Chapter One - Souls Abide
The memorial stone always lit up beautifully under the deepening twilight. Rin sighed, wistful, as the candle flames spluttered in the cooling breeze. Some of the wicks sunk so low they were near lost in a mass of wax. By their colours, more than a few were the ones she had placed there herself, lit and re-lit by the souls that wandered in to pay their respects. The incense in their holders had long since cooled but she could smell it still, sandalwood lingering on the breeze.
High on the hill, the lights of Konoha below also seemed candle flames unto themselves. Forty thousand lights of the living twinkled, more coming to life with the sun set below the horizon and sinking still. It was a good reminder, perhaps, that despite how the memorial stone loomed above her, life below marched ever onward. Would that it could draw her away from this ritual.
Fluttering orange light made to make wavering lines of the inscribed kanji, caught between brightness and shade. Her gaze shifted over them, sliding with ease to one after the other, knowing their places as well as she knew the lay of the village.
"I hope you're all keeping up your rest," she told them, bowing and going through the motions of her prayer. "Things have still been quiet on this side of Konoha. For now. It's nice returning to some semblance of peace after a week of running around Keishi. Things are... tense. There's always talk, of course, and it's just chatter, this time, thankfully. Still, I can't help but feel that we're all simply waiting for the inevitable. Lately there's been more skirmishes and—" Rin sighed. They wouldn't want to hear about the kind of things that killed them.
She struck out for something lighter. "Obito's been moaning about the amount of paperwork he has to do, now that he can't foister it off on someone else. Not that that's unusual. He seems... happier. I think he's enjoying being out in the open again after so long. Not always hidden behind a mask and a codename. Being known by more than just Shinobi. Yūgao said she even caught him helping out an elderly woman, like he did when we were young. Oh, and Sadu passed her Chūnin exam — officially. She's to join a patrol team on the Kusan border. Sakura's training with Lady Tsunade now at the hospital. Naruto is constantly mentioning it. I think he might even be jealous." She spared a quiet laugh, remembering how the boy had rankled at his teammate becoming the student of 'such a cool sensei' while he had eyed his own father's sensei in poorly hidden disgust. "But he'll come around. Jiraiya is a master shinobi after all." She blew out a breath. "They certainly don't need me anymore..."
She felt a stab of sadness mingle with pride. It was hard to get used to the thought that those once fresh-faced genin would no longer be, well, hers, despite her own sensei insisting to the contrary. Constant was the lingering thought that she had not done enough. Something had been missed. Some lesson left untaught. Minato had laughed at her. 'Of course there is. There always are. You'll simply have to trust that they'll find their own way forward. Or,' and at this his eyes had brightened with a rare mischief, 'that someone else will just have to pick up the slack'.
Taking on the triad had been a brief, but good respite after the years of mission after mission, battle after battle, and all with death as a constant companion. They were not like her; a youth spent on the battlefield. Although it was inevitable that their innocence would fade, Rin was glad to have played some part in letting it do so gently. Naruto, Sakura, and Sadu were good. Were brave. Whatever was to come next, at the very least, Rin could say she was glad to have the time with them that she did.
"They'll find their own way forward," she told the spirits of the dead. "They'll find a way to reckon with... this. Adapt." After all, that is what she and Obito had done, hadn't they?
Rin gave the memorial another once over, her eye catching on the more recent additions. They had been carved smaller, thinner, as though to save space on a stone unexpected to be so quickly filled. It had not been so long ago that certain circumstances had forced the village to invest in a larger memorial stone altogether. There was Fū, with his gentle teasing smile, and his wild, dancing eyes as he tried to suck in a breath through the gaping hole in his chest. There was Hayate, tired and patient, with his gasp of surprise and terror as bloody red chakra sprung from the earth to burn him alive. Ao with her tinkling laughter and scream of unadulterated fear as a shadow fiend had... Rin grimaced. Her gaze travelled up, moving to the names carved earlier in the War to stop on the name of a boy, exceptional enough to have both one etched here and a gravestone laid next to his father. A brave, stupid, fool of a boy. She could still feel the small touch on her wrist, the murmured attempt to comfort her ('It'll be alright'. It wouldn't. It wasn't), and the reedy tremor of fear beneath it. The chittering birds caught in his fist. Her own shrieks. Rin closed her eyes and let the memories drift.
Lighting a new stick of incense, she stepped back. She let the scent of sandalwood ease her. Perhaps she would take up Obito's invitation and find her way to the izakaya after all. It was not in her to retreat to a dark, lonely apartment tonight.
Rin stood a while longer, content enough to take in the settling twilight. "I should go," she said idly, turning her gaze to the stars beginning to prick the sky above. She made no move to leave. 'The names aren't going to disappear,' Obito had said last time he had drifted in this direction. 'You don't have to come everyday to check.'
'I know'. She came regardless.
She sighed.
Then frowned. It was a strange sort of addiction.
As she gazed up at the stars, a flicker of white light caught her attention. It caught the edge of the black polished stone, and Rin looked down to find the same light reflected on her hand, her shirt, her flak jacket, bright enough to desaturate the warm green. Her muscles tensed and she swung around in a jerk of motion, flicking a senbon between her fingers purely out of instinct.
From her place on the hill, Rin could see for miles, and somewhere, far from Konoha, light seared in the darkening sky. It hung as a star pulled to earth, brightening with every moment. Intensifying. Brilliant and foreboding. Fracturing as she watched it. Rin's confusion quickly sunk to dread. Oh, Kami...
She didn't have time to think. It came slowly, then all at once.
A shockwave rolled across the land, rushing outward from the hanging star like a single great ripple from a pebble dropped into stagnant water. Stunned, Rin watched the canopies of distant trees bending as the tide rolled over them. A moment more and it was upon her. Unthinking, she threw her arms up to shield her face. It hit with enough force to pull at her clothes, throwing her long braid in a whip. A deep rumbling thunder came with it, and with that, a rush of chakra that ached as it swept through her bones. Under the pressure, her tenketsu points popped.
The corrugated roof of the nearby shrine squealed as it was tugged. Trees groaned as they held on by their roots. Then, as slow and quick as it came, the shockwave passed. Around her, birds swept from the branches, a cacophony of sound as they broke from their shock to flee. From within the warm lights of the village below, cries of confusion, distant calls, and high wails of terror began to rise.
Rin could only look to the distant, fading star in horror.
Obito tipped back the rest of his sake, enjoying the warm burn as it went down. He had to admit, Genma had picked well. The izakaya was loud and lit up with enough paper lanterns to cause a fire hazard. Every corner was packed and every seat taken, shinobi or civilian. Many had the same idea; eager for the warm twilight to slip into a cooler, if humid night. Tonight, only the four of them had managed to show. Disappointing, but Obito was sweating enough already, much less if they had been forced to squeeze into a private booth with their regular nine and whoever else decided to tag along. If those prudes decided that they had something better to do than downing several bottles of cheap infused sake, then clearly that was on them.
Yūgao only had to cock her head before Obito was nodding, passing over his cup to be filled from the large flask she unfairly hoarded on her side of the table.
"You trying to win a prize tonight, 'Bito?" Asuma drawled as he watched on from across the table, shooting the huffed smoke from his nose like some sort of grinning fire serpent. Or a particularly angry monkey. Obito hadn't decided yet.
"Keep sucking on that wellness stick, Asuma," he replied, before taking a stinging sip of the refilled cup (and adamantly ignoring Yūgao's amused smirk). The warmth in his belly and the cotton heat in his head was almost erotic. "This is my own form of self-care."
To his left, Genma tapped his senbon on the oaken surface in a mindless rhythm. His own drink had been untouched for at least five minutes. "Wouldn't have to deal with this shit in the Guard. Keep telling you."
"Yeah, well..." Obito grumbled, not really having it in him to counter that one.
Already he could feel the pricks of a tension headache returning. How ANBU had less paperwork than regular jōnin duties, he would never understand. By now, he was half convinced it didn't, he had simply been zeroed in on like a point of weakness. Fresh meat to be sent to a chopping block made of paper with a cleaver of ink. Complaining to Rin had only earned him a roll of her eyes, informing him that 'he should stop acting like a child'. No more could he get any form of sympathy from Pakkun. The little old dog had given him a dull look and an order to 'suck it up' and to 'do his job', like Obito didn't fill the pug's food bowl near every morning and let him outside near every evening when he had to take a shit.
Obito was awaiting the day his name 'mysteriously' entered the Jōnin-sensei lottery, and 'happened' to be drawn from the list. Surely, by dealing with Minato's son for the past sixteen years on top of hanging around Rin and her two other brats, it meant he had done more than enough of his fair share of teaching obligations. Well, sort of. He'd taught them a thing or two. Occasionally. When he felt like it. As much as he loved Naruto, he hadn't envied Rin's position of dealing with the kid five days a week.
Asuma shrugged, drawing Obito away from lingering paperweighted thoughts. "You get used to it. Pretty sure they're just handing shit off to you as a way of welcome." I knew it. Obito hummed, restraining the elated whoop threatening to burst out of his chest. Vindication.
Yūgao snatched the sake flask before he could make another go at it, pouring herself a cup instead. "Or," she started, "admit that this was nothing but a pleasant respite and claim back your papers. Again."
"I'm done."
"Sure, Captain."
"Anyway," Genma cut in, raising a hand to catch a server's attention, "not sure about you three, but I came here to get heels over tits drunk tonight, not to talk about work. Shut up about it." Obito saluted his cup.
With a new bottle of sake to tide them over, they fell into a companionable chatter, Obito free to listen and comment around the lip of his cup. Genma was all too happy to steer the conversation, pulling out a piece of gossip like he was an old woman at a card table. Grinning, he let them in on the knowledge that the police force had caught one of their own number smuggling erotic summonging scrolls amongst various other contraband, Obito was all too happy to chuckle at his cousins' expense. Fugaku would have been enraged, and the image of the clan head spitting curses while howling about clan honour was a delightful one.
Soon enough, the pleasant burn of drink weighed down his muscles. Obito leaned back against the bamboo decor of the wall, letting the alcohol relax the tension that had seized his shoulders the entire week. He needed this. Especially after reading the recent reports that had come in from Rain Country's way. And Grass. And Waterfall. How long would he be able to do this before he was forced out onto the battlefields once again? This might be one of the last occasions in the next long while that they all would be able to gather like this. Maybe even one of the last occasions that everyone at this table, this izakaya, was alive to do so.
From his position, it was easy to catch how Asuma's gaze wandered to the door of the izakaya and Obito pursed his lips, trying to keep the smirk off them. "Hey Sarutobi," he called. The other man straightened, playing at nonchalant as he turned his attention to the Uchiha. "How's Kurenai?"
Asuma narrowed his eyes. "Why do you want to know?"
"No particular reason."
"Don't know. Haven't seen her around lately."
"Sure you have," Obito said, lazily throwing an arm over the back in his seat. "Say, she was at Momochi's just last week with your cousin, wasn't she? Could have sworn Fumi mentioned how Kurenai said you guys had been meeting up on the regular. Just the two of you as well, I think."
"Mm. Not sure about that. Fumi likes to open her mouth and let any kind of shit fall out. Not too different from you in that. You should know better than to listen to bad intel. Hasn't that been in your job description for the last decade?" He fished another cigarette from his breast pocket and stuck it between his lips. "Haven't seen Kurenai since we all went to that place in the Irodjaya District."
Liar, Obito thought, smug. I know you two are fucking. Sarutobi could see he knew it too, making a subtle, rude gesture as he scratched at his beard. Obito curled his grin around the lip of his cup.
A senbon sharply poked at his forearm. "Now, now, don't go sticking that long nose of yours into others' love lives when your own is as abysmal as it is, Uchiha."
Obito jerked away. "Fuck off, that's been in your mouth."
Yūgao took a long sip of her sake. "So have a lot of things."
"I've heard no complaints," Genma countered, returning the needle between his teeth.
"Doubt you will when you keep half the Irodjaya District on a payroll." Obito laughed at that.
"Why are you defending him? He's not your captain anymore."
"I just think it's rich is all, coming from you."
"Drink your fucking sake, Uzuki. I'm currently keeping this izakaya afloat too."
Obito cleared his throat. "There's nothing wrong with my love life," he commented, not about to let Genma get the last word on that front.
"Fair. Hard to fault something that doesn't exist."
"Oh, fuck off—" Obito cut himself off and blinked. An inexplicable feeling suddenly burgeoned in the pit of his stomach.
Obito straightened in his seat. Distracted, he searched for a source of the feeling in the suddenly too bright lantern light. He tried to blink the brightness away. It stung. He shook his head, struggling to contain a sudden pressure behind his eyes. The feeling in his stomach rose, like rushing sludge water, higher and higher, becoming a torrent before he could even fully comprehend the drag of the current.
"Obito?"
"Why is his Sharingan active— is that...?"
"I don't know—"
A hand on his shoulder. His head dropped, weighing a ton. The pressure behind his eyes mounted. "Obito?"
The strangeness rose to gorge his throat. Higher. He scented stinging metal. Higher. His body jerked. The world became sharp. Sharper. It blurred. He tried to breathe. The air was stifling and reedy thin. His hand twitched. Something thumped and spilled.
"Obito!"
Obito tried his mouth. It felt as if he was chewing on cotton. "I'm—"
Agony.
Oh, Kami. Agony. Agony. A spike driven into his left eye, forced inch by inch through brain matter and drilled into the back of his skull. There was a hoarseness in his throat and a sudden wetness slipping down his cheek. He couldn't see. He could. Movement lines of flickering possibility. Torturous blindness. His head was in a vice, clutched between the hands of a demon that pressed against his temples. He pawed at his eye, and through the haze, his trembling fingers came away a bright, bright red.
"Shit!"
Droplets fell in a steady drip on the table. Obito struggled to breathe as he stared at the crimson beads. Bodies around him moved. His shinobi instincts reeled, yet he could do nothing but remain paralysed at the agony clawing his head. Something, in a place a side-step away from this world, rumbled and cracked and shrieked. White light stung his left eye.
It came. At first slow, then all at once: a rolling tide that shook the izakaya on its foundations, and the pain... the pain did not stop.
Every breath was fire and torment.
He awoke to a sea of stars, wavering amongst the inky void. The stifled gasps he managed wheezed wetly, and yet his mouth was inexplicably dry. He tongued his teeth, the appendage clumsy and his jaw cumbersome. There was no flooding taste of copper beyond that which seeped from his gums. He coughed, tasting salty fluid and a burn in his lungs. Pain followed; heavy and suffocating, scraping needles after it.
He blinked an eye, his other hanging closed. Not dead. Should be. Could be yet. The ground was hard beneath him. Breathing around the needles, he listened, but other than a quiet night breeze pulling at the tears in his shirt, all was eerily silent. Not dead. Kakashi felt a prick of disappointment. What he hoped were his last moments was now no more than a blur of light and the brief memory of calm. He did not feel that now. Now, he was somehow alive enough for his instinct to hiss, and the unwanted spectre of self-preservation to rumble. Move, shinobi, a voice, mirroring the cold baritone of a long dead captain. Move, or soon you will be dead. Or worse: compromised.
Petulant, Kakashi responded. I don't care. I could die here. I want to. There are people waiting for me.
Complete the mission.
I have. It's done. The weapon was destroyed, crushed to dust in a place no one would ever find it. I am done. There are no more missions. Not anymore. He coughed and blood filled his mouth. Ah, there it was.
There's always a mission. Not dead. Assess. Know who you are, what you are, where you are.
With nothing but terrible pain for company and the cold ground against his back, eventually he decided to play along. He was Hatake Kakashi, twenty-nine, a shinobi of Konohagakure, Jōnin, human (as far as he could tell), injured to an unknown extent, and he hadn't a fucking clue as to where he was. At least one of these answers is problematic. Resolve.
Kakashi tested his limbs; twitching his fingers, curling his toes, and tensing his muscles. A point just over his shoulder flared in protest as he rolled the joint, quaking pain down his left arm and webbing across his back. Scapula, likely cracked. The deep gash he took to his thigh he already knew of, the Akatsuki member in the ridiculous orange mask had swept a kunai across his leg with a speed even his Sharingan could barely track. The myriad of near fatal misses had still left him slices and nicks. Kakashi could feel each touch of them in the cool breeze as they wept. Lucky then, that Tenzō had come forward to keep the Akatsuki man well occupied.
Shifting caused an ache to thread up his spine, that pain likely the result of a hard impact with the ground. Another ache gripped his hip. He wasn't sure about that one. Blood and fluid in his lungs, and, judging from how cool — even icy — the summer breeze felt on his skin, a physical body that was currently running far too hot. As for his spiritual body...
Concentrating, Kakashi released a trickle of chakra to push through his coils. He gasped, sharp and breathless at the agony that responded.
Oh.
Mutilated would be a kind word for what he found in examination of his circulatory system. Another lame attempt was met with the same full-bodied flare of suffering. From what little he could sense, it would not be so outrageous to conclude that each of his chakra coils had been all but unravelled, and the pathways between them linked by little more than threads. Moving chakra around a system in that state wasn't unlike attempting to stand on shattered bones.
Shit. Shit. Kakashi drew in a raw breath and hacked, burn flaring in his chest. Not good. If his body decided it would be a fine time to give out now, he wouldn't stop it. Death might be preferable to surviving in this state anyway.
It was clear then, as the pain gripped him like teeth piercing a bared neck, that while his physicality had remained... somewhat whole, a vital part of him had most assuredly not. That he was not currently a cooling corpse, Kakashi could only surmise was the result of some kind of rebound effect — a dimension crushing inward and a flood of chakra pouring outward all at once handed a small amount of kickback that had been suffused into his own system. Yet whatever the explanation, the point was moot. He should be dead.
It was out of habit that he kept his scarred eye closed but he opened it, only to immediately close it once again; a sharp pain and blurred, stinging stars. Even Sharingans required chakra and he could hardly sense, much less access whatever he had left. He gingerly raised a weak, trembling hand to press at the area and found a sludge of congealed blood. Kakashi swallowed. His tongue felt thick and strange in his mouth.
Assess.
Kamui had thrown him back into the world. Shapeless mounds and the thick, overwhelming smell of churned soil surrounded him, that much he could tell. It was difficult to see with a shrouded moon and no Sharingan to help pierce the darkness. Rolling his head and squinting his single working eye, he could see no sprawling form of trees above or around him. No grass itched at his face. All was barren dirt and clouded sky. Unable to see more, he was stuck waiting until the clouds shifted, and around him, sharp light edged shapes into being. Kakashi clenched his teeth hard enough to ache, his nostrils flaring at what the moon revealed. No...
This was not some sparse, barren land. It was a blast site.
Graced by the light, around him there was only utter devastation. His place of impact was in truth, a crater; the eye of the destruction. Beyond his respite, the land had been ripped to clean earth. He knew now, there was little chance of recognising where he was. He doubted that even those who once did could do the same. The moonlight passed over to reveal jagged rock piercing toward the sky, shards as large as cliffs. Boulders, like towers, had been pushed up from the earth, or the earth had been peeled back to reveal them. The breeze carried the acrid scent of distant smoke. Above it all, a heavy feeling sat in the air, yet Kakashi could not sense and know it for what it was, with his circulatory system so wasted; akin to abruptly forgetting the texture of leather, or wool, or metal. He could, however, hazard a guess as to what that heavy, lingering thing was. As to what had happened with his reentry from Kamui.
That much chakra... that much demonic, unnatural chakra... Kami. Raw and free from a singularity, it would not have been unlike a bomb of unfamthoable proportions. If he had been wrong, and if it had been too much for even Kamui to contain... Kakashi, all of a sudden, felt very small.
Move, shinobi. Run, coward. The insistence was louder now. Safe. Find somewhere safe. Assess. Resolve. Assess. Go. Decades of training rushed up like well-water to clamp down on the yawning horror. Weak and hapless, he listened.
Slowly, so ever slowly, Kakashi rolled himself to the side to push himself up on his elbows. Again, he wetly coughed, letting a small crow of pain slip from his mouth. Blood and fluid caught in his mask, feeling sticky against his lips. He struggled to his feet, rising through the breathless agony of each motion. Through sheer force of will, every step was stronger, more stable than the trembling one before it. His ragged breathing was loud in his ears; the only sound in the haunting quiet.
Under the dark passing of clouds, a lone man stumbled through a devastated land. The first hint of grey-toned green bloomed three miles out. The first standing tree stood at four. It was there his suffering body would take him no further.
A colossal tree offered him the tangle of its roots. Kakashi collapsed, glad for the soft, damp moss and comforting dark. He curled into himself within it, breathing through his hurts and the gnawing thing beneath. Shielded by the thick roots of his den, he had a view of a thick chunk of dressed stone, more than a storey high. It lay amongst the crushed remains of surrounding trees where it had been thrown; the stone a section of foundation. A support for an enormous bridge. Through a sinking eyelid, Kakashi could see mason marks and red paint slathered thickly on the side. Resolve. Finally, as exhaustion claimed him, Kakashi felt he had an inkling of an idea as to exactly where he was.