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Time travel at its core revolves around knowledge and control, is lauded in folktales, and used as flimsy excuses in trashy novels. Time travel takes a peon of fate and makes them omniscient for one glorious moment, until they cast their die and crash the future fully off course in whatever they have deemed a justifiable cause.
In short, time travel has made Kakashi a control freak. How…piteous. And embarrassing, not that anyone knows to judge him.
Kakashi shuffles through the notes in his hands one last time with a sigh. Really, the level of difficulty they were using in ANBU codes these days was just sad, he would have to do something to inspire them to update it. Though nothing too thorough, he likes his free source of information far too much for that.
“Letting udon go cold is a crime unbefitting of a Konoha Shinobi, Kakashi!” Gai loudly interrupts his thoughts, and Kakashi grabs for his chopsticks automatically, tucking the notes away into his book like a deceptively boring bookmark.
“Maa, they’re not cold yet, just…..lukewarm.” Kakashi protests, taking a large mouthful to prove his point. They are stone cold.
“A valiant defence, rival!” Gai enthuses from his place beside him at the stall, his own bowl long empty, and his eyes shining with amusement at Kakashi’s expense.
Sometimes Kakashi wishes he could go back to the days he only saw Gai as an idiot, and not the trolling little shit he actually is. But who else would accompany him to lunch and not bat an eye at his questionable reading choices? (Of both varieties.)
“Spar?” Kakashi asks around his last mouthful of congealing udon.
Gai shakes his head mournfully as they stand. “Alas dear friend, but a mission awaits, though it is no doubt far less thrilling than besting you in a friendly battle.”
Which meant it was is probably a courier mission for some nobility, and Gai’s only entertainment would be embarrassing the recipient with a colourful entrance.
“Good luck I guess.” Kakashi drawls and rises to wave him off good-naturedly, before making his own way vaguely homewards with the aim of stashing his stollen communications back where they belonged, before anyone noticed they were missing. He’d got what he needed from this batch at any rate, and while the latest nobility assassinations were certainly interesting, and the guard detail of the Councilwoman Utatane valuable, the ongoing rotation of their external spies was quite frankly boring.
Unfortunately, this left him without anything to occupy his mind except The Dilemma.
He has been contemplating The Dilemma on and off for the last three years, and frankly couldn’t think of what his next line of investigation should be. Because he isn’t really sure what methods were left to him at this point. Mostly because there isn’t anything to investigate. It has been three years since Danzo had very effectively vanished and no one, not a one of the very formidable investigation team Minato had put together, had found so much as a hint of him past taking his dinner one night, going for a stroll, and then apparently ceasing to exist.
Kakashi hates it. With passion.
Sure, his disappearance allowed Root to fold like wet paper, and Konoha has done a reasonable job of cleaning the mess up. (Under Kakashi’s watchful eye.)
By now Kakashi has also ascertained all of the man’s other schemes have been similarly abandoned, which could really only mean the man is dead, but the fact remains that he doesn’t know that for sure. And coming from a position of absolute foreknowledge, Kakashi really doesn’t like that. It was fine at first, sort of, because he’s had plenty of other things to focus on, so many other threads to follow and cut off before they grew into something apocalyptic like they did in his future-past. But now the niggling thought is constantly trying to wiggle its ways to the forefront of his mind, the not knowing keeping him up at night, because Kakashi has more than enough battle stress and trauma these days to trigger himself without the help of outside sources, thank you very much.
With a morose sigh Kakashi cuts his own thought process off and lifts his head to inspect the sky. The summer left them with quite a bit of daylight, despite the late hour. And really, he isn’t that far away from Konoha’s science-cum-medicine labs; he might as well loiter around there until Obito gets back.
.
Kakashi didn’t mean to doze off, but he must have if the way he’s drifting back up to awareness is any indication. The soft tinkering of Rin’s tools wouldn’t have been enough to wake him, not even her murmuring voice, but the rough voice responding in an undertone tripped some wire in his brain.
“-going to asphyxiate if he keeps wearing his mask to sleep.” Rin is saying distantly, and Obito makes a sound like he’s trying to suppress a sigh. His old injuries had given his voice a husk even before, the first time, but somehow when his voice broke this time around it came out even scratchier. It's comforting on some level to have such a distinction between the two times.
“I know, I’ve told him that. It’s like the damn thing's sawn straight onto his ears at this point.”
“Someone probably called him pretty as a child, and he started wearing it out of spite.”
The mild offence of that statement is enough to drag Kakashi the rest of the way from sleep, and he blinks his eye open to Obito crouching in front of him, his own single eye quietly assessing and eerily focused on Kakashi. He probably should have found that more disconcerting than he did.
“Yo.” Kakashi mumbles on autopilot.
Obito carefully reaches out for his knees, and tips the chair Kakashi is precariously balancing on two legs against the wall forward against the floor. “Do you have to risk your neck even in your sleep, Bakashi?”
Kakashi shrugs lethargically. Well, it’s not like that had been on purpose…the sleeping anyway. “Shouldn’t you be scolding Rin for leaving me like that?”
“Not your nanny.” Rin chimes in, and Kakashi ignores her in favour of focusing on the way Obito’s thumbs are moving against his kneecaps. (In some corner of his brain that isn’t sleep addled he resolves to smack himself for it later.)
“You good?” Obito murmurs, still with that unwavering eye contact. Kakashi’s pretty sure that stare is partially to blame for the way people have started calling him Obake Obito. That and the whole ghosting away into kamui shtick.
“I’m good.” Kakashi agrees easily, and Obito seems willing to accept that, because he stands and offers Kakashi a hand up, which he accepts gratefully. (He might be physically young again, but he’d swear his bones remember his age.) “Your clan head let you go already?”
Obito rolls his eyes reflexively, but there’s not much real irritation behind it these days. “I’m not in the Police Force, he can’t actually make me do any of the negotiating with the elders involved in this mess.”
Kakashi graciously doesn’t point out that this ‘mess’ was Obito’s idea in the first place; it certainly hadn’t been Fugaku’s idea to expend the force beyond its current capacity to include both a civil service department and a civilian division. Both of which would require elaborate recruitment efforts to staff, as the Uchiha clan just didn’t have enough bodies for it.
Kakashi really is glad an Obito left to grow up (relatively) healthy, still naturally took to upending all long-standing and rotten institutions he set his sights on. Just with less mania and madness. He himself had not ever been, and never would be, cut out for that sort of strategic thinking and passionate visions, and the thought of trying to fix everything himself caused him endless stress, until he realized Obito was already halfway through a stubborn campaign to force the world around him into the shape he wished it to be.
“I like how you call it negotiating and not a yelling match.” Rin comments dryly, not looking away from her tiny glass instruments he assumes are very important.
“If I can’t hear the yelling I can call it what I want.” Obito grins. “Are you coming with or staying late today?”
Rin finishes noting something down on a sheet of paper with a meticulous hand, before turning just enough to wave them off with a smile. “This will keep me busy a bit longer, but I’ll meet you at sensei’s in the morning.”
So a ‘bit longer’ meant she’d be down here till dawn, like some sort of sleep averse goblin.
Kakashi cranes his neck a little in an attempt to see around her without risking getting too close and inadvertently ruining something again with his ‘biohazardous’ uniform. “Is this one of your projects or Orochimaru’s?”
Rin’s smile doesn’t physically change, but there is definitely a sharpness there now. “You should know by now that the only projects are my projects, Kakashi.”
What would the Orochimaru of a time now-never-to-be think of this development, Kakashi wonders, now that all his resources and time were being spent on ethical medical research beneath the thumb of what he still foolishly thought of as his apprentice.
“Do you think your ability to trick people into thinking your schemes are their own ideas counts as a crime by shinobi standards or just civilian?”
“If you stick around any longer I’ll show you a few criminal medical experiments for free.”
Kakashi ducks around to Obito's other side when Rin's hand twitch’s towards a scalpel, even if she‘s looking a little amused now. “I liked you better when you were crushing on me.”
“No you didn’t.”
“No, I didn’t.” He agrees easily.
.
Obito is awake before him the next day, which is becoming increasingly common, oddly enough. There doesn’t appear to be any reason for it that Kakashi can pinpoint, but he also hasn’t asked, mostly because his own nights have harboured more nightmares recently then he'd like to admit. He’s emotionally aware enough to recognize it for what it is, namely his own anxiety around The Dilemma. He’s not even surprised his dreams don’t even feature Danzo half the time, instead repeating a cycle of faces dying in front of him, moons in the sky, violet eyes, Obito screaming and screaming and screaming at him. Trauma, and all that.
So he stays quiet as they make their way to sensei’s, pretending to be absorbed in a book, and Obito doesn’t press him, though he does walk closer.
The light is still dim and grey when they let themselves into the house, Kushina’s soft snoring barely audible from down the hall, and a note on the table from Minato explaining he’s already been called into the office, with a sad little face scribbled beside it. Weekends don’t exist for kage, after all.
Rin has beat them there despite her late night, shushing a groggy Naruto as she sneaks him out of his bedroom and waves his limp hand at them as hello. Kakashi knows from long experience that sleepy quiet will last maybe half an hour more before Naruto’s endless reserves of energy kick in, and he runs them all into the ground. Some things have nothing to do with contained bijju.
Obito moves to the fridge as Kakashi goes to draw something rude under Minato’s note, extracting a bottle of milk to offer Naruto, who yawns at the offering and shakes his head with a pout. Three tries later and the kid is nursing the banana flavour as they slip back out of the house and make their way further into the village. (Kakashi fully plans on ratting Obito out to Kushina for letting Naruto have sugar first thing in the morning.)
They’re about half way there when Naruto starts to properly wake up, blond bedhead popping up from Rin’s shoulder to blink around himself, eyes landing first on Obito and smiling with all the simple joy of a toddler spotting one of their favourite people, before moving on to crane his neck around searchingly until he spots Kakashi. He pats Rin’s shoulder in a manner learned directly from his mother when she’s absently trying to get Minato’s attention.
“Kashi-nii.” He demands, and Kakashi would be embarrassed by how easily he gives in if it wasn’t such a common occurrence that Rin is already passing him over, Obito hiding a grin behind a fist.
“Morning, Naruto.” He greets as he props the kid on his hip, and Naruto immediately tucks his little fingers into the collar of his shirt where it meets his mask, gripping tight and looking pleased with himself. “Are you ready for breakfast?”
“Mhm.” Naruto nods. “Then training?”
“Sure.” Kakashi agrees easily, because Naruto is thinking of his ninken and Obito showing him kunai tricks, and not anything like Kakashi’s own training at that age, or Naruto’s original childhood harassment on the streets. That is perhaps a better gift than Kakashi could have ever wanted for him.
.
They return Naruto to Minato in the afternoon, the man happy to drop his paperwork and listen intently to his son’s ramblings about all the exciting things he'd been up to, starting with the bugs he and the ninken had caught, and barreling straight into the funny tricks Rin could do with senbon that had made Obito yell a lot.
“Don’t forget to come for dinner tomorrow.” Minato calls after them as they leave his office. “Kushina has a new recipe she wants to try.”
Obito and Rin are already out the door, so Kakashi pauses long enough to assure him they wouldn’t forget before another thought strikes him. “Ah, Minato-sensei, do you know how long Gai’s mission is supposed to last? We were going to see if Kushina could train with us this weekend.”
Minato blinks, fending off Naruto as he tries to yank his headband off. “I haven’t assigned Gai a mission, he should have another five days of his leave left?”
Kakashi feels a chill slip down his spine. “My mistake, I’m always confusing who’s in and out of the village.”
He leaves before Minato can call him back, slipping out into the hallway. Gai had very distinctly used to word mission when he’d last spoken with Kakashi, which meant he'd either lied to his face or….. well, he isn’t sure he likes any of the other implications. Danzo had been the only one running missions behind the Hokage’s back the first time around, but if he really was still alive how is he managing it while staying hidden? Or had someone taken advantage of the void Danzo had left, stepping in with their own purpose? If so, how? Root was dismantled and Gai was unlikely to take orders from anyone who wasn’t the Hokage, certainly not the council after Danzo had been exposed.
Kakashi carefully shuts the spinning thoughts down when he see Obito waiting at the stairs for him, concern hiding in the twitch of his mouth. A concerned Obito will be hard to shake later, so he slumps his shoulders a little, hands hiding away in his pockets.
“New recipe tomorrow.” He tells him brightly in lieu of an explanation. It's routine for whichever of them is in the village to take Naruto for a day every week so Kushina can have a day off, and she always insists on repaying them with a meal, not that they feel they need repayment. “Rin leave already?”
Obito’s mouth stays in its unhappy slant, but he follows Kakashi down the stairs and out of the building without pressing. “Yeah, said she’s got to check in on the lab. Something about an experiment with eyeballs, and not to expect to see her for a week.”
Kakashi shudders at the thought. He’d really been hoping he'd never hear the words ‘experiment’ and ‘eyeballs’ in the same sentence again, but Konoha is a village with an abundance of eye based dojutsu and Rin is a medic.
“She really is becoming a goblin.” He complains, and pretends he didn’t add a whining note to his voice to make Obito laugh.
.
In the end, Kakashi spends a day destroying a punching bag in an out of the way training room and decides he can’t afford to be this paranoid all the time. They are shinobi. Gai probably has an explanation that would make sense to no one else but him, like his plans to spend a day sunbathing on a beach constituted a mission or something.
He will give him another five days.
Five days was a reasonable period of time to wait before jumping to paranoia, and then Gai’s leave would be up anyway.
That decided, Kakashi goes to locate Councilwoman Utatane. He figures enough time has passed since Councilman Mitokado’s heart attack for no one to question an old woman passing away in her sleep. It certainly has nothing to do with possible secret missions.
.
Obito fucked up. In hindsight, he’s regretting all the decisions that have led him here. Here, being his perch in one of the trees above their campsite while Kakashi takes his turn to sleep before they continue on their mission.
It had been rather last minute, Minato apologetically asking them to cover an intel gathering mission, when the team originally assigned to it hadn’t been able to return to the village in time from their preceding assignment. It wasn’t too involved and shouldn’t take more than a few days, but Kakashi had seemed strangely unhappy about it. He hadn’t let on to Minato, but Obito could tell. Kakashi has been a little ‘off’ for a while now, not that anyone else seemed to notice. To be fair, Kakashi is strange even by shinobi standards, and even more paranoid than their oldest war veterans. That is just who he is though, and this was something different. This was hands tucking into pockets because Kakashi knows his fingers twitch when he is nervous, and he keeps forgetting Obito had been the one to point that tell out in the first place. This was training alone on odd days instead of even, and falling asleep in Rin’s labs twice a week, coinciding with the days Obito spent late at the Uchiha compound.
And his nightmares have been picking up again.
Nightmares like this one, where Obito has to fight the strange vertigo of seeing his own face flash before his eyes, only to realize he’s watching from Kakashi’s perspective as he puts his hand through his chest, and a girl’s voice he doesn’t recognize screams and screams. The light of the moon is all wrong, and Danzo stands in the background, eyes spinning violet while he recites a mission roster.
Obito forcefully blinks the vision away and slips quickly out of the tree to crouch beside Kakashi. He wraps one hand around his ankle through the blanket, trying not to startle him too much, and shakes gently.
“Kakashi.” He calls.
For a moment the only response he gets is Kakashi stilling even further, if that was possible, before he twitches away from Obito and is sitting up against the tree three feet away in the next.
“Obito?” Kakashi asks, the faintest shake to his voice.
Obito relaxes back to sit cross legged and hums in affirmation. “It’s almost dawn and I’m bored of watching your lazily ass sleep.”
He watches Kakashi process this, both of them knowing it is a blatant lie, but Kakashi doesn’t call him on it, and Obito isn’t about to mention the nightmares while they are out on a mission. Not to mention it would be an awkward conversation, given Obito has never said anything about the secondhand visions he gets through their shared set of eyes.
It’s not like it happens that often.
Alright, so it happens frequently enough that Obito can guess the screaming voice from the dream probably belongs to the girl with obnoxious pink hair from the regular cast of people Kakashi’s nightmares seem to cycle through, and can recognize the purple eyes. Gods, Obito may have fucked this up so bad, but now is the worst possible time to fess up to it.
“Ah.” Kakashi finally responds, forced cheer in his voice as he straightens and starts to gather up his sleeping roll. “Well, we can’t have that.”
What Obito wants to do is make Kakashi sit back down and forcefully hold his hands until they stop twitching. Maybe yell at him a little bit to make him grin hard enough the shape of it is visible through his mask. But this isn’t home, and even if Obito always feels safe in forests these days, it isn’t safe enough for him to be comfortable allowing Kakashi to let his guard down.
Obito casts a considering glance around at the trees. He could make it safe enough, probably, weave a net of roots and branches like a shield around and below them, gather enough moister from the hanging fronds to reflect sharingan traps in puddles of water. Hell, kamui would make an excellent place to escape to, if only they weren’t about to commence a mission and it didn’t take quite so much chakra.
With a quiet sigh Obito dismisses the ideas and stands to help Kakashi pack up their campsite.
.
The mission goes… fine. It’s more the political stakes of the intel rather than its physical danger that warrants two jonin, and it concludes uneventfully. Obito considers it uneventful even if they are being tailed by a couple of Suna nin, who are clearly suspicious of their passing through their lands, but can’t actually find anything to fault them for. He likes to think of them as an honour guard, and they’ll drop back once he and Kakashi cross back into Fire Country.
The only thing Obito is leery of is their proximity to the border of Ame, but it’s not like he’s going to voice that. They are moving at a steady clip through the spars trees marking the edge of the Land of Rivers, and it’s drizzling miserably. Kakashi seems content to keep their pace at any rate, and Obito’s not about to slow him down over a bit of rain, even if it leaves Kakashi shaking out his hair every so often like a wet dog. It would be cute, if he didn’t spray Obito directly in the face every time.
Things take a nose dive, naturally. The universe is out to get Obito, he swears, it’s like he’s got some sort of bad karma from a past life.
See, you don’t have to be a powerful shinobi to string a few brain cells together. Given enough time even the weakest person with no training to speak of can put together a trap good enough to foil a kage. Obito is well aware of this; you don’t serve as a child soldier in a war of adults without learning to make use of what you have. That knowledge doesn’t make him less susceptible though.
The trap was set in the ground weeks ago, wire buried deep in the dirt and fault lines precisely cracked into the stone below that, only triggering now that the consistent rain of the past few days has turned the earth to mud. It hadn’t even been meant for them, in hindsight.
But the trees are thinned out and smaller here, directing Obito and Kakashi from the branches back to the ground, and it’s bad luck that has Kakashi stepping on the wrong patch of dirt. There’s no chakra, no sign of disturbed earth when it’s all mud. The ground just collapses underneath them, the entire ten foot radius around them suddenly gone and sinking away. Shale caves inwards under the force and Obito isn’t prepared, doesn’t have his mengekyo activated, can only snap his arm out so fast the muscles sting as he latches onto the back of Kakashi’s vest and yanks him backwards. Mokutan comes as instantaneously as his sharingan activates, and the few skinny little roots from the surrounding shrubbery snag around them like extensions of his own arms, winding around Kakashi's chest as they are buried by the mudslide.
Obito does not enjoy or appreciate the deja vu he is experiencing.
When the earth stops rumbling around them Obito can feel the roots have formed a shield above their heads, even if he can’t see them in the dark or move his legs where they continue to sink into the soggy earth.
Obito spits mud and rasps. “Kakashi, are you okay?”
He doesn’t get an immediate response even though he can feel Kakashi’s chest rising where he digs his fingers into his vest.
“Kakashi.”
“I’m fine.” Kakashi croaks, sounding decidedly not fine. “I’m not hurt.”
Obito growls, activating his mangekyo, and a moment later they’re tumbling down onto the sterile ground of kamui, and Obito is wrestling Kakashi around to asses him. It’s not an easy task, with all the mud.
“What- we could have used a jutsu for that, we agreed to keep kamui under wraps while we’re being followed-“ Kakashi starts in on what would undoubtably be a magnificent lecture, if he wasn’t stiff as a board and his voice wasn’t so reedy.
“Uh huh.” Obito mutters, pulling his shirt up and wiping at Kakashi’s face with the inside. It’s seems marginally less dirty than the outside.
Kakashi splutters. “I said I’m not hurt, Obito!”
Obito stops scrubbing when he can mostly see Kakashi’s face again, and tries to asses his expression. He grips his biceps firmly, something he’s noticed seems to help during panic attacks, and hopefully prevents them too. “Uh huh, and you want to tell me that didn’t trigger some bad memories either?”
Kakashi scowls, but does relax marginally. “What about your triggered memories?”
“I’ve had therapy.” Obito dismisses, pleased that he seems to be calming down.
Kakashi scowls harder at him. “Yelling at trees isn’t therapy no matter how many times you say it.”
Obito snorts and later he’ll blame his single minded focus on Kakashi for what he says next. “And you're not actually seventeen no matter how many times you say it, but you don’t see me being a dick about it. Do you want to stay here for a bit? Now that we’re here we can just go right home, but it’s not like there’s a rush. We could have a picnic or something.”
Kakashi is no longer scowling, eye wide. “I am seventeen.”
Oh, well... That probably works better as a distraction than trying to create a picnic out of the rest of their rations even if it isn’t quite how he'd planned to broach the subject.
“Yeah, sure.” He hedges. “That’s what it says on your ID.”
“Obito.”
Obito sighs. “Look, you know our eyes transfer images sometimes. Sometimes the images come from dreams. You know you have a lot of dreams.”
Obito can see Kakashi’s throat bob as he swallows. “What did you see.”
“Oh you know. Enough to give me secondhand PTSD probably, but not everything.” Obito winces.
Kakashi takes a moment to process that, then groans and pulls his mask down to scrub his hands over his face.
Obito slowly lowers his own hands from his arms and doesn't breathe. That was- Kakashi had- oh god.
Kakashi mumbles something and Obito has to use every ounce of his will power to refocus. “Hm? What was that?”
“Areyoumadatme?”
“Why would I be mad at you?” Obito asks, truly baffled.
Kakashi raised his head, expression pained in a way Obito has never been privy to before, lips pulling downwards at the corners.
Fuck. Rin was right.
“For not saying anything.” Kakashi presses. He looks like he is actually unsure of Obito’s response, which Obito would be upset by if he wasn’t intimately acquainted with Kakashi’s complete lack of self esteem.
“Course not.” He grins, partially to set Kakashi at ease, partially from genuine amusement, because that is a lot safer to focus on than both Kakashi’s trauma and his stupid, pretty face. “Besides, with all the weird shit you pull it made sense.”
Obito can read the thought process so clearly now on Kakashi’s face, not just in the intense eye contact as Kakashi searches his gaze, but also in the way his lips press together, the barest hint of a dimple as he finds whatever he’s looking for and tries not to give in to Obito’s amusement.
“Shut up, like you would have done better.”
“Hey, I would have been an amazing time traveller.”
Kakashi snorts, but his expression quickly grows serious again. “You didn’t say anything."
Obito shrugs, sheepish. “Well, you didn’t either. And I thought I could… do something for you first.”
“Do something for me?”
“I’ll tell you later, but first I want to show you something. And remember, I didn’t know until last night, so I didn’t mean to keep it a secret!” Obito shifts his stance, ready to move them both back out of kamui.
Kakashi wrinkles his nose and it’s unbearably cute. “Show me? This requires a location change?”
“Yeah.” Obito agrees, taking Kakashi’s arm and waiting.
Kakashi blinks back at him. “…okay?”
“That’s- Kakashi. Why are you like this.” Obito groans and reaches out to pull Kakashi’s forgotten mask back up, pretending not to notice the way his ears flush red.
.
Obito drops them into one of the newly reopened training grounds behind the Academy, one with dense foliage best suited for stealth training. Kakashi has never used it, too terrified of small children sneaking around where they shouldn’t. He truly has no idea why Obito feels the need for a dramatic excursion out here, but he’s honestly too out of sorts to protest.
Obito looks around the opening in the vegetation, too small to really be considered a proper clearing, and nods to himself, turning to face Kakashi.
“I really didn’t think I was keeping something important from you, you know.” He tells him as he curls his fingers towards the ground, and roots instantly bubble up out of the earth.
Nonplussed Kakashi watches as they curl around their feet, growing thicker as they emerge, until finally Obito plucks a shard of something bone white from the mass and holds it out to him.
It is bone Kakashi recognizes as he takes it, a skull fragment maybe, though Rin would know better.
“It’s Shimura Danzo.” Obito says quietly and Kakashi freezes. “It was right after that first Kumo mission we took after the war, remember? I didn’t like the way he talked about you.”
“What.” Kakashi says faintly.
“He was threatening you. Was I just supposed to let him wander back to his office to send his creepy Root out after us?”
Kakashi looks up from the bone shard, possibly to protest though he’s not sure what his argument would be, but all words die on his tongue as he takes Obito in. He looks resolute, absolutely certain in himself and the world around him and it’s mesmerizing, this version of him that’s both so true to what Kakashi knew and yet so far apart. He stares at that red eye spinning lazily, the perfect twin to his own, and for a moment it’s hard to breathe. For once it’s not a bad feeling.
.
Kakashi will admit, to himself at least, that Obito had thoroughly and successfully distracted him. He doesn’t even think anyone would judge him for it, considering the circumstances. (Rin would, and it isn’t a matter of if she found out, but when.)
So they drop by Minato’s office, deliver their intel and report, and are approaching their apartment by the time Kakashi’s brain kickes back into gear to supply him with the reminder that a) it has now been seven days since Gai left the village and b) Obito had ominously promised to ‘do something for him’ before neglecting to go into any more detail.
This realization is prompted by Gai greeting them with a brilliant smile as he leaves their apartment, politely locking it behind himself.
“Welcome home, dear rival and Uchiha Obito!”
Kakashi stumbles to a stop in complete confusion and would have stayed where he was if Obito didn't grab him and drag him up the last few steps of their apartment complex.
“Do you really need to full name me every time we interact, Gai.” He complains, but it is too resigned to be a question at this point.
Gai ignores him, focusing on Kakashi instead. “I am sorry for missing our training day, rival, but when a noble mission is presented I must follow through with all the youthful energy I possess! And on this anniversary no less!”
“Noble mission? Anniversary? Gai-“
Obito cuts him off, grip still firm on his arm as he hauls him past his enthusiastic friend. “Thanks Gai, I owe you one.”
Gai offers a salute, smiles full force one more time at Kakashi, and then leaps over the railing. He’s halfway down the street before Kakashi can close his mouth.
“….did you steal my friend?” He asks as Obito shoves him into the apartment. “Is that what’s happening?”
“Don’t be stupid, this isn’t one of your soap operas.”
“I told you, those are prize worthy dramas and-“ Kakashi stops and stares.
There, sitting on their old kitchen table with the wobbly leg like it had been brought in with the groceries, sat a jar with a pair of eyes floating in it.
Purple eyes.
Rinnegan eyes.
Kakashi’s mind has never been so perfectly blank before.
Obito leans cautiously around Kakashi so he can take in his expression. “Surprise?”
“How did you get those?” Kakashi pauses as a horrifying thought strikes him. “Did Gai get those?!”
“He had some free time.” Obito dismisses, like it’s nothing. “And technically, Rin did the hard part, Gai mostly played taxi and messenger. And don’t give me that look, they’ve been a regular feature of your dreams since you made it down your hit list, obviously they were a loose end that was bugging you. I took care of it.”
Kakashi flounders for a moment. “How?”
“It’s called diplomacy, Bakashi.” Obito sniffs with mock offence. “People are usually happy to get rid of weird implants from creepy strangers if you offer them trade agreements.”
“I think I need to sit down.” Kakashi announces and turns his back on the table to go find a couch.
Obito follows him and hovers.
Kakashi allows it for about a minute before sighing and kicking his shin. “Sit down.”
Obito did, keeping an awkward foot of space between them and Kakashi sighs again. He slouches down and over until he can drop his forehead against Obito’s shoulder.
“Thank you.” He mutters and Obito instantly relaxes under him, wriggling one arm between the couch cushions and Kakashi’s back to pull him closer.
“There’s a lot….” Obito hesitates, for a fraction of a second, like he wants to make sure he’s using the right words. “There’s a lot I want to do for you, Kakashi, like you do for me.”
Kakashi bites back his automatic response, knowing it will only be received with loud arguments. That he barely managed the minimum, and then only after failing at every turn his first life. That it’s hardly the same as Obito thoughtlessly using his own power as the hokage’s protégé to send Konoha’s jonin on a mission to Ame, for the sole purpose of allowing Kakashi to sleep easier.
And still, Obito hasn’t asked about Kakashi’s past, or his own future. He’s seen god knows what from Kakashi’s nightmares and is happy to shrug it off, trusting Kakashi not to keep anything important from him.
Kakashi presses his forehead deeper into Obito’s shoulder and lets the rush of emotions flow through him, warm as sunlight on his skin.
.
The sun is starting to set when Kakashi sits up abruptly. “Wait, what anniversary? Today isn’t an anniversary.”
Obito’s eye twitches. “Ah. Never mind that, Gai just meant like, taxes and stuff.”
Of all the responses Kakashi expected, that was not one of them. “Taxes?”
“Sure, you know, our shared bank account and all that.”
Kakashi blinks. “We’ve always shared a bank account.”
Obito is starting to look distinctly uncomfortable. “Right. You started using mine, so I just added your name. Four years ago.”
“It’s easier, you agreed.” Kakashi mutters.
Obito squints at Kakashi for a long moment. “…you know Konoha has laws around shinobi living arrangements meant to make it easier for shinobi partners to manage each other’s affairs if something happens on a mission. Right?”
Of course he’s aware there were a varied number of rules meant to stand in for things civilians would handle through paperwork and far too much wasted time. Shinobi could die at any time after all, it makes sense. “And?”
Obito opens his mouth, stares at Kakashi for a long moment, and then closes it again. “You know what? I’m gonna let Rin explain this one to you.”