Hatake "Mental Stability" Kakashi
The irony of it is, when they meet Kakashi, they’re all caught equally off-guard. He’s clearly scouting, and, well, it’s one thing to hear that your dead jonin-genin teammate who died before he hit twelve is all grown up, and it’s another to see him, loose-limbed and lanky and jumping with perfect grace between the trees.
Huh. He never does learn what a comb is, is Obito’s entirely inappropriate first thought.
The second is oh right, sharingan, as Kakashi almost tears his hitai-ate off his face and killing intent spikes.
The three of them freeze, many—many—memories of two-on-one spars that Kakashi had won flashing before Obito’s eyes. Assuming they can win could be a lethal mistake.
Kakashi’s eyes linger on Obito’s face, then Rin’s chest. Ugh. Really?
“Maa, you can’t blame me for being male,” Kakashi says, deliberately relaxing from his combat-ready stance and slouching against the tree trunk. “You know me better than that, Itachi.”
… Itachi?
“Excuse me? Did you forget which Uchiha was on your team, Bakashi?” Obito says on autopilot, still reeling from the whole no-longer-dead-teammate thing and also seeing what’s unmistakably his own eye in Kakashi’s face.
Friend-killer Kakashi.
“Mm,” Kakashi says, and returns to looking at Obito. He doesn’t shy away from eye contact even though Obito’s own sharingan are active, which is weird. He doesn’t try to cast a sharingan genjutsu himself either, which might be weirder. “What I don’t get is, why both eyes? You were always so attentive to detail back when you were a cute little kohai tagging after me in ANBU, it’s a stupid mistake to make.”
Obito doesn’t know what the fuck Kakashi’s talking about. Itachi, the blinded clan heir, in ANBU? Nobody would’ve been stupid enough to suggest that, child prodigy or no child prodigy, especially after… how Kakashi, the previous child prodigy, died…
Except he didn’t die here, did he?
Friend-killer Kakashi.
“Friend-killer Kakashi,” Rin—no, Tiger—says evenly and oof, the checking out must’ve pissed her off. She’d had a crush, once, way back before he was a too-skinny body in a too-shallow grave and they learned he was three years younger than them, and having it thrown back in her face like that would’ve stung enough to bury herself in ANBU.
Kakashi flinches.
“Who did you steal that eye from?”
He takes a deep breath, leans back further against the tree in a perfect imitation of Nara laziness. The only thing ruining the image is the activated sharingan and the killing intent pouring off him.
“There it is,” he murmurs to himself. “Do we skip to the good bit, now?”
“Tiger, hold,” Obito orders, ignoring the reversal of their usual roles. She’s bristling at their not-dead teammate’s… everything, but he flinched when she called him friend-killer. Something’s going on that Tobi didn’t tell them about.
Obito hates not having accurate information.
“Gotta say, I’m disappointed in your mother,” Kakashi drawls, still watching them. “Didn’t she teach you it’s rude to say people stole their gifts? Y’know, before you murdered her?”
Gift. Fuck.
“Well? Aren’t you gonna come and take it?”
Tiger shakes Obito’s hand off, opening her mouth to snap something caustic that will break their kind-of-teammate beyond repair, and the branch they’re standing on ruptures into solid wooden blocks that immobilise them both before he can blink.
An unfamiliar shinobi drops from above, landing next to Kakashi. Brown hair, black eyes, happuri with the leaf insignia, jonin vest–
“You have the fucking mokuton?” Obito blurts before it occurs to him that this might not be a good move.
“Senpai,” they say, ignoring Obito entirely. “It would be nice if you would do the work for once, instead of leaving it to me.”
Obito doesn’t even know where to start with that. Or the way Kakashi crinkles his eyes in a smile—deeply unsettling, Obito thought his face would crack first—unsheathes the tanto over his back, tosses it up to catch it by the blade, and offers it to the stranger handle-first. Without looking.
Right. Prodigy.
(Why isn’t he carrying his chakra sabre?)
The shinobi sighs, taking the weapon and thankfully sheathing it.
“That’s Cat,” Rin says, wound tight as a wire. “Professional to a fault.”
“Hey, now,” Kakashi says mildly. “I’m free game, but you’ll leave Tenzō out of it.”
That sounds like a threat. It’s almost a relief to know there’s some of the Kakashi Obito knew still in there, even as the killing intent disappears.
“Even now?” the newly named Tenzō asks, something indescribable in his eyes.
“How could I do anything else for my cutest, most favouritest little kohai?” Kakashi drawls.
Tenzō sighs. Deeply. The exasperation almost overpowers the way he's glancing between Obito and Rin and Kakashi with all the subtlety of Jiraiya outside a bathhouse. “‘Favouritest’ isn’t even a word, senpai.”
“It is now!” Kakashi reaches out and, lightning quick, ruffles Tenzō’s hair like he’s petting a dog.
Tenzō glares at him, but doesn’t snap. Obito is now aware that mokuton suppresses chakra, so his attempt at burning through it behind his back isn’t going to work unless he puts a serious amount of power behind it, and that–
Obito doesn’t want to be that flashy, across from a Kakashi looking at them both with his sharingan active. He understands why everyone snaps at him for doing it, now.
“You let people touch you?” Rin asks. Tenzō turns his attention to her.
Wow, that’s even worse than a sharingan and killing intent. Tenzō has, objectively, totally normal eyes, and is radiating no type of Intent at all, and yet.
Obito is much more aware of the fact that mokuton suppresses chakra now.
“Him,” Tenzō says briefly. “I let him touch me.”
Kakashi winces again, leaning away from Tenzō. He hasn't taken his eyes off Obito and Rin. “Fourteen years, and still no taste. Well, as long as you’re here, do you want to make yourself useful? Make a treehouse?”
Tenzō sighs. Obito is getting the feeling he does that a lot. “We’re delayed for three days then, I take it?”
“Mm,” Kakashi agrees. “I'd like a treehouse, if you wouldn't mind.”
“I am not wasting my energy in the middle of disputed territory with two unknowns just so you don't have to get out your own bedroll.”
Kakashi's eyes crinkle.
The treehouse is strangely beautiful. Functional first, Tenzō certainly hasn’t removed their restraints, but Obito wasn’t expecting the First Hokage’s bloodline limit to be so… intricate. Rin gets tenser and tenser as solid planks grow from the branch they’re standing on, stretching around them and twisting until the house takes final form and Tenzō leans heavily on the windowsill.
“Actually, Tenzō, I was thinking you could make it centred over here?” Kakashi needles. “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble…”
“Move it yourself,” Tenzō snaps, pushing himself upright and leaning-without-leaning in the way Obito only recognizes because Rin’s doing it on him right now.
“So mean to your poor taichō,” Kakashi says mournfully. Tenzō shrugs.
“You’ve only got yourself to blame. You didn’t have to rescue me.”
“Rescue from what?” Rin asks. Obito knows she’s not thinking of anything good, but he doesn’t get a chance at trying to maybe mitigate before Kakashi’s expression sharpens.
“No ROOT? Itachi. I was in that before you were."
“Why do you keep talking to Itachi?” Obito snaps. “I’m literally in front of you and I’m still not worth talking to?"
Kakashi tips his head to the side, red sharingan bleeding black as an unfamiliar pinwheel spins in the centre.
God fucking dammit.
“Aa,” he shrugs carelessly, flickering back to an activated sharingan. “There’s still work to be done.”
“What sharingan does that?” Rin asks.
“The mangekyō,” Obito murmurs, cursing all the gods that the version of him Kakashi got the eye from evolved it. “The taboo.”
Didn’t your mother teach you it’s rude to say people stole their gifts?
I’m free game, Kakashi had said, killing intent vanishing. I’m free game.
“When did that happen?” Rin asks crisply, and Obito loves her fiercely, for being made of sharp edges.
“I’ll have this conversation in three days,” Kakashi says flatly. Why is he so focused on three days?
“What mangekyō does Itachi have?” Obito asks slowly.
“I would think that’s obvious,” Tenzō says snippily. Obito can’t stop himself from sending a horrified glance at his not-teammate, just out of sync with Rin so one can cover the other’s blindspot.
“How many times has he used it?”
Kakashi shrugs. “How long is a piece of string?”
“Once is more than most shinobi, Bakashi,” Obito snaps reflexively, and Kakashi goes still for an odd moment before he relaxes again. One shoulder lifts in a lopsided shrug.
“Maa, two’s company. I'll have to draw the line at three, though.”
Obito can’t decide what’s worse, the raw grief on Tenzō’s face, or the lack of it on Kakashi’s.
“Okay,” Rin says. “Okay. This isn't– you're not– you think you’re being tortured with Tsukiyomi?”
“Aa,” Kakashi says. “It sounds so ridiculous when you say it like that.”
The sheer flippancy makes Obito want to strangle him. Like he isn't admitting to having been tortured with the Uchiha clan’s worst jutsu.
God. Kakashi thinks Itachi—pacifist Itachi, blind Itachi, who tries to protect Sasuke with everything he is—dredged them up to hurt him as much as possible.
Friend-killer Kakashi.
I’m free game, he’d said.