Chapter Nine: Fruit of the Garden

ACT TWO: PEACE, OF A SORT

He watched them work, hidden away in a dark box-room behind the pane of one-way glass.

Locked in a strain, Obito's jaw ached. The threads of muscle in his bicep had long since numbed from the intensity with which he crossed his arms. It felt insignificant to what lay in front of him. Framed in the glass, medical nin wove around one another like swarming flies around a carcass, or ants on discovering a pot of spilled sugar; Obito couldn't decide which. They passed their tools and voiceless words, the fog of teal chakra filling their hands as they worked on the man strapped to the bed. Occasionally the lights flickered, flashing the already too white room into a cold brightness that pecked at Obito's eye. Dodging wiring. Not unexpected for a place so deep underground.

He shifted on his feet, as he did every so often. Kept the blood flowing. His body was already griping at the battering of exhaustion and strain it had endured, reminding him of his own unfortunate limits. Despite the wild hustle of the past three days (a week, more like), Obito wasn't keen to let it win by crumbling just yet. He frowned at the glass and the reflection of the dim film of blue that lit his box-room. A secondary part of his mind caught the bruised skin beneath his eye and the deepened lines of his face. He ignored his own dull stare to look beyond it. One of the medical nin turned away from her patient to wipe the sweat from her temples with the heel of her palm. Someone said something to her. She gave a heavy, hopeless shrug and looked down to where she had been working: her patient's arm; wrist upturned. Too thin and too pale.

Obito whistled a thin, quiet breath between his teeth, unable to look away. He hadn't looked away since slipping into the facility after enduring the rapid-fire debriefing Team To had provided the Yondaime with staunch professionalism; their captive already received and deposited elsewhere at the Hokage's order. Now, here, Obito found himself locked to the position as a part of him still waded through the moment two days prior when their quarry had turned around to reveal himself as something impossible.

Another medic-nin adjusted a naked leg for better access to the spray of scabs down the calf. The hard consequence of tumbling to the forest floor and rolling on rock and root. On the bed, they had bared their patient near completely. The sight filled Obito with a sense of wrongness. Made him petulant in discontent, even as practicality called for its necessity. The boy that he knew had always been meticulous in what he showed people — himself most of all. He would have never allowed this without some fight against it.

'Why do you even wear that thing?' Obito himself had once demanded of that boy, jabbing a rude finger at his face.

The boy had scoffed and turned his cheek. 'It's standard shinobi gear. And it's none of your business, idiot.'

Young, it had been something Obito refused to understand and something he had only begrudgingly come to respect. Why wouldn't you want others to know your face? How else could they remember you and all the extraordinary things you had done if they didn't know it was you? It was only later in life that Obito had found some comfort in the invisible. The ceramic mould of his dog mask was as much a kind of release as it could be a prison.

Through the glass, the patient's jaw was lax in his unconscious state. The glow of the white light made the small, fine grey hairs of his beard meld with his too pale skin. Obito flattened his mouth. He should be wearing a mask, he thought. They should've given him one.

Time passed and still the ants swarmed.

Uncaring as to how the moments became minutes, Obito sunk deeper into his thoughts. Minutes became an hour. An hour became two. A soft prayer tugged him from the depths of his brooding and unhappily, he went with it.

"Amaterasu, preserve..."

He hadn't heard the click of the door. Sloppy, Obito chided heatlessly as Minato's lean form drifted to his side. The film light stained the Hokage's face in a brush of blue, contrasting the equally cold white blaring through the one-way glass. Together the shades found every line of his face, catching in every crevice that showed his age and highlighting the edge of fatigue. The sudden years that had captured him as he listened to Team To's report were still there.

Another presence slipped like a dark shade behind them and the feather touch of a hand flitted across Obito's lower back. As the shade circled, she suddenly gripped at his elbow and dug her thumb into the joint, pinching at the nerve and causing Obito's body to seize back into wakefulness.

Rin didn't look at him. In the dark room, the waxy shine of light cast comparatively elegant lines on her face. Her jaw sat slack and her eyes wandering, wide. He knew she methodologically took in every detail. And for it, she looked as lost as he had felt for the past three days.

Like a moth faced with a burning flame, Obito's gaze returned to the man in the bed. Together the three of them watched. Silent and tense. Mystified. His arms felt heavy with a ghostly weight folded against his chest and the awkwardness of limp, dangling legs that were too long to keep comfortably settled. When the grey-haired Senju Kenshi had turned around, Obito's heart had shook with such a strength that he almost thought himself dying. There was a man, a target, an enemy, wearing the maskless face of a boy long dead.

"He's a grown man," Minato murmured to the dark room. Obito pulled in a steadying breath through his nose and hated the truth of it.

A man lay in that bed.

His eyes were heavy, half lidded; his face angular, silvery stubble frosting his jaw. A mix of delicate and strong features. Handsome.

Not a boy, but a man.

Not the thirteen year old boy that had saved Obito from Iwa nin. Not the one who had become one of his closest childhood friends. Not the one who had died in the name of the village. Just like all the rest. When their target had been standing and talking, Obito had been burdened with doubt, but laid out on the forest floor, his thoughts only became more consumed.

Senju Kenshi was Hatake Kakashi. Or at least a man that looked exactly like him.

Kakashi had inherited more from his mother than one of her beauty marks below the corner of his mouth. Hatake Yukiko's more refined features had found its way to his cheekbones and the curve of his brow. Obito recalled how his young self had been struck dumb when the woman had come to collect her son from academy, his young mind flustered by her beauty. He'd harboured a painfully unsubtle crush on the woman for weeks before eventually turning back to his obsessions with Rin. Kakashi had been tight-lipped when asked and Obito had learned little more than the fact she was a tokubetsu jōnin.

Leant over Kakashi in a damp forest on the outskirts of Waterfall Country, it had taken Yochi roughly shaking his shoulder and calling for him, to rouse Obito from the trap of bewilderment and awe. They had to be away from there, Shīkā had murmured. Retreat to somewhere safe to examine the target properly. Not a target, Obito had wanted to say. Kakashi.

He had moved automatically then, taking the man into his arms and hefting him up to clutch him close, even as his mind worked on habit to rattle off unwelcome observations. Dense muscle, trained, evidence of weight loss, injuries with application of minimum first aid, sweat-stained, hasn't washed in some time — hasn't been able to. Dense demonic chakra infusion. Weak chakra signature; below genin levels.

Even as they had fled, Obito couldn't prevent himself from looking; couldn't keep himself from adjusting his fingers and pressing into the hard muscle beneath layers of cloak and cloth, just to check the man he carried was not some trick. They had sequestered themselves at the back of a damp cave to examine him, Gankyō layering the walls with barrier seal tags, Shīkā weaving her strongest genjutsu to hide their presence. Under Yochi's firelight, Kakashi was laid out once again. With his cloak stripped from him, he had looked even thinner — a testimony to some hard weeks of endless travel and little to eat. Under the light, the proof before them solidified into something queasy.

It had been him, Obito knew. The shinobi who had crawled from the Dead Zone to sleep in the tree hollow. Who had tried to burn the evidence of his existence and who had hid himself amongst people burdened by the loss he himself had created.

"Captain," Yochi called from beside the fire, "are you sure this is Hatake Kakashi? He was your genin teammate, wasn't he?"

"I—hm."

It had been so long that Obito couldn't remember what Kakashi's chakra signature felt like. But he knew that face, longer, harder and more angular as it was now. Obito had seen Kakashi's face only once. With his sharingan had seared every line of it into his memory as his teammate, his friend, had laid cold on a morgue table. But that boy was dead; unrevivable. There was no coming back from a death like that. So how it was that Kakashi was here — wounded and weak but breathing — unnerved Obito in a way that chewed at the innards of his belly. Flat on his back and his shirt dampening with grime, Kakashi breathed shallowly beneath Obito's stare, a frown wrinkling his brow.

"He has no genjutsu on him," Gosei muttered, adjusting his crouch on Kakashi's other side. "This is no henge."

Gankyō cocked her head. "Is it him, then? The White Fang's son?"

"I don't know," Obito admitted. "Maybe."

"He died as a kid, didn't he?"

"He did. It was during the early days of the war, I believe," Gosei answered. "Captain, you should know—"

"Hold on," Obito interrupted, captured by a sudden thought. He narrowed his eye at the cloth covering the left half of Kakashi's face. Tugging at it, he let it fall. The makeshift bandage revealed a jagged scar, slicing down Kakashi's face from brow to cheek and grimly bisecting his eyelid through the middle. Yet it was softened and the pink ridges of it spoke of an old injury — years old, not a new hurt. More curious was how the eyelid twitched, tracking whatever dream went on inside his head. Had he kept the damaged eye in? Curious, Obito thumbed the eyelid, gently pulling it back.

His heart seized at what he saw.

Three tomoe spun under the firelight, a dark, bloody red.

Where, in the darkest hells, did Kakashi get that?

"Fuck," breathed Gankyō over his shoulder. "That old man lied."

Gosei quickly reasoned in the medic-nin's defence. "He said he didn't check. He simply could not have been aware."

Obito's mind reeled, the questions flooded in as he snatched his hand back. Beneath the closed eyelid he could feel the sharingan's burning stare. Where did he get that? Who gave it to him? How the fuck is he here? Kakashi had moved like Jōnin. His accent, natural and smooth, was of Konoha. He was trained as a Konoha shinobi. There was no doubt that it was Kakashi's hitai-ate that the Morikage had tossed on the table like a winning card. But the man's chakra reserves were practically null. A faint flicker. How could he possibly use a sharingan? How could he control—

Wait...

Did he...? Could he have...? Obito reached out once more, spelling chakra to his fingers. He touched them to Kakashi's temple and thumbed the grizzly eyelid once again, revealing the tomoe rotating sluggishly beneath.

Kakashi jolted at Obito's touch. The muscles of his neck seized in a flex, reacting violently to the power pushed into his system. In his unconscious state, he gasped and choked. His throat bobbed as Obito concentrated the flow to a pinpoint. He stared transfixed on the foreign sharingan. If it started to transform... even for a moment...

"Captain!" His hand was ripped away, wrist gripped tight in Gosei's hold.

"Tokuma," Obito hissed. He turned his own flaring sharingan on the Hyuuga. "I was trying—"

Gosei pushed his hand to the grimy floor and kept it there. "— And whatever it was you were attempting was about to cause irrevocable damage! There is a reason his chakra signature is so weak. Master Kaishun's assessment was correct. His chakra system is extremely volatile; almost utterly destroyed. Master Kaishun has reconnected and realigned the most significant pathways but without careful, pinpointed healing they will not recover. He may not recover. Pushing foreign chakra into his system now will erase all the work that has been done — worse, it may lead to the breakdown of the pathways entirely. There is no surviving that." Gosei slowly released his wrist. "You will kill him, Captain."

Obito sucked in a dark, anxious breath then. "How unstable is he? Will he make it back?"

His mask removed, Gosei's pale eyes narrowed in thought. Obito saw the quick firing of his byakugan, the veins around his eyes rising like worms for an instant before they resettled beneath his skin. "He is stable for now. Other than his body processing the irregularity you just caused. Still, it would be wise to hasten our retreat back to Konoha. As fractured as it is, if he is ever to even properly utilise chakra again, his chakra system essentially must be rebuilt from scratch. And with haste. That will be an endeavour that will take many knowledgeable hands."

Gankyō scoffed, lazily shrugging her shoulders. "Why put in the effort? So what if his chakra shits itself. How is that our problem? We just have to get him back at least somewhat alive. If Hatake is the culprit—"

"One of the culprits," Shīkā cut in to insist. "If he really is connected to the shinobi we sensed at the farmhouse, then we should be prepared to question him here so our lead isn't lost."

"My, you seem so sure," Yochi mocked by the fire, his hands spayed to the heat. The damp branches crackled and popped, spitting up ash.

Affronted, the blue haired woman upturned her chin. "So we're just to ignore evidence? Just because it doesn't fit what you—"

"Enough!" Obito snapped. Team To dropped into silence. Releasing a clasp, he pulled a small square case from one of the pouches strapped at his lower back. Obito flipped the latch to peel it open, checking the small vial inside was the right colour before he plucked out the syringe and fitted the needle to its end. He pulled half a finger of the draught, rolling up the stomach of Kakashi's vest to press the needle in. Right to muscle. Obito pinched his mouth on the man's behalf. There was no fat on his belly to ease the punch of the sleeping serum. He'd be feeling that later.

Putting the case away, Obito heaved a sigh, thoughts turned once again to the way Kakashi had moved, twisting to throw off Obito's shadowfire hound. An advanced evasive manoeuvre meant to throw off an enemy in pursuit to flee with as little injury as possible. It was a standard technique taught to every ANBU. He drummed his fingers in the damp of the cave floor before making a decision. Team To tensed as he moved to tug open Kakashi's vest. A glare got them to relax. He slipped the worn, raggedy shirt off the man's shoulder to expose the bicep of Kakashi's left arm.

An ANBU tattoo of Konohagakure stared back.

The red was faded slightly, as though it had been inked many years ago. Not unlike Obito's own.

"Something's not right," Shīkā had whispered then. At the time, Obito had been so focused on Kakashi he had barely heard her.

Something's not right.

Watching the man through the pane of glass, Obito heard Shīkā's words now. Yochi had asked if he was sure this was Hatake Kakashi. That same unnerving doubt he felt within the cave gnawed at the pit of Obito's stomach.

"He has a sharingan," he announced to Minato and Rin. "Left eye. I don't know if it's mutated into a Mangekyō, but it's fully evolved in its original form. Three tomoe."

They gave him a sharp look.

"How?"

"That's a good question," Obito answered, his tone dulled.

A pause sat between them. "ROOT?" Rin asked quietly. And that was exactly what Obito feared to consider, even as it had tormented the heels of his thoughts the whole way back.

"It's always possible," Minato muttered, eyeing the man through the glass. "Foundation is vast."

Vast it was. Plenty of room for a sharingan to go missing. Or to show up. A hard thought crossed Obito's mind. Vast enough that even certain kinds of sharingan could make unexpected appearances. He thought of shattered concrete drifting in the dark and something sickly twisted in his gut.

But why Kakashi? Why insert a sharingan in him? Obito couldn't fathom it. The Hatake had nothing in common with the Uchiha besides some distant marriage relations that amounted to little. There was nothing genetically significant about the Hatake bloodline; none that he knew of and none reported by any authority. No connection to a sage. But... could there be? Did someone know something they didn't? What about his mother? There could be something. One never knew with the likes of her clan.

He listened with half an ear to Rin's murmured request to Minato that she be kept up to date with Kakashi's medical tests and received a distracted assent. With the duties of a Hokage calling him, Minato bid his farewells; a touch to the shoulder and a press of fingers in a squeeze.

And then he and Rin were alone.

If he closed his eyes, he almost felt as though the two of them could be thrown to the past, sat on the verandah of the Hatake clan house a second time, surrounded by dark rain. He kept them open.

Never again.

The medic-nin organised themselves in an array. Each with two fingers pulsing with power, they held them to the tenketsu points of Kakashi's chest on a count. A flare of chakra washed through the walls to crawl over Obito's skin. The man on the bed grimaced and flexed his neck in his sleep. It was an ugly expression; the cringe, the curled lip. Obito ground his teeth.

Something wasn't right. Was he the same Kakashi? Their Kakashi? Obito looked him over. Something wasn't right. He couldn't be.

He died. I saw his body. The way his funeral attire sunk into the gaping hole in his chest.

The sickly twisting in his gut crawled its way into Obito's throat. No, he decided. Something was wrong. Something was terribly, terribly wrong.

The wind rattled at the window frames and tugged the old iron latches with an unnerving strength on the top floor of Obito's apartment complex. They shuffled down the open walkway together as gusts tunnelled through the lines of buildings to pull insistently at Rin's vest. She folded her arms against the blow, blinking away the brown hair that lashed at her cheeks. Perhaps it was the wind noisily sweeping over the railings to slow their progress and torment loose latchings to squeal, or perhaps it was the cloud fogging in her head, but every step felt like battling a shifting current.

Drifting into Obito's apartment, together they moved through molasses; she to sit herself at his kitchen counter and he to swing his leather pouches onto the side table of the open lounge and knock the photo frames aside. Rin rested her chin in her hands, listening to him shuffle about until there was silence with the soft pop of smoke; Pakkun making himself scarce at the dark unreadable look on Obito's face. The fog grew strong in her head. Rin blinked and before she knew it, she was nursing a cooling cup of tea while Obito stood, eyes downcast and arms braced against the counter; a man lost in his own head.

It seemed both their minds were preoccupied. Rin gave in to the consuming toil of it.

Kakashi. Kakashi. He hadn't been away from her thoughts, but thinking of him again caused a tightness to grip her chest and her breathing to thin.

He was a grown man, but in that bed he had looked small — like the boy she had once known. She recognised what the rush of medic-nin about him were attempting; exhausting themselves to quickly and methodically heal his chakra pathways and repair the coils scattered across his body from forehead to toe tip. Obito and Minato were not well-versed enough to know it, but Rin recognised that the medic-nin were specifically focusing their efforts on a far more dire issue, with an almost ferocious urgency: his gates. The most vital of tenketsu points. They must have been dangerously compromised. The thought made her feel sick. She wasn't sure it was even possible to truly recover from acute damage to points so vital.

As she sat at the kitchen counter, her mind and heart warred with an equally untenable messiness. Rin was thrown at the sensation, not having been so unbalanced in a long, long time. Something that felt like reason wanted her to return to the facility just to check her eyes hadn't been deceiving her. Their missing third had returned with someone else's sharingan lodged in his skull, fifteen years after he was supposed to have died. It wasn't so unreasonable to be sure. Perhaps she had been mistaken.

No. She knew he had died.

Because it was my fault, she thought, picking at the twine laying limp of the mouth of her mug. Because all she had done was scream and scream as she watched him fall into the mud, not doing a damn thing.

Fool.

She twitched at the sound of shifting fabric. Obito's hand curled itself around her wrist, his thumb gliding a soothing track over the tendons of her hand. She watched the route blankly.

"I should go back and volunteer," she mumbled as his thumb made a line down to her knuckles.

A grunt. "Not sure you'd be much help."

You're not that good. It didn't sting. It was true. Maybe if things had been different it could have been her in there with Kakashi, sweat peppered on her brow. But they weren't. Her knowledge was far more focused on taking lives than saving them. She could acknowledge that, at least.

Obito sighed and Rin raised her head. The afternoon sun hidden under clouds cast a milky light that made his complexion sickly and this close she could smell the layers of old sweat caked on his skin. Beneath his eyes, the skin was puffy and bruised. His movements were slightly sloppy as he pulled his hand away to rub the space between his brows. He hadn't even removed his gear, much less showered. Much less shaved. She almost told him to go rest before she bit her tongue.

"Where did you find him?"

Obito gave her a guarded look. "Just over the border of Taki. He'd been making his way in that direction for nearly two weeks; sleeping rough and slowed by injuries."

She nodded dumbly. Rin watched him move to the kitchen sink, seemingly to look for something to do before deciding on removing his gloves to wash his hands. Tension bunched thickly in his shoulders and he scrubbed roughly enough to take skin.

"You don't know if it's actually him," she said.

Obito ignored her to unstrap his vambraces, placing them to the side with an uncharacteristic carefulness. Red lines marred his forearms and he rubbed at them, turning to look out the double windows above the sink.

"Obito. You don't know, do you?"

"How can it be?!" He snapped, slapping the counter. As quickly as his outburst came, he reigned himself in, dropping his head with his lip curled in a silent snarl. That too, he forced away. "Foundation is vast," he said after another terse pause, echoing Minato's words.

Rin swallowed. So they were going to have that kind of conversation. "Our estranged father has always been unconventional," she stated flatly. She watched Obito's eye flicker and felt the warning heat of the old seal on the back of her tongue. If they were to do this, then they had to be artful about it.

"He's always been interested in experimenting with new..." he struggled for a moment "—species in the garden. But —ugh." He grimaced and paused, and she knew his intended choice of words had stepped too close. He had likely received a sharp, burning reminder of what shouldn't be said in the wrong company or outside the right one. After a beat he continued, "but this style of gardening is something else entirely. It's exotic."

"And you know he always enjoyed cultivating the bizarre. Some we don't even know the origin of. That tuber, for instance."

"But why him?" Why Kakashi?

Rin gave him a pointed, flat look. "You can't guess why?"

Obito gave her a pointed look in return. "He didn't survive that. You were there."

The doubt returned. "I was distressed."

"And Sensei? Was he as distressed when he found you both that he forgot to check? The mortician?"

She swallowed, returning to fiddle with the string of her teabag.

"Yeah," said Obito, bitter. He moved to clear out some of the dishes from the drying rack beside the sink, letting the word hang between them. Mugs followed plates. Forks followed bowls, until there was nothing left to stow and he stood, turned away from her, staring at his open cupboards. Rin didn't need to see his face. The tension did not budge from his shoulders. Finally, he asked, "do you think he's the same?" Tell me he is, was what Obito truly meant.

Rin lowered her eyes to the cold swirl of orange tea, the smell of passionfruit and vanilla had gone with the warmth. Yes, she wanted to say, but it was an automatic, kneejerk want. But she couldn't. She was too well trained for that.

"We need more information." A coward's answer.

Obito's shoulders dropped. Then all of a sudden, he appeared to make a decision with a curt nod of his head. Rin struggled with the decisiveness of it. It was as though they had quite abruptly arrived at an impasse. A strange, uncomfortable place to be. All the pathways before them felt obscured in a thick cloud of doubt.

"What do you think?" She asked, puppeted by the same want.

Obito looked over his shoulder, his eye dark. "I think fruit freely offered is the rot of the tree. No matter how good it looks." Obito looked hard, gruff even, as he said it. She hated how sensible it was. More, she hated how much it reminded her of their shared naivety, once upon a time.

Once, Lord Shimura Danzō had made an offer; one they readily took. Rin knew now that it had been naivety that allowed them to be goose-stepped into a dark and miserable place. The offer was as good an aphrodisiac to young nin. Hurting, grieving, so angry they could scorch the sun, and so desperate to make some kind of lasting difference in the nigh endless war.

She closed her eyes as she recalled. They had joined the Garden near together, she and Obito. He had been given the first offering, and then herself shortly after. Danzō had been smart enough to keep them apart in missions. If ROOT wanted some bloody message to be sent, they let loose one of their snarling hounds. If they wanted silence or words pried from a mouth, they sent a ghost. Even now a childish part of Rin resented Minato for not stepping in. For not telling them 'no'. For not protecting them from that. But they had been adults — albeit young — and so were capable of making their own choices. And the truth of it was that both of them had already been three feet deep in Foundation's dark, clutching mire before their sensei had even known his students had slipped somewhere beyond his reach.

Rin got to her feet and quietly tipped out her mug, watching the tea flood the drain before it disappeared. "It could be him," she said.

"Then why didn't he come back?"

The hurt, demanding words of a boy.

"Maybe he couldn't."

Obito shook his head, still turned away. "If it was him, he would've tried. He would've sent a message. Somehow. If it was him, he would've come back."

Rin touched his shoulder, feeling drained. Weak. Leaning in, she pressed her brow against his bicep. I'm sorry, she wanted to say. It's my fault. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. The old wounds welled. I should have been better.

"He'll wake up. He'll tell us," was all she could say instead.

Inside, the medical bay looked even brighter and sallower than it did from behind one-way glass. The lights gave off a queasy electric hum. Minato squinted at them, tempted to ask that they be dimmed. Probably impossible. He'd never known any sort of hospital to create a pleasant atmosphere and like any medical setting, the stark cleanliness of it assaulted the senses. All was white tile, from floor to ceiling and disinfectant burned off the shining surface. It was its own kind of grimness.

Minato flicked out his senses. ANBU agents sequestered themselves in the corners, hidden in the white beneath genjutsu on either side of the room. Two more sat in the vents. He could feel them poised over the grille. This mysterious Kakashi was well guarded and Minato equally well protected.

He fought a sigh, his thoughts wandering briefly to the others. Reporting in the tower, the distress had been evident in the strain of Obito's voice. Rin had reeled when he sent for her. His wife had already been running herself ragged performing tests on her Dead Zone samples. Enough for her son and husband to miss her. But after Rin, Kushina's chambers at the Seal Corps had been his first port of call. Hearing the news, she had fallen to her chair and burst into tears. With her hand hanging limply from his haori, Minato may have shed some of his own.

"My Lord."

Minato nodded to the manager of the medical bay that had led him through the tunnelling hallways to Kakashi's room. A thin faced woman with bright red hair and the codename 'Kumi'. Their interactions had been few over the years but the medic-nin was pleasant with an excitable air about her. As they approached, the other medic-nin inspecting the patient drew themselves away from the bed, bowing low and murmuring their respects. Tsunade had selected from the best on no notice at all. Once again, he was in her debt. Minato didn't want to count how many times that was now.

He turned his gaze to their patient and all the uncertainty he represented. Strange, to see him up close. The bindings had been removed from his wrists. He twitched against the pillow, his brows tugging. Locked in a dream. Nevermind the sedation, by the state of him, Kakashi posed little danger when comatose, and not much more of one when he finally woke.

This Kakashi was tall; between himself and Obito in height. Somewhere, he had gained long, lithe limbs that he never had as a child. The absurdity of seeing him grown struck Minato for a moment. He wasn't broad-chested with a thick sort of strength, but was wiry with compact muscle and little body fat to speak of. That alone couldn't only be attributed to malnutrition. He was trained. Honed. If anything, the weight he had lost only made him look more gangly than weak. With as many years as he had behind him, his own experience told Minato he could be sure that a man like that at his peak was more than capable of going toe to toe with the heavy hitters. Minato eyed the lines of his forearms, dense with muscle. Silver lines and puckered pink were scattered across his exposed skin in a puzzle of old faded scars. Though by the look of him, maybe Rin's style of shadowy subterfuge suits him better.

This Kakashi was a shinobi through and through. His body displayed a lifetime of effort despite the fact that he couldn't be older than thirty. The age fits, Minato considered. If he were some sort of clone, would they really put in all that effort to give him fake wounds for a little realism? Yes they would, he knew. That was, if they didn't already have him for some time and sent him forth on the most gruelling of missions. Minato tried to recall if there were any specific injuries Kakashi had received as a boy but he worriedly couldn't think of any. Kakashi had always been the meticulous sort. Careful to never let himself be involved in a situation he couldn't untangle himself from. Mostly.

He was glad to see that at some point the medic-nin had fixed a cotton mask over Kakashi's face. They had left his eye uncovered. Minato looked on grimly. At some point, it had bisected in a vicious slash that would have surely destroyed the natural eye beneath. A good excuse to replace it with a sharingan. Whose though? The foundations of ROOT ran deep. It was foolish to think Danzō couldn't supply one easily enough. Both the gods and the Uchiha themselves knew just how many had died in the fields over the past twenty years. More than enough to have a healthy supply.

"Hatake is stable, sir," Kumi said, interrupting his ruminating. "Physically and spiritually. All his physical injuries have largely been healed and he should encounter no problems besides general stiffness when he wakes." She gestured to one of his legs where the thin white sheet moulded around it. "The wound on his thigh suffered infection, just starting to affect the blood, but that's been cleared as well."

"And the spiritual?" Minato questioned. Usually the good news came before the bad.

Kumi swayed her head in a candid motion of 'so-so'. "The work was intensive, as you saw, but ultimately successful, I think. His entire system — coils, pathways, and each individual tenketsu point — have been realigned and are thankfully healing properly. Though it took some effort, I won't lie. You should know, my Lord, that there was evidence of healing pre-arrival." Her brown eyes grew bright and she didn't bother to hide how impressed she was. "Whoever did it was highly competent. A master, even. They stalled significant deterioration of the whole system. From what we could see of some more specific pressure points, there were glaring signs that Hatake was living in a much, much worse state." Behind her, the other medic-nin nodded solemnly. One even offered a muttered prayer to Ashura of the seven sages. "How he was even functioning... well," she blew out a short breath, "fortitude must be in his blood, or maybe we should thank the Kami for a miracle. Likely the former. He is able to bear a sharingan which is impressive enough considering how rare successful dojutsu implants are outside of those with the genetic predisposition." She stopped to ponder before turning, her red hair bouncing, to look down at Kakashi as though he were ever more the fascinating specimen. "Do we have a file on his genetic history?"

Minato cleared his throat.

"Right," Kumi said, looking sheepish. "There's no guarantee that Hatake will be capable of the same chakra reserves or capacity to mould the chakra that he could before, but it's possible. It'll be a process. He'll require therapy."

Minato nodded at that, pleased. Some would likely question why he would allow it, given the circumstances and the tenuous position of their captive. As far as anyone here knew, Hatake Kakashi was the prime suspect in an unprecedented disaster. But the loss of the ability to mould chakra for a shinobi was a terrible thing, and perhaps Minato wished to believe that Kakashi had some sort of explanation for all of it; the Demon Star and resurrection. They always had ways of suppressing a man's chakra — even permanently — if it came to it. But as it had been hastily explained to Minato, the window of opportunity for saving Kakashi's circulatory system was little more than a sliver unless the man was to cope with permanent disability.

"Thank you, Kumi," said Minato lightly. "Is he able to be woken?"

She nodded. "He's currently being kept under with general anaesthesia. We're able to inject a stimulant into the IV whenever you wish."

"Good. Do it." Sweeping the back of his coat, he sat himself on the plain wooden chair beside the bed. Surprisingly not white, but a cheery blue.

Kumi took in his new position with some hesitation. "Sir, I don't think he'll be very coherent if you mean to speak to him as soon as he wakes. And the effect of the stimulant won't be instant. It'll take some time."

He braced his elbows on the arms of the chair, and flicked his hand dismissively but not unkindly. "Today, I've made time. And I've often found that coherency leads to more convincing lies."

The woman shut her mouth with a clack of her teeth. Wordlessly, she directed one of her fellow medic-nin to perform the task. The man scurried from the room, quickly returning with a syringe of yellow liquid. He was equally efficient in slotting the point into the hanging cap attached to the cord of the IV, and sending a line of yellow whipping to the needle stuck in Kakashi's wrist. Kumi herded the medical staff from the room. The ANBU kept their positions.

Near quarter of an hour later, Kakashi began to come to. The twitches increased, turning into languid shifting beneath the sheets. He huffed, his chest expanding with a breath that wasn't suppressed under the weight of a sedative. Minato heard a sharp slice of air squeezed out between his teeth. Air shot from his nostrils. Even if his mind wasn't yet all there, Kakashi's subconscious urged him from beneath, warning him of the danger of staying vulnerable. An instinct imbedded from enduring years of conflict. There was no doubt in Minato's own mind that the man before him had been a high calibre shinobi for a very, very long time.

Kakashi's breathing calmed into an unnaturally steady rhythm. Controlled. Slowly, the bleary twitches of his eyelids ceased. And silently, Kakashi observed his surroundings as he pretended to fall in and out of sleep. Minato didn't hide himself, but the man in the bed didn't turn his head just yet. Kakashi would have to face his captors eventually. May as well analyse his current state beforehand. Standard, really.

From his place in the chair, Minato could feel small, gentle flutters of chakra, tentative and dim as they were. Something like relief pulled at Kakashi's mouth. His brows drew together before his expression cleared and he turned his observations fully outside himself. His eye — the natural black one — opened and flickered to Minato, already filled with awe. It was quickly followed by a disbelief that struck at Minato's heart.

"...Sensei?" Kakashi croaked.

Minato's breast ached. The disbelief faded too, this time replaced by a guarded pause. Nervous, Minato concluded. Afraid that this is too good to be true. Oh, Kakashi. It was the same look the boy had once given him when his mother had introduced them as Minato had come to her before a mission. He had seen it again when the young Kakashi had been informed that Obito and Rin would be joining their two to make four. He knew this look. This is Kakashi, it told him. Somehow. But Minato's sense of reason equally demanded him to be sure.

"Hello, Kakashi," he answered softly.

Kakashi stared. Minato felt the shifting of his gaze over the contours of his face, trailing to his haori and the flak jacket beneath. Listening, he could hear Kakashi's breathing had become a little more rapid. The longer he looked, the darker his eye seemed to become, heavy with a weight that Minato knew well.

Could a clone replicate a memory of loss? That might be a feat beyond even the likes of Shimura Danzō.

"I hope you'll forgive me if I have some questions," Minato started, interrupting Kakashi's inspection. "But I've recently had a grave dug, and the body that was placed there hasn't moved. So who, exactly, are you?"

It took a moment for the words to sink in. Kakashi winced in a delayed response.

"Dead?" Minato thought he heard the word whispered before Kakashi was clearing his throat. The cotton mask shifted like the man was licking his lips. "Ah." The sound was awkward enough that Minato had to swallow a sudden crack of amusement. "Sorry."

Minato snorted. "Considering that I don't think it's your fault that you're still in your grave, you're forgiven. But you'll understand if I have to press you to answer the question — groggily or not."

His mask shifted again, as though this time he were pursing his lips. He blinked and blearily shook his head, no doubt trying to clear the fog. "I get it," he said warily, voice cracking with disuse. It was deeper and warmer than Minato had expected. "The truth might sound bizarre."

"Luckily I'm in a good enough mood to hear the bizarre."

His left eye still shut tight, Kakashi's open eye strayed to where an ANBU agent stood stiffly in the corner of the room. Impressive, Minato thought. Good enough to sense a presence, even without the full use of his chakra. From Kumi's report, he'd been under the impression that the road to recovery was a long one for Kakashi to regain any real ability to mould or sense chakra, but clearly he was mistaken. Minato caught his hint.

"Leave us," he told the agents. They failed to move, full of sudden hesitation. "That's an order I won't repeat." Bodies shifted and the air cleared and not a whisper of a sound could be heard.

It did. It did sound utterly bizarre.

Travelling from another world, another dimension, another timeline sounded like something from some ridiculous novel. As he listened, Minato considered that perhaps he had asked Kakashi to explain himself too soon and the drugs still in his system had resulted in some kind of hallucination. But although there was some stumbling and a slurred word or two, the detail and the logical consistency of those details gave Minato pause. The way his long lost student spoke with a hard conviction beneath his soft, croaking voice... and the fact that any other explanation might just seem less ridiculous by comparison... well.

Minato had been ready to face a biological clone Danzō had accidentally let loose on the world. Had prepared for a man willing to go lengths to obfuscate the truth as ROOT were sent to recapture him. How this clone played into the rampantent destruction and where the power of it came from was a theory in progress. He was not ready, comparatively, to be told by Kakashi that the origin of the blast was a horrific wooden idol created by a terrorist group to hold the souls and power of every single known grand yōkai. And that the blast was caused when he himself stole the statue into Kamui to destroy it there.

Kamui. Rin, damn her, had been right from the very first night.

"You have the power of a Mangekyō," Minato stated, stifling his incredulity. And what did that mean, exactly? What were the consequences of that here?

"Obito's," Kakashi answered truthfully. His eye slid to Minato, watching for his reaction.

Minato gave nothing. He was still Hokage and despite the years, he was still a sensei. Kakashi was their culprit, and Minato had a duty to protect his students in any capacity necessary.

Kakashi understood and cleared his throat to continue. "He gave it to me when he was killed in action at fourteen. In my world. I'd show you but I'm honestly unsure if I can use it anymore." He eased himself up on his pillows, a half bitten grunt escaping from beneath his mask. Kakashi brushed aside his grey hair where it fell over his brow. His bisected eye remained closed. "I evolved its power a year after." A subtle tightness passed over his face. One Minato wouldn't have caught had he not been scrutinising every iota of him.

Getting a thought, he rifled through the chest pockets of his flak jacket, finding a slot of paper and a pen. "Could you draw the pattern for me?"

In short order, Kakashi returned it with a wobbly mimicry of Obito's Mangekyō pattern scribbled in red. Minato examined the messy pinwheel before tucking it back into his vest. Gods have mercy. "Your world," he said, tone slipping into habitual command. "Tell me more about it."

Dead. So many dead.

Different people than the ones that had passed in their own world by the sound of it (himself, Kushina, Rin, Obito. Oh, Kakashi), but dead all the same. By the end, Kakashi's voice had cleared more of its cracking, regaining a natural smoothness. Minato felt exhausted. Naruto... He swallowed a lump of grief.

"Kamui was the only way I could think of getting rid of the statue safely," Kakashi said with a finality, circling back around to where they began. He was right to think as much. Minato, had he been faced with similar puzzle and similar options, likely would have decided the same. An accident. That was what it was, in the end. An unprecedented situation followed by unprecedented action with unprecedented consequences. Who could ever have guessed that Obito's dimension existed between worlds? Minato sucked the inside of his teeth and allowed himself to curse within the comfort of his own head. What a fucking mess.

Looking too pale nestled amongst the white sheets, Kakashi watched him take the news, as he had been watching Minato since he properly awoke. He had asked nothing about the state of this world and Minato could likely guess that there was a lot that Kakashi had figured out or learned by virtue of existing as he fled the scene of the disaster. Watching, he felt the pressing sense that Kakashi wanted to but had long since learned patience. Right now, he was willing to take whatever Minato gave him. He could hazard a guess at what those questions might be. Again, Minato gave him nothing. Not yet. If Kakashi was onto it as he seemed to be, he might just figure out a thing or two on his own when certain individuals decided to make their appearances.

"You report like ANBU," Minato said, breaking the silence. Kakashi dipped his head.

"I was for a decade or so. Captain of Team Ro."

The admission didn't catch Minato by surprise. From what he could see of the man, he seemed made for the institution. Strange though, how all three of his students had followed one another into ANBU. Obito after Rin, and then in another world, Kakashi too. Not many sensei could boast that.

He leaned over to pat Kakashi's hand. "Well, you've given me a lot to think about — to put it lightly. But you understand that we'll require proof of your account. That there's procedures to undertake? Not all of them will be comfortable."

Kakashi bobbed his head. There was no fear, no wariness, just acceptance. "I figured." He looked away before turning back, contemplative. "I'd ask something, if you'd allow it?"

Ah, here it was. How many of us still live? "Of course."

"The blast... how bad was it?"

He didn't quite expect that question. Minato cocked his head, watching as a muscle in Kakashi's neck twitched. He's been lugging around guilt from the moment he woke up in our world. Minato wouldn't lie to him. "Approximately two hundred and thirty have been reported dead with hundreds more injured — it's unknown how many exactly as there's been a limited amount of self-reporting. Two villages were affected. It was mostly farmland that was damaged. People's livelihoods, yes, but it could have been worse."

"...right." Kakashi looked down at one of his fists curled in the bedsheet. He flexed it, letting the skin go tight across his knuckles.

A choice to save lives ended up costing them. Minato didn't envy the man.

A polite knock thumped against the one-way glass. Minato sighed. Maybe I don't have all day after all. Getting to his feet, he placed a hand on Kakashi's shoulder. "We'll figure this out," he assured. "For now, heal. I do have to make a request of you though." Kakashi looked up, his expression clear. "Until we have gone through the procedures and you have been cleared, tell no one of this. Nothing. Can I trust you?"

"Yes." His tone was so serious, his expression so stern, that the conviction in his answer took Minato aback. For a moment, it was the boy he once knew that was sat in the bed, staring up at him with his grey hair a mess. It niggled Minato with a thought.

As he stepped towards the door, Kakashi cleared his throat. For the first time since walking into the bay, Minato saw open, heavy emotion pass over Kakashi's eye. "Sen— Lord Hokage," he said and there was a heaviness in his voice too. "Thank you."

Minato smiled. "Don't thank me yet. We've a long way to go. Anyway, I won't keep you. You have another guest arriving in a couple of hours, if you're feeling up to it."

The other man looked like he was attempting to make a guess but kept his quiet until Minato had a foot over the threshold to the hallway. "Ah, Lord Hokage. One more thing, if I could?'

Minato's smile turned amused. "What is it?"

"A request. Mah, something to shave with would be nice."