Kakashi had his suit especially made for this occasion, he hadn’t even dressed this nice for Obito’s funeral. He didn’t care that the rain was ruining the material, or that he was getting his pants muddy when he sat on the wet ground. The cliff overlooked a depressing, abandoned town deserted during the war. The once nice, industrial buildings are falling apart under the weight of the creeping vines.
He was sure he was going to die today. It was what he deserved, and if that was what she decided he needed to do to make up for it, he would. He would do anything.
The rain pelting him suddenly stopped, and Kakashi looked up to see an umbrella over him. She gave him a sad smile, the rain already streaking her mascara with her umbrella gone.
Kakashi reached up and guided her hand to hold the umbrella over herself, “You’ll catch a cold, Ka.” He said simply.
“I could say the same to you.” She barely whispered, but relented and kept the umbrella. She took a shuddering breath, “I always liked it here, it helps remind me that no matter what walls we create, growing things will always break them down. I’ve needed that reminder a lot recently.”
Here it was. Kakashi stayed rooted in his place despite his primal urge to flee from a crying woman. He chanced a glance at her, and this time he was sure it wasn’t the rain making her mascara run down her pale face, but she didn’t look at him. Her emerald green eyes were lost in memories.
She hiccuped suddenly, “You really know how to break a girl’s heart, Kakashi. Those three words ruined my life, and you didn’t even have the decency to respond to my letters. Did you even read them?”
He hadn’t.
“You can kill me if you want. Would that make you feel better?”
“Of course not, I still love you.”
Kakashi clenched his fists in the grass and tore the strands up by the roots. He stood abruptly, and Ka watched him leave from the corner of her eye.
“Kakashi…” She started.
Her next words made Kakashi freeze.
“I’m sorry.” Was all he could say before he left.
~~~
“Kakashi, I must say, we are very impressed with your performance.” Lord Danzo complemented in an unenthused voice, “Especially your mastery of the Sharingan in this past year. Your mission’s have nearly doubled, and your performance is just as good as ever.”
“Thank you, Lord Danzo. If I may request something?”
Danzo, with a put-upon look, sighed and motioned for him to speak.
“It’s just- well…” Kakashi was never one to mince words, but, “I put in a request at the deceased ninja affairs office several times, but nobody has taken… the dead man out of my tent.”
Danzo sighed, “Yes, yes, we’re working on it.”
“It’s been a year.” Kakashi pointed out.
“Well, this is really something the Uchiha clan should deal with.”
Kakashi had already tried that, and was met with similar dismissal. They had never really cared about Obito, barely even allowed him to live in the compound. The only members of his clan he got along with were the children.
It was clear Danzo did not care about that at all. Despite the fact Obito gave his life for these people they don’t even care enough to move his shit out.
“There are a lot of moving pieces to this type of thing.” The desk worker he had harassed at the Land of Wind base had said, “It just takes time.”
Kakashi clenched his fists as he left. As soon as he opened the tent flaps a gust of sand was blown in his eyes, binding him before he wiped it out of his one eye. He was met with a wall of people with their backs to him, shouting at something.
“We’ll die!”
“We can’t storm Suna!”
“You don’t give a shit about us!”
In the center, Jiraiya stood on a small stand. Kakashi must have missed a speech during his meeting, but he looked grim.
Kakashi caught the shoulder of the first person he recognized, “Genma! What’s going on?”
Genma’s eyes were wide in fear, “I-they want us to invade Suna head on.”
Kakashi could only sink his head in his hands, “Shit.”
Kakashi thought of how it had come to this. He and Obito were always close since what happened at Kannabi bridge. They went almost everywhere together and always shared a tent, to the point people joked about their relationship. Anko would pretend to hit on Kakashi, only to dramatically back off and apologize when Obito walked up.
“Haha, very funny.” Obito rolled his eyes with a smile.
Their tent wasn’t only just empty without him, it was haunted. Obito’s things were stuck in an awful stasis, a neat line where his side of the tent ended marked by the messy clothes he never picked up. Kakashi wanted it gone, but he couldn’t bring himself to touch any of it.
Ever since he got this stupid eye, Kakashi can swear he sees Obito. Sometimes he talks to him, sometimes he talks back. Obito was strapping on his sandals again.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go on this mission with me? It’ll be fun!” He was smiling.
“Your missions always end in failure.” Kakashi found himself saying back, like he had a thousand times before, “Somebody around here has to actually make money off missions.”
Obito rolled his eyes, “It’s not like I let anybody die,”
Kakashi chuckled, “That’s why they always end in failure.”
That was fine, Obito never had the stomach for being a ninja- Kakashi always knew it. He was better suited for a more domestic life in the village, but Kakashi would be lying if he said he wasn’t secretly grateful. As ugly as it was to think, Kakashi needed Obito. Probably more than Obito needed him, aside from how much more money Kakashi made.
He should have just gone with Obito. He never should have let him out of his sight. Obito never should have been a ninja.
After The Incident, Kakashi was ordered to see the resident shrink. He remembered Obito having to see the man before, when another angry outburst left a commanding officer with three shattered fingers and a sprained wrist.
“Oh, yeah!” Obito’s ghost had smiled when Kakashi had told him, “Did I ever tell you what happened that day?”
“I remember you coming back with bloody knuckles and a grin, and that the shrink had to be hospitalized.”
“Well, I’ll give him one thing, it was certainly therapeutic to beat the shit out of him. Told me I was mad cus’ I had a repressed urge to fuck my mom.”
Kakashi snorted, “Where do the brass find these “professionals”?”
“Ooh, he’s no professional. I heard he only took one semester of psychology 101.”
The shrink had looked Kakashi dead in the eye and said The Incident had happened because he had suppressed homo-erotic desires.
“You’re not a real doctor, are you?”
“I’ll have you know I’ve taken a semester of psychology in university, thank you very much!”
“So I’ve heard.”
While their main base was in the Land of Wind along with all the other jonin, times of war had their forces stretched thin and Obito would bid out wherever he could- granted it was a two person job. And if it wasn’t a two person job, it normally only took one genjutsu to make it a two person job.
Usually Ame was a safe bet, since everybody else hated it there between the Rain and rampant missing nins, and they could usually get most of the old class there. Well, their little group of 5 outcasts of that class consisting of Anko, Ebisu and Genma. It was quite peaceful when they learned to turn a blind eye when they saw the odd Akatsuki henchmen walking around.
Obito had another reason for liking Ame. Kakashi was so sure it was just a phase, but he should have known better. Obito doesn’t do “crushes”, he does relentless obsessions until the girl-
Don’t think about that. Nothing good comes from thinking about that. He didn’t need a repeat of The Incident now.
“She’s like a warm bowl of soup on a cold day! A cup of laced hot coco! Warm red-bean buns-”
“God, are you talking about a woman or a bakery?” Genma laughed.
“You’re just jealous because nobody loves you and you have a heart of stone.” Obito huffed, and Ebisu laughed.
“Oh yeah, the dwarf single mother and waitress. A real catch.” Ebisu said, and Kakashi would wager a bet he was indeed quite jealous, especially since Kakashi is pretty sure he’s the only virgin left among them. And not the graceful, “I just haven't met the right girl yet”, virgin Obito was.
Anko gave a belly laugh at that, and Ebisu blushed furiously. He must not have seen Obito’s sharingan behind those stupid sunglasses, because he continued, “The only A her body gets in her cup size.”
“Ebisu…” Obito almost growled, barely audible over Anko’s raucous laughter.
“It’s not so bad, I mean, she’s so short she probably doesn’t even have to get on her knees to-”
“Ahhhh-!” Obito screamed and tackled Ebisu, sending him through the card table.
“Gah…you’re….choking….me…”
Anko was on the ground crying from laughter, “Obito, stop, I-I’m gonna fucking pee myself.”
Kakashi tsked at her, “I hope you’re happy, you caused this.”
“I know, that’s why I was laughing!”
Kakashi shook his head with a smile, and went to go pull Obito off Ebisu before he did something he regretted.
Obito and Ka didn’t have a fairytale romance, more of Obito getting drunk and deciding to hit on the waitress with surprising success. Everybody joked he was going to meet his favorite dwarf prostitute whenever he left, to Obito’s chagrin.
Kakashi sighed and poured himself another drink, focusing on his conversation with Anko and Genma instead of Obito making out with the waitress on his lap. She was a pretty little thing, with short black hair, pale skin caked with too much makeup and striking emerald eyes. She also looked like a child in Obito’s lap, and when standing she barely reached his shoulders- hence the dwarf in dwarf prostitute.
She had gotten her black lipstick smeared on his face when she pulled away, “My kids are gonna love you!” She had screamed in drunken mirth.
“You have kids!?”
“...Is that a problem?” She asked hesitantly.
Obito teared up, “I always wanted to be a dad!” Ka cooed and forcefully shoved his face into her chest and hugged him.
“What’s your name again?” Obito’s voice was muffled by her shirt.
“Ka! Yours?”
“Obito!”
“I love you, Obito!”
Kakashi never thought he would live to see the day Obito found a woman that moved half as fast as he did. Most of his relationships ended after a week when he broke out the “what do you think our kids would look like?” bomb, which is apparently much worse than the L bomb. Which was still probably still better than Kakashi's “let’s flounder in uncertainty for a few months until you get frustrated and leave me” approach to relationships.
But, somehow, Obito and Ka had lasted for more than a year until his death. Obito was the only ninja Kakashi could think of that would stay loyal to a girl he met during the war, much less spend his mission earnings on winter clothes for kids that weren’t even his or celebrate birthday weeks with them. It wasn’t like there was anybody in Konoha waiting for him anyway.
“You should come and meet them, Kakashi! Hiroki is such a show off, but a sponge for information, he’ll remember things I’ve told him months ago perfectly. I swear, he talks like a little adult! It kinda sucks because I can’t just keep telling him the same jokes and get a laugh, but it keeps me on my toes. Yuzuka though, I can barely get a sentence out before she interrupts me with a bunch of questions. I need to keep an encyclopedia on me whenever I go there. We spent all day going through that thing, once. I swear she’s teaching me more than I learned in the academy! She’s gonna be a doctor or an engineer, I know it!”
“Maybe next time we go there.”
The thought of meeting Obito’s kids- considering how much effort he was putting in Kakashi thinks he deserves that title- terrified Kakashi. Kakashi wasn’t good with kids, he has avoided Minato and Kushina after Naruto was born because of it. They were just so fragile, and Kakashi was so, so scared of ruining them.
Just another reason why Obito was better than Kakashi. The fact Kakashi is alive and Obito isn’t proves just how cruel this world is.
A few months after Obito died, Kakashi realized nobody probably told Ka. They weren’t married, and she didn’t know any of his family. Kakashi avoided Ame like the plague, as did Ebisu and Genma. So, he grit his teeth and sent her a letter:
“Obito is dead.”
Obito had been going on about proposing to her, Kakashi wondered if he ever got around to it. Had she waited for him in the months she hadn’t heard from him? Would those kids remember him when they grew up, like how Kakashi’s own father haunted him?
The night before Obito’s last mission, he had laid in bed awake late into the night. Tossing and turning so Kakashi couldn’t sleep, his breathing erratic.
“Obito,” Kakashi groaned, “What’s wrong?”
Obito stared up at the ceiling, blankets thrown off him and his arm over his eyes. His face was contorted like he was in pain, “Hiroki…He said when he grows up he wants to be a ninja like me.”
In the half light, Kakashi could see tears run down the side of his face.
“Oh.” Was all Kakashi could say. He should have said something more, something better. Had Obito died because he was too distracted, since Kakashi couldn’t comfort him?
Obito’s heart was too big to be a shinobi. Even Anko, the prickliest in their friend group, would mock him relentlessly. It would always make Obito bristle, and Anko would coo “Aww, is wittle Obito getting upset?”
She and Kakashi were the only ones Obito wouldn’t physically lash out if they mocked him or somebody he loved. He was always so defensive like that, maybe not always violent until…
Maybe there was something to be said about the standard two boys one girl team set up because the three of them were close, all being outcasts in their own way. The stigma Kakashi got from his father, Obito rejected by his clan, and after Anko suddenly quit working with Orochimaru she became ostracized too. Anko was nothing like Rin, but in a way that made it easier. Rumors flew about Anko’s loose morals with Orochimaru and their relationship. A slut and a troublemaker.
“He wants to make sure nobody believes me.” She had confided in them, years ago in a moment of rare vulnerability, “You have to stay away from him, he’s pure evil. I don’t know why he doesn’t want me talking, it’s not like they would do anything about it anyways.”
Somehow, Obito could just tell she needed a hug and she wept on his shoulder. They all were familiar with the powerlessness she was describing, and didn’t need to press for anything. It wouldn’t change anything.
Kakashi was notoriously bad at feelings, so his idea of showing he cared was buying drinks and as much dango as Anko would eat that night. She finally smiled again, though.
They often went on missions together, and while Obito tried to bid to Ame as soon as he got back from the last one, sometimes they didn’t have a choice. In the end, they were powerful tools for the village.
It happened six months before Obito died. Kakashi was their leader, with Anko and Obito they were going to infiltrate Suna. It was going to be clean: stake out their weak spots and that’s it. It was routine when they stole three ANBU guards uniforms, Obito disposed of the bodies somewhere, and they began their patrol of the outer walls.
They were stopped by another ANBU squad of six a few hours in. The man had frowned at their small group, and asked Kakashi how many men he had.
“Three.”
“What?” The wind was howling from a brewing dust storm, making it hard to make out a word made worse by Kakashi’s mask.
“Three!” Kakashi repeated, holding up three fingers: his index, middle and ring.
Kakashi had corrected his mistake faster than the untrained eye could see and switched to his thumb, index and middle fingers. Not fast enough, because the man had narrowed his eyes at them.
Before the man could move, Obito had activated his sharingan and thrown poison-laced shuriken at them. They dodged out of the way, and the best Kakashi could do was lead the fight on the opposite side of the wall to not attract any more attention.
Their odds weren’t good, outmatched two to one in low visibility. The sand made the foreigners move just slightly more sluggish and slightly more sloppy. Anko summoned snakes that could sense body heat and Kakashi his dogs that didn’t need to see. Obito didn’t need any of that and relied on his sharingan.
The good thing about the sandstorm was that it made it impossible for light to travel long distances, and Obito used that to his advantage to use Fireball Jutsus to temporarily blind their opponents. Meanwhile, Kakashi and Anko sensed them out and attacked in the brief window of vulnerability.
It had seemed like they were going to be okay, when there was suddenly a feminine scream. Anko’s chakra had lashed out before dimming dangerously.
“Anko!” Obito and Kakashi cried. In a flash, they were beside her. Obito summoned a small fireball in his hand for light and held Anko’s body. Kakashi had to try to deflect enemy fire while Obito assessed the damage.
“Anko?” Obito tried again one hand cupping her pale cheek. He was covered in her blood, a gaping wound tore through her chest and stained the sand under her. Kakashi knew she would have bled out in seconds.
“Obito!” Kakashi yelled, “Forget it! I can’t hold them off any longer!”
“B-but Kakashi, Anko is…”
“We can’t help her if we die here!” Kakashi said, even though he knew that was a lie. She was already gone, in a single instant. Obito probably knew that was a lie too, but he set her down.
His sharingan blazed red and cut though the sandy haze. Even his opponents stopped to look at him in wonder. It wasn’t the normal, three tomoe Kakashi had come to expect. It had morphed into a strange, pinwheel shape.
There was a brilliant flash of blue, and that was all Kakashi could remember from that night. Next thing he knew, he was waking up in the hospital and they were getting ready to send Anko back to Konoha for a funeral.
“What happened?” He asked Obito, but his friend refused to talk on the subject.
Come to think of it, that was around the time Obito started that stupid agreement he had with Itachi and Shisui. Those kids would follow him around, announce whoever was approaching him, read him his paperwork aloud, and write wherever he said.
Kakashi saw Obito in the meal tent, flanked by his cousins and approached him. He seemed pretty focused on his food, and didn’t even look up when Kakashi approached.
Suddenly, Shisui jumped up and shouted, “Hello, Hatake-san!”
“Uh, Hey, Shisui-chan. Itachi-chan.”
Obito looked up, “Oh, Kakashi! Sorry, I was pretty deep in thought there.”
“That’s okay. What’s up with the kids though?”
Obito smirked, “Oh, this? I just realized someone as great as me deserved some servants. Only commoners write their own reports or read paperwork.”
“Yeah.” Itachi agreed, mouth full of dango, “We’re servants.”
“The best servants.” Shisui agreed, “Now, are you gonna share that dango or what, Itachi-chan?”
“Oh, so you’re bribing them,” Kakashi surmised.
“Yes, some may call it that.”
In hindsight, it was pretty obvious Obito was losing his vision. Kakashi still didn’t know why this was happening, some cruel twist of fate for an Uchiha to go blind? Kakashi wouldn’t put it past the bitch.
Kakashi didn’t realize it until it became impossible to ignore:
Kakashi went to their tent, he could already feel Obito’s chakra signature inside but didn’t bother to knock.
“Yo-” He was cut off by Obito’s startled scream. Kakashi caught a glimpse of Obito squinting through coke-bottle glasses to try to read the fine print on a form before Obito violently threw them across the room.
They were so thick, instead of shattering when they hit Kakashi’s plastic nightstand, it dented it.
“Whatcha lookin’ at, bud?”
“Porn!” Obito choked, shoving the paperwork behind his bed frantically, his sharingan activated.
Kakashi picked up the glasses and whistled lowly when he looked through them, “So you strapped two magnifying glasses to your head?”
“Yep!” Kakashi gave his friend a long look, and Obito sighed, “No. Ka made me get those. She said I couldn’t walk around with my Sharingan activated all the time because it strained my eyes too much.”
“I see.” Kakashi carefully folded the glasses and put them on Obito’s bedside table, before sitting down on the bed across from him, “Well, she’s right. I didn’t know your eyesight was getting so bad.” Kakashi knew it wasn’t great, he couldn’t see things far away without his sharingan but nothing like this.
Obito sighed again and deactivated his sharingan. He pressed his palms into his eyes, “Yeah, it suddenly went downhill recently.”
Kakashi chewed his lip under his mask, “If it’s that bad, maybe you should go back to the leaf?”
“No!” Obito snapped, “This is all I have! I have no other way to make money, and I have people depending on me now! I refuse to waste away in a home like all the other disabled veterans, so you can’t tell anybody.” He grit his teeth, “The Uchiha clan would never let me go.”
Kakashi had agreed. He understood where his friend was coming from, his own father was destitute when he was banned from missions. Now, he wondered if it would have been better if he had said something.
Would Obito still be alive if Kakashi had? Maybe he wouldn’t have ever forgiven him, but Kakashi was okay with that- as long as he was alive. Had he died because of his vision?
Kakashi only spoke with Itachi again one time after Obito died. Itachi had sought him out. He came to his tent late at night, like he was doing something he knew he shouldn’t, shroud in a dark cloak.
“Hello, Hatake-San.” Itachi greeted plainly, and something about Itachi’s tone made Kakashi’s hair stand on end.
“Hey, Itachi-Chan. What’s going on?”
Itachi withdrew a small scroll from his cloak, “Obito-san told me he wanted you to have this when he died. It’s customary in the Ucha clan to give this to our brothers, but since Obito didn’t have any brothers he wanted you to have it.”
A terrible feeling overcame Kakashi. He swallowed thickly and slowly unfurled the scroll. Kakashi dropped the scroll as soon as it became clear what it was and stumbled back like he was burned.
“Obito-san was always very good to me and Shisui-senpai, so I wanted to honor his last request. Nobody can know about this, though.”
Itachi’s voice was growing distant.
“Hatake-san?” Itachi asked, but Kakashi couldn’t respond. His breathing picked up and his head felt light. Images flew through his mind, faster than he could focus on any of them. He dug his fingers into his hair painfully to fight against it, but it didn’t work.
It was a storage scroll with the character for eye in the middle of the sealing matrix. Obito had left him his sharingan. Kakashi wanted to vomit.
He imagined what the eye would look like, grotesque and glazed over like it was never human. Never Obito. Like how Rin had looked.
He was suddenly back in that cave, dark and damp with the only light being small holes in the collapsed ceiling. The wetness seeped any warmth from them, and Kakashi convinced himself that was why he huddled next to Obito.
4 days. They were there for 4 days before Minato found them. 4 days as Rin slowly became nothing but rotting meat. Kakashi kept his face buried in his knees most of the time, afraid to look at his friend. She had died saving him, pushed him out of the way just in time to get half of her body crushed.
Obito held her hand until it had long gone cold and stiff. Neither slept for the first day, refusing to leave Rin alone and get eaten by bugs and rats. Kakashi lost track of how many rats he had nailed to the stone floor with his kunai in those days.
When Obito did finally let go, the top layer of her skin came up with him. Obito vomited in the corner, not that it was an any worse smell. The stench of decay had started hours after the cave in, and quickly filled the small space. The noxious gasses had made the time pass in a strange, disjoined way. Like a nightmare.
Within the first day, blisters started to appear on Rin’s skin. When they popped, they gave her skin a strange, new and shiny look.
On the second day, her eyes had become completely white and foaming blood and another green substance leaked from the corners. The same foam dripped lazily from the corner of her mouth.
On the third day her skin had turned green and porous. It became impossible to shoo the flies away. Where were they even coming from? It baffled Kakashi that they could fit between the tantalizing holes in the ceiling and they chose to be here.
On the last day, the gasses were already choking out any oxygen. Rin’s body bloated with them, and it became harder for Kakashi to connect the two. The kind medic-nin in training and this mass of rotting flesh. Now, whenever he thought of her this image blotted out anything else. They would have died if they spent another day in there.
Minato was horrified when he realized what had happened, and for a year afterwards wouldn’t let them on missions alone. But life had to go on, and Minato wanted to become Hokage so he had to let go eventually. He would remark on how close Kakashi and Obito had become, but both he and Kushina had realized not to mention Rin in front of them.
Kakashi woke up in the hospital after the incident, apparently his screaming had woken the entire camp up and they had to sedate him. The next day, he had asked a discrete medic to transplant Obito’s eye for him.
He spent the next year in a haze. Minato had asked him to come back, and had tried to write to him but Kakashi never responded. Ka had tried to write to him too, even after she knew Obito was dead, and Kakashi never even opened those.
Kakashi had nobody left. He was ready to die, he thought of it constantly. Every time he looked over when he woke up in his tent he was reminded of it, when they still wouldn’t take Obito’s shit.
A year later, he was at the mission desk when he saw an opening in Ame. On a whim, he took it. He had stood in front of the old bar that they frequented and looked inside until Ka came in for work and found him. She asked to meet him outside the village that night, and he nodded.
He got a suit tailored for it, not sure what else he was supposed to do.
“Meeting a beautiful woman?” The Tailor had asked when Kakashi ordered their nicest suit.
“...I’m meeting my brother’s window.” It felt weird to say it out loud, but good at the same time. He wished he could have called Obito “brother" while he was still alive.
He met with Ka. He asked her to kill him, but she refused.
“I still love you.”
Then there was nothing she could do for him, and Kakashi stood to leave when she stopped him.
“Kakashi, Obito wanted to see the end of all this suffering, he wouldn’t want us to be miserable. And for what it’s worth, I would still love to be your sister in law. And I think Minoru would like an uncle too.”
“Minoru?”
Ka smiled sadly, “I found out I was pregnant a month before I heard about what happened. You would have known that, if you read my letters.” She laughed, “He looks just like Obito.”
Kakashi couldn’t bear the thought of failing him too, “I’m sorry.” he breathed before he shunshin away.
He was brought back to the present by quiet weeping in the pandemonium. It’s Itachi, his face buried in Shisui’s shoulder. That’s right, they want them all to throw their life away in an invasion of Suna.
For the first time since he can remember, rage and indignation boils under Kakashi’s skin. After everything they’ve done, they want to take more? They already took the life of a great man, and they’re still hungry!?
Before he realized what was happening, Kakashi was suddenly shoving himself towards the front of the crowd. He was suddenly standing in front of Jiraiya, and Obito’s eye was burning so he threw off his leaf headband that covered it. He realized belatedly that made the whole crowd silent and Jiriya looked like he had his puppy kicked. With it gone, tears flowed freely from his brother’s eye.
“What else do you want from us!?” He shouted uselessly and plaintively, and because he genuinely didn’t know, “We have given you everything, and you still take! My best friend- my brother!- gave you people everything! He could barely see when he left on that last mission, but he still couldn’t quit because what else could he do!? He had people depending on him, and he was stuck here. We’ve given you our entire beings and we can’t get out because we are nothing else! And you don’t even have the fucking decency to get his shit out of my tent!”
When he was done, murmurs rippled through the crowd. People started to take off their own headbands and threw them on the ground. Despite the clear fear in their eyes, they stood defiantly.
Kakashi had not meant to start this. His attention was brought back by Jiraiya’s heavy hand on his shoulder, “I’m sorry, Kakashi-chan. Can we move Obito’s stuff out now?”
Kakashi allowed Jiraiya to lead him back through the crowd like a child. The mass of people parted for them like a wave for a rock, still silent and defiant.
When they got there, Jiraiya produced packs and sealing scrolls for Obito’s belongings. They began with the clothes strewn around the room.
“I won’t make excuses for it, sometimes old warhawks like me forget the human cost of these things.” Jiraiya started idly, “I’m sorry, Kakashi-chan.” he reiterated.
“Save it. The person who deserves an apology is dead.”
Jiraiya sighed deeply, and Kakashi moved onto Obito’s bed stand. In the top drawer was his doofy coke-bottle glasses and a positive pregnancy test. Another wave of nauseated grief hit him at the sight, and he almost forgot Jiraiya was there.
“Oh,” Jiraiya interrupted his thoughts, and Kakashi tried to fruitlessly hide it, remembering Obito’s words: “The Uchiha clan will never let me go.” Jiraiya just held up a placating hand, “I won’t tell anybody, I know how these things work.”
There wasn’t much else to do, and when everything was stored away Jiraiya asked: “Now what, Kakashi-chan?”
“I’ll bring this home for Obito. I think… I think I’ll be gone for a while.”
“Just as well. I don’t think after that show you made there will be any “final push” anytime soon. Looks like you started a little revolution.”
Kakashi looked down, “I didn’t do anything, I just said what everyone thought.”
“Yes, but you were the only one gutsy enough to say it outloud. Danzo will have a fit, but as long as everyone stays strong he can’t make them do anything. This is the biggest base in the Land of Wind, if it stays neutral the rest will follow.”
“What do you mean?”
“Welp,” Jiraiya stretched, “I hardly see how they can keep a war going if our soldiers refuse to fight.” He winked, “So, onto Konoha then?”
“Nope.” Kakashi smiled, “Ame.”