Disclaimer: Kishimoto owns Naruto. I just fool around with it.
Notes: Short Obito/Rin AU concept, featuring retired-ninja!Rin and amnesiac!Obito. Enjoy!
Towards the sunset
When Rin had first left Konoha to make a living in Tanzaku Town, this was what she had expected to find:
A small town on the outskirts of the capital city of Fire Country, whose lifeblood were the tourists that flocked to visit the old castle that had served as the headquarters to the Fire Daimyou's army before the creation of the ninja villages, four generations back.
What the once ninja found was:
Beneath the shiny veneer, the grand spectacle put on to impress the visitors, a hive of degradation and corruption, an enclosed society built upon the solidarity between bandits and thieves, gamblers and murderers and... those who were lost.
Rin had made the decision to give up her ninja career on the day that it had been announced that the Third Ninja World War was over. She had seen too much suffering and did not care to see any more.
Red, red, red on her hands, staining, flowing, crusting and spilling onto sawdust-covered floors. But there were other things to focus on. The injured never stopped coming, placing their red lives on her hands.
The Hokage had been sorry to see her go, but, in recognition of her loyalty and efforts in the service of Konoha, he had conceded her an indefinite leave. Rin's part in the war and in the ninja world was done. She could retire without shame.
Her grandmother had watched, grim-faced, but understanding, as Rin had packed her belongings, laying clothes on top of clothes on top of a headband folded at the very bottom of a light bag. "Be safe and come back once you find yourself again," had been her farewell.
Rin had wanted to sever every tie that connected her to Konoha. She found a job as a clerk at a local grocer's, whose owner was kind enough to rent her the space above the shop for her to live in. It had not taken long for the resident folk of Tanzaku to discovered her skills as a healer, however. All it had taken was fixing one little boy's scuffed knee and the next day, the ill and the distressed had started queueing in front of the shop, seeking her help.
There were no doctors in Tanzaku. The town's more hardened population kept them at bay. The closest doctor's office was three towns and a two-day journey away.
It had been jarring at first, to be asked to prescribe pills for migraines and heal bruised jaws, rather than severed limbs and third degree burns to over 70% of the body.
By the time that Rin had gotten a house of her own with enough space on the ground floor to accommodate a small clinic, the illusion of Tanzaku's lawfulness no longer fooled her. Then again, neither could she convince her patients that she was just some girl who happened to know a thing or two about medicine. She never asked questions, though, and in turn they afforded her the respect not to pry into her undisclosed past.
Then one day, an unexpected patient wandered into her house. He was a young man, the same age as her, bearing a split brow that painted his handsome if not unmarked face a deep red. It would scar, she knew immediately, a fault line across a fine black eyebrow, but it would not compromise the single eye that he had left. "A fall," he had explained with a roguish grin once he had caught her shell-shocked stare. The next time he visited, there were bruised ribs, then a broken arm, then a stab wound to the gut that nearly did him in.
Every time that he showed up at Rin's doorstep, her shock at the sight of him was renewed. He was trouble, a wanted man on both sides of the law, and he did not have any money to pay for her services with, but Rin never turned him away. He was a beautiful ghost whom she could never say no to.
Sometimes, the authorities stopped by her practice, asking about the various slips and falls that her most frequent patients constantly found themselves involved in, but there was still enough of the ninja in her that she could convince them of the truth: some of her patients were, tragically, very clumsy.
The young man looked closely at Rin, avoiding the gaze of the constable who had planted himself in front of the little stool he sat on, attempting to read the story written in the scars covering the right side of his face, while Rin stitched a cut on his upper arm. His one dark eye revealed nothing, but his flawed eyebrow twitched briefly with every silent moment that passed before Rin acknowledged the officer's inquiry and kicked him out of her house for bothering her patients.
She kept her life separate from theirs during the day. She had no desire to tangle the quiet life that she had made for herself with the troubles of all the thiefs and crooks that passed through her door. During the night, though, after both the front door and the door that separated the public area of the ground floor from the privacy of the first floor were locked, she often came up to her bedroom to find a roguish grin and flawed eyebrow waiting for her.
"Is it all right if I stay the night, doc?"
"Always, Obito."