Obito-Sensei Chapter 9
Doubt
When Sakura got back home, she paused at the threshold to her family's home, and scratched at the bandage on her arm
It itched. She wondered why she'd stopped, hefting her pack, and realized it was because she didn't want her parents to ask about it. Even though she desperately wanted to lie down in her own bed before she went to the hospital, if just for a couple minutes, she wasn't sure if she wanted to face her parents yet. Her mother would fuss; her dad would ask what had happened.
She took a deep breath and opened the door. It was unlocked; no one in Konoha would dare to rob the homes of a shinobi, and even if they were stupid enough to try they'd be caught in short order. "I'm home!"
Sakura waited for an answer, but none came. She took an uncertain step inside, slipping through the doorway. There weren't any shoes out in the entrance; she kicked hers off, and set her pack down. Sakura walked down the hall, her feet cold against the wood floor, and stepped into the kitchen. There was a note on the table, a piece of paper curved into a V and propped up into a little roof with her father's scrawl on it.
On A Mission, it read. Last Minute. Should Be Back Tomorrow. Left Some Instant Ramen For You. Hope The Mission Went Well!
Sakura stared at the note. She felt like all the air in her lungs had just vanished without her having a chance to breathe it out. Her mother had left on a mission as well, a recon job, about three days before, with no indication on when she'd be back. Her father had just returned from one yesterday, and yet he was already back out in the field. She wondered if it was with Special Jonin Anko again; her dad had said she was a tough leader, but he seemed to enjoy working with her.
Alone in the kitchen, with nothing but another note from her dad, Sakura didn't know what to do. She didn't know whether to sit down right there on the kitchen floor, or head to her room, or just stand there for the rest of the day staring at her father's note.
She might have been dreading it, she realized, but in reality the only thing she wanted more than her bed right now was her parents.
Her face twisted.
She turned around, stomping out of the kitchen and up the hallway stairs to her room. When she got there, she collapsed into her bed face-first with a sigh.
S-Rank ninja, she thought to herself blearily. We ran into an S-Rank ninja the very first time we left the village. What kind of luck was that? Her hair was still stuck together. Why was she lying down? Dumb. Just like ruining those tags. She couldn't even do things in the right order. Groaning, she rolled out of bed and wandered to the bathroom.
The Haruno family's shower had always been slow to heat up, and Sakura took her time undressing, her movements slow and sore. She only stepped into the water when the bathroom mirror had begun to fog over. The water was hot, probably hotter than it should have been, right on the threshold of enjoyable and painful, and Sakura felt her shoulders relax a little, the water pouring over her; she was still tense, she realized.
S-Rank ninja. Hair still full of blood. Why wouldn't she be tense? Her arm twinged as she brought it up to probe at the mess that her hair had become.
'Stupid. You were stupid. You would have died if you hadn't hit that shuriken out of the air, and that was just luck.'
She felt a little faint. The water really was way too hot. She didn't change the temperature.
Sakura ran her hands through her hair, wincing at the knots, and scrubbed viciously at her arms and legs, trying to get the last of the stains out. Up, down, up, down. Her arms were going automatically; she'd forgotten to grab any soap. She reached out for it, the motion feeling weirdly foriegn. She'd had to swim to the bottom of that pit. Sakura was sure she'd dream about that tonight, like she had the night they'd spent in Paper Hill. The heat, the weight, the darkness. The sound of Hidan's heart, the feeling of it bucking in her hands.
She felt nauseous again, and itched the cut on her arm, feeling the burn of the water running over it. It had finished scabbing over, but the water made it sting even more than before. What kind of luck was that.
Well, maybe it was a little lucky, since Obito had been with them. She'd have to go pick up the promissory note from the mission office after the hospital; when Team Seven had given their briefing with Obito to Iruka, who'd been watching with disbelief the whole time, her academy teacher had told them to come back later for the bounty money. Even split four ways, it would take him a little time to get permission to issue it from the Land of Fire's government.
She wondered what he'd thought of her. Iruka was a chunin. He must have noticed the blood left over on her and Sasuke.
What could she do with the money? Sakura had never had that much money before. She'd be able to keep it: her parents had promised her that whatever she made on her missions was hers to spend. She'd give some to them, of course. Sakura had no idea what she'd do with over a million Ryo. Her family could afford to not run missions for months, with that.
Maybe that would be nice. Not months. But a week or two, just relaxing. Sakura laughed, getting a little water in her mouth. Only one mission outside the village, and she was happy to sit in it for as long as she was allowed. The world was big, she'd known that, but she hadn't figured it would be so full of scary people.
Ah, that was childish. Sakura rinsed the last of the shampoo out of her hair, and then went for the conditioner. She scrubbed the remnants of the blood out, feeling the knots and clots with her finger, and watched it run down the drain. Her hands curled into fists, before she shook them out. Focus, almost done. She ran her hands down the whole length of it more than a dozen times, working out all of the tangles. The villages were always fighting, and there were plenty of people besides them out there who fought each other too. There were criminals, crazies, ideologues, and everything in between out there. She'd just run into them sooner than she'd have figured. Sakura had just assumed that when the time came for her to really fight people, other ninja or otherwise, she'd be ready. That she'd have trained enough, or had some realization about the nature of the world that would make it easy.
But that hadn't happened. She'd snatched up an S-Ranked ninja's beating heart and offered it to her sensei like a blood sacrifice of her own, and she hadn't been any different before or after. She didn't have clarity now. She just had a headache, and dirty hair, and maybe some money later in the day.
Sakura didn't really know what that meant. Maybe she wasn't smart enough to understand it, or maybe she was just too tired.
She wasn't sure how long she was in the shower after that; Sakura stared at the drain, the water pounding the back of her head, until the heat faded and the shower began to run cold. She left the bathroom with two towels: the second was wrapped around her hair, trying to dry it out. She drifted back to her bed and slipped under the covers, sinking into her pillow; her hair was growing cold against her scalp, but still, Sakura felt her eyes drifting closed.
A nap couldn't hurt, she thought. Thirty minutes, then she'd go to the hospital for her checkup. Thirty minutes would be fine. That'd give her the energy to manage the rest of the day.
Her eyes closed, and she woke up two hours later. Sakura rolled over, groggy and even sorer than before, and sighed when she spotted her clock.
"Shit."
###
When they were finished talking, Naruto and Sasuke found themselves sitting in silence for an uncomfortably long time. Their mothers watched them, both of them completely unreadable.
When Naruto had gone home with Sasuke in tow, Mikoto had already been there, sitting with Kushina. They were poring over the barrier scroll that Kushina had been working on for the last several months, Kushina pacing and muttering to herself and Mikoto standing as still as a statue, her Sharingan poring over every tiny detail of the barrier's ink. Naruto had been surprised. Usually Kushina visited Mikoto, not the other way around. Of his father, there'd been no sign.
"Gross," Kushina finally put, quite succinctly, and both Naruto and Mikoto laughed. Sasuke's mom leaned forward, looming over them; both of their parents were on the couch, and Naruto and his friend were sitting on the carpeted floor in front of them.
"Well, Obito was definitely right," she said, looking at both him and Sasuke. Naruto had always thought she was pretty, even if the right side of her face was covered in burn scars. He'd never asked his mom how her friend had ended up with those scars; she was a ninja, he figured, and sometimes ninjas caught on fire. "That's not even close to a normal C-Rank. I hope you guys don't get cold feet."
"Not a chance." Sasuke shook his head. "But…" He frowned, and so did Naruto. He could tell something had been eating Sasuke up on the way home. Sakura and Sasuke were both a little quiet usually, which Naruto didn't mind; he had plenty to talk about no matter what. But when they'd been heading back to Konoha, they'd been extra quiet.
It wasn't any surprise. They'd both gone in that pit; Naruto didn't know how he would have handled it. He wasn't afraid of blood, but he also wasn't afraid of, like, snakes, and if he'd been forced to jump into a really deep pit absolutely full of snakes he was positive he'd come out happy to never see any kind of reptile ever again. Sasuke didn't seem like he was in shock or anything, but Sakura had gone all the way to the bottom and actually grabbed Hidan's heart.
She'd just gone home, he suddenly realized. They'd all said they'd catch up later at the village gates and gone their separate ways, with Naruto and Sasuke going in the same direction. Sakura had just gone home. They hadn't invited her or anything.
Well, that made sense. She probably wanted to see her parents, the same way he had.
"We're pretty weak, huh?" Sasuke said, finishing his thought, and Naruto looked at him, his face scrunching up in confusion.
"Eh?" he asked. "Whad'ya mean? We did fine."
"Obito did fine," Sasuke said as both their mothers watched patiently. "We would have died before we even understood we were in danger."
"He's right, Naruto," Kushina said, and Naruto switched his confused look to her. "You all did very well, but it was just good luck, and Obito, that let you walk away."
Naruto frowned. He knew she was right, but he didn't like accepting it. The academy had been kind of easy; if he wanted to learn something, he could buckle down and do it, so long as his parents kept him focused, and he'd be done in a week or two. It had always been that way. The academy was just school, but it still made sense to him that if it was easy, being a real ninja would have been too.
But he'd almost died on his first real mission, and the only thing that had saved him was Obito being a real badass and Sakura being able to hold her breath for a long time. So obviously that wasn't a case. Being a ninja was way harder than learning to be one.
"Okay," he said. "Yeah. That makes sense." He looked back to his friend. "So let's get stronger, Sasuke."
Sasuke shrugged. "I don't think we have a choice, Naruto." His eyes grew a little darker. "I don't think I have a choice."
Naruto flinched. Sasuke had told him, maybe a year ago now, what his mom Mikoto had told him about Itachi. His friend was right; he didn't have a choice but to get stronger. He sometimes forgot that, even if it was fun to come up with fantasies about beating Sasuke's brother up for what he'd done.
"Forgot about that," Naruto said, trying to draw Sasuke's thoughts off his brother. "Let's just make it so next time, we can actually help Obito, instead of him having to protect us."
"Hopefully," Kushina chimed in, "that's not going to come up again."
"Well, duh," Naruto said with a grin. "But just in case, right? If we're gonna be Obito's students, we gotta try to surpass him. That's what dad always says."
Kushina laughed. "Good point," she admitted. "Well, what's your plan then?"
Naruto jumped to his feet. "First, I'm gonna figure out dad's jutsu."
"The Rasengan?" Mikoto asked. Naruto was glad to hear that she sounded a little surprised. His dad had told him that he was giving him an A-Rank jutsu, the first he'd ever tried to learn, and if Sasuke's mom knew it right off the bat like that then Minato hadn't been messing with him.
"Yup!" Naruto started pacing a little, the same way his mom had been before they arrived. "He told me he'd teach me the next step after I figured out how to pop a water balloon with just my chakra. It's really tough, but I think I'm getting there." He stopped with a wide grin. "And once I've got it figured out, Sasuke can just copy it with his Sharingan."
"It's not quite that easy," Mikoto said, looking at her son. "You know that, right?"
"Yeah," Sasuke said quietly. "Even if Naruto figures out the jutsu, I'll need the chakra control to actually use it. I'm going to have Obito teach me water walking; I think that's a good place to start."
Mikoto nodded, and Sasuke cocked his head. "Did Obito go to the compound? He wasn't heading for his apartment."
Obito, Naruto knew, was one of the very few Uchiha who lived outside of the clan's isolated compound. He'd asked Sasuke about it once, and his friend had shrugged and told him that his relative wasn't very popular with the rest of the clan and vice versa, whatever that meant. Neither of them were sure why. Obito was pretty cool, as far as Naruto was concerned. If most of Sasuke's family didn't like him, they were probably stupid or something.
"I'm not sure," Mikoto said. "He might have been going to visit the memorial. He usually talks with his brother a little after a mission."
"Obito has a brother?" Naruto asked. He'd never heard any of this before.
"Had," Mikoto said quietly. "His name was Shisui."
"Oh." Right, the memorial. You didn't go there to talk to people who were still alive. Naruto shrunk down a little, feeling like he'd stepped over an invisible barrier. Mikoto wasn't mad, and neither was Sasuke. They were both just… sad. It made him uncomfortable.
"What about Sakura?" his mom asked, and Naruto grabbed at the sudden lifeline to escape the awkward silence he'd created.
"What do you mean?" Naruto asked, and his mom wrinkled her nose.
"You and Sasuke are both gonna get stronger," she said. "You're gonna teach Sasuke the Rasengan. What about her?"
"Oh!" Naruto said. He blinked. He hadn't even thought of that. "I mean, I could, I guess. When we figure it out. I dunno if she's super interested in ninjutsu. Actually-!" He smiled, remembering the cave. "She was really good with a sword!"
"A sword?" Kushina asked, and Naruto pantomimed the chokuto that Sakura had picked up, swinging the invisible blade around.
"Yeah! It was awesome!" he said. "She grabbed a sword from one of the crazies and bam!" He swung the imaginary blade again in a quick diagonal cut. Sakura had been a lot more scared, and she'd screamed a little when she'd swung, but his mom didn't need to know that. "Knocked a shuriken right out of the air! Scared the guy who threw it so much he just froze. She held onto it the whole time too."
"Sounds pretty impressive," Mikoto said. "Maybe you should bring that up with her and Obito. He's always had a knack for kenjutsu. If she's interested, he'd be an excellent teacher."
"Not a bad idea," Sasuke said, leaning forward. "It would be nice to have someone with blade skills on the team. I don't think either of us are very inclined towards it."
"Well, that seems like a good place to start," Kushina said. "Keep it in mind, huh?" She rose off the couch.
"Anyone want a snack?"
###
Sitting without company in a bustling restaurant, Obito Uchiha wondered, not for the first time, why for the last seven and some years he had usually eaten alone.
It wasn't because Obito didn't enjoy spending time with people, or having meals with them. Sometimes, he thought it might just be a bad habit he'd fallen into. Even after Kakashi had died, he'd still done his best to stay connected with people. His newly evolved Sharingan had made him an object of interest with his clan, and his sensei had been careful to make sure he didn't grow apart from his comrades. It was a danger for anyone who'd lost teammates, and Obito had avoided it handily.
After all, avoiding things was his speciality.
Yet, after Itachi had left the village, Obito's life had grown quieter and quieter. He'd been less welcome with his family, and his teacher and teammate had grown busier and busier. He had friends, or at least he thought he did, but he'd started taking so many missions that he'd rarely seen them.
Maybe that was why Minato had stuck him with his son, and Sasuke, and Sakura, Obito thought. To get him to slow down. It was a strange feeling, but he didn't mind having a team to train at all. It helped that he'd known two of them rather well right off the bat, even though that had just made him feel guilty about Sakura.
His food arrived; he'd decided on a Gyudon. Obito had always preferred simple and savory food, stuff he could make on his own if he needed to. Beef, rice, veggies, maybe a bit of soy sauce: that was all he needed to be content. He thanked the waiter, and the man gave him an uncomfortable smile before going to help another booth.
Sakura, he thought, picking up a set of chopsticks and mixing together the beef-bowl until all of its carefully placed layers were helplessly inseparable from one another. He didn't get why this restaurant did that. Who wanted to eat the beef, then the veggies, then the rice? They were way better mixed together, right? Maybe it was just a presentation thing.
His female student had surprised him. Obito had been watching her carefully on their first C-Rank together. He'd already been confident that Naruto and Sasuke would be able to handle whatever came their way; they had the competence, and the mentality. He'd been right and wrong about that, turned out. Even if Sasuke was smart for his age, and knew plenty of Uchiha techniques, he still had the judgement of a teenager. Obito's heart had almost stopped when he'd jumped down to intervene with his fight against Hidan, and the rest of the team had followed him.
Obito wished he could just call them stupid, but he wasn't under any illusions. Hidan might have killed him if not for their help. He'd been steadily cutting the man to shreds, but he'd been almost exhausted by the end of the fight; just a bit of bad luck, some sloppy footwork, and that scythe might have punched a hole in his heart or his head instead of his arm.
Sakura had been the one to jump into that pit. Sasuke had gone first, but he hadn't been able to actually reach the heart. Sakura, the one who he'd been worried would crumble under pressure, had gone in without hesitation. She'd endured all that blood and seized Hidan's heart.
That was good, he thought. That meant the girl who didn't know why she wanted to be a ninja was definitely prepared to be one. Still, Obito wished that she hadn't had to prove that to him at all. It was just-
"Mind if we sit down?"
Staring at his beef with his grip around the chopsticks so tight they were in danger of snapping, Obito didn't notice two people approaching his booth until they were right on top of him. He jerked to the side on reflex, looking over to the familiar voice.
Minato Namikaze watched him with a faint smile, the same kind he wore every time Obito did something he found amusing. He wasn't wearing his Hokage outfit; just plain black pants and a white shirt. Somehow, he made it look pretty official.
"You alright, Obito?" Behind their sensei, Rin Nohara gave him a little wave, and Obito blinked. She was still wearing her hospital uniform: she must have come straight from work.
"Uh…" Obito blinked again. "Yeah, no problem." The Hokage and Rin slipped into the booth opposite them, and the waiter hurried back to take their order.
"Water," Minato said. Rin asked for the same, and some sake, and the man was gone again.
"So," the Fourth Hokage said. "I've heard from a couple people now that you guys had an interesting mission."
Obito laughed. "Yeah, something like that." He turned the piece of beef he had in his chopsticks over. "You mind if I…?"
"Go for it," Rin said, and Obito took a couple grateful bites, using the quiet it bought him to gather his thoughts.
"Yeah," he repeated, setting his chopsticks down in the bowl. Still plenty of food left, but he could find time to eat it through the conversation. "Sorry, sensei. We ended up in a rough situation."
"It happens," Minato said with a shrug. "I'm sure Naruto was able to handle it." He looked Obito up and down: the Fourth had always had a peculiar way of analyzing people, Obito thought, that made it obvious you were being appraised without being judged or threatened. "You seem alright."
"I was fine, besides a little chakra exhaustion," Obito said, taking another bite. He raised up his arm, twisting it to and fro for emphasis. "I caught his scythe in my arm once, but it was a clean wound." He looked at Rin with a little smile. "Those medical jutsu you've shown me took care of it without much issue. Can't even feel it now."
Rin raised an eyebrow. "A scythe?" she asked, and Obito nodded.
"Yeah. What'd you tell her, sensei?" he asked, and Minato shook his head.
"Rin came here on her own," he said. "We just happened to run into each other. I guess we both wanted to see how you were doing."
"I had one of your students today," Rin continued.
Obito cocked his head. "What do you mean?"
"You sent her in, remember?" Rin grinned.
Right, Sakura. He'd asked her to check in with the hospital about the cut on her arm. It had slipped his mind for a moment. "Sakura?" he asked. "Was she alright?"
"Fine," Rin said. "So far as we could tell, anyway. I decided to take her, even if it was just a checkup." She gave him a mischievous smile, and Obito smiled back uncertainly. "I got the impression she already knew me."
"Really? Obito asked. "I haven't talked about you much-"
Rin's smile fell away, and Obito realized he was a moron. She started speaking again before he could say anything else.
"Anyway," she said, and Obito couldn't help but notice that Minato was resisting the urge to laugh. "She told me that you and Sasuke had seen something weird with your Sharingan, but so far as I could tell the wound was clean. She does have a little foreign chakra in her though, a spot on her heart."
Obito rocked back, and Rin held her hands up in a placating gesture. "Nothing to worry about," she said with emphasis, and Obito relaxed, marginally. "It's not affecting her system, and it's not circulating. It's like a clot, almost. If it were blood, that'd be a problem, but it's just a bit of natural energy and chakra mixed up in a weird way that refuses to move on." She laughed, a melodic sound that Obito loved. "If she tried unlocking the Eighth Gate she might have some complications, but if she did that she'd be dead anyway, so…"
"Right," Obito said. "Well, that's a relief. Swimming through all that blood was bad enough. If it gave her trouble, I…"
He didn't know how to finish that sentence. What would he do? Feel bad? He already felt bad for letting his team get put in danger. The waiter arrived with drinks, and Minato took a sip of his water.
"Obito," he said. "You're pouting."
Obito straightened up self-consciously. He'd always been self-conscious of how round his face was for an Uchiha. He thought it made even a marginally unhappy expression look like a pout, which was why he tried smiling so much.
"Sorry," he said, frustration leaking through. Minato and Rin watched him curiously. "I'm just…"
"Sore?" Rin asked, and Obito shook his head. She reached for her sake.
"I feel stupid," he admitted. "I didn't want to put any of them through something like that. I picked a C-Rank that I thought would be simple and easy, to ease them in. I just wanted…" He searched for a better word, and was unable to find it. "I just wanted to keep them safe, I guess."
"You did," Rin said. "Nothing to worry about there."
Obito frowned. "I wasn't good enough. Even just two months of staying in the village with them put me out of practice. And I let them talk me into too much. Naruto wanted to go ahead, and I let him: I just made him stay behind me. If I'd been thinking straight, I would have just kept them in the Kamui. I should have just sucked them up the moment things started getting weird." He dropped his head. "I told you, sensei. I don't know if I was ready for a team. I let them down."
The Fourth Hokage watched him for a moment, and Obito stared into his bowl of half eaten beef, his gut churning.
"Obito, I gave you my son, you know," Minato finally said. "I wouldn't have done that if I didn't think you could train him and keep him safe."
Obito looked up, and the Hokage crossed his arms.
"Your Sharingan is amazing enough that your main issue has always been self-confidence," he said, and Obito felt his face go red. It was a little brutal to say it so straightforwardly, wasn't it? "Shinobi never stop learning, and that team is another lesson for you. You're definitely worthy of being their teacher."
"Minato-" he started to say, and his teacher raised one hand. Obito stopped. That was a Hokage motion, not a Minato one.
"Sensei always said that a shinobi is one who endures," Minato said, looking Obito dead in the eyes. He was one of the few people who did that; even other Leaf ninja usually didn't look into Obito's Sharingan. He'd heard it around a couple times that it was considered bad luck. Obito wondered where Jiraiya was now. He'd trained under the Toad Sage himself for a little over a year, some time after Minato had officially been appointed as Hokage, and sometimes he found himself missing the melodramatic giant of a man. "And he was definitely right about that."
Minato leaned forward, setting his elbows on the table and clasping his hands. "But we all know," he said gently, "that being a shinobi is more than just enduring. A shinobi is also one who sacrifices."
'I know it.'
Obito couldn't help but hear those last words in the echo of his teacher's own.
"No one had to sacrifice anything this time, Obito," Minato said with a smile. "Just their hygiene I guess, if what I heard about what Sasuke and Sakura did is true. You can try to keep your team as safe as you want, but if you don't succeed, that's not a failure on your part."
He understood what he was talking about, Obito knew. Minato was the one here who had actually lost one of his students.
"If they have to sacrifice," Minato said, "then all that's happened is they've learned what being a shinobi is. You don't have to worry about keeping them safe from that."
"I'd really prefer to," Obito muttered, feeling like he'd lost an argument no one had been having. Rin laughed.
"That's nice of you, Obito," she said with a smile. "You're always too nice for your own good. Don't worry about those kids. They'll be fine. Just focus on training them." She winked. "If you make it so they can protect themselves instead of you having to keep an eye for them, that'll be a lot easier on you, right?"
Obito sighed. "You always were the smart one, huh?"
Rin's smile grew a little sadder. "Well, someone had to be after Kakashi was gone," she said. "I didn't see you stepping up."
"Rude," Obito grinned, taking another bite of his beef. A thought occurred to him. "Do you guys want to stay for dinner? Or do you have somewhere to be?"
"I could eat," Rin said, and Minato nodded as well.
"Cool," Obito smiled. It would be nice to not eat alone again for a change. "Cool."