Author's note: Warning! Severe overuse of the word 'because' ahead! Why? Just because.

Chapter Five

Variance

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Once the peculiar, gently nauseating and entirely contradictory feeling of simultaneously being and non-being (and something so utterly freakish that Rin suspects that even sensei is hard-pressed to ever really get used to it) lifts from her body, quietly dissolving like fine mist, she stumbles – clumsily and head-first – into the fading daylight on unsteady legs. Her mind is reeling, and she half-expects a painful collision with the ground still rocking under her sandals. But sensei, it seems, has retained a firm grip on her shoulder throughout; and she's glad. Because even as the world slowly comes to a halt, and her senses finally catch up with the rest of her, she clings to him in the same way—

"I don't sense anyone, and the traps are still in place." Minato-sensei gently disentangles himself from her. "At least that's a good sign."

She would have agreed, because it's better than good (retreating to an old campsite and finding it undisturbed is better than anything they could have hoped for, she knows), but she only has eyes for the awkward mess of matted white and muted blue sprawled out on the grass by her feet.

Suddenly, awareness floods back to her – Obito. Iwa. Obito. Sensei. Kakashi... Oh God. Kakashi! – and it jerks her back into action. She makes a move to reach him, to get to him, to help him like she couldn't help Obito, because Kakashi is badly hurt and he needs her. But someone holds her back, and Rin doesn't understand.

"Let go!" she pleads, but Minato-sensei doesn't budge. "Let go, sensei! Please, let go!"

"You need to calm down."

(She is calm, she wants to scream. Can't sensei see that Kakashi isn't moving?)

"Rin?"

She has a biting retort ready on the tip of her tongue – Don't you care at all, sensei? – but even that is drowned out by the sound of her heart slamming against her ribcage like a sledgehammer when all of a sudden they are two. And then she just can't.

"Minato-sensei—" she chokes. "Obito."

"Rin-chan. Stop."

She stiffens. Rin-chan. No-one has called her that in years. Not since—

"Kakashi is counting on you."

Sensei doesn't say, but she hears it clearly – We are counting on you; the village, Hokage-sama, everyone. I am counting on you – and it makes her stomach turn with shame. She should know better (knows better) than to lose her head now. Obito is gone, but Kakashi isn't; and she has seen far worse – done far worse – but she is wasting valuable time.

"Stay here."

A kunai (one of Minato-sensei's special ones, identical in shape and size to Kakashi's jounin present) is pressed into the flat of her hand. Then, sensei vanishes among the trees, and she swallows once – we're counting on you, we're counting on you, we're counting on you – squares her shoulders and swiftly gets to work on her only remaining teammate.

Kakashi lies perfectly still on his back, and she tries not to look too closely at the ugly cut over his left eye. Instead, she focuses on the damp, dark patches on his uniform, on the fine lacerations running across his skin like deranged spider web, on the blotches slowly turning his already pale skin whiter than even Hyuuga eyes; and given that they are precisely what they are, it's nothing she hasn't seen before.

At least this is familiar territory, she tells herself as she carefully puts down her weapon, rubs her hands together and chakra moulds itself to her fingertips; even if nothing else is.

"How is he?" is suddenly asked from somewhere behind her.

Rin doesn't flinch.

"It's clear," sensei adds, almost as an afterthought. "We'll stay here tonight."

He comes to a halt beside them, gingerly picks up the discarded kunai and pockets it; and then she knows for sure that Minato-sensei won't be leaving for a while.

"Rin, what do you need?"

"Bandages," she replies promptly, because Kakashi is in need of some serious patching up and her boys – sensei included, on occasion – make sure that she never has enough bandages. She nearly smiles, but then she remembers and her heart hurts all over again. "But my pack, it's—"

(Gone. Lost. Buried along with Obito.)

Perhaps Minato-sensei understands, or at least he can guess, because he hands her three pristine rolls of white gauze, and she doesn't think that she has ever seen anything more beautiful.

"—anything else?"