Chapter Text
This is all the current me can do.
—The sound of a thousand birds chirping, and blue colored lightning enveloping his kunai—
And that is…
—Sharp, black rod emerging from his hand, piercing through the air—
… to protect this world, my comrades, and the Obito of the past…
—A lightning coated kunai and a sharp rod, mere centimeters away from piercing their hearts—
… by killing the current Obito.
—A piercing pain, and a white filled vision.
Chirp... chirp... chirp... chirp...
The sound of a thousand birds chirping through the air, ringing through his ear in this deafening silence.
When Kakashi opened his eyes, he saw Rin standing in front of him.
Ah, he had replayed this scene over and over in his mind for the past two decades.
Every time, he tried to deactivate his chidori before it could reach Rin; before it could reach her and pierce her heart.
Every time, he failed.
He figured this time was not going to be different.
Still, he tried.
Everything seemed so slow in his eyes.
He felt the crackling lightning enveloping his right hand… slowly dissipating.
… what?
Just centimeters away from Rin’s chest, was his right hand… with no chidori in sight.
That never happened before.
“Kakashi, what—you have to kill me!” Rin’s cry (so desperate, so broken) stopped his train of thoughts. She was looking at him, desperate brown eyes glistening with unshed tears.
Kakashi—
Kakashi couldn’t kill her, not when finally (finally), he could save her.
So, he paid no heed to Rin’s plea, instead grabbing her by her collar and pushing her away from the enemy. His unoccupied hand swiftly took out a kunai from his other holster, and with a swing, he slashed the shocked kiri-nin down.
Kakashi stood before the corpse of the kiri-nin (the kiri-nin whom, in all of Kakashi’s nightmare re-enacting this scene over and over, was protected by Rin, who took Kakashi’s chidori to the heart to get herself killed), staring at his empty, blood-less right hand numbly.
He did it.
He saved Rin.
This never happened before in his nightmares.
—Red and purple eyes, one with a spinning pinwheel and the other with rippling circles, locked with his own black and red ones—
That was right. He… he was fighting Obito before this, before he…
How did he get here? How did he get into the place of his nightmare, to where he had killed Rin?
How was Rin alive in the first place?
“I… Kakashi, I was—I was supposed to die! I died before! Why is this time different?!” Rin’s shouting filled his ears, the strange words she was spouting gaining his attention easily.
Died before? Different this time?
“Kakashi, you know—you know I have the Sanbi in me! If I go back to Konoha—” Rin’s breath hitched in the middle of her sentence, cutting herself off. Letting out a choked sob, she glared at Kakashi. “I know you don’t— won’t understand, Kakashi, but—I was supposed to be dead just now!”
“Rin, I…” slowly, as he took a deep breath, he turned to the teammate he had once killed. Rin’s words… they were starting to make sense.
Kakashi didn’t know how he got here, much less how Rin got here.
Time travel wasn’t supposed to be possible, especially not when you and your opponent were trying to kill each other; especially not when one of the people back in the past with him had been dead for twenty years or so.
But here he was, and here Rin was as well.
“I can’t let you die. Not again.” He ended, trying to mask his pain from his now much, much younger teammate, even if it was only mentally. “I went through that once, and—” And everything fell apart. Him, Konoha, the world—
Obito.
Rin seemed to understand that he, too, came from the future she remembered (well, remembered up until her death, that is). “Then why? You know, you should know about the faulty seal! About the Sanbi!” She cried out, gesturing to herself as she glared at Kakashi. “If I go back to Konoha, if I survive—I’ll destroy Konoha! I can’t! I don’t want to destroy Konoha! I don’t want to destroy the village that Obito loved!” Her breathing started to become rushed, uneven. Her body was trembling; with fear or rage or desperation, Kakashi didn’t know.
Suddenly, the air felt heavy.
Ah, a jinchuuriki with a faulty seal—add being in a highly negative emotional state…
It only spelt disaster.
“Rin, you have to calm down.” Kakashi told her, approaching her slowly. He had never approached a Kyuubi-influenced Naruto without Tenzou before, so he didn’t know how to deal with an unstable jinchuuriki, but he had to try.
For Rin.
For Obito.
“How can I be calm?! I can feel it even now—the sanbi trying to break out!” Rin closed her eyes as she hugged herself, shying away from Kakashi. “Please, Kakashi… you have to—you have to kill me. Before it’s too late…! It’s trying to—KAKASHI, PLEASE! DO IT NOW!”
“I can’t! I can’t kill you! Not again! Rin, you have to understand—”
“No, Kakashi! You have to understand!” Kakashi watched as Rin desperately demanded him; watched as bubbles of chakra began to wrap around her like a cloak, even if she was unaware. “You have to kill me before I—”
Rin could never finish her sentence.
This is all the current me can do, and that is… to protect this world, my comrades and the Obito of the past…by killing the current Obito.
He had thought that back when he was fighting Obito in the kamui dimension.
But…
But… no… this… this, he could do as well.
The world demanded balance. When a life was saved, another should be taken.
Yeah, this… this he could do.
In Rin’s place…
Weakly, he smiles at Rin, even if she could only see his eyes.
He coughed out blood, but it didn’t deter him from smiling at Rin, even as he started feeling his own life leaving him.
“Rin… live.”
In Rin’s place, Kakashi will die.
A life for a life, as this cruel world demanded.
The last thing Kakashi heard… was Rin screaming.
The water turned red as blood of countless kiri-nins were slain so easily.
A black cloaked figure knelt beside the bleeding corpse of the silver haired teen, ignoring the unconscious brunette as he scooped him up.
White hand cupped the pale, masked face gently.
“Kakashi… I’ve told you before… this world is hell.” He murmured quietly to the lifeless body, cradling the silver haired teen to his chest. “If it’s not Rin, it’s you… I can’t accept that.” He pulled the dead teen closer to himself. “Don’t worry, this time… this time I’ll do it right. I’ll make sure that the Infinite Tsukuyomi is realized.”
A single, crimson colored eye shone in the dark, the pinwheel pattern in it spinning as a vortex appeared behind them. “For the three of us…”
And with that, the ones that were left were the slain kiri-nins and a single, unconscious brunette.
Brown eyes slowly opened, and she was met by the familiar white walls of Konoha Hospital—
She woke up with a gasp, her body shooting right up. “Kakashi!” the name slipped out without as much as a thought, but the owner of the name wasn’t there anywhere within her field of vision. He was—
—he was dead.
That was right, Rin—Rin killed him.
A sob escaped her lips, and she buried her face in her hands.
She killed Kakashi.
This must be why Kakashi had refused killing her a second time.
The pain—the pain was too much.
“—in! Rin!” A voice—a familiar one—called out to her. Slowly, she lifted her head up, and it was Minato-sensei. He was looking at her, an understanding, if sad, expression settled on his face. His right hand was on her shoulder, squeezing it gently. “Rin, don’t blame yourself.” He whispered. “You weren’t in control, especially with the faulty seal.”
Rin felt tears threatening to fall again. “B-But, sensei—I—I was supposed to be the one who died! Not Kakashi!” she rasped, both her hands clutching onto the blanket placed over her lower body tightly till her knuckles turned white. “Kakashi—Kakashi was supposed to live, like—like—”
“—Like before, right?” Rin’s eyes widened, and looking at Minato-sensei’s blue eyes, she knew that Minato-sensei also came from the future (the future that never was now). “I remember. I—I tried to come to you and Kakashi as soon as I could, knowing what was taking place when I realized I was in the past. When I arrived though…”
“… you found me alive, but unconscious, instead.” Rin finished for him quietly, looking away, eyes casted down. “I should have died, but Kakashi stopped himself before his chidori could pierce me, and—and we got into an argument, and…”
Rin couldn’t continue, and Minato did not push her. She appreciated him for it.
Minato looked away from her as well. “We didn’t find Kakashi’s body.”
Rin’s body stiffened. “Wh— what?” No, no, Minato-sensei must be joking. It couldn’t be!
Kakashi’s dead, and they didn’t even have a body to bury?
With the dawning realization, Rin couldn’t help but break down.
It was dark.
But not like when he met his father; an empty space of nothing but darkness, with only him, Sakumo and a little bonfire lighting said space.
No, it was dark like how a cave was dark.
“Ah… you’re finally up, Kakashi. Took you long enough.” Kakashi’s eyes widened. He lifted his head, only to find Obito (much younger looking, but still Obito) standing in front of him, his hands parting from one another, a sign that he had just done a jutsu, most probably.
Kakashi looked down on his hands… and found cracks over his skin.
Shakily, he looked up at Obito. “Obito, you didn’t…”
Obito chuckled darkly as he approached Kakashi, pulling the silver haired teen by his hand closer, as Obito wrapped his hands around Kakashi. “I can’t bring you back fully right now. I don’t have the rinnegan to perform rinne-tensei, so I had to go for the next best thing…” he replied. “I hope you don’t mind, Kakashi.”
If Kakashi had a working heart right now, or a functioning pair of lungs, his heart would probably skip a beat and his breathing became unlabored.
But he wasn’t.
He didn’t have a working heart or a pair of working lungs.
He wasn’t even alive.
“Don’t worry, Kakashi. Soon, you’ll be alive again, and the Infinite Tsukuyomi will be realized.” Obito promised to him, voice low and dark, tinged with a sort of obsession only an Uchiha could muster.
Kakashi wanted to scream at him, to tell him that he should stop this madness, to let Kakashi die and to go back to Konoha to be with Rin and with Minato-sensei and Kushina-neesan.
Oh, Kakashi wanted to.
He couldn’t, no matter how the words were already in the tip of his tongue.
“Why… why do this…? Why revive me at all, even if it’s only Edo-tensei?” Kakashi asked instead, not brave enough to pull away just yet to come face in face with Obito. “Rin… Rin’s alive, Obito, and—and you hate me.”
As much as it pained him to admit that Obito hated him.
“I don’t hate you.” Obito replied. “I love Rin, but I realized… when I saw Rin’s tail piercing you—that I love you as well.” He admitted. “I was blinded by Rin’s death in the past, so blind that I didn’t realize that I love you too. Now—we’re back here and while Rin lived, you died, and I can’t accept that.” His embrace tightened. “A world without you or Rin… it’s hell, Kakashi. That’s why, this time, I’ll do it right. For you, for me, for Rin…”
Kakashi wanted to tell him to stop.
Wanted to tell him that this wasn’t worth it.
That Kakashi was not worth it.
But no words escaped his lips.
He knew he couldn’t attack Obito. Kakashi was sure he had placed a restricting seal that allowed freedom for Kakashi, but not so much that it allowed Kakashi to try stop Obito.
He could only speak to Obito, try convincing him to stop with his words.
But no words, not a single one, slipped past his lips that night.
And he doubted that they will ever in the days after this one.
They travelled in time. It should have been a second chance for all of them.
Hah, what a joke. They only made it worse.
There was no happy end in sight to this tragedy of theirs.
To Be Continued