Rating: T
Summary: Rin and Kakashi are sent on an important mission in the area surrounding Kirigakure. It's an ambush. Rin's kekkai genkai, however, picks a great time to unlock. One tiny change leads to the destruction of the plans of many a megalomaniac.
It was obvious to her that the mission was not what it seemed. But she accepted it without protest. It was either that, or to tell her team the truth- and that was something she would not do unless she absolutely had to. After all, they had already lost Obito, and that had almost destroyed them.
If she didn't know better, it would have seemed relatively innocuous. An B-ranked mission to the lands surrounding the Mist in order to gather information from one of their informants- it should have been no trouble for the two students of the infamous Yellow Flash, now Yondaime, and the squad of jonin they traveled with. Both of whom were already gaining fame- the former for being an absolutely phenomenal medic nin, the latter as Sharingan Kakashi.
But the fact that the informant specifically requested the students of the Yondaime was a tip-off. Minato-sensei was suspicious, but the information that was on hand was far more important than silly gut feelings. But to his credit, he had assigned a squad of jonin to the mission just to be safe.
That hadn't helped much in the end, after the Mist hunter nin had picked off the rest of the team one by one until only Rin and Kakashi were left, running ragged after days of not sleeping and not eating more than the occasional nip from their (decreasing) supply of tasteless ration bars.
It was on the fifth night that Rin had looked over at Kakashi as they sat shivering, taking a short break before they had to run again, and said, "I'm the one they're after. I'll stay behind."
He stared at her with his lone black eye. "I am- I was a spy from Kirigakure," she elaborates, and tries not to look away. "I've always been."
She expected him to pull out a weapon, to fling insults, to proclaim his feelings of betrayal- anything. But Kakashi did nothing.
"Was Obito supposed to die?" He asked finally, his voice soft and emotionless.
"No," she denies, quicker and hasher than she had wanted to. "No, I never wanted him to die. But," Rin adds, even knowing that doing so wouldn't get her any points in her favor, "...His blood is on my hands. I surrendered myself to the Iwa shinobi without a fight. If I hadn't..."
Kakashi stays silent.
"Kakashi, you-" she starts. "...You know the truth now," she ends softly, and her fists clench. "Why aren't you reacting?"
He looks back at her with a half-lidded eye. "...I think I knew. I think I've always known."
She stops at that, and says in surprise and no small amount of trepidation. "You- How?" Because if Kakashi knew, then more likely than not, Minato-sensei knew as well.
"Don't worry. I never told Sensei," he says casually, almost reading her mind, as if keeping such secrets from his commanding officer wasn't a crime punishable by death. "It was... the day Obito died. We fought the Iwa shinobi together. There was no way a chuunin could have fought the way you did. You used techniques you could not possibly know, moves you have never shown before... I didn't know how, exactly, but I knew you weren't who you said you were. But even before, there was something off about you."
"I'm not," she agrees, relieved for some incomprehensible reason. After all, she probably won't return to Konoha alive, so she shouldn't be worrying about Sensei finding out the truth of her identity. "I'm not Rin Nohara, you know. She never existed."
"Then who are you?" He asks, looking strangely curious.
"I don't know," she says truthfully. "But I think if I was someone, I would be Rin."
Kakashi rests his head against the tree trunk thoughtfully. "If I leave you behind," He says, "The Kiri nin will leave me alone. I can return to the village alive."
"Yes," she agrees, "Just leave, and I'll stay here and wait for them."
"Hm. No thank you."
And Rin whirls around, eyes wide. "What do you mean," she grits out through clenched teeth. "If you don't, they will kill both of us."
"I made a promise to Obito," he says simply, and Rin stops talking at the sound of his name. "He told me to protect you with my life."
"Obito's gone," she hisses, "He wouldn't want you to get yourself killed for no reason. Just leave me."
"If there is one thing Obito taught me," Kakashi fixates her with his one eye. "Is that those who abandon their friends are worse than trash. I can't- I won't go against that, especially not with Obito looking out for me." He taps his hitai-ate where it covers his eye. It makes a metallic clink.
Rin doesn't argue.
They are ambushed in an open clearing. The hunter nin come after them like flies upon carrion- there are dozens of them, their expressionless porcelain masks glinting in the sunlight. They attack with jutsu, with blades, with kunai- but they seem to want to keep Rin alive.
She knows they want to take her back to Kiri and make sure that the death of a traitor is long and painful. If she was going to die... well, she wanted to die here, in the midst of battle with her teammate, not under whatever cruel torture the interrogation specialists have in store for her.
It all ends with a fist in her chest- Kakashi's Chidori, to be exact. It burns, and while her chest is numb, she can feel the blood gurgling up her throat and trickling down her lips.
"K-Kakashi-" She gasps through her dimming vision, her life's blood spraying from the exertion, her teammates pained expression forever engraved on her mind. "T-thank-" She does not to get to finish her last words.
Dimly, Rin feels a hand on her shoulder, and then a searing pain- so much more painful than anything she had felt before- as Kakashi wrenched his hand out of her chest with a sickening squelch.
And then she was falling- but she was gone before she hit the ground.
A few dozen feet away, hidden in the forest, a boy with a single Sharingan eye was crying.
She wakes up with a gasp, and that is her first clue that something had gone incredibly wrong.
Rin picks herself up gingerly and for a moment, stares at her surroundings.
While dying had distracted her from really paying attention to her location, she was sure this hadn't been the same place she was before. Or maybe it was all the blood covering every square foot of the previously innocent looking clearing.
Kakashi had used Chidori- on her, she remembered. So why was she alive? Her clothing was bloodstained and there was a large hole both in front and in the back of her clothing, where she had been hit. But the flesh underneath was untouched and scarless, and she stared at her body in wonder.
All of the hunter nin are dead, some of them more than others. Their bodies are scattered around the landscape, ripped apart as if some feral creature had gotten a hold of them. There's an arm a few feet away from her. She doesn't shudder.
Her thought after that is, Kakashi. She sees him lying face down a dozen feet away, and she thinks, no. Because it was her who was supposed to die- it was her who was the hunter nins' target- not Kakashi. But she flips him over and feels his pulse desperately, and there is one. It is feeble, but it is there.
She sits there for a moment, digesting what had happened. Someone other than Kakashi had taken down the dozens of hunter nin- the elite forces of her former village- with a frightening ease, and had moved her body away from where she had died originally. Kakashi was unconscious, but he was going to live- chakra exhaustion seemed to be his only medical problem.
And she- Rin- was alive, for some reason she could only guess at. Her heart had been crushed by the Chidori- it was a fatal injury, but she wasn't dead. In fact, it was as if she had never been hit. The only evidence it had even happened was from her destroyed clothing.
She doesn't question it. She doesn't have the time. There's a decision she was going to have to make, and she had to choose before Kakashi woke up- or if their mysterious benefactor returned.
She had to leave, Rin realized. If she stayed in the village, it would get out one day of her past as a spy- and even though she no longer relayed information to Kiri, that was a deed punished only by death. And if she was discovered, it would only cause pain and suffering for those she knew- Kakashi and Minato-sensei would derided as being unable to see a traitor within their own team. The best thing she could do for them was to get out of their lives.
After all, Kakashi had to remember landing the would-be killing blow. He wouldn't question her disappearance- or rather, her body's disappearance.
Rin stood up clumsily, tried to ignore her blood splattered clothing, and ran.
Kakashi Hatake wakes up a few hours later.
Rin, he thinks, I killed Rin. His hand is covered with her blood and gore, which had since dried into a crust on his fingers. He gets to his feet stumbling and openly gawks at his surroundings.
His enemies are dead, killed- butchered would be a better word for it, as body parts decorated the landscape in a grotesque display. And Rin- or rather, her body- was gone. She wasn't where he killed left her.
He searches desperately, in the forest, in the clearing, in the small river flowing nearby. But she is gone, and he realizes with a sinking feeling in his stomach that one of the hunter nin must have gotten away with her body. At least, there wasn't anything more they could do to her. She was beyond that now.
Kakashi Hatake returns to Konoha alone and blood stained- he does not tell the Yondaime about Rin, other than her death. She is mourned by a great portion of her generation and the generation after them, and she is remembered as a remarkably kind kunoichi who helped all she could. Because Rin Nohara's body could not be retrieved, she never gets a plot in the Konoha Cemetary. As a result, Kakashi never visited her grave- instead, he spends his time frequenting the Memorial Stone, on which both of his teammates names are enscribed.
Soon after, when Kushina Uzumaki tells her husband and her husband's remaining student- the one who is practically a son to them both- about her pregnancy, Kakashi visits the Memorial Stone. He says nothing about Kushina-san's top-secret pregnancy, as he knows all too well how well-known the Memorial Stone is.
The village is not infiltrated by a mysterious masked man the night of the birth of Naruto Uzumaki- or rather, Namikaze. The Yondaime never fights an orange masked man who has the ability to turn intangible at will. The Nine-Tailed Fox is never released onto Konohagakure, and Minato Namikaze never sacrifices his life in order to seal the monster into his son.
Naruto Namikaze grows up with a rambunctious mother and a doting father. Without the death of the Yondaime, the Uchiha clan remains on good terms with the rest of the village and any talk of a coup is hushed. Sasuke Uchiha grows up with a loving older brother who treats him to dango every week.
In the Academy, Naruto Namikaze and Sasuke Uchiha become quick friends, like their mothers had more than a decade earlier.
And... Kakashi Hatake throws himself into the ANBU Corps and tries his best not to think about anything else. His sensei tries to pull him back, but his ties to the other world are stronger. He loved his team, he realizes too late. They were all he ever had, and now they were gone.
Sensei had his own life now. Kakashi Hatake is nothing more than a ghost.
A/N: Decided I rather have more parts with similar word count than trying to cram the rest of the story into one chapter and an epilogue.