Chapter Text
Obito tastes the tang of iron when he coughs, wet and suffocating as he tries to breathe. He rolls his head to the side, eyes burning, chest heaving, trying desperately not to drown in his own blood. Air rattles in his lungs, and warmth spreads across his right side.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. First assignments are normally small jobs, like expelling minor land curses and hunting mysterious two-tailed foxes that keep raiding the coops of local farmers. Instead, he’s in pitch black darkness, a crushing weight pinning half his body to the unbending rock at his back.
They thought it was a fox. Something was feeding on the poultry in an old man’s coop outside the city, and they assumed it had to be a low-threat pest. Kagami-sensei hung back with a smile, ushering his student onto the grounds, and said, “You got this.”
Obito waited for hours in the dark, his weapons holster fully stocked, for a sign of movement. He wasn’t an apprentice anymore, and to officially graduate, he needed to complete a C-grade assignment without the help of his instructor. Then he saw a flash of grey against the vague outline of the building, and moved. His target was quick, fleeing into the forests before it could be identified, and Obito pursued.
It led him to a cave. He should have turned back and requested reinforcement from his sensei. He didn’t. When the roof of the tunnel fell onto him, he had no one to call for help.
Obito is dying. He’s going to die here, alone in the dark.
Tears flow freely from his eyes as he sobs, unashamed in his solitude to give voice to his fears. So stupid. He’s so stupid, so incompetent, maybe this is all he deserves. What a fucking idiot.
Something moves. Pebbles skirt across the ground, echoing in the still-standing hollow of the cave. Sound is strange in there, and as the collapsed earth settles, it’s hard to tell if those movements are close or far away. There’s nothing he can see, not an outline or a shape. His world is nothing but the darkest pitch, stuck in this place where light does not reach.
It moves again, displacing more debris. He reaches with his unpinned arm for the dagger on his holster, but it’s not there. While breathing through the panic, he remembers holding it when the roof went down… It was knocked out of his grip when he fell.
What does it matter? He’s a dead man, regardless of what happens next.
Those sounds morph into steps, and those steps are right by his ear. He looks up, pinprick red lights breaking through the unbending black.
Something is in here with him, and he can’t get away.
Obito tries to pull back. The weight bearing down on him is so crushing that he can’t pry free of it, and his wet breath picks up into short, anxious panting. A strangled noise claws up his throat.
“G-get away,” he demands, swatting blindly at the space to his left. His hand finds something warm, solid beneath his fingers, and he reels back with a yelp. Everything hurts. It hurts so bad that he’s quickly growing numb, and yet he’s terrified this monster will make it worse.
The beast leans in, invisible save the piercing light of its eyes, and hot breath warms Obito’s face.
“Go on,” he tries next, his voice shaking and weak, “g-go away. Eat me after I die, at least. Please, please don’t do it now, please let me just—”
Something wet trails along the side of his face, and he yelps, thrashing uselessly once more, kicking out with his leg. A hand forces him still, its ironclad grip like a locked jaw right above his knee. The blood on his face is no longer trailing into his eye.
This thing is a vampire, isn’t it? And it’s hungry. Obito made sure of that when he chased it from its prey.
The beast sniffs him, as though examining this full-course meal it’s made for itself, and Obito squeezes his good eye shut. Damn it. Damn it damn it damn it! This is his first ever vampire, his very first one, and he’s about to be devoured by it!
Obito is fourteen. He’s been in training for four years, and all that time, all those hours practicing with Kagami-sensei, have amounted to nothing.
What a fucking joke. He’s never even staked a vampire before. The first one he ever comes across, and it bested him.
Metal clatters against the rock. His dagger? Oh, he realizes numbly, it’s going to kill me now.
The beast hisses above him like a threat, and Obito clenches his jaw, bracing himself.
Something drips onto his lips, once, then twice. His brow twitches and he tilts his head away, but a firm hand forces it still.
Blood, he realizes numbly. It’s blood on his lips, seeping between them and into his mouth. At first, there are only droplets, but then more spills, filling his mouth, and he tries to spit it out, but the vampire won’t let him.
“All this blood leaking out of you,” a quiet voice whispers overhead. “What a waste.”
He’s forced to swallow. The blood burns as it travels through him, like liquid metal, and for a moment, he chokes. But the beast hushes him, and as the seconds pass, he continues to breathe.
Exhaustion blocks out the pain, and before he understands what’s happening, Obito is asleep.
He wakes with a gritty texture in his mouth and groans. The darkness is as unrelenting as before, but the throbbing on his right side has dulled. Hands tug at his weapons holster, poking around the pouches by his hip and feeling for the sword that’s partly pinned beneath the boulder. By now, Obito is numb to it. It’s the third or fourth time he’s found consciousness since the collapse, and he’s sure that if the vampire was going to eat him, it already would have done so. But how Obito hasn’t bled out yet, he isn’t sure.
It doesn’t hurt so much now, even if nothing has changed.
The vampire pauses in its pilfering of his things, and red eyes find Obito.
“Awake again?” it asks, and Obito’s confused, because he’s never heard stories of them talking. Granted, he only knows about vampires through hunters, and they probably don’t stop to chat. A hand swipes across the cut on his head, over the damage on his face, then down his right side. “You’re almost there.”
Almost where?
Obito tugs at his pinned arm and leg, groaning when they refuse to listen. He can’t see more than the beast’s eyes but knows that it can see him. Vampires are one of the few monsters that retain vision even in the absence of light, due to their magic. To this thing, they may as well be under the sun.
They’re trapped. The mouth of the cave is fully covered by the landslide that got them into this mess, and even a vampire might not be strong enough to move all that debris. Maybe the beast is keeping him alive to ration him in case it can’t get free for a long time to come. That sounds worse than dying now, while the pain is numb.
More shifting, the scrape of metal, and another hiss. Drops of blood are once more poured into Obito’s mouth, and he chokes, writhes, feels around for the stake on his belt. There it is, still in its slot, as though the beast didn’t know what it was, and how easily it could kill it. While a hand massages Obito’s throat, encouraging him to swallow, Obito hooks his fingers around the carving of wood, and slips it free of its slot. His arm goes up, behind the invisible body hanging over him, and he swallows.
Like liquid metal, it burns all the way down.
“Good, just like that,” the vampire whispers, bringing the back of its palm to Obito’s forehead. Its skin is cool against his own, no longer warm like it was when it first came over, as though heat is leeching from its body the longer it spends in this cave. “You should feel better soon.”
Obito stills, his arm hanging in the air behind the beast, the stake’s sharp edge aimed inward. Breath rattles in his chest, but strangely, he realizes he’s no longer wheezing. “What… do you mean? Why—why do you keep… doing that?”
Something shifts again, and Obito tries to follow the sound. It’s only then that he notices the fabric cushioning the back of his skull, and wonders what it’s from. “I’m healing you,” the thing says with a long exhale. “Once you’re stable, I can feed.”
Obito’s grip tightens on the stake, feeling the unsteady beating of his heart. So, it wants him alive so it can continue to drink from him while it’s trapped. That’s—
“Then I can get us out of here.”
The stake clatters to the ground, its echo bouncing off the walls. He hears the beast turn to the noise, and the quiet scoff it makes when it picks up the weapon, tossing it somewhere far across the cavern. There’s an open space behind Obito that stands strong, where the vampire must have lurked when the roof collapsed.
“If you kill me, you’ll die in here, too. Is that preferable to me taking your blood?”
No, he thinks, it’s not.
Like before, Obito’s eyes flutter shut, his mind fuzzy and light. He allows sleep to wash over him, and doesn’t hate the feeling.
Like he’s floating on a bed of clouds.
When next he wakes, he feels… softened. Mushy. Calm. He looks around, curious to note that he can just barely make out the silhouettes of the objects around him, the shape of the rocks as they overlap.
The shape of the vampire as it shifts and hovers, as its lungs heave with heavy breaths.
This darkness is too pure for Obito’s eyes to adjust to, and nausea turns in his stomach over what this could mean. But more than that, he hears the ragged breaths of his unlikely companion, and wonders what it means.
“Are you okay?” he asks despite himself.
The vampire leans in, entirely too close to his face. It presses the back of its hand to his forehead, and its touch is like dry ice, burning in its cold. “I’m at my limit,” it confesses. “I need to feed.”
Obito swallows, squeezing his eyes shut tight. He’s heard tales from senior hunters of vampires who drained their victims dry, and imagines what that would look like as he lies there in wait for whatever this thing is going to do to him. But in those long, endless moments, that calm stamps it down, and replaces it with something pleasant.
Obito wants to be bitten.
He wants it, and doesn’t know why.
That icy hand manoeuvres Obito’s arm, sliding off the sleeve of his jacket and prying away the collar of the shirt beneath, leaving the junction between neck and shoulder bare. He peeks one eye open, watching the black silhouette move above, pinpricks of red focused entirely on him. The vampire is shaking, like he’s stuck out in the snow without a coat. But it’s the middle of summer.
A thumb presses to his skin, smoothing over it, and as the beast leans in, it has the gall to say, “Thanks for the meal.”
Fangs scrape his skin, sliding around until they pierce through. Obito chokes, breath refusing to come, heart racing as the area goes warm then cold, a pulling force drawing more out from the wound. He doesn’t thrash, doesn’t feel around his weapons holster, but his hand goes up, and he grabs onto the beast’s shirt.
It lasts thirty, maybe forty seconds. Obito is nauseous and lightheaded as the beast pulls back, licking the punctures, and already the bleeding has stopped, like its saliva is just as healing as its blood. The vampire shudders, swiping the back of its hand over its mouth, looking down on Obito, waiting.
Obito groans. His whole body is an impossible blend of too-hot, too-cold, and his head falls to the side as he waits out the spinning world around him. But… he’s not dead. And though he feels like crap, he already felt like crap before.
Without a word, the beast shifts away from Obito until it comes up to a part of the cave sitting high enough for it to stand. Steps echo across the cavern, its body disappearing into the dark by the sealed entrance of the cave. Obito can’t see it anymore. It’s too far away for his limited vision.
All it takes is one swift tug for the rocks at the entrance to pry free. They tumble forward, the earth trembling as whatever the vampire did sends them careening down yet again. But this time, when they land, there’s an opening. Moonlight streaks in through the gap in the debris, and it falls onto a pale face with pale hair, its red eyes accentuated by the cool tones around them.
Obito stares at the young boy looking back at him, and his whole body tingles.
The vampire rolls its shoulders, as though its—his—display of strength is nothing more than a warm-up. He returns to Obito’s side, crouches down, and inspects the crushing weight on Obito’s body with a tilted head.
“If you move it, I’ll bleed out,” Obito declares warily.
Amusement tugs at the corner of the beast’s face, where a smudge of Obito’s blood remains, a line all the way down his chin. “Maa, do you still think you’re bleeding?”
Obito blinks rapidly, and realizes he can’t tell. It doesn’t hurt anymore, despite the horrible weight, as though he’s fallen numb.
With a tilt of his head, the vampire presses his hand to the rock, and Obito flinches, waiting for it to careen over him, breaking his bones and suffocating him. He’d rather let the vampire eat him, because at least then, his death would serve a purpose.
He hears crackling, the yawning shift of an ever-present weight. Dust and small rocks roll onto his chest, tumbling onto the ground by his body. When he peeks his eye open yet again, he sees that half of the debris has been shoved off him and onto the earth to his right.
Obito lifts his head and regrets it. He sees the mangled state of his arm and leg, and tears prick his eyes, his throat tightening. Oh, okay. So, he’s never going to walk again.
But it doesn’t hurt.
The vampire pries him free of the rest of the rubble, then looks down at him, licking his lips. Obito no longer cares if he wants another free meal, or to drain Obito dry. It doesn’t matter.
The boy crouches, arms on his knees, and considers the hunter at his feet. “I’m going to move you.” No sooner do arms snake under Obito’s back and knees, and pry him up from his tomb. Obito looks down, seeing the bundle of fabric that was cushioning his head, some jacket or cloak of some sort. But the vampire’s only consideration is the stain of browning blood all across the human’s bed of rocks. “What a waste.”
Obito snorts, supposing that’s fair.
He’s carried out of the cave and into the copse of trees further out, leaned up against a sturdy trunk. The stars are out. He thinks a day has passed, as it was cloudy last night, and Kagami-sensei must be looking for him. Perhaps they’ll send a search party; it takes a long time to train up a hunter, and losing one who’s about to get his full license is a shame. Not that Obito can be a hunter anymore, now that he’s like this. He stares numbly at his mangled leg, and part of him wishes the damn monster just ate him yesterday.
The vampire kneels, using the blade he stole to slice open his palm. Blood oozes from the cut, and as it’s held up to Obito, he sees pale lines that match the same trajectory across the beast’s skin. He’s been doing this, again and again, since they met.
“Drink,” he demands, dipping Obito’s head back and balling his hand into a fist overhead, squeezing until beads of blood trail down the side of his palm. They fall onto Obito’s lips, and hesitantly, he complies. It’s disgusting, and he wonders if this guy plans on turning him, or something.
Something tingles in the ruined right half of his body, burning in the same way the blood does going down.
“Maa, I feel like I was partly to blame for this mess,” the vampire says. “Consider this my apology.”
Obito narrows his eyes on the monster, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “Partly? It’s your fault we ended up in the damn cave in the first place.”
Red eyes match his stare, as though annoyed. “Most hunters aren’t stupid enough to follow a target into dangerous territory without backup. I thought you would leave.”
“I’m not stupid!”
“I didn’t say you were.”
He did, indirectly, and Obito sticks up his nose. They glare at one another, and turn away.
Already, the cut across the vampire’s palm is healed, leaving behind another faint white line.
If it weren’t for this boy’s glowing eyes and bloodied teeth, Obito might not realize he was a monster. He feels so human, kneeling there with his grouchy face and Obito’s stolen items tucked into his pockets, supplies that Obito can’t bring himself to demand be returned.
Where is the bloodthirsty beast, the one that prowls at night, stalking its victims until they’re alone, and draining the life from their bodies? Where’s that creature of legend that his predecessors have slain, staked through the heart and burned?
This is wrong. This isn’t what a vampire is supposed to look like.
“Kakashi,” someone calls, and they both look up. In the dark of the trees, partially obstructed by the overgrowth, stands an older man with pinprick red eyes, observing them. This must be a member of the vampire’s coven. Obito tenses, sure that this senior vampire will see easy prey for what it is. “You’re safe?”
The little vampire nods, gesturing to the human beside him. “A hunter went for me, but I’m okay. He’s kind of terrible.”
Obito hangs his head and plucks at the grass with his good hand, cursing the truth in those words. He’s an absolute failure, to be saved by his target.
“Then let’s move,” the elder says, nodding deeper into the forest. “There are more of them afoot. Searching for this one, I’ll bet.”
“Understood.”
Once his coven mate leaves, Kakashi lingers. When he looks back at Obito, his eyes are silver, not red, and it’s so impossibly hard to see what he is. A smile tugs at the corner of his lips. “Don’t die,” he says. “Your blood tastes nice. It’d be such a waste.”
He leaves Obito to sputter alone in the dark, feeling something like cattle.
When Kagami-sensei finds him, it’s two hours later, and all those raw emotions from the cave bubble to the surface. He cries, carried on his sensei’s back as they call headquarters for a ride.
“We’ll get you to a hospital soon, hey?” Kagami-sensei soothes him with kind words that don’t mean anything. Obito isn’t in pain, for all that he probably should be, and the numb reality of his broken limbs is a heavier burden.
Well, he failed his graduation exam. So, that’s great.
After waking up in the hospital, Obito gawks openly at his hands, flexing them both. He bends his once-crushed leg that the doctor told him would need to be amputated, that there was no fixing, and feels along the length of it. It’s solid beneath his fingertips. There’s scarring, lines and imperfections from where the rocks dug in and cut, and he can’t bring himself to care.
When Kagami-sensei sees him, he doesn’t know what to say. Neither does Obito. All he can do is hug his sensei, laugh and cry, and wonder if his career might not be over, after all.
He’s interviewed by the Hunters Guild investigative team and conveniently leaves out the part about the vampire feeding him blood. No one asks, either, and he wonders if the guild even knows about its healing properties. In all his studies, Obito never heard of it.
They discharge him within days, and he’s free to go. Back to waiting for a new C-rank assignment, training for his license, like nothing ever happened. When the day finally comes, and he’s staring down at this card he’s worked all these years to have, he isn’t sure what he feels.
He thinks of the vampire’s terrifying strength, the red eyes that softened into silver, and the half-smile they parted on. His hand comes up, feeling for the barely-there scar that only he knows of on his neck, the way it felt when fangs sunk into his skin. It would be nice to see that guy again, he thinks. To say ‘thanks’, and ‘I’m sorry.’
But this card means that if that day ever comes, there won’t be words between them.