AN:/ So I know it's been awhile, but I started a new job along with just life in general. I finally got a grip on where to go with this and actually have a second story planned I'll be starting soon. SO expect actual updates soon. Please enjoy and review so I know whether anyone likes this or not.
Chapter 2: A Glimmer of Hope
It's a startling contrast, the feeling of having rocks completely piling down on top of you and bearing down on your body, to a complete weightlessness that practically throws you forward. When the rocks were on top of him, the pain had been numbed by adrenaline and constant pressure, now somehow outside of the cave with nothing to bear down pure agony shoots through about half of his body.
"Kakashi!" he hears Rin scream at the same time he yells in pain. Tears he'd been holding back flowed freely and his chest rapidly raises from hyperventilating. He regrettably makes the decision to turn his head to the side to lift up the bloodied side and chokes out another sound as the movement causes a ripple of twitches in his body that awaken every nerve that had still been dulled.
He sees a man collapsed beside him, his chest just barely raising up and down and a deathly pale face half covered in horrific scars staring at him. Or not really staring, as he notices the milky colorless pallor of one eye, and the grey clouded iris in the other that slowly begin to close. It takes him barely a moment to register that this must be the man who saved him.
"Th-thank, y-" he sputters on the remaining words as his chest begins to feel too tight.
"Shh," a soft and gentle voice breaks his single focused concentration. Rin. Her small hands are on his torso and he feels the warm and soothing sensation of healing chakra pouring into him. There's a chill that makes him think his jacket and shirt have either been pulled up or cut open, he's too focused on other things to be able to tell for sure.
As his vital systems begin to mend and pull themselves back together, the sound of steel clashing in the background is almost deafening. Is that Kakashi? Is fighting the enemy alone?
"It's going to be okay," her beautiful voice shakes, but her hands are steady as she moves them around his body to close any open wounds. "We've got you...you're going to…" she sobs and he finds the strength to turn his head enough to look straight up into her teary eyes. Wet trails trace her face markings and her lips quiver.
"I-It's o-okay," he croaks out. The arm that managed to avoid being crushed reaches up and wipes a freshly forming tear from the corner of her eye. "It's okay."
"Obito!" he hears an echo of a different voice shouting his name, and his vision goes out of focus to see the form of his male teammate over Rin's shoulder rushing towards them.
He's slipping. The colors are fading and the noises are growing further and further away. He's just barely holding on when the shock of one brilliant spot of red swirled with silver in his vision appears right over him.
"Please...hold on…" he can't understand the next part fully it's too quiet and distant. "...so sorry….right….longer...please!" Something wet falls on his cheek, and everything goes black.
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The smell of ointment and salves is overwhelming and he nearly chokes on it as he barely begins to regain conscience. The pungent odor practically shocks him awake as he sits up gasping and scrunching his face. Immediately hands roughly grip his biceps and firmly hold him down. There's just a moment where instincts kick in and he's certain he's still there on the battlefield. He's just began to struggle when someone breaks through the haze.
"Obito!" Sensei's voice commanding and stern yells out suddenly. "Calm down, you're safe." One of the hands on him goes from rough to a barely tangible grip that comfortingly rubs up and down his uninjured arm. The hand around the other releases him and he turns to see it belonged to a medic dressed up from head to toe.
The medic mutters something to Minato that Obito doesn't quite register as he takes in his surroundings. He's definitely in a hospital, but not in Konoha. The tile looks more dated and the paint is a more off shade of white. He has his own room at least from the looks of it, various tubing and wires coming from his body into an assortment of machines. That smell hasn't dulled since he opened his eyes to the somewhat dim lighting.
He scrunches his nose again, but this time notices the waxy feeling it causes on the half of his face that was buried in the landslide. His hand flies up to touch it, only for Sensei's quick hand to grab him again. Kindly blue eyes stare down at him with a knowing look.
"You'll rub the ointment off," he says. "Your injuries were pretty severe, Rin managed to stifle the internal damage and close up most of the major areas you were bleeding from." It's both a comforting and a worrying thought, because he had been buried under a pile of rocks for crying out loud! How much chakra had she used in performing that miracle?
The thought must have shown on his face because Minato fondly shakes his head and laughs. "She's fine, suffering from mild chakra exhaustion, but otherwise fine. Her work was enough to get you to somewhere across the border and heal the more complicated damage to your skin and bones...it's mostly gone well." Before he can ask Minato quickly adds to the statement. "You'll have some scarring on your arm and leg mostly, they think your torso and face should heal slightly better since they didn't have as much weight on them, and with some rehabilitation you can regain full mobility in your limbs."
He glances at the medic who is simply nodding along. For all that Kakashi says otherwise, Obito isn't stupid and he sees what's going on here. The doctors want to keep him calm, and are using an adult he trusts to break the news of his condition to him. It's a nice, but condescending gesture. Speaking of which…
"Where's Bakashi?" Obito asks. His voice comes out scratch and hoarse, and his throat burns with each word. The doctor lifts his back up and offers him a glass of water he gladly takes.
He can practically hear him bragging about how he was right, and that Obito had almost got them all killed and -
"He hasn't woken up yet," Minato says, and there's something hesitant and heavy in his eyes that send Obito into a panic. Had something happened while he was out? Minato lets out a weary sigh. "We found him carrying you back, with Rin leaning on him...the amount of chakra exhaustion was…" Kakashi's never been known for his stamina. His teammate's below average chakra reserves were the one thing he was ever able to hold over his head. Now the fact makes him feel sick at the implications it brings.
"We had to cover h-...the eye," his sensei says in a careful tone. His eye, the sharingan Obito gave him so he could save Rin. "He can't deactivate it, it was draining his remaining reserves. There was a moment when we weren't sure if either of you would make it through."
Sensei's shoulders slump and he shakes his head again. Obito doesn't take the next sip of water offered to him and uses every bit of strength he has to fully sit up instead. His muscles ache but he really doesn't care at the moment.
"He almost died?" Obito says what the other man has been avoiding. Minato's silence is damning.
Kakashi had carried him back while exhausted and likely injured from whatever fight took place after the cave in. He saved him and Rin, and done it while Obito's eye had literally been killing him. His chest clenches with guilt. He hadn't known, at the time it seemed like a good idea. He hadn't thought...and that was the issue wasn't it? He always forgets to thinks things through, rushing in without a thought for the consequence.
It's a heavy thing realizing just how lucky he's been until now. His brash nature finally caught up to him and almost got him and his entire team killed. Who knows what would have happened if it hadn't been for that man.
"What about the man who saved me?"
"..." Sensei nods over to the medic who ducks their head and rushes out of the room leaving teacher and student to speak alone. Minato looks down at him and there's something hidden in his expression that Obito can't decipher.
"Obito...what happened out there, we need you to agree not to speak about it with anyone else outside of who was already there," Minato says. "Do you understand? The man who dragged you out was brought to Konohagakure after he was stabilized enough for transport. For now he's an unknown in a hospital room there in a comatose state...we want as little information getting out as possible for now."
He wants to protest and argue, because whoever that stranger was, he saved them. None of them might even be here if he hadn't come to their rescue, but he knows when he's in over his head for once. He had thought his rescuer was from Konoha or at least an ally, the secrecy Sensei is suggesting says otherwise though.
For now he silently nods his head not looking the older man in the eyes. A tan hand reaches out to ruffle his hair before he turns around towards the door. "Get some rest, I'll bring Kakashi and Rin in once they're ready to move around."
Obito doesn't imagine rest coming easy anytime soon.
Everything hurts. His body crumpled and broken in so many places where crushing rock once sat on top of him. It's hardly a kindness that they let Rin heal him just barely enough to keep him alive. All he can do is lay immobile on the ground while the Iwa nin stand over them. Kakashi places himself in front of him and Rin protectively, still forced to kneel before the enemy.
They yank Obito upright, and he yelps in pure agony as he feels his bones grinding and his wounds stretching and the sudden movement. Tears fall as he stares ahead. They grab at Rin and Kakashi, dragging her off and reclaiming their prisoner. Her screams echo as the one holding her runs and vanishes from sight. Kakashi struggles, snarling at them as they use their feet to push him against the ground.
"Do something!" Kakashi shouts back at him.
He can't...he wants to, but it hurts to much. He cries harder held up by the Iwa nin behind him. They grip him by his hair and pull his head back forcing him to watch as one of the Iwas holding Kakashi down kneels before the boy with a grin. He pulls out a kunai and stretches it towards a cloth covered throat.
"No!" Obito finally speaks. He shakes his head and struggles against them despite the pain.
His own eye mismatched with a smoky grey one stare into the one remaining in his head as the kunai slides across and slices open the other boy's small throat.
He screams as loud as he can struggling against the hands holding him down. They feel much smaller than before, but Obito is too busy fighting to take notice of anything aside from blurs of color flashing before his face as he throws himself around.
"Obito!"
They took her…
"Calm down!"
They killed him…
He's flung back against the bed all but pinned down. Wait, bed? Yes, he's on a bed, in the hospital room with off colored walls and he feels another batch of ointment freshly applied to his face. That only leaves who is holding him down. He brings his gaze up to see the boy he was certain he had just watched die leaning over him, lean wiry arms pinning down his shoulders and knees pressing down on his legs.
There's no red like in the dream, just grey and a patch staring down at him. "It's me." Is all he says, sounding out of breath. Had he fought him that hard? He glances away in shame remembering sensei's mention of the other boy being here for exhaustion. Reality returns to him and the terrible world of the dreams becomes pushed to the back of his mind.
Kakashi's hold falls away and he sits back, quickly sliding himself off the bed. "Sorry...I shouldn't have...your injuries." he murmurs and composes himself next to the bed. It's somewhat pointless considering how terrible he looks. His hair looks like it's seen even less time with a comb than normal and heavy bags are noticeable under his eye.
"I-I'm fine," Obito gets out awkwardly.
Silence falls between them and neither is willingly to even look at the other for a long moment.
"Are you alri-" They both start at the same time and stop mid sentence. Silence falls again. Surprisingly it's not Obito who breaks it.
"They said you were awake," Kakashi says barely above a whisper as he plants himself in the seat next to Obito's bed. He's deathly still in a way that screams guarded. "I wanted to see if you were okay."
The admission floors him. Then again, sensei did say Kakashi carried him and Rin didn't he? Maybe the boy's not as stone hearted as he thought.
"Um I'm fine I think," Obito says and plops back against the bed with a sigh. "Wish I could get my hands on a mirror though. They said I'm going to have scars."
"I have one from the surgery," Kakashi says, but then flinches. "Sorry, it's not the same, I know."
"...Did you really carry me back?" Obito blurts out before he can filter himself.
The other boy nods not uttering a word.
"I'm sorry," Obito says. He's crying again, he's such a damn crybaby just like Kakashi always says. Fat tears roll down his face mixing with the ointment. It burns, but he's felt much worse recently. "I'm so sorry."
"No," says Kakashi. His voice quivers and he places a hand on Obito's shoulder. Obito stares up at him, dumbfounded by the gesture. He doesn't think he can name one instance since they've known each other where Kakashi has touched him that hasn't been forced or fighting.
"Don't be sorry."
The words and the silent approval in them cause a shift in the room. Neither says anything else, but Obito gives the other a bright smile as he settles back into his bed. They stay like that, Obito dozing off in the room and Kakashi sitting vigilantly by his friend's bed until evening starts to set in and the doctors come to collect Kakashi back to his own room.
It feels like a new beginning.