Work Text:
People look different when they’re dead. Kakashi sinks to the ground with Rin—with her corpse— and this is not the first time he has lost a teammate. Not the first time he has been at fault, nor the first time his survival instincts have thrummed through him, telling him that he needs to run , that he has to leave behind his dead teammate because the enemy nin are still around and they will kill him too.
This time, he does not listen. This time, he can’t look at his teammate’s corpse with any thoughts other than that he deserves to join her.
He feels in a detached sort of way when a sword is pushed through him, when a blow is struck that is just weak enough that he will die slowly.
He does not know when he ended up on his back, staring upwards unseeingly. “I’m sorry,” he hears, choked and wet as if the speaker has fluid in their lungs. He realizes belatedly that it is him speaking, “I’m sorry, Obito. Y’ shouldn’t’ve saved me…” He feels the enemy nin approaching around him, readying to strike a more final blow, and he lets the world fade to black.
—
Kakashi wakes to the sound of screaming. It’s over as soon as it starts. There’s someone holding him, he thinks. That’s nice. The world is a blur of pain, pain, pain, and yet all he can think of is Rin, his mind filled with the Sharingan’s perfect recall of her dying face, of his arm through her chest.
He forces his eyes open on instinct, feels his—Obito’s—sharingan refuse to cooperate. His vision in his working eye is blurry, comprehension of what it’s telling him even worse. He catches the blurry form of a masked figure leaning over him, gaze directed towards Rin.
“Just-“ Kakashi coughs, words rough and painful on his lips. The masked figure turns to him. “Just kill me.”
The words are quiet and rasped, the only thing Kakashi can manage before the darkness creeps in yet again. He hopes it’s for the last time.
—
Obito stands above the corpses of his teammates, unseeing eyes attempting to comprehend the way the blood pools and coats them.
“Oh,” he says, voice strangled and hoarse from disuse, “I get it. I’m in hell.”
He sinks to his knees beside them, pulls Kakashi—-Kakashi’s corpse —towards him. Cradles it, as if that will change anything. Grasps at Rin’s pale hand, still-warm but far too limp, far too sticky with her blood to be anything but that of a corpse.
He looks at her, face lax and losing color already, and his first thought is Kakashi’s fault . But no, he thinks, that isn’t right. Because the devastation on Kakashi’s face, the way he’d sunk to the ground with her, hadn’t even tried to dodge the enemy’s blade- “I’m sorry, Obito. Y’ shouldn’t’ve saved me…”
One of the Kiri nin lets out a groan behind Obito, and a part of Obito relishes in the way he screams as Obito’s mokuton destroys him.
He squeezes Rin’s hand, hates how different she looks dead. How wrong.
“Just-“ Obito’s head snaps to Kakashi, there in his lap and broken but alive , feels the darkness in him recede a bit with a spark of hope- “Just kill me.” Kakashi’s words are quiet, so damned quiet and utterly broken , and Obito cannot hate him. Cannot even imagine it like he might have when he saw Kakashi’s hand through Rin’s chest.
But—Kakashi’s alive, but he’s dying. Obito lets out a sob, curling forward and around Kakashi in protection, wishing he had Rin’s healing ability. Wishing there was something he could do besides sit here and watch as his only remaining teammate dies in his arms.
—
There’s movement in the cave. It’s sudden, fast, and Obito’s mokuton attacks it with barely a thought from him. He misses, though, and feels that foreign rage start to well within him, overtaking the sadness—-
Then, “Rin? Kakashi?” The person calls, panic in their voice. And it is strange, truly, that Minato-sensei’s voice still makes him feel safer on instinct, snaps him from his blind panic and causes the rage to recede near-instantaneously.
“Minato-sensei?” He croaks out, and then Minato’s there, and it is everything Obito had wished for these last months—
But it is far too late, and now his teammates lie dead at his feet.
“Obito?” Suddenly, Obito’s tired. The sound of his name on his sensei’s lips brings waves of exhaustion with it, dragging him under even as he fights against it, fights to stay with his teammates even in death.
It is not a fight he wins.
—
When Obito wakes up again, he’s in the hospital. He thinks for a minute that he’s back in the cave, but then the white walls and the bright scent of antiseptic filter through and reality crashes in.
He’d though he was back in that cave, imprisoned again by a madman, but this is so much worse. At least in the cave, he knew his teammates were out there somewhere, alive and strong. Now, though, there is no helpful obliviousness to the outside world to dull the pain, no way to pretend that it was all a bad dream when the evidence surrounds him.
He lets out a sound, so broken he can hardly believe it comes from him at all.
—
There’s someone else in the hospital room. Another bed, another patient. Obito feels a rush of anger, ire sparked by the fact they wouldn’t put him in a room alone, even after all he’s been through. Then, the reality hits him and snuffs his rage in an instant.
How long have they been at war now? How much worse have things become since Obito’s been gone, that they can no longer afford to put patients in their own rooms? This isn’t even a two-patient room, just one they’ve shoved two beds into.
The other person’s breath gurgles as they breathe . It’s a horrible sound, and before Obito knows what he’s doing, he’s shoving himself to his feet, not caring for the way it pulls at the IVs in his arm.
He’s not yet distanced enough to think it will be someone he doesn’t know (there weren’t enough of them left for that), but—
When he sees Kakashi laying there, bandaged and pale with an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose but alive , Obito collapses with the force of his relief.
A part of him deliriously hopes that he will find Rin there too, that if Kakashi’s alive so too must she be. There are only two beds in the room, though, and there’s already been one miracle.
—
When a nurse comes in for their next check-in, they find him like that, curled up on the ground next to Kakashi’s bed. They don’t bother to usher him back to his own bed, just provide him with a chair and check his IVs.
He barely sees them. Lets them guide him into the chair without moving his eyes from the faint movement of Kakashi’s chest.
But before they leave—“is he—“ His words are quiet, tearing at his throat as he forces them out, but the nurse stops, and that is enough. “Is he going to be okay?” His voice breaks halfway through, and he cannot bring himself to care.
They sigh, but it is a patient thing. “We don’t typically make judgements this early”—a piece of Obito dies a little further at the words, knows that he cannot lose Kakashi after just having gotten him back—“but we’re hopeful for his case. So long as no infection sets in, he should make a full recovery.”
And suddenly the hope floods in, so much more now that he knows more of Kakashi’s condition than the gurgling sound of his breathing. Now that he knows that Kakashi might actually survive this, might still have his future laid out in front of him. It is all Obito can ask for.
—
“There was… a man.” Obito says, curling in on himself. Minato’s curious gaze is kind, quietly expecting, and the weight of it is heavier than the boulder that had crushed Obito all those months ago.
“The one who saved you?” Minato asks, and it’s not a question.
“Yes,” Obito says, and then takes in a breath, knows that this is the part his sensei will not believe, the part no one would— “Madara.”
He hears Minato’s sharp intake of breath, readies himself to be called crazy, “ Uchiha Madara?”
Obito can only bring himself to nod his assent, studying the hospital floor with renewed intent.
“Shit.”
Obito jerks, searches Minato’s face for insincerity, but- “You believe me?”
Minato’s face softens, but his eyes burn as he places steadying hands on Obito’s shoulders. “Of course I do, Obito. I will always believe you, and I will always be there to back you.”
“Oh,” Obito says, because he can’t think to say anything else.
He catches only a brief glance of Minato’s smile before he’s pulled in for a hug, but he knows it’s soft. Fatherly.
He curls into the hug, eyes burning with tears like they haven’t for months.
- - -
Kakashi wakes up, eventually. He’s in a medically induced coma for nearly two weeks before he gasps to awareness, panicked and frantic and three days before he was meant to be even close to consciousness.
Obito is forced to the corner of the room as the nurses frantically try to calm him down. In the end, it takes Minato to do it, and even then the first words out of Kakashi’s mouth are “You should have let me die.”
Obito’s moving before he has any say in it, shoving Minato-sensei from his place at Kakashi’s bedside. “You stubborn bastard, like hell I’d let you die!”
Kakashi’s eyes are wide in shock, full of more emotion than Obito has ever seen from him. Obito belatedly realizes that he’s grabbed the railing on the bed and is leaning over Kakashi’s prone form threateningly.
“Obito?” Kakashi’s voice is barely a whisper, hoarse and pained, and Obito’s never heard such a beautiful sound.
“Hey, Bakashi.” He says, and it sounds far too soft. He can’t bring himself to mind all that much.
“How-“ Kakashi chokes out, before seeming to give up on words. He grabs Obito with one hand on the back of his shirt and one on his elbow—-to ensure that he can’t dodge this, the bastard—pulling him awkwardly half-onto the bed in a motion that’s less like a hug and more like a death grip. Kakashi’s fingers press directly on top of the pulse point in his brachial artery, and Obito has to stifle a snort at this ridiculous bastard.
Rin’s dead, and that will never stop hurting. But… Kakashi’s alive. Maybe that’s enough.