in a cloud of chakra that spread in the air. The special summit in Land of Iron was informed about everything and the Third sent Minato and Orochimaru back to the village.

Kakshi wanted to be angry or devastated as he should, nonetheless he felt mostly numb. Maybe thanks to IV with sedatives, maybe because of excess of recent excitement, but the young jonin took exchange of his living teammate for a dead one and vice versa with easy.

"Kakashi-kun", began Minato putting his arm on the boy's shoulder. "I know it's hard but could you tell us what exactly happened?"

Kakashi clenched the bed sheets but nodded. He wasn't a wining child, he couldn't be. He was a ninja and it was time for a mission's report.

Ω

Black

After Guruguru put its slim fingers into his skull there was a flash of the whitest light Obito had ever seen. The light seared into his eye like a flare, but after the heat and light had gone, he was left in the most complete blackness he had ever known. And after months in that damned cave Obito knew a few things about lack of light.

Now, he could feel the soft cotton of bed clothes shifting under him, he could still hear Orochimaru bustling around the room and the beeps of heart monitor, he could still smell the cleanness of the hospital floor. But he could see nothing at all.

Obito was home, true, but price he had to pay for it was way too high. If he could cry, the boy's tears wouldn't be even half way done but he already was empty. Obito couldn't have cried even if it wasn't for the bandages wrapped around his head. He hadn't experienced this feeling before. The sorrow was still there, but not raw anymore – now it was an empty unhappiness - the kind he didn't think would easily lift.

"May I get some water?" He asked.

Only silence answered him. Ah yes, he recalled that Orochimaru said something before his breathing went completely silent. He had to leave to do more of his science/crazy stuff. Uchiha shuddered remembering how the Sannin couldn't control his excitement seeing Obito's wooden body. The serpent man helped him recover much faster, but the teen wasn't too eager to become his next guinea pig.

The boy slowly sat and found with his hand a cupboard standing next to his bed. He nearly knocked over a vase of flowers before he came across a water bottle. Obito inhaled a smell of the flowers. Kushina brought them to lift his spirit but they only reminded him Rin. Whole this hospital remained him about her. He needed to leave, if only for a moment.

He wobbly stood up and leaning against the walls moved forward.

Obito spent hours in this building, doing everything to earn some time with Rin. He cleaned the floor, changed the linen and hung the laundry; he had been doing everything to see that brilliant smile. Thinking about her kindness and doe eyes Obito's legs took him up, the way he knew as the back of his hand, even when his brain was smothered in a grey haze.

No one stopped him until he reached the roof. There between lines of drying sheet, it was possible to hear whispering children voices. Obito focused on his hearing but his mind pushed to the fore the smell of detergent and starch. With difficulty, he dragged his attention to surrounding him sounds. He couldn't believe it at first but after a moment he was sure one of the voices belonged to Shiori. How, in the name of love, did she get here? Kushina-san was going to be so…In the end it didn't matter. The boy wanted to do nothing more than hug the little pipsqueak.

One foot after the other he marched forward with a snail pace. After a while he started to comprehend what he was hearing. It seemed Shi-chan was pissed at her new friend's lack of faith in her deducting skills.

"I still don't believe it, Shiori-san."

"Oh, come on, Shisui-san. You heard it yourself. Hatake-san clearly told Mini-nii about seals, as plural. That white monster had to mean more than one seal and you have my word that sealing a tailed beast required only one. More would make it unstable and impossible to control."

"And that second seal was to…"

"Control her! Before they took off on that mission I told Rin Kakashi was being more gloomy than usual. I was afraid he had self-destructing tendencies and that he could do something stupid. She promised me she will have an eye on him. There's no way knowing that she would tell him to kill her."

"Senpai thinks the second seal controlled Nohara-san's mind," concluded the third voice.

"Precisely, Tachi-chan. She was programmed to do it."

"So that Madara fellow wanted Hatake-san to kill Nohara-san so his sharingan would evolve? But why?" Inquired Shisui.

"Think! He had Obi-nii. He rescued and nursed him. Why?"

"I have no idea."

"They know each other and are teammates," mused the boy Shiori called Tachi. "But maybe it's about their eyes? They share one set of sharing…"

The boy clamped his mouth shut when a loud kiss sound was heard.

"I love you, kid. You're the best." Declared the girl and turned to the other boy. "Tachi-chan is right. I think Madara assumed that the both eyes are still connected even if they are in different skulls. That's why they took Obi-nii there. So he could saw on his own eyes how his best friend kills the girl he loves. Then Madara would have in his grasp a distraught Uchiha full of hate and others raging emotions, with a freshly developed Mangekyou."

Obito stood on the brink of something he couldn't describe. The weight of everything he heard seemed to press down on his shoulders and he struggled to take even a single breath. He promised himself he would always believe Shiori and so he knew it was true. But it was too much. All of it. Somehow, he kept moving even if every step cost him part of his soul. The darkness grew darker; the pain grew sharper; all of it seemed to only grow in strength and he began to wonder if things could ever get better.

He moved away a sheet and walked into a clearing triggering a wave of tense silence.

"O, Obi-nii?"

The boy fell forward, dropping on hard concrete and bowed his head, shoulders shaking. A sense of deja vu swept over him, as Madara's ghostly words danced around and within him. A devious reminder of all days and nights he had spent there instead of escaping. Struggling to keep breathing his entire body seemed to sag with exhaustion and numbed agony.

"I… It's me… It's my fault!"

His cries weren't even as half frightening as crazy chakra that erupted from him. It was sickening. He was in so much pain. Pain no one could understand not counting one young jonin a few floors down who suddenly writhed in the same agony.

Shisui shielded his friends, ready to use even his despised red eyes and everything else he had. Itachi stood right behind him prepared to grab the shocked girl and flee if it was necessary. Fortunately, it wasn't. A five-masked shinobi materialized around them as Obito went completely limp. Orochimaru stood over him with a grim face.

"Child, what did you do?"

"Ehhh… nothing?"

The reborn woman had a feeling he didn't believe her. She needed to fix it somehow. And so she started to cry.

Itachi awkwardly hugged her and glared at the Snake Sannin. Senpai called situations like this one a clusterfuck. He didn't know what it meant but he felt it was designed for times exactly like this one.

It was one big clusterfuck.