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The dead don’t remember life after death is an unwritten rule of the Edo Tensei. After all, it only brings someone back from their point of death, not from beyond it. Kakashi tries not to think about this.
Obito glares at him, the luminescent blocks in Kamui casting shadows across his… newfound greenness.
“What would you know, Kakashi?” he hisses, fury and disgust creasing the lines of his face. It’s reminiscent of Naruto, in a way. But hackles raised over the girl he loved, and not his rival; hatred on his face, instead of desperation.
Kakashi swallows roughly. The thing is, he doesn’t. He wasn’t Rin’s best friend, doesn’t know who she was when she wasn’t trying to get them to get along; but he knows the feel of her heart pierced and bleeding over his hand. He knows that she choose death for the safety of the village, and after Naruto’s birth, he understands just how many lives she had sacrificed hers for.
“She wouldn’t want you to do this.” Kakashi feels a bit like Naruto, a bit like his younger self. Obito’s always brought out a side of him he couldn’t control, couldn’t feel proud of being. It’s raw and honest in a way that makes his skin itch.
Lives keep dropping like flies outside of Kamui thanks to a one eyed Uchiha Madara. But for as long as Kakashi keeps stalling Obito, their power stays divided. It allows him to hurl awkward words before he has to throw sharp kunai.
He knows he has to kill Obito in the end. There is no other way to honour the memory of who he once was. But he’ll steal every moment he can to exist in the thin breath before his murder.
He licks chapped lips and forces himself to continue. “She cared about the village—”
“The village that killed her,” Obito snaps.
“She chose—”
“Like she had a choice!”
“Well then why don’t you ask her!”
Kakashi feels the dull pain from grinding his teeth too harshly before he hears what he said. He hadn’t quite… meant to say that. Obito just kept interrupting and he said the most cruel thing he could think of.
But it’s not an impossible taunt. He’s fighting a war where the dead rise. Obito could, as a matter of fact, ask her.
“Fine! If it’ll get you to shut up about it,” Obito grumbles, pulling a corpse from the battlefield and concentrating on his hand signs. Or maybe it’s a comrade in this war, still clinging onto life. There’s blood drying behind Kakashi’s ear and he can’t even feel the head wound he’s probably got for it, if the shinobi’s chest is still rising when it swirls into existence, it stops too soon for Kakashi to have even moved a finger. He still adds it to his list of comrades he’s failed nonetheless.
It’s lifeless eyes get swallowed up by a hauntingly familiar deep brown. Kakashi can’t break eye contact with her even as the rest of her body comes back, smaller than he ever remembered. Were any of his genin that tiny?
“Rin?”
“Oh. Hello Kakashi,” she smiles, just the same as she had ever. Picks herself up from the ground and tilts her head at Obito for a moment. Kakashi can’t see her face anymore from this angle, can’t see the horror she must feel looking at a no-longer-dead Obito, scarred up and mutilated.
“Hello Obito,” she says evenly, like it’s just another day.
Outside the walls of Kamui, the fourth shinobi war rages on. Inside, Kakashi finally lets himself blank out his mind. His body might not let go of all tension, but he doesn’t bother to listen to the same drivel Obito’s been spouting off when he tells Rin of his plans.
Kakashi doesn’t know what he thinks that’ll do. His eyes roll automatically like he’s a chunin again stuck in a team he’s overqualified and underprepared for.
It’s been years since he did that. Maybe that’s why he looks over, to see the scene again. But this time instead of Obito being scolded by Rin for being too unruly, or encouraged by her to do his best, Rin’s smile seems to be missing something. Kakashi can’t figure out what—it’s identical to what it used to look like.
“A perfect world huh,” she muses quietly. Kakashi thinks she’s going to consider it for a moment, really think about the implications and the emptiness of a fake reality, but Rin doesn’t pause when she simply says, “That seems nice.”
“Ha!” Obito gloats, spinning quickly on his heel to smirk cruelly at Kakashi, “Told you Rin would like me making a perfect world for her.”
“What do you mean for me?” Rin reaches out for Obito’s hand, squeezing and pulling, but she’s thirteen now and Kakashi doesn’t think Obito can feel anything on that half of his body for all he can move it around.
Obito’s mouth opens. Closes. Opens again as he keeps looking for the words without looking back towards her. His eyes stare vacantly at Kakashi. He’s not prompting him to answer, but Kakashi does for him anyway, looking back at Obito. “A world where you didn’t have to die the way you did.”
Kakashi understands him in that moment. Understands his inability to turn back around and face Rin right now. She must not like being reminded of how—
“What’s wrong with how I died?”
Kakashi and Obito snap their heads back to her in an instant. Rin’s smile is gone and in its place is unsettling blankness. They answer at the same time, “Everything?”
Kakashi’s attempt at lightheartedness and Obito’s foreign rage that’s been slow cooking for over a decade make her pause for a beat. She settles on replying to Obito, eyes cast downwards for all she steps forward with determination.
“I chose to die that way, I wanted to die that way.” Her hand squeezes his so hard, Kakashi thinks he can see the synthetic bones break the way her stoic expression gives way to the twisted anger Kakashi’s only seen in his nightmares before. “If you care so much about everyone living their perfect world, mine would still have me dead!”