Rin lifts her gaze from the paperwork she is doing when a groan sounds from Kakashi's bed.

"Hngh…" he grumbles, eyes squeezed shut tight and an arm thrown across his forehead. Rin rises to her feet. Walking to his side, she hesitates only a moment before placing a hand on the bed next to his arm.

"Are you in pain?" she asks.

He cracks an eye, his eye, not Obito's, open and pins her with it. Kakashi hadn't been easy to read when they were kids, but the awe in his gaze is unmistakable. "…Rin?" he croaks.

There is a sob in her throat, but she puts a dam down to hold it in place and smiles. "Hey, Kakashi," she whispers.

He turns his head and stares at her with surprise and a touch of unease. "Really you?" he breathes.

She nods. "Yes," she says, only to startle when his fingers brush over the hand she has resting beside him. "Oh!"

Kakashi sighs and settles. Laying flat in his bed now, he gazes up at the ceiling and says, "I… I think I remember Obito was alive too?" he murmurs.

"He is," she answers. Absentially, Rin reaches for the pendant of the necklace he gave her when they found out she was pregnant with Nika. The amber stone frame by gold is warm beneath her clammy fingers. "He stepped out to take our daughter to the Academy."

Kakashi turns his head to look at her. "You guys have a kid?" he says in a tone that is amused and delighted.

She nods. "Her name is Nika, she's seven."

"That's amazing," he replies, eyes curved into a smile.

Rin can't help but smile. Their daughter is spectacular. "You think so, huh?" she says, feeling inexplicably pleased her old teammate is so happy about Nika's existence.

Kakashi nods and shifts in bed until he eases himself into a sitting position. She bites her lip as he does, wanting to help, but resisting the urge. Kakashi is unlikely to appreciate it. He never did care to be "babied" by anyone.

"Rin, what about Sensei and Kushina?" he asks, turning to her. His eyes are searching as he demands, "What's happened to them?"

Rin's mouth goes dry. Why didn't she prepare for this? Of course he was going to ask about them (or Minato-Sensei at least). Unable to find the words to give him the news he needs to know, she deflects. "…We have questions too, Kakashi."

His whole form droops and Rin feels alarmed. "They're dead," he whispers into his lap, suddenly zapped of all of his previous, feverish energy.

"No!" she decries. Instinct takes her before her restraint can kick in and Rin grabs one of Kakashi's hands in a vice-like grip. "Well, Kushina died a few years ago," she has to admit as his face lifts. He starts to slump again and she says, "Minato managed to survive, but he's been in a coma since that day."

His expression turns critical. "Was the Village attacked?"

Rin swallows. How was he able to guess it was an attack that stole their teacher's wife from them? "Yes," she says. "Minato saved Konoha by the skin of his teeth and placed the Nine-Tails in Naruto." She thinks of the boy, he'd been so small then… "He was barely six at the time."

"Oh," replies Kakashi. He starts to pick on a loose thread of his hospital blanket. "Is the Uchiha clan all okay?"

She frowns. What sort of question is that? Of course they were. "Why wouldn't they be?"

He shakes his head. "It's nothing," he replies. Drawing his knees up, he puts his chin on them and says, "It was a dumb question. Obito is alive and you two have a daughter at the Academy. Of course they are fine."

Rin doesn't understand and she itches to. "Will you answer some questions for me, Kakashi?" she pleads.

He turns his head, resting his cheek on his knees and looking away from her. "Soon," he mumbles. "When Obito comes back. I don't want to repeat myself too much."

She sighs. "Sure," she relents. She hesitates but puts a hand on his sinewy shoulder. "Why don't you lay back down and rest a bit more?" she suggests. "You still look tired."

"I'm fine," he insists, tensing under her touch.

"Kakashi," she hisses, feeling herself start to glower at him.

Kakashi's face turns back in her direction. For a moment he stares, then he curves his eyes into a smile. "Mah, you've got the medic glare down, Rin."

Rin can't help herself, she grins. "Oh, you think?"

"Hm," he hums at her before he slowly unwraps himself from his knees. He doesn't lie down, But Kakashi does stretch himself out into a more relaxed position. Rin decides to count it as a win.

For a short time, they lapse into an almost comfortable silence. Kakashi has his eyes shut and breathes in and out while Rin studies him. He looks just like she remembers from before he died. It makes her feel fifteen. Useless all over again. Rin rests one of her hands beside Kakashi's. They are the same size and as she wonders if she will see his hand grow to be as big or larger than Obito's, Kakashi's pinky finger stretches out and interlocks with her pointer finger.

She stares at their small connection in wonder and delight. Kakashi, he's missed her, hasn't he? He's not mad at her for—

The door of Kakashi's room opens in one noisy motion. Rin turns her head in the direction as Kakashi pops open his gray eye. She finds herself smiling in spite of herself when she sees Obito coming in with a bento-box-shaped bundle swinging from his fist.

His eyes initially find her and he grins. Then Obito sees Kakashi is awake and trips over his own feet in the process of rushing to the boy's side. "Kakashi!" he yelps as he falls to his knees next to the bed.

"Yo, Obito," says Kakashi voice calm and lacking any kind of excitement.

Rin wonders if she should be worried about how placid he's being. Shouldn't it be scary or at least confusing to see your teammates have grown up on you? Rin thinks if she were in Kakashi's place and woke up at fifteen flanked by an adult Kakashi and Obito she'd be more than a little flustered. Perhaps he's in shock. Or maybe he's gone into some kind of denial and thinks this is all a dream.

Obito is unconcerned by Kakashi's reaction, unlike her. He smirks at the boy as he says to him, "I don't know why I thought you would be asleep much longer. You're too stubborn to stay down for long."

Kakashi chuckles with a fondness that feels strange to be coming from him. "You're one to talk about stubbornness," he teases.

Obito huffs and complains, "Hey!"

Rin, who is ready to burst with questions, says to Kakashi, "Now that Obito has arrived, I'm going to start asking you questions, Kakashi."

He only nods. "Shoot."

Rin finds herself speechless for a moment. She doesn't know the best way to articulate what she wants to know the most. Rin sighs. There is no good way to ask. "How did you end up here?" she questions, "in Konoha?"

Kakashi doesn't so much as blink. "A jutsu," he answers like it's obvious.

Rin bites her tongue. She wants to fume. He has no right to act like everything is perfectly normal!

Obito seems to feel the same way as he crosses his arms and says, "Uh-huh. Why do you have my eye?"

The boy's hand goes to his closed eye. He chortles. "You tested it, huh?" he asks, other eye closing and curving with his mirth.

Rin replies, "We did."

Kakashi hums. "That's fine," he says as if his opinion was ever going to be weighed when deciding whether to test the Sharingan in his head or not. "You gave it to me," he tells Obito.

Rin feels herself gasp as Obito falls back from Kakashi's side, sputtering, "What!"

Kakashi hums to himself. "Hm. That's not quite right," he murmurs with a small exhale. Turning his gaze to the ceiling, he rubs absently at the back of his neck. "A version of you gave it to me."

Rin furrows her brows. "Version…?" she mumbles, perplexed.

The boy looks at the both of them. "I'm from another dimension," he says simply.

Again, they gasp and sputter. It feels inconceivable that this boy, Kakashi, their teammate could not be the boy that died for them. Kakashi stares at them with a sad eye as they regain their bearings.

Finally able to speak once more, Rin whispers, "How is that possible?"

Kakashi runs his hand through his hair and shrugs "Honestly? I'm a bit foggy on it myself," he admits. "I didn't perform the Jutsu. That was… Someone else," he says, eyes flickering between them during his pause.

Rin frowns. "Someone else? Why did they do this to you?"

For the first time since he's woken, Kakashi's face flashes with true, intense emotion. "They didn't do this to me!" he snaps, bristling. "They saved me."

"Saved you?" echoes Obito.

Kakashi's anger dissipates and a hollow sort of sorrow takes its place. "Look, where I came from, the world was ending." Kakashi pauses and drops his gaze to his lap."O— They sent me here because there was no hope. They wanted to make up for what they did, to give me back what they stole from me."

Rin bites her lip and exchanges a look with Obito. He looks as doubtful as she feels. After a beat of hesitation, Obito puts a hand on Kakashi's narrow shoulder. When the boy looks up, he says, "…This person doesn't sound like they were a friend or an ally. Are you sure this was their attempt to save you?"

Kakashi jerks away from Obito's hand. "They traveled the wrong path for a while, but in the end, they saw the truth," he says. "I trust them."

"Okay…" says Obito, putting up his hands in a placating way. He looks once more at Rin and she nods. "We have a few more questions," he tells Kakashi.

The boy shrugs.

Rin studies him for a moment. She thinks that means he's still willing to talk to them. It's so hard to tell. It's been years since she had to try and decipher Kakashi's odd way of communicating.

"So, um, why were you in clothes too big for you when Obito found you?" she asks, hoping it will be an easy question for the boy. Something lighter that will take away the rest of the wariness on his face. Rin reaches over to the end table beside Kakashi's bed and brings out the copy of Icha Icha Paradise they found on him. "Why did you have this?"

Kakashi lifts his hands into the air, fingers splayed out. "Hm…" he hums. Turning to them, he returns her question with another. "How old do I look to you two?"

"Twelve," they answer together, without hesitation.

Kakashi closes his hands into loose fists and lowers them back down to his sides. "Interesting," he says. Turning a look on Obito, he rubs his chin beneath the surgical mask Rin put on him after they settled Kakashi into his hospital bed yesterday. "I kind of remember when I arrived you weren't alone Obito?"

"Yeah," says Obito, sounding a bit surprised Kakashi remembered dropping onto the training grounds at all. "I was training with my genin team."

Kakashi's eye curves with a smirk. "How old are the brats? Twelve? Thirteen?"

"They aren't brats!" argues Obito

Kakashi rolls his eye. "Sure, whatever you say." When Obito continues to scowl at him, he crosses his arms and quirks his eyebrows. "So?" he presses.

Obito huffs. "They're thirteen," he grumbles.

The boy(?)'s expression turns speculative. "Dimension and time-travel…"

Rin stiffens. Surely she heard Kakashi wrong. "I'm sorry?"

"I'm older than you two," he proclaims as they gape at him. "By a few years, anyway."

"What?" she whispers, having trouble grasping what she's been told. She must have misheard Kakashi. There's no way this little boy is older than her.

"The kids, Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke, were practically grown where I came from," says Kakashi. Rin awes while still in denial. How does he know the name of children he never saw born? "That must mean I was more than sent to another dimension, I was sent to a different time in it too."

Obito, apparently, is finding it much easier to accept what he's being told. He points out harsh and annoyed, "That still doesn't explain why you're twelve."

Kakashi flops back in his hospital bed and throws his arm over his face. "No, it doesn't."

"So why are you twelve?" presses Obito as it is finally dawning on Rin, somehow, this Kakashi is both a stranger and a friend. A boy and a man. Her Kakashi and not her Kakashi at all.

He is everything and nothing to her all at once.

"Mah, how should I know?" complains Kakashi, peaking out at them around his skinny arm.

She tilts her head and frowns. "You don't know?"

"No," he replies. "Like I told you already, the world was ending. There wasn't time to explain the ins and outs of the jutsu before it was performed on me."

"…When you say ending, how close to ending are we talking?" asks Obito in a low, reluctance voice.

Kakashi is quiet at first. Then, in a small voice that she is sure had a tremor running through it, says, "If I stayed there another five minutes, I would not be here."

"Shit," breathes Obito as Rin blinks hard to soothe the sting behind her eyes.

She reaches over and places what she hopes is a comforting hand on top of Kakashi's knee. "I'm sorry about your home, Kakashi," she tells him. Offering a slightly shaky grin, she says, "We're happy to have you here, though. We've missed you."

"Missed me?" he murmurs and something flashes in his eyes. "So I'm dead here," he says.

"Since we were 15," replies Rin. There isn't a point in trying to hide what happened to Kakashi. He'd have figured it out soon enough even if they said nothing to him. "You died on the Kannabi Bridge mission."

"I did, did I?" he mutters, staring hard at his knees (and Rin's hand). "Hm…" he hums. Looking at them again, he asks, "Was I twelve here too when we were on that mission?"

"Yeah."

Kakashi runs a hand through his hair. "I wonder…"

"What?" asks Rin, leaning in closer.

"What if that's why?" he says, gesturing at himself. "Am I twelve because that's the last version of me this dimension has ever known?"

"Maybe we can find stuff on this jutsu that was used on you," offers Rin. "We could figure out why."

He shakes his head. "It doesn't matter to me," declares Kakashi. "I can still do everything I need to in this form."

"What do you need to do?" questions Obito. "Didn't you say you were sent here as an apology? To be given everything you had taken from you back?"

"Yeah," he agrees only to continue and says, "that doesn't mean any of this, you guys, are safe from what happened back in my dimension." A determined set coming to his brows, he proclaims, "I'm going to make this place safe for you." Leaning towards them, Kakashi surprises Rin and Obito by grasping onto their hands with his rough, slender fingers. "I promise you, Rin, Obito, I will make sure your daughter never sees the end of the world."

Rin doesn't know what to say. She's reeling too much as it is from everything else she's found out in the last ten minutes. Obito (thankfully) is not struggling to comprehend things half as much as Rin is. He frowns and says, "That's a lot of 'I' statements, Kakashi."

Kakashi glowers. "And?"

"You can't be planning to do this all on your own!" he argues.

Kashi's glower turns into a sharp glare. "I will," he insists.

Panic seizing her, Rin shakes her head and clutches onto Kakashi's hand. They can't let him go off alone! It will be the death of him. She will not let Kakashi die on her watch again.

"Kakashi, you don't have to," she says. "You can't!" begs Rin. "You don't know this place, this isn't your home."

He squares his shoulders and extracts his hands from Rin and Obito's grips. "I've been on every kind of mission you can imagine and then some," he tells them. "I am more than capable of going in with only scraps of information and saving this world."

"We can't lose you again, Kakashi," whispers Rin, tears blurring her vision.

The stern look on Kakashi's face softens into sympathy. "You won't," he says.

"I don't believe you," hisses Obito, a seething scowl on his face. "One-man missions are always suicide missions."

"I can't risk you guys," whispers Kakashi, open eye beseeching. "I don't want to lose either of you again."

Obito does not melt like Rin. He continues to scowl at Kakashi. "Look, you can't stop us any more than we can stop you," he tells him. "Let us help. We can come up with some kind of plan to stop the end of the world together. We're all more likely to enjoy a happy future together if we go in on this as a team."

Kakashi blinks, apparently startled. Then he smiles. "For being an idiot, you can be pretty inspiring," he remarks with a little laugh.

Rin covers her mouth in her shock. Through her fingers, she scolds, "Kakashi!"

Obito, at the same time, guffaws. Slapping his leg in delight, he says, "Oh man! You haven't changed at all, have you, Bakakashi?"

"Obito," she hisses, tugging at his arm. He shouldn't be insulting Kakashi. Not when they're trying to get him to agree to let them help him save their world from a potentially world-ending threat.

Kakashi waves a hand at her. "It's fine, Rin," he assures her. "It's… nice," he says. "It's comforting to see Obito is still the idiot I knew as a preteen."

Rin bites her tongue. She wants to tell him off for insulting Obito, but he sounds so fond. He obviously isn't trying to be rude. The way he speaks… Rin thinks it's been a long time since he last saw Obito. Longer, probably, since they saw him.

Maybe in his dimension, Kakashi hadn't been able to save Obito.

Rin wants to cry. Could it be there's nowhere their team remains whole? As she becomes lost in her contemplations, Obito and Kakashi continue to joke and jab at each other. She's only brought out of her despair when Kakashi clears his throat and Obito bumps his arm into her leg.

She refocuses just in time to hear Kakashi implore, "If one of you would find me some clothes, that would be helpful." Serious once more, he tells them, "I'd like us to start working out our strategy as soon as possible."

Rin relaxes. So Kakashi decided to relent, did he? He'll let them work as a team? She hopes that's what his words mean.

She'll fight him more if she has to. Even if there isn't a place where their team remained intact, they are now. Rin won't let them be broken again. She smiles. "I'll go find you something, Kakashi," she says. Standing up, she pats Obito on the head and tells him, "Share the bento you brought Obito. I bet Kakashi is hungry."

He looks at her, there is a bit of uncertainty in his dark gaze, but then he beams. "Sure!" he agrees, standing up to take Rin's spot. "Good luck shopping, Rin."

"Thank you," Kakashi says.

She nods. Before leaving, she pauses in the doorway and twists back around to give them what Kakashi called her "medic glare". She hopes it will be enough to keep them from doing anything stupid while she's gone. "Be good!" she orders.

Without waiting for a reply, Rin leaves.

Thanks for reading and let me know your thoughts with a review