There is Time

Isobu is tearing at the seal holding him prisoner.

RageHateFury…

How dare they?

How dare they seal him in one of those accursed leaf ninja!

It is bad enough they constantly seal both he and his brethren in these cold-blooded monsters, these beings that call themselves human, as if that makes them superior and worthy to pass judgement on every other sentient being there is, but only his arrogant eldest sibling has ever been sealed inside a leaf ninja.

Kurama was the first of them to be caught despite all his bravado at being the strongest of them.

Leaf ninja… it was they who started the imprisonment of him and his siblings…

Konoha who taught others how to shackle them… use them…

Curse them.

Curse them to the endless depths of the ocean.

His chakra feels more drained than he can ever remember it being, but there is still enough to break loose.

The little abomination that he is sealed in distracted.

One last tear at the seal should—

Isobu is jarred from his destructive thoughts by his newest host’s own voice entwined with her will. The strength of her conviction shatters through his blind wrath.

Protect.

Heal.

What?

A healer…

He wonders just for a moment if his own hallucinogenic abilities are causing him to have delusions.

He… was sealed inside a healer?

Had he the need to breath, the breathe would have been stolen from his lungs. After all these years, never has he been sealed into a healer. Now that he is calmer, Isobu registers the deliberate design of the poorly constructed seal binding him in his latest host.

Ah, a trap, or at least another deliberate ploy made to weaponized him in some way even sealed in a healer.

But…

Contrary to the popular opinion of humans, bijuu are not unintelligent, and it does not take Isobu much to realize that whatever plot was intended for him and his host has gone awry. Not the least, due to miscalculating the strength of will his host possesses. The odd sensation of his own chakra elsewhere, still free and untamed, is a blatant indication of at least some sort of dimensional travel, if not time travel mixed in somehow.

He watches her as she tries desperately to save her patient, one of those thrice cursed Uchiha no less, but the fluctuating levels of her chakra are making such a task nigh impossible. Yet, she spares no effort in her attempt.

And here is a choice… Isobu could shatter the seal. Kill all three of them. He would be stranded here, but he could at least warn his siblings and his counterpart. Keep them away and wary of the humans who are capable of imprisoning them.

But he wonders…

It’s been a long time since his father. A long time since he looked at any human and saw hope. There was no hate in this girl for him. Stubbornness, fury and grief at the situation, a desire to live and heal, but no hate.

Is it possible?

Despite his previously ungenerous thoughts on humans, he knows they are not all abominations, and he has ever been a soft heart.

Isobu sags in place.

All his hope, once a blazing inferno, has been doused to a few crackling embers over the long years. So Isobu is willing to take this chance, unbidden and unlooked for as it is, but still something new. He dearly hopes he isn’t wrong, because he doesn’t know how many more years of isolation, watching the cruelty of humans, he can stand.

Well… he’ll cast his lot with these three children. He’s under no illusion that there will not be blood and death, these three are shinobi for all they are children. In time, perhaps they could look at him and not see a monster. The cycle of hatred will never end so long as they never try.

Rin takes a deep breath and resists rubbing the sweat off her brow. Her concentration has, thus far, been splintered between healing Obito and trying to keep the Sanbi contained. But… for no apparent reason the bijuu had stopped fighting her.

Is it tired? Has it given up? Or is it just waiting for her to be distracted before tearing through the seal when she least expects? She reaches out her awareness one last time to check, but Rin cannot tell what is happening with the bijuu.

Well. They have already had one miracle today. Asking for another so soon after the rather large one they have been granted might be pressing their luck, but maybe… just maybe it would be all right.

She takes a moment to appreciate the ingenious use of a Roukoku water clock in what is clearly meant to be a healing room of this place.  Not only does it allow a healer to keep track of the passage of time, but it is also constructed so as to double as a washing sink. In addition, the sound of the continuously running water is relaxing for both healer and patient.

A breathe.

A silent plea to the heavens.

And Rin sets her entire attention towards healing Obito, trusting whatever guarding hand that seems to looking after them to protect them once again.

Her chakra is still far more than it should be and her control not nearly well regulated. But she isn’t going to let that stop her. She bathes Obito’s chakra coils with healing chakra and inch by slow inch it is healing. Slowly, but surely, the degradation is coming to a halt.

But not fast enough, her chakra control escapes her more often than not, causing the technique to fail. Underneath her hands, Obito’s tremors worsen a vivid warning of the lack of time.

Suddenly, another presence is there, and her chakra control shores up into a steady stream. Time is of the essence so she doesn’t stop, can’t, no matter how much she wants to panic at the Sanbi’s intrusion. But… it’s helping. The bijuu is helping. Her chakra is well under control now and she can feel the vast quantities still available to her from the bijuu.

She’s wary, worried, part of her terrified that the Sanbi is going to do something to Obito, but she can sense no malice, no hate, only an echoing tired wariness. She’s still healing Obito, but a part of her trembles. Rin feels like she is standing on the verge of a fathomless precipice, turning away from every teaching that she has heard of the bijuu.

But Obito will die if she doesn’t trust.

She swallows even though it tastes like poison in her mouth, and again sets her concentration entirely on healing Obito, trusting in this strange partnership to a being known only for its destructive capabilities to save him.

It’s a breathtaking rush, a giddy relief, as the healing and stabilization of Obito’s chakra coils is going exponentially faster with help. As she looks closer at the damage she can spot other influences besides the Sanbi’s chakra. A seal that looks to have been carved on his heart has been overrun, burnt with the Sanbi’s chakra, and is slowly dissipating.

She hopes desperately that the seal was not some sort of stabilizing element for whatever healing methods where used to keep Obito alive.

Rin doesn’t quite know what to do about his right side as the seam where the living flesh meets with the new flesh seems to be falling apart. The normal methods of healing do not seem to be working on it, yet she can tell that whatever was used to replace that part of his body is contributing to keeping him alive. If it fails, then all the stabilization in the elemental nations of Obito’s chakra coils aren’t going to matter.

So she turns her focus to a small section of the edges, where these new prosthetics meet with Obito’s original flesh. Painstakingly slow, she tries various attempts to keep the two halves bonded together, but nothing seems to work.

A formless idea wrapped in familiarity not her own, a slight hum of chakra, and she wills the living flesh to heal and the prosthetics to grow. Pulling them closer to each other and intertwining the two energies, she watches with delight as they mend. In fact, the original tissue seems to be healing even faster at that location. Embolden by her success, she begins the slow arduous task of mending the two sides together.

Finally satisfied, she withdraws her healing jutsu with a smile and lets the gentle sound of the flowing water lull her.

Obito’s tremors are nearly nonexistent. It will be some time before he is completely healed from the amount of damage the Sanbi’s chakra wrecked to his system, he will mostly likely be aching for days, and there is something still not right with his prosthetics. But he’s out of immediate danger for now.

Rin fills her thoughts with boundless joy and unending gratitude as she directs her thoughts towards her unasked for passenger. She feels it, no him, Sanbi-san definitely feels like a him to her, she feels him startle.

Wariness and aching hope entwine together. It’s unorthodox, completely against everything she’s ever been taught, but after this he more than deserves a chance to prove himself to be something other than a being of rage and destruction.

As she retracts her hands and opens her eyes, her smile widens. Kakashi is fast asleep, curled up under the furs on Obito’s left side, hand over Obito’s heart. Rin wobbles slightly, her gaze sliding to the water clock to reveal she has spent 8 long hours healing. Exhaustion crashes over her like a wave, and she is sluggish as she crawls underneath the furs on Obito’s right side. She casts a bleary goodnight towards her new partner as she drifts off.

Sleep feels like a divine mercy to her.

When next Rin wakes, it is to the urgent prodding of Sanbi-san’s, and until she knows if he has a name or what his name is that is how she is going to refer to him, chakra against her own.

Running the palm of her hand over her face, she opens her eyes. A single glance around reveals some sort of odd luminescent lighting on the walls and Kakashi missing, causing a frown to bloom on her face.

The urgent prodding has yet to fade, so she sits up, furs tumbling from her shoulders, and reaches her arms back in a good stretch. Checking the water clock tells her that she has been sleeping a solid 24 hours now, and her stomach is aching in blatant agreement with that assessment. It had been a good 10 hours before their impromptu escape and trip to the past that she has eaten, making it approximately 42 hours since any food has passed her lips.

Rin feels a distinct tic in her left eye muscles at the thought. Considering everything about their current situation and with how unlucky the number 42 is, she wonders if the universe is having a lark at the expense of her life.

She is not amused.

But first…

She reaches over and runs a check on Obito’s healing progress. His coils are still steady, and everything seems to be on the mend, except for the issue with his prosthetics. They are progressively worse than before, still not a critical danger, but they will be soon if something isn’t done.

Sanbi-san is no longer prodding her, so she assumes this is what he wanted her to pay attention to. She cocks her head as a sudden sensation of warm sunlight wraps around her. A moment of confusion, and then she remembers how Obito’s prosthetics seemed to grow. Perhaps they need some sort of sunlight? From the way Sanbi-san seems to retreat from her forethoughts, she will take that as his opinion on what’s wrong.

Well, sunlight is more of an idea than she has at the moment, and there would be no harm in trying.

Still, she needs to find Kakashi. She doubts she could open the way out without his help. Hopefully, he knows where some food is around this place too.

As she rises to her feet, she spies some dark silver-grey clothes her size that were previously not there. Rin runs her fingers over the Hyakunichisou, otherwise known as Zinnia, flower pattern on the mid-thigh kimono style top. The flowers are large and spaced far apart. Being a kunoichi well versed in Hanakotoba, the flower language, she recognizes the hidden message and a wave of guilt courses through her.

Loyalty.

She closes her eyes and sighs. This is not meant to cause her pain she knows. Grief and self-loathing in equal measure have been Kakashi’s shroud, every moment that she has seen him since that ghastly day they left Obito buried underneath mountains of rock.

No. This is sorrow and distress and horror all wrapped up in is this my fault? Everything starts falling apart the minute things are taking a turn for the better, what’s going to fall apart now? What can I do to keep you both with me?

She understands.

A part of her has been screaming since they left Obito, and the screams have morphed into howling since finding out he survived.

Left him.

Alone.

Bleeding.

Crushed in the dark.

Her thoughts are circling like eddies in a stream as she remembers that fateful day, when they returned without Obito and were confronted by the Uchiha clan.

It had blindsided her.

All of them, Minato-sensei, Kakashi, Kushina, and herself, all of them had been so marred with grief it was hard to breathe. But Obito’s clan had been an altogether different story.

Distain.

Contempt.

Rage at Obito’s decision to give a non-Uchiha a Sharingan eye.

No grief for his passing. No pride in his accomplishment for finally achieving the Sharingan, the second tomoe on activation no less.

Nothing.

Obito was, is. He is her best friend, and somehow she missed just how his clan treated him. Oh, she knows it wasn’t all sunshine and roses, but never did she realize the true depth of isolation he must have felt.

Both her boys have suffered so much.

She’s under no illusion that there is not the need for mental healing. Honestly, they could probably all use it. Rin has no idea what Obito’s mental state is going to be. She recalls the echoing memory of Obito’s frantic “Not late” prior to his collapse. His thoughts were centered on Kakashi and herself, just like the day when Obito told them to leave him, so at least that much is a normal reaction for him.

He bears no marks that indicate torture as long as you discount the strange prosthetics, which probably saved his life. All the same, no physical torture does not mean he escaped mental torture or even experimentation, which is likely given the prosthetics and the strange way his body healed. There is a chance for things to be different now, but that requires getting everyone physically healthy first.

A breath and she opens her eyes.

A cursory scan of her current clothing reveals its less than admirable condition. She picks ups the top and black pants. Kakashi is not present, Obito is unlikely to wake, but still she slides behind a screen to change into the clothes she assumes Kakashi found just the same.

Rin takes note of the crest on the back of the kimono top. It is made up of the same 9 interlocking diamonds like the wall she saw on the way in. The diamonds are outlined in silver with each individual diamond filled with a deep blood red.

She wonders.

She has never seen Kakashi wear any crest that denotes his clan, but given everything that has happened, she would not be surprised if this is the Hatake clan crest.

Was it okay for non-clan members to wear it?

Rin supposes it must be or he wouldn’t have left the clothes for her.

Finally dressed, with one last glance at Obito she heads out of the room to seek out her wayward teammate. Kakashi must have heard her moving about, because she doesn’t get very far before she meets him.

He is wearing new clothes with the same Zinnia pattern and crest as well, and she wonders if she misinterpreted the meaning behind the clothes. Perhaps it is simply a normal design in the clothes stored here?

If this place does belong to the Hatake clan, she would not be surprised. Kakashi is many things, but always loyal to those that earn it. She and Obito only fully gained loyalty from him on that disastrous Kannabi bridge mission.

Or perhaps it was that Kakashi finally realized that he did feel loyalty to them then. So many years spent trying to guard himself from harm, only to bear a grievous wound to his soul once he opened up again.

Still, if Kakashi is anything to judge the rest of his clan by, loyalty is a safe bet.

His gaze is conflicted with guilt and he doesn’t quite meet her eyes, letting his own eye drift off to the side of her shoulder.

Mentally she sighs. This is something that will have to be dealt with soon. But for now she lets it go.

“Can you open up the entrance again?”

Kakashi’s eye narrows in consideration. “Why?”

“The prosthetics are not healing as they should. Everything else healing is, but whatever they are made from they seem to mimic the properties of growing things.”

With a mental apology to Sanbi-san, because there is no way she is going to open up that proverbial can of worms at the moment, she claims the idea as her own. “I thought the sunlight might help heal the damage.”

“Ah, the greenhouse area of the den would work for that then.”

Rin perks up. “That would be even better. I’ll go get him.”

A quick trip back into the healing room and she returns with Obito in short order. “Lead the way.”

On the way, she catches a glimpse of other passageways leading off to other rooms as she follows Kakashi. “Did you find some food around here?”

“Yes, I’ll bring you some as soon as we get Obito settled.”

Soon enough, they enter a large warm room. Kakashi triggers some more seals to open the roof and let some sunlight in. She places Obito in a patch of sunlight, making sure to cover his normal skin to prevent a burn, and waits. Kakashi disappears but for a moment, and returns bringing with him some dried fruits, nuts, jerky and some water, which he shares with her.

“Thanks.”

Kakashi nods even as his eye remains fixed on Obito’s prone form. “Is it helping?”

“Yes.” She smiles softly as Kakashi’s shoulders sag in relief.

As she eats, Rin worries over how long it has been since Obito has eaten. From what she can sense, he should wake sometimes soon. She can make a more informed decision then, since she has no idea how the prosthetics have otherwise affected him.

After the sun has gone down, they return to the healing room. “He’ll probably be awake in a few hours now. He might feel better with some new clothes too when he wakes up, considering the lack of shirt and his old pants. Clearly, wherever he has been and whoever he has been with did not see fit to provide him any. And some clothes would cover up some of the scars, since he’ll probably feel self-conscious about them.”

Kakashi form gives a subtle flinch. There’s more guilt and self-loathing in his eye, but the most prominent expression, before he buries it, is confusion. The guilt and self-loathing she can understand, even if she doesn’t agree with it. But the veritable well-spring of confusion makes no sense to her.

Before she can inquire further, he hums in agreement and if she did not know him better she would have missed the small note of concern in it. It takes him next to no time to return with some new clothes, identical to the ones she and Kakashi are wearing. So perhaps it is merely a staple design in clothing?

Maybe it’s both a staple and message?

So many questions. But as things are right now, it’s not the right time to ask. Perhaps later when things settle a bit. They are not going much of anywhere at the moment, misplaced in time as they are.

Circumstances not demanding her assistance, she grants Obito his modesty as Kakashi puts the new clothes on Obito. After which, they sit down on either side of him again to wait.

Abruptly, Kakashi turns his head towards her. “Is he always going to need sunlight like that?”

Rin shakes her head. “I don’t believe so, at least not in that amount anyway. I can’t be sure just yet, but it appears to be a side effect of how injured he was.”

“Is—”

A sudden choked noise cuts the conversation short as both their heads snap to Obito’s face.