Chapter Text
The orange wash of sunset colored the bird’s eye view as two gangly young men left the apartment it had been assigned to watch, the two of them talking in low, hurried voices, one of them wearing those wonderful spectacles that all birds found innately fascinating. Soon after, Lord Danzo and Lord Fugaku left, and finally the young lord.
A few minutes later, a third young man left the apartment, in firm, steady, hurried strides. The bird perched on a rooftop across the street squawked in spite of himself as the young man’s hair came into view. Glossy, shiny, jet-black feathers growing from his head. Just like the bird’s own fine plumage. If the crow hadn’t been assigned an important task, it might have given into the temptation to swoop down and steal a few strands of the boy’s feathers for its own personal use.
Several minutes passed in solemn quiet after the young man in the grass-outfit disappeared. The crow craned its head one way and the other, watching the front door and biding its time. Shuffled its feet on its perch. Sensed the growing agitation on the horizon near the river, the unknown and unnameable thing that would be rising soon, that the humans were unloading from carts in a field not too distant from the town’s edge, the looming thing that the other crows and all of the inhabitants of the forest were communicating silently about, the thing just out of sight… It was evil, and worrisome, and overwhelming, an outrage against nature, but the crow was unworried. In spite of the hubbub, it was something they had dealt with before. They would do so again, with strength in their wings and steel in their eyes. And this many humans out of doors at this hour meant there would be fine pickings strewn across the ground later on in the night and early morning, for any who were hungry.
The crow was just pondering this when the other one came bursting out of the apartment. Not the snow-feathered one who sometimes fed leftover rice to visitors, like a mother feeding helpless corbillats. The loud, dark-feathered, snapping one with the bared-teeth snarl. Cousin, the young lord had called him, when he had first assigned the crow to watch over him. Cousin, the crow had cawed back in response, quirking its head, finding the concept a bit strange. All crows were cousins to each other, but not all humans were cousins to each other, for some mystifying reason. It was an idea worth pondering on a quiet night, or during a long flight…
The dark-feathered young man left the nest in a slouching, hunched, pained hurry. The crow cawed a tsk of disapproval. Everyone, always in such a hurry, in this brood. The cousin was moving so fast and with such hunched posture, he didn’t see a young yellow-feathered human woman who had to jump out of his path, nor an older featherless man who swore at him as he knocked elbows, nor the pigeon-mother shooing her small flock out of his way, nor the enemy cat who darted into the shadows at his approach. For once, the cousin did not pause to stop or chatter or bare his teeth at them or at anyone else. He simply hurried on, down the street, then the next street, his trajectory a slow, wingless, maze-like motion of curls and turns, rather than moving straight through or over, as the crow flies —
In the distance, fireworks.
Startling, the crow cawed with all its strength, outrage and instinctive hatred in the complaint erupting from its throat.
The human startled too, at both sounds; he had been walking so fast that when he startled, he stubbed his toe, hard, on the curb. A raw shriek burst from him, making the crow rear back and complain again too. So loud. Chatter finally erupted from the young man below, angry, ugly chatter, as harsh and full-blooming as the fireworks in the distance. The words were unintelligible, but the fury and frustration behind them was perfectly communicated.
After cawing and yelling and turning in place several times, a show of indignation that made a young human mother hurry her brood of small ones in the opposite direction, the young man sank to a seat on the very curb that had offended him. The crow ruffled his feathers and settled in to watch, flinching in spite of itself at the sound of fireworks every time they went off. Would have flown away, but the young lord had told the crow not to leave this one unwatched…
The cousin below had his face in his hands, the scars and ridges like mountain lines hidden from view.
The sky flashed rosy, purple, red, then yellow and orange. All sorts of horrible, unnatural colors, an unseemly imitation of the warm pink that flushed over town from the just-setting sun.
For a while, a long while, they simply sat perched, the young man on the curb and the crow up on the rooftop. Nothing moved except sunlight receding over the horizon, and the flashes of false light from the awful fireworks. Nothing used its call except the furious shrill shrieks of the fireworks behind them. The cousin occasionally hiccuped a sob, so the crow knew he was still in pain over the hurt toe. But neither of them spoke.
The young man’s voice broke as he stared at the ground, then emitted a soft, elongated, barely audible caw of fuuuuck…
…Finally, after a long, long while, the young man rose back to standing. Moving slowly at first, and then more and more hurriedly, he returned back the way he had come, winding his way around buildings in a slow, snaking, curve, and then, as his hurry grew, so did his short-cut taking. He hurdled over small fences, then leapt onto the tops of the buildings, so that the crow had to soar higher as well to remain unobtrusive and unseen. The young man’s pace increased with every new rooftop, until he was barreling back toward the apartment from which he had come at top speed, moving so fast, he was surely going to collide with that chimney up ahead —
The crow blinked in surprise, then cawed in insulted shock, near astonishment. The young man hadn’t collided with the chimney after all. Somehow, in some perverse, unnatural way, he had sailed right through not just the chimney, but the protruding weather vane behind it as well. In fact, the closer they got to the apartment, the less he swerved at all, until he was no longer moving in curves and turns, but instead moved forward straight and steadily, somehow making it seem as though objects in his way curved around him, rather than he around them.
Unnatural, the crow shuddered in condemnation as the human reached its destination, which was the same apartment he had left several minutes before. This time, the cousin threw the obstacle (the front door) open, and disappeared inside.
Certainly unusual, and worth reporting to the young lord.
The moment Obito re-entered Kakashi’s tiny, shitty, cubbyhole of an apartment and heard water running from the bathroom, all the strategizing and deep-breathing and calming self-talk he’d been using on his way over went soaring out the window. Without pausing to exchange greetings, he shoved his way past Gai in the living room, used chakra to yank open the locked bathroom door, and immediately found Kakashi sitting on the bathroom floor, with —
Oh.
Once Obito laid eyes on the ribbons of blood running from Kakashi’s left wrist and hand, there was only one thought in his head:
So this is where they came from.
(…Part of him had known it all along).
That was what was in Obito’s head. But out loud, he kept saying:
“What are you doing.”
Heard himself say it.
“What is this.”
Felt the words leave his mouth, spill past his lips, but —
“What are you doing.”
But couldn’t remember deciding to say it, or to continue asking, or to just keep on mindlessly repeating the same few questions, in a voice so flat that nothing came out even remotely question-shaped in intonation.
All the while, Kakashi just sat there staring up at him from the floor, his expression flat, his face blank, and totally unresponsive, even once he was technically responding:
“I’m not doing anything,” he finally said.
“What’s going on,” Obito demanded, flinging every syllable like each one was a shuriken he was hurling at Kakashi’s chest. He was so incredibly furious, he had to throw something. “What is this. What are you doing.”
…Still no answer.
About ten seconds elapsed in total silence. Nothing happened aside from Gai’s ghastly pale face joining Obito’s in the reflection in the bathroom mirror, looking on in a deeply emotional and almost comically easy-to-read mix of horror, and pity, and concern, and self-reprisal.
Then there was just a fraction of a moment where Kakashi blinked at them both through the steam, visibly struggled, almost scrambled, and then probably almost found a way to deflect, or lie, or change the subject—
Strangling his desire to scream, Obito let his own expression do the talking, since he was absolutely certain he was going to fucking lose it all over again if Kakashi tried to give him a single syllable of bullshit right now.
(Again).
He was not going to have it.
So before Kakashi could work up any kind of an answer at all, Obito just shoved Gai out of the way for the second time, grabbed Kakashi’s not-bleeding wrist, and teleported the both of them over to the antechamber outside the Hokage’s office.
Strode over to pound on the closed office door with his free hand, hammering the flat of his palm against the wood, distantly aware he shouldn’t use his knuckles because he was certain if he did, he’d end up punching straight through the door. Hammered his palm against the door over and over and over and over and over again. Still clenching Kakashi’s right wrist in a bruising, iron grip with the other hand, his fingertips digging far too deep into the soft, scarred skin.
As his office door became an abused taiko drum for the person behind it, Minato quickly dismissed the three ANBU agents who had been briefing him on the developing Mizukage situation, waited for them to depart via the windows, then called for the person outside to come in. He had barely enough time to reseal all the files strewn across his desk and tuck his stack of confidential papers out of view when a very dangerous-looking Obito came storming in, dragging a very bewildered, tired, and irritated-looking Kakashi behind him.
A very bewildered, tired, irritated-looking and bleeding Kakashi —
“What’s going on?” Minato asked, rising quickly from his seat, his voice tight.
“This, it’s fine, Sensei, it’s nothing, it’s just Obito being—”
Obito didn’t answer either of them. Just strode in and shoved a still-reluctant Kakashi in front of him, until Kakashi was standing in the center of the thick rug in the middle of the room, right in front of Minato’s desk. In the low orange glow of the slipping sunset coming from the windows behind Minato’s chair, Kakashi’s pale face shifted; it might have been just the light, but it looked like there might be a light pink tinge above his mask.
Obito’s face, by contrast, was dark red.
“Obito, slow down, take a breath—”
“Stop being so dramat—”
“I ASKED YOU A QUESTION!” Obito bellowed like a thunderclap breaking over them both, directing all his fiery intensity at Kakashi. “WHAT IS THIS.”
Kakashi’s shoulders slumped as his jaw locked shut and his lips pressed tight, his fingers uselessly trying to control the flow of blood dripping steadily from his left arm as he searched hopelessly for the words that would wrap this up neatly for them, package it in some inconsequential way, end this horror-show of an evening before anything worse could happen.
This is…
This is nothing. Just a bad habit. Inconsequential. Something I do when I feel like…
…Rot
Shook his head.
This is something stupid that I never should have done, and definitely never should have let THEM find out about.
Insides squirming, brain going fuzzy in the center, unable to speak, all his words and plans crumbling under the weight of their combined gaze.
…Fuck, fuck fuck, he thought, ducking away from Minato’s gaze. Now I’ve messed up THIS, too, and they’re both going to hate me or pity me, and I, I can’t, I can’t TAKE that—
He didn’t know which one he dreaded more, and he couldn’t bring himself to meet anyone’s eyes, so he kept his own gaze locked somewhere between the near edge of the Hokage’s desk and the far edge of the rug under his feet, and tried and failing to find air to breathe, any air at all.
This is so fucking shitty.
I’m such a fuck-up.
Minato’s going to —
I should never have let them see this.
Fuck, FUCK.
They both must be so disgusted with me, have lost all respect for, for a piece of garbage, like me —
Obito released Kakashi’s wrist and clenched both his hands into fists, his breath shaking in his rapidly collapsing chest.
This is…
This is fucking crazy. That’s the only fucking word for it.
Blood pounding hotly through him, urging him to scream or yell, or hit, or strike somehow, but there was no target, no useful object to direct his anger towards, and no one he could lash out at without making things ten times worse.
It’s insane. This is senseless and insane.
Why is he doing this.
It’s pointless, self-inflicted pain. It’s —
Kakashi is a genius, he always has been, so why the fuck is he doing this to himself, why has he been doing this to himself, since it’s clearly not the first time—
Balled his hands into fists again as a tremor ran through him, feeling his lip quiver, forcing himself to remain still and silent as more and more dark thoughts itched and burned inside him, like being trapped in a field of burning nettle.
This is… this is like —
This is just insane.
Why the hell would he go out of his fucking way to actually hurt himself MORE, on PURPOSE?
Since apparently he doesn’t get enough of pain and suffering from all the fucking KIDNAPPINGS, and chakra depletion, and all his fucked-up Root missions, and random people fucking yelling at him, and trying to attack him in the street—
Each blip of a memory brought with it more fierce, black-red, angry fury, more livid energy coursing through him with nowhere to go, burning his insides like lava, becoming worse with each small movement.
But the thing that hurt the most was:
There’s no reason. There’s absolutely no fucking reason.
This is him just choosing to hate himself for no fucking reason at all, him being idiotic and insane in a way that I’m completely useless to stop, there’s nothing I can do to fix it for him, and I can’t cope with that, I can’t control anything or influence anything, all I can do is watch, and be useless, all I can do is yell about it, which means I’m gonna set him off, which means I’m gonna lose him again, just like before, and I can’t DEAL with —
Poised and waiting, Minato stood still, caught in a terribly tight deadlock of uncertainty about who to speak to first, and how. He scanned back and forth between the faces of his two former students, trying to plan out what to say, defaulting to speaking (mentally) to the one who was on a visibly shorter fuse, who was nearly hyperventilating:
This is…
This is some kind of haven for him, Obito. A coping mechanism of some sort. This is him attempting to escape from a mental prison.
More than prison — a mental hell.
This is his outlet, same way Kushina has her alcohol, same way Jiraiya-Sensei had his brothel visits, same way you have your outsized anger. This is his way of trying to temporarily free himself from some internal pain, some way to get a short reprieve from his terrible thoughts.
Thoughts that want to destroy him.
That are actively trying to destroy him.
Heart thudding hard in his chest, his mind went back to the graveyard, the headstone that read Hatake Sakumo…
…This is his way of staying alive for us a little longer, he thought desperately at Obito, wanting to chew on a pen or run his hands through his hair, but also wanting to remain the picture of calm, the steady and unwavering rock of a Sensei, even while he felt like he was being split by lighting, right down the middle.
Kakashi, that IS what this is for you, isn’t it?
Or am I wrong again, completely off the mark…?
He desperately wanted to hug one of them, or both of them, or maybe shake them, or just do something, but it was like his feet were stuck in the concrete of the all-encompassing fear of saying the wrong thing and sending one or both of them flying off the handle and storming out, as had happened far too many times before…
Kakashi ended up being the one to break the stretch of deeply unpleasant silence first, with a murmur of a comment, but not with an actual answer to Obito’s question. Not an acceptable one, anyway.
“Like I said, it’s nothing. Barely a scratch.”
Another short, awful silence, and then he continued:
“I’ll bandage them up—”
“No, you WON’T, Kakashi!! I know you won’t! You didn’t before—”
“Obito-kun,” Minato-Sensei cut in sharply, his request polite, even as his tone suddenly went hard and sharp as polished steel. “Can I have a minute with Kakashi, please?”
“NO!!” Obito wailed immediately, hearing his voice break as it jumped up an octave, but unable to control its pitch or tenor, feeling himself entering the more panicked phase of what promised to be a lengthy emotional meltdown. “I should be here, too! I have a right to be here! You’re both trying to—”
“Obito, I need five or ten minutes alone with Kakashi, and then you can come back. You can wait right outside, in the antechamber, but I’d prefer it if you ran downstairs to speak to my assistant. He can give you a medkit we can use to clean and bandage all of these with.”
“But I—”
“Go, Obito.”
This time, it was a command.
“…What triggered it, Kakashi?” Minato-Sensei asked across the heavy abyss of silence between them that only yawned deeper and wider in the wake of Obito’s slammed-door departure. “Do you know?”
Control the perceptions of others, Captain Hatake. Don’t say anything stupid. Stay in control, no matter what.
Kakashi moved his head from left to right, blankly, but Minato just kept staring. Unlike Obito, Minato wasn’t coming into his space. Sensei had leaned back a bit, actually, sitting perched on the edge of the windowsill behind his desk. His hands were folded in front of him in a relaxed and undefensive posture. His face was pointed at Kakashi, but with a neutral expression on it. Neutral and patient, like…
Like that time at the beach a few weeks ago.
His deep, ocean-blue eyes were staring right at, right into Kakashi.
There was nowhere to go, no way to run.
…So eventually, Kakashi nodded his head.
“Can you try to describe it to me?”
Although he wanted very badly to shake his head no, Kakashi pressed his lips together, waiting, searching for the right words, feeling the familiar tinge of time-pressure eating at the edge of his skin. The thing was, they’d already used up at least two or three of their Obito-less minutes on this one exchange. Plus, this wasn’t really like earlier, when he and Obito had yelled at each other while Gai was gone getting dinner. This was the Village Hokage Kakashi was talking to. And on the night of a huge, important festival celebrating the end of the war, too. This was nothing like the beach trip. It wasn’t as though Sensei had an hour or two to spare, to listen to Kakashi talk about his crazy, unfixable mess of self-destructive habits, and his unendurable rotting swamp of a private life. Or several hours, really, since that was probably how long it would take. Just explaining what had happened earlier with Danzo and Fugaku and Itachi and the others, and the resulting blow-up fight between himself and Obito, that would take several minutes at least, and —
“Kakashi..?”
“I, uh,” he broke off to swallow hard as his breath hitched suddenly. He stole a quick look down at his messy, bloody wrist.
It was starting to itch.
Badly.
His eyes were itching, too. Instead of scratching them, he forced himself to stay focused on what was right in front of him.
Which were the small, dark red splotches freckling the rug, right next to his feet. Blood from the cuts he’d carved into his wrist and hand dripped down onto the thick, expensive rug under him. In spite of his feeble attempts to hold it back, it was trickling from his fingertips; it was spreading all over both his hands, somehow, even though his right hand was still wrapped around his left elbow. It was going to leave a permanent stain.
“It was a mistake,” he shifted, trying not to think about his kitchen floor back at the apartment. “It won’t happen ag—”
“Try,” said Minato, and this, too, was an order, although a careful one. “Try describing it, Kakashi, just a little. What you were thinking about.”
What I was —
Tears sprang into Kakashi’s eyes so fast. A thick, ugly, throttling lump in his throat like he’d just tried to swallow a rock. His breath hitched again, and he shook his head, trying futilely to hide his face from view.
“It’s nothing importa—”
“It’s important to me,” Sensei interrupted, rising and circling slowly around the big desk. Approaching slowly, but still much too fast.
Shit.
No time to hide them, no time to blink them away —
SHIT.
Heart pounding, Kakashi moved back a few steps, and half-turned to try to leave, but as always, Minato-Sensei was too quick for him; he caught Kakashi’s uninjured wrist with both hands before Kakashi could finish turning away and just pressed his palms firmly against Kakashi’s unbroken skin, cradling him as much as catching him.
“Kakashi, it’s okay to be struggling.”
Sensei’s voice was so quiet, so patient, so soft.
“You don’t have to hide it. That’s perfectly okay.”
Kakashi barely heard him. Eyes shuttered, breathing ragged, all thoughts of perception and self-control gone as his mind fell into a whirlwind of reflexively panicked screaming, he yanked his wrist out of Minato’s hands and cradled it with the wounded one up against his chest:
Rin.
Rin Rin RIN.
Don’t touch it. Your student Rin, this is the weapon that killed Rin —
“Kakashi…”
Minato’s voice was so, so soothing, and therein lay the danger. Shaking his head again, Kakashi leaned his head back, face craned away towards the ceiling above them at an awkward angle, so that it would be mostly out of Minato’s view. A couple of warm rivers had already started trickling down his face, towards his ears. He didn’t know where these horrible tears were coming from all of the sudden, or why he couldn’t stop them after so many years of practice at successfully bottling them up. He didn’t know how to answer Minato-Sensei, or even speak, or even breathe —
“Can I see it, please?”
Before Kakashi had finished shaking his head again, Sensei had carefully pulled Kakashi’s bleeding left hand into his own. A moment later, what felt like soft cloth was placed carefully against the weeping wounds. When Kakashi risked a glance down, he discovered that the soft cloth was the flame-embroidered edge of the Yondaime’s haori cloak. Protests sprang into his mind (Don’t — you shouldn’t —) but nothing came out of his closed, unmoving mouth.
All the while, Minato was silent, staring at him intently.
Kakashi pointed his face toward the dying light at the window again. There were more fireworks erupting in the skyline now, but they might as well have been on a different planet; the only thing he could hear was the sound of his own too-loud breathing; all he could feel was the red heat in his face, the painful fire of his growing embarrassment and shame, as he tried but failed to contain a sudden tremor from running through him, contorting his face, making him want nothing more than to pull back, yank his hand free of the Hokage’s grip, leave immediately —
Out the window. I could leave. I should leave. I can make up an explanation later —
“Kakashi, stay with me, okay?” Sensei said very softly. “Don’t leave. I’m here for you. I’m not going anywhere.”
Kakashi’s head jerked in refusal. His throat constricted. Minato’s grip on his arm, it hadn’t changed, but it somehow felt almost like a vice. Kakashi yanked once, just on instinct. Minato caught him, cradling Kakashi’s hand even more gently with his own, pressing a soothing thumb against his forearm and rubbing a small, firm circle onto Kakashi’s skin.
What the hell, Kakashi screamed silently, his panic rising to an unbearable level, until he was drowning in it. This feels AWFUL —
It should feel GOOD to be held, touched, comforted, reassured —
So why —
Why isn’t this working?
Am — am I broken, or something?
I shouldn’t be surprised anymore, that I’m such a pathetic failure, that I can fuck up even at this.
“I… I’m sorry, Sensei,” he managed to ground out eventually, through sheer force of will, tension creeping through his arm where he was still trying to pull away, cheeks burning with an emotion he didn’t want to acknowledge, let alone name. Every word felt so awkward, but he made himself say them anyway: “I’m… I’m not sure why I’m crying.”
Minato’s head shot up, and his face fell. Before Kakashi had time to figure out what that meant, Sensei had crossed the remainder of the small space between them and pulled Kakashi into a very close, warm hug.
This one felt —
Sensei, I’m —
It was unbearable —
Not a child, I’m —
Just on reflex, Kakashi tried to pull back, but Minato tightened his arms around him. Kakashi pushed against him again, trying to break away from his hold.
“Sor—”
“I’m sorry, too, Kakashi,” Sensei interrupted without releasing him. “Whatever it was, I’m sorry this happened. I’m sorry it happened to you. I know we don’t have a lot of time left before Obito comes back, so can you and I agree to discuss this in detail, later? But not a lot later. Soon, like first thing tomorrow morning?”
“...Mm,” Kakashi assented at last as the sun finally sank fully below the horizon, and at the same time, every last ounce of energy drained out of him. Lacking other options, he just let himself go limp in Minato’s arms, just for a second or two.
He was suddenly just too fucking tired of everything to keep trying to maintain the illusion of self-control. His head dropped. His legs were barely… His mind felt blank, fuzzy…
And suddenly, his arm, his wrist, his chest, his head, it all hurt —
(Had been hurting, all this time, he just didn’t have the energy to block it out anymore).
Suddenly, he just felt so tired.
“I should go h—”
“It’s alright, Kakashi,” Minato-Sensei said as Kakashi’s voice wobbled and broke. “It’ll be okay. You’re going to stay over with me and Kushina and Menma tonight. I’ll make sure Menma lets you sleep in, this time.”
“It’s — Sensei, I have to report to Root at 7:00am—”
“No, you don’t,” Minato interrupted him for the third time, more forcefully than before, shaking his head as he finally let Kakashi get free of the hug, but only letting him move back far enough that he could grab Kakashi’s shoulder with one hand and his chin with the other, forcing Kakashi to look him right in the eye. “I’ll talk to Danzo about it, and to Kushina about you staying over, and I’ll talk Obito down from the ledge, if he’s still on it when he gets back. And in the meantime, you just sit down and let me clean and wrap this, okay?”
Looking away the moment Minato released his chin, Kakashi shuddered, then gave into his immense exhaustion, wiping hard at his face with his left hand, undoubtedly smearing blood all over his eyes and his mask, coughing and choking on the sobs that were still rising up painfully in his chest, throttling them back down, fighting with the last remaining dredges of his rapidly-dissipating self-control to master himself, to slam the lid closed, to finally just block them all out, push them all away, push them all back down.
“…Okay.”
In the hall downstairs, Obito yelled for Ryu to hurry the fuck up already, cursing the day Ryu was born, and trying not to think about what might be happening in the office above them. He bounced his leg and drummed his fingers hard against the counter as he waited for Minato’s stupid fucking receptionist to come back with the medkit (slowest receptionist in the world, fastest Hokage ever but with the slowest receptionist, this guy deserves to be fired, yesterday—) when the thudding footsteps from down the hall finally reached his location and Maito Gai appeared in the doorway, breathless and looking worried as hell.
“Obito-san—”
Obito’s feet embarked on the journey over before he found the presence of mind to give himself the okay: he was across the room in less than a second, throwing himself into Gai’s broad chest, wrapping his arms around Gai’s back, and burying his face against the firm shoulder and neck muscles under the weirdly plasticky bright green leotard.
He began sobbing.
Howling.
Wracked with it.
“I don’t get him, Gai, I don’t understand — How do you — I just, I can’t figure out how —”
Without speaking, Gai squeezed his strong arms around Obito, just once, but very, very tight, so tight that Obito felt his ribs protesting. Then Gai drew back to look him dead in the eye, a fierce, firm glare on his features. Still without uttering a single word, Gai drew him over to the side of the room until they were next to the wall, and then slid him down to a seat on the ground.
For a few moments, all Obito felt was some dark, ugly, disgusted, twisting, churning, heavy, anger-like emotion — remembering their fight at the Chunin Exams years ago, not to mention the endless hits Gai had scored on him at taijutsu training only hours earlier, and the extremely arrogant, proud smirk Gai always wore, and the way Kakashi always brightened up, lighting up from the inside out whenever his eternal rival’s stupid ugly spandex came into view —
Obito’s gaze fell back to the blood coating his own fingers.
Kakashi’s.
“…I don’t understand either, Obito-san,” Gai said quietly as they both settled in with their backs to the wall. “But I’m not letting that stop me.”
A long shuddering pause, and then Obito choked out, “Gai, I — I’m making this worse, aren’t I?”
At first, Gai seemed reluctant to answer, but eventually he volunteered, “You’ve made it better. But —”
Not waiting for Gai to finish, Obito launched right into it, the hot flame of a thing that had been burning him from the inside for the last half hour or so:
“He thought that I made up that stupid Friend-Killer name. Like I could ever have joked around about — I swear to you, Gai, the first time I heard it, I punched a hole in the shelving unit of the konbini I was in, I ended up knocking down the whole display, and the one next to it, too. I was furious. I was so fucking mad, I couldn’t breathe. If Minato hadn’t calmed me down, I probably would have set the whole village on fire—”
“Hrm.”
Suddenly, all of Obito’s anger snapped back to target the jumpsuit-wearing teenager at his side who had just interrupted his ranting.
“What the fucking hell do you mean by that, that ‘hrn’ noise?” Obito fired at him.
“Hm.”
“Do you know who it was, Gai?”
Another pause.
“…It was Aoba, right? Or Tokara and Hayate, wasn’t it? Anko? Or was it Asuma…? Ebisu?”
No response.
“Ibiki? Aoba? Anko? Who was it! Fucking tell me, Gai!”
“Obito-san…!”
“Who the fuck was it??” Obito demanded when Gai refused to elaborate beyond saying his name. “Who!?”
Annoyingly, Gai just lowered his enormous eyebrows and folded his arms and legs into a crossed position. “It doesn't matter now, Obito-san.”
“How the hell could it not matter!”
“Because what matters is that he thought that you did it,” Gai rejoined without hesitation. “Obito-san, Kakashi believed that you believed he would kill his own friend and companion. For a mission.”
Boiling over, Obito grew fuming again. “I know, Gai! That’s the whole damn fucking problem—”
“Your anger doesn’t serve the situation,” interrupted Gai again, just as hard and flat as before. “It’s selfish of you, Obito.”
The statement was a —
It was a…
A punch to the gut that hit him just as hard as than the ones he’d received (five or six times at least) at their spar, earlier.
And…
Well, it wasn’t the first time he’d been told it, but it was certainly the first time he’d ever heard it from Maito Gai.
Elbows on his knees, face in his hands, Obito sat back, pushing himself against the wall.
(The unspoken conditional sentence that had lived poised like a sword over his head for the last four-nearly-five years since being informed of Madara’s seal on his heart: Obito, if you can’t control your emotions, your anger…)
Swallowing hard and quickly, he half-turned, part of him ashamed to ask the question, but part of him certain that he had to, and that it was now or never:
“Gai, tell me honestly. Is it better if I just… don’t try to fix it? If I just leave him alone, like he wants?”
“No,” said Gai flatly and firmly. “It is not better.”
“Then…”
“Obito-san, you need to become someone he can truly rely on.”
“You’re saying I need to just grow up and get over it?”
Gai got to his feet, wiped his palms on his hips, then extended a hand down to hoist Obito to standing too. “I’m saying you need to be someone he can rely on.”
…I can do that, I guess.
I can try.
…
Shrinking as the flame of anger inside him refused to die, Obito bit down on the side of his lip and looked away. Hid his hands in his armpits. Even with them out of sight, he couldn’t repress the knowledge of the blood still on them, anyway.
I HAVE tried—
“What you mean is I should—”
Obito broke off.
Gai blinked down at him owlishly as he glanced up, but he left his question unfinished. He couldn’t finish it. Not without exploding all over again.
What you mean is that I have to become someone who just sits back and watches from afar, as Kakashi hurts himself over and over? I’m supposed to just turn a blind eye, like you and Minato do? Become someone who shows up after the fact to patch him up and take him to the hospital and put him back together again? Someone who waits outside and lets him do whatever he wants to himself in the meantime, make all his damn stupid self-endangering decisions, even if it means he—
His breath was coming shorter and shorter.
I will never be able to do that.
If Rin were here, she would never —
“Come on, Obito-san,” Gai murmured, somewhere near his shoulder, tugging on his elbow. “Let’s go see what we can do to help.”
…A nice idea, but too late. Far too late. Obito couldn’t reply. He was starting to spiral, down and down and down, single words like bricks inside him, like weights tied to his ankles:
Late.
What happens if I’m —
If I’m ever REALLY too late?
What happens if I’m late because I don’t even KNOW what’s happening? What happens if Gai isn’t here for some reason, and Minato isn’t here for some reason, and Kushina and Menma aren’t here for some reason, and he —
(Even with his eye pressed shut, all he could see was the ugly brown bloodstain on Kakashi’s floor).
What happens if he —
The spiral stopped; alone in the dark, Obito impacted against the floor of his thoughts like an uncooked egg against a brick wall:
He knew exactly what would happen to Kakashi under those circumstances.
Chest too tight to breathe, Obito slid back against the wall, pushed his head further into his arms, and just sobbed into his arms instead of answering any of Gai’s requests for a response, unable to stop the sobs he didn’t have breath for in the first place, unable to eject the unwanted picture of the the ugly, lopsided brown stain on the kitchen floor from his head.
Rin, what would you —
What should I —
What do I do.
What the hell am I supposed to do.