Archive of Our Own

Post messy and probably unhygienic eye transplant, Kakashi looks down at his teammate, half crushed under a boulder, and sits down to perform the hand seals for an earth jutsu.

“Hatake,” Obito slants the visible eye at him. Let it be known that Obito had never deigned to address him with his last name, both by his revulsion at the formality and Sakumo. Obito is slowly going into shock and more bones are crushed as they dilly dally away and Kakashi brusquely but accurately deploys the seals faster, lest Obito die before his eyes.

“Yes, Uchiha-san?” Kakashi, like a brat, singsongs back, even though his hands are shaking like he got rheumatism at the age of 13.

He still has the strength in his voice to flatly judge. “What are you doing.”

“I'm making hand seals, Obito, we learnt this back in the academy.”

“Not with those hand signs, you brat,” the breath that leaves Obito's throat is a rattling, ugly thing. “What -”

A column of earth shoots up from seemingly nowhere and the boulder goes splinter and crack. There is a weight off his chest and he wheezes, breath entering and choking him, as Rin pulls him out and begins her healing procedure, hands glowing and sewing him together.

“Will he live?” Kakashi drawls, seemingly uncaring, despite the corners of his eyes shaking.

Obito can see it all. Obito should be calling Kakashi out on his bullshit because he's a Ninja, he should lie better. But that requires talking and if he uses his crushed lungs anymore he’ll lose his voice.

Or worse, pinched by Rin.

So he contents with judging Kakashi, one eye widening in disappointment at the cool guy facade. This whole Sharingan thing is so convenient. Depth perception and clear eyesight? Tick. Jot that down, historians, he's winning the eye game.

“He can't fight,” is all Rin’s assessment boils down to.

“Cool. Alright. No more fighting for you,” Kakashi agrees, bending over and throwing an arm or two over his scarecrow’s shoulder, rearranging his limbs and somehow throwing him on his back with minimal effort, as all things Kakashi does.

Obito is lightheaded. He gave away an eye, and now he’s being thrown around in a confusing spiral of okay-so-I’m-being-carried-now-that’s-fine-warn-me-too-guys.

They get out and move in a V formation, because Rin is near the point of chakra exhaustion and Obito is freshly extracted from under a Humongous Rock and Kakashi just, you know, got a Brand New Eye, so they’re not exactly in optimal functionality.

They’re also kinda in a war. It just sucks sometimes.

“It’s great that you two asked for my consent in any of this,” he slots in a snide comment, as Kakashi and Rin sprint to the direction of Kannabi Bridge to Nowhere Trading Port.

“Hm,” Rin hums, while dashing around an incoming tree.

“People who got crushed under a boulder don’t get to have opinions on emergency first aid procedures by trained professionals,” Kakashi retorts, and nearly runs him through a tree branch.

He yelps, ducks down, and clutches the back of Kakashi’s collar.

“I don’t like you both,” he tells them. Rin, sweet and lovely and wonderful Rin, his childhood friend, the girl of his dreams, giggles, sweet as bells, and all romantic feelings that are nice and cute and friendly inside his head flutter away like that rock crush and subsequent brain damage. Kakashi and Rin are insane and their teaming up is both unprecedented and unappreciated and please, can Kakashi stop looking back at him with the newly installed Uchiha eyes and just, focus on not running him through another tree, please?

“We’ll crack the bridge, complete our mission, pack up, go home,” Obito weakly suggests, coughing and feeling himself die a little inside. “I think I cracked meself.”

“If he bleeds out, how fast can we transfuse blood into him surgically and like, medical ninjutsu-ly?” Kakashi asks Rin, bypassing him completely.

“That’s not a word,” Rin points out.

Kakashi’s response is to roll his eyes at her, like that wasn’t obvious.

“He’ll live. We don’t have blood bags, but our blood should be able to go in him and hold off the flow if things start getting worse than it is right now, don’t try to move, Obito, or I’ll slap a seal onto you,” she rights his wonky post on Kakashi’s back and he feels like a humiliating sack of potatoes, just bumping his way back to storage space.

“Guys, bridge?” He weakly croaks out some last dying breaths.

“In due time, Obito,” Rin tells him, all mollified and fake, because it is a War and they actually don’t have time but go off he guess.

Kakashi shuffles him like he's a particularly big and humanoid backpack. “I’ll take him in, break the infrastructure, and get out. You stay out, keep watch, we can’t have you injured along with the deadweight. I can't carry you both back. I'll die too. And then sensei will revive us and let Kushina-san yell at how stupid we were. Don't do the stupid thing and die, please.”

His eyes tell all of them that whatever his disappointment level right now is, Kushina's will be tenfold that.

Rin and Obito visibly shudder, and she makes the earnest promise to be good. Sworn on sensei's Hiraishin and The Bells.

Kakashi and him turn to demolish the bridge, turn around and Rin is gone.

Or, not so gone, because they see a trail of sandals dragging and kicking everywhere to a nearby cave, and okay, she's surrounded by a couple of Kiri nin from the look of their headbands and uh, is that a pot of ink and brushes?

“Are you busy?” Kakashi asks politely.

Rin waves him away. “Two minutes. Then I'll be right with you.”

She lied. She took like, a minute and a half, and soon they're back on the road to Konoha.

"Did something happen?” He asks her and swerves an incoming pebble.

“I think,” she frowns, “they tried to seal something in me?”

“Did it,” he blinks in quick succession, “work?”

There is disorderly screaming from behind them as Kiri nin set out in pursuit. This is ridiculous. Konoha is literally so close. There are higher ups stationed at the village borders. Kiri is going to get smashed.

“Maybe? I think there's an ultimatum, because I got knocked out, but to be honest with you both I can't remember much,” she confesses, tapping her shoulders and back for the potential seal. It is a goddamn shame that there is no Byakugan between the three of them so they can discuss what was graffitied on Rin as a team.

The Kiri nins start to increase their volume. Kakashi looks tempted to send them off with a well-aimed roundhouse kick.

“I think they said something about bijuu and rampage and Konoha?” Rin’s eyebrows crease harder, her forehead puckered in doubt. “I don't think it's good news, this sealing thing.”

Kakashi stops. “It's not. Stop running. We're in front of the village.”

The enemies screech a dissonant cacophony of three tails Konoha trample, which doesn't sound too good and Obito takes the opportunity to slide off Kakashi's back, wobbling on his feet and wheeze one long and hard breath out of his semi-pressed lungs.

“Okay, alright, things don't look good,” he surmises.

“You don't say,” Kakashi's side eye can strip paint in their drying process.

“Ouch, hey, I got brain damage, keep the mean to a minimum,” he pouts. Turning to Rin, his hands and him hover because he knows jackshit about seals, Kushina-san didn't get to teach him a lot and there was the clan losing their collective shit about a woman teaching their own brethren how to ninja properly. Politics politics politics and now he can't help the love of his life, the star to his heart, lovely and beautiful Rin who sounds like she has a bijuu shoved into her.

“Hey yeah, sorry, can you just,” he hollers to the Kiri nin, “say the warning again, but like louder.”

“The Three Tails that is sealed within the girl will destroy Konoha when you step foot inside the village,” one shinobi theatrically emits a villainous cackle and he barely stops Kakashi from running them through with his Chidori.

“Wait, what, am I possessed?” Rin clicks her fingers in front of Kakashi's face.

“Not until you're inside Konoha, but then yeah, you'll be possessed,” the silver haired scarecrow leans away from her grubby fingers, sniffing as Obito leans bodily into him, an arm around his hip.

This odd and out of character display of intimacy is most likely a side effect of the sheer psychological trauma that they as a team had been subjected under. No other extenuating circumstances pertaining to Kakashi jumping in front of him to protect his dumb potato self and losing an eye and Kakashi blasting a lump of rock to extract him out and carrying him all the way to Konoha on his back.

It's normal team bonding experience during war time. Nothing else to it.

“That sucks,” Rin continues pouting. “So I can't bully Obito into getting checked up first thing inside?”

She asks that like getting a literal rampage is less imminent than him getting a health check up. Because they're equitable in her scale of measurements.

“Well the village might be a little crushed, but uh, you're welcomed to try?”

She stabs a finger to his eyes. “I will upend the earth under your feet if the first thing you do isn't checking up on your lungs, I swear to Kushina-san, Obito -”

She then goes into a full body shudder, and the Kiri nins skid loudly and all jump behind any object in sight, because standing behind a direct blast could be damaging. Being killed instantly and all that.

“Oh great,” Kakashi mutters. “Even more problems.”

The Three Tails, the legendary Sanbi inside Rin, glows a whole set of bright turquoise eyes and wow he is so not ready for a rampage. He has priorities , alright, and if he doesn’t get looked at in the hospital, inside the village, stat, a lot of somebodies will bleed, his at the top of the list.

“Rin?” He tries, voice even and soft even though the last thing he is feeling is soft. “Fluffy bunny child?”

“Don’t call me that,” a voice that is decisively not Rin growls. “I am tasked with the destruction of Konoha. Here is Konoha’s soil. I must lay waste to it.”

“Yep, uh, alright, I get that, I understand your struggles,” Obito’s brain searches for loopholes and turntables and turns up blank, because it’s useful like that. Come on. Come on. Anything. Anything -

“Huh. Alright. Well, bad news for us all. We’re actually not in Konoha.”

Everything pause in an ugly and gearing skid as tailed beast on its way to full rampage occupying medic girl’s body, some enemy ninja hiding badly behind boulders and freshly appointed jounin who is not pleased with any of this at all - turn disbelieving eyes at him.

“Really,” Kakashi’s eyes promise burial and a lot of kunai, hacking into flesh, while he’s on no anesthetics at all. “Really.”

“Care to explain?” The Sanbi inside Rin speaks, which is weird, because it has a thirteen year old’s pubescent squeak in a gravel I-am-the-villain voice.

“Konoha isn’t a place,” Obito says, completely out from his ass, “it’s a people.”

He can hear Kakashi mutters off to the side Great now we’re all going to die.

“Konoha is a big place,” Sanbi-Rin fusion notes. “I can safely assume there are also a lot of people in this arbitrary location as well.”

“That would be a lot of people,” Kakashi muses.

He's trying to help. It's sweet. Obito almost swoons, but he has to be on track and on top of it.

He takes in a deep breath, and performs like his life depends on it, which, it kinda is, so that is both figuratively and literally.

“It'll be super inconvenient to eat all of them. And there are like, so many of them, and half of the citizens aren't even inside the actual village. You’ll have to catch them all. It’ll be like, your fate until you eat everyone. It’ll be so bothersome.”

He drags out the word, true Nara style, and hopes the Sanbi is as lazy as he feels on a regular basis.

“That,” Sanbi-Rin hedges, “does seem troublesome.”

“I know ,” he widens his eyes, “and they’ve got, like, Uzumaki and sealing masters just, roaming the street. It’ll be such a nasty visit. Hot place, all leaves, fires going off every second. And then you’ll be jailed inside a piece of paper! Terrible trip, let me tell you.”

Someone who isn’t Kakashi actually sobs in open distress. Obito’s eyes glint with an evil gleam.

“You are suggesting something else, brat?” Sanbi-Rin peers up, or down, at him.

She’s shorter. That shouldn’t have been possible, but alas, this entire situation shouldn’t have been possible too.

“Yes, actually, indeed, uh,” he looks around. No, if Rin-Sanbi goes to Kiri it’ll just look terrible. Blood everywhere. They’ll all be killed. And the Hokage will have to get involved and politics and paperwork and sensei will be put in a trial because conspiracy for further inter-village conflict and because he didn't teach his brats not to send murderous beast people loose to a ninja village for free slaughter.

“Kumo has a temple of meditation. It’s a place for connecting the bijuu with its human container, sorry Rin,” Kakashi suggests, flanking his side. “It would be a worthwhile visit. I hear their two jinchurikis are very well-respected and hopefully, will be understanding to your, uh, predicament.”

Obito steps on his uncovered toes. Hard.

“Situation,” he smiles, with a lot of teeth. “And you would only need to say that you are Namikaze Minato’s disciple and you are temporarily unable to participate in the war efforts. However, you are more than happy to defend the village lest any Kiri shinobis infiltrate it since they are a common enemy, and it’ll be good practice manoeuvring in your host’s body too.”

“Kumo is nice. Fresh mountain air,” Kakashi nods, sagely and wisely, and only a little bit eagerly. “You can camp in a valley, smash some rocks, meditate, kill some Kiri nins. Great holiday destination.”

Sanbi-Rin looks like they know they’re being scammed, albeit brilliantly, but it’s not a bad deal, there’s no Uzumakis and people hounding them into chains and seals. Heck, the Sanbi hasn’t been to Konoha. Two Konoha nins, admittedly two baby ninjas, are telling him that it’s in the people. It’s not exactly like he can turn around and ask the opinions of his previous captors who sort of put him in pseudo-death-and-capture tag game and shoved him, quite rudely too, inside a little girl.

They’re children. Their lying capacity is nothing to none. Is Kumo like, north east from here? It’s north, isn’t it. It’s cold there. Lots of mountains or something.

Sanbi-Rin asks Obito the way to Kumo. He's only too happy to oblige.

“Yep, just follow that star until you can’t see it, and if the sun comes out, kinda like, go a bit left of it and ask for directions as you go along. It shouldn’t be too hard to navigate,” he points, making sure to issue out Man Bro™ arm slaps to Rin.

“Please keep hydrated,” Kakashi adds on.

“Hope you enjoy Kumo!” Obito bides.

And with all the miracles that had been missing from his life, Sanbi-Rin rushes away, and Obito cheers, because damn he just did that.

“Well done. You'll be promoted in no time,” Kakashi notes.

“I can't believe we pulled that off! Do we just, go now, or,” he gestures vaguely to the various Kiri nin, discombobulated and confused, scattered all around them.

“They can come in if they want to fight Minato-sensei,” Kakashi raises his voice and angles his head over his shoulder, and for a brief and stupid moment, Obito's brain goes wow that's evil. And hot. Like really hot. Um, is your rival supposed to be this hot please help.

Seeing as it's also the same brain that sent a literal time bomb away from Konoha, he's going to invest in that train of thought with only three seconds of genuine interest and then it can all go away.

“Guys!” Minato calls from somewhere from within the trees.

They wait.

“And girl! Guys is a unisex term, it's how I always address everyone, please don't look at me with disappointment in your eyes, Rin-chan!” Their sensei profusely explains, panic in his voice. He is a jounin, an elite killing machine. He notices.

“Uh, kids?”

“Rin is currently unavailable, sensei,” Kakashi informs him.

Minato drops down from nowhere, ushering them inside the village gates.

“How unavailable , exactly,” he asks, as Obito is getting wheeled around on a stretcher and nurses simultaneously yell and marvel at his wounds and how he isn't dead yet.

“I don't know,” he tells all of them. “Honestly I'm surprised myself.”

“Rin is in Kumo,” Kakashi takes the time and consideration to tell Minato, to spare him the agony of guessing.

“Doing what, exactly? And why ?” Their blonde teacher looks close to tears. That's a new low. Only Kushina is capable of making him cry. And now a couple of brats are out here balding the man before he reaches 20, with complimentary breakdown sessions.

“There was some minor kidnapping, she fought back, and uh, she got the Three Tails sealed into her and it might destroy Konoha when she's inside the village so she left to Kumo indefinitely?” Kakashi tells him in a rush of air.

The entire impromptu emergency room goes dead silent, and Obito croaks out - “Sanbi-Rin was alright to reason with, so no stress, sensei, we'll come to Kumo in a few weeks and get her to come back, reverse the seals, job done.”

“You reasoned with a tailed beast? You told Rin to go to Kumo? You gave each other eyes like they're kunais?” Minato progressively loses more and more of his control on his voice and it skyrockets to a shrill panicked shriek at the eye exchange ordeal, where he presumably just lost his last marble. Obito would feel bad, but he didn't panic when the Rock Crush happened, so Minato should really do better than him.

“You're just just restating facts now,” he tells his sensei ruefully.

“I think,” Minato blinks, “you two need to talk to the Hokage after this. Immediately after this.”

The Hokage, while there is no screeching involved, stops smoking his pipe, puts his War Hat on a nearby jounin's arm, and pinches the ridge of his nose.

“Kumo, you say,” he forces out, politeness and formality barely even there.

“Sanbi-Rin is staying at that jinchuriki temple and they were pretty alright when we talked so things should be up and standing as long as she doesn't come back to Konoha. Or well, she can, when we reverse the seals,” he tells the Supreme Leader.

The Hokage looks close to screaming. Kakashi and Minato tense around him, arms reaching for their weapons before sanctioned preteen brat butchering occurs in front of the Hokage tent.

“You prevented,” the Third pronounces, like it pained him, “inevitable wide scale rampage and destruction of Konoha.”

“I guess? It wasn't just me. It was a team effort. All team 7 members contributed,” he slots that in, because if Rin hasn't cooperated then things would not have looked this pretty.

“You came up with everything by yourself. I just pitched in. Take the credit, Obito,” Kakashi pinches the back of his elbow.

That hurts. Ow .

“Thus,” the Hokage continues, which physically pains not only him but everyone else, “you are worthy of a rank promotion. Congratulation, jounin Uchiha."

“Thank you, Hokage-sama,” he bows, per customs.

“A hero worthy of much praise, indeed,” Sandaime Hokage continues, painfully.

Shimura Danzo sweeps into the room, spares one look at the dirty street urchins, their canary teacher and sighs, long suffering.

“You made it back,” he pronounces, “with one short, it seems.”

“She is alive and well,” Kakashi informs him acidly. Danzo barely listens, training his eyes on Obito and all the mess that he is instead.

“If there is nothing else that needs to be said,” Kakashi continues, “we will be on our -”

“Hokage-sama,” Danzo turns to the Supreme Leader, “the mission?”

“Yes,” their Benevolent Ninja President wheezes out, “the mission.”

“What mission?” He pipes in. “Another one?”

The Hokage's eyebrows twitch visibly. Danzo-sama, Creepy Elder Number 1, opens his mouth, cruel lines looking like they are always on the wait to torment him.

“Sir, it's alright,” Minato moves to stop his speech. “I'll explain to him the rest.”

“The rest?” Kakashi raises an eyebrow.

The rest, as Minato breaks it down ruthlessly, includes a solo mission to mountain something something to conduct search and rescue missions for fallen or missing shinobis.

Obito thinks that going by himself would just amount to him joining the ranks of the missing nins. Kakashi agrees, and stares down Minato from trying to convince them to go separately.

“So do all war heroes get the privilege to cart back shinobis all by themselves through enemy land or is that just an on the spot nomination for me, because I'm filing for discrimination,” he puts a tentative hand on his hip, for assertion of his displeasure, but also because he's been standing for too long and it hurts everywhere he needs support. Or a lot more bandages.

“It is not,” Minato protests, because he's loyal to authority. “I don't think,” he adds, because he also has a brain and it seems all too convenient that Obito who should have been dead and is now living is sent back into the field by himself to properly get labelled as KIA or MIA.

“I'm going with him,” Kakashi insists.

“You'll be filed both for insubordination,” Minato beseeches. “Kakashi, don't you care about the shinobi code of conduct?”

“Those who abandon their comrades are worse than scum. I know you're an angel by definition of your existence, sensei, but I can't live with scum on my conscience,” Kakashi beseeches back.

Minato moans, but makes no actual effort in stopping them. “I warned you both. I wasn't here. I know nothing about anything .”

“Please don't hurt the Kumo nins when you see them, sensei. Hurt the,” he crushes his hand into a frightful fist, “ Iwa and Kiri nin.”

Kakashi blinks once, slowly. Then he smiles, the lines of his cheeks pressing onto his mask and Obito feels like he finally did something right in the world.

“O..kay,” his sensei echoes. “I will...do my best?”

“Godspeed, sensei,” he waves.

They leave and arrive at the cave I-can't-pronounce-the-name-still and immediately his bullshit senses go flaring.

“I smell bullshit,” Kakashi voices out his thought.

“Yeah, same, shit, the Hokage really is anti-Uchiha, he really sent me out here to die, Kashi,” he complains and meets the glowing red eyes of a similar dojutsu, staring into his soul.

Kakashi springs into a defensive stance. Obito? Obito believes in the good of people and the power of words, so like an idiot, he stares back and waves -

“Hi hermit Uchiha-san ~”

He can hear Kakashi facepalming and muttering That's it that's how we'll die.

“Where's your Sharingan?” The Hobo Under A Mountain rasps back. Understandable. He probably moved out and didn't have to talk for ages until the idiot entourage of Kakashi and Obito turn up at his front door and keep asking to go in.

“Oh, wait,” he turns and points to Kakashi’s new eye, “there. Gave it to him. Mine doesn't appear on command, only during life or death situations, I'm 'fraid. Sir.”

Hobo Hermit doesn't blink, but he takes in a long and shuddering breath.

“I leave the village and now all my descendants are stupid. And trading eyes like they're kunais. By Hagomoro, if only Hashirama is alive and well and what are you doing why are you dragging me out.”

Obito doesn't know much about senility, but this guy probably needs medical attention in the head, and the Yamanakas are amazing at that, so he'll take him to like, the Uchiha outskirts, and work things out from there.

“We're getting treatment for you,” he informs his probably distant relative cheerily. “You sound like you have issues. They're most likely fixable.”

It's like his idiocy and ideals are genetic traits, because Hobo Hermit blurts out I want world peace and he echoes back Damn bro me too big mood.

“You are going to get murdered,” Kakashi sighs from behind them.

“I am not your brother,” Hobo Uchiha uncle says.

“He calls everyone that,” Kakashi closes his eyes in a slow and tormented manner.

“I call everyone that,” he asserts, for legitimacy.

“I am at least a little over 80,” the great uncle informs them impishly.

“You can teach the rest of our clan how to not die early then, they keep on dropping dead like flies,” he pulls and tugs, which is very difficult as great uncle Uchiha is still not moving and cooperating.

“I vowed to make the world a better place,” uncle Uchiha insists.

“Yeah me too, but I'm looking at politics and campaigning for that to happen, not hide out in the middle of nowhere and dropping from everyone's radar,” he snorts. “World peace requires cooperation and volition. You can't perfect a genjutsu and cast it on everyone and call it a day. It takes time and a lot of badgering and yelling.”

“To be fair I was going to instigate a war but you have valid points too,” his uncle hums. Obito claimed this hobo as his own, he's going to ride or die with him once he's shaved and debriefed from T&I.

“Thanks. My brilliance baffles even me sometimes,” he grins back. “So, about that war thing -”

“I will still consider it as a priority.”

“Okay, fair, I just met you, can't convince you just yet -”

“Only if you dismantle the current government makeup of Konoha will I return to the village,” the uncle declares the ultimatum.

“Oh you don't have to return,” he shakes his head, “to the village.”

“I don't?” Uncle Uchiha blinks, the same time as Kakashi’s incredulous He doesn't?

He shrugs. “We built a residence just outside of the village border. Chill in there for treatment, leave when you want, don't rot by yourself in the mountainside, there are like, fleas, gee uncle, when was the last time you bathed ?”

“Uncle?” Kakashi echoes emptily.

“Like, last week. It's all the dust that makes it all,” uncle gestures vaguely to his mane, “that.”

“Big mood,” Obito nods with understanding and empathy. “And we're both Uchiha, and he's older, so uncle.”

“Is it safe to,” Kakashi who has literally no chill when it comes to paranoia, slips into the Kumo language, some complicated recognised term that Obito once again, cannot pronounce. “Let him in like this.”

“It'll be fine,” he flutters his hand. “I've got a safeguard in the outskirt residence. Nothing will go boom.”

Things in fact, go boom the second their merry little entourage step a toe each on the threshold.

Gee. His Senju master should really get a grip.

“Sir,” Obito has the nerve and audacity to frown, “that's not very polite.”

Senju Albino, because he never got a first name when he dragged the unconscious body back to the house, snarls past their little pre-teen selves and at his Hobo Uncle, red eyes blazing.

“Madara!” He roars.

“That sounds familiar,” Kakashi looks at him. “I feel like we should know that name.”

“Madara, Madara,” he mutters, the familiarity of it in the history book faintly there but just not quite there yet for his lizard brain to -

“Tobirama!” His Hobo Uncle, Madara Uchiha, holy shit, the Madara, roars back, flying at his guest, hands flashing seals and signs that intend to kill.

“Do you know any -” he turns to Kakashi who in turn also panics and he trips to the colliding forces of the most powerful Uchiha ever and the goddamn Nidaime Hokage and he just wants death to be on a bed is that so hard -

Both men skid to a grinding stop, although Madara's big purple fire thingy goes through him and there is a torrent of rain that comes splashing down on his hair and face and they all stare at each other, stunned into silent.

“Nice,” he nods at Madara's fire persona. “I'll just, step away now. Carry on."

The awkward pause in which he steps from the sword unscathed is such a painful one that he wishes that he got stabbed instead so none of this can happen to him again.

Madara stares at him like he's grown a third head in that span of time, and he can hear Kakashi muttering stupid vindictively on the side.

“You can become intangible?” Senju Tobirama asks him, curious and not at all Uchiha hating like the history books portray.

“Apparently,” he tells him.

“Apparently,” Tobirama repeats, but in a different tone. The Disappointed Tone.

“My Sharingan is a new upgrade so I'm still working through all the steps from my nonexistent manual.” He patiently explains, not because an ex-Hokage is an idiot, but clan politics change every second hour and the Uchiha reigns supremacy at the top of Batshit Insane and Complicated Clan scale, so he’s grown used to explaining himself and his entire tragic backstory in two sentences whenever he meets new people.

“Stupid clansmen. They should have taught you how to use your Sharingan, regardless of you possessing them or not,” Madara scoffs, bending down to peer into his eye.

He flinches away, because the word clansmen is still a no go zone in his psychological trauma headspace.

“Clan elders hate me, so uh, can I say no to that.”

“Your clan hates you?” Tobirama's eyebrows climb.

He scratches his head. “The competent Uchihas all die out or went missing, so they couldn't really hold Advanced Sharingan Maintenance modules because uh, not a lot of people in the clan got there so we're all in a stump, and honestly I'm loud and annoying and like diplomacy instead of stabbing so I'm not invited in a lot of clan meetings because they know they will lose arguments with me.”

“This is even worse than that time I found Nawaki and Kagami just wandering the land of waterfall and blowing up trees with explosive tags,” the revered Second sighs. “Okay, alright, I made up my mind.”

“To do what?” He backpedals, because his thought process is slow and suddenly someone who by all means should be long dead, is saying he made up his mind and it can potentially mean anything please don't say murder please no killing -

“We must return to the village, temporarily, and root out all the idiots. I can't let my village goes to ruins when I'm out here trying to make it better,” Madara squeezes both hands in fierce fists, staring at him. “I can't believe they neglected you because of a simple reason such as we'll lose arguments.”

“Well,” he shrugs, and puts his foot in his mouth, “adults are stupid.”

Madara throws back his head and cackles.

“Damn right we are!”

And so they return, and so chaos ensues.

Actual. Literal. Chaos.

It was pandemonium.

There's Madara marching through the street and hopping off rooftops and into people. There is panic in the street. Someone broke down. Another broke into cold sweat.

The Uchiha Police Force got a handful of cases on their hands that when Madara marched into the main compound that they couldn't react in time.

Nobody really told him what exactly went on, but Madara lectured his clansmen in some ways or other and that dashing Mikoto got the seat of clan leader out of that whole I'm disappointed in all of you lecture that went on for a week.

“And no killing,” Madara told them, like a hypocrite. He probably got the highest body counts in there.

“Uh,” an elder wheezed, “yes, sir?”

Obito got the shiny new role of advisor and the first thing he did when he got a brush and scroll was to send the whole clan a letter just detailing -

I told you I would be the boss of y'all one day.

Someone went into a fit and nearly lost it. He finds that that is beyond his realm of care and deigns to bypass the news completely.

As for Tobirama, apparently he rounds up all of his six students, three being very questionably shady, one running a clan, one presumed dead but had actually just left because Leaf is a sad and oppressed place and one is a really tired and lowkey shitty Hokage, sits them down and asks only one question.

It might've been How have you all been since I gave the presumption of me dying in a forest and none of you looked for me. It could have also been What the fuck are you doing to my village you stupid children.

According to Minato, it was a combination of both. Which would have been soul crushing for those six people because Tobirama doesn't yell. He only perfected his I am disappointed in you face and dishes it out as a legitimate form of injurious weaponry and people drop dead on the receiving end of it.

By the time he's done, apparently there is no more Third Hokage, reasons being sanctioning domestic terrorist organisations and sending out genins to fight in war without proper training and a very long scroll that Minato cries when he's recounting the news to him and Kakashi.

“Is there a Yondaime then, or will the Nidaime take up the post?” He wonders, trying to braid Kakashi's static hair.

It's therapy. Yamanaka Inoichi recommended it to him and Kakashi both.

“Yes?” Minato squeaks.

Kakashi and him narrow their eyes in tandem.

Kushina yells from the other room “Congrats, pretty boy!” as she gathers weapons to slaughter more fugitives trying to harm her genin team.

Minato weakly protests to the intimidation tactics Kushina regularly indulges in. Apparently he thinks it's a big too extreme. Kushina waves him away, packs a scroll and a pack of senbon into her thigh pouch and bounds away, wishing them fun with running the village don't blow it up love you all.

“Don't look at us, you chose to get engaged,” Kakashi points out acridly, a million braids in his hair and tucked under his mask, voice soft but flat.

“Don't you sympathise with my reasoning though?” Minato pouts.

“You're too soft, sensei,” Obito tells it like it is.

“You told him to not kill the Iwa nins. You're too soft,” Kakashi snipes right back at him where it hurts .

“Ow,” he mutters, “I'm delicate. Also I have clear understanding of long term benefits. Show them mercy now and they owe us a favour. It'll be beneficial, and a key to immobilise their forces when the time calls for."

"I take back what I said," Kakashi raises a hand, "he's scary."

“And in the running for the Hokage hat. Did you know I was nominated because of my skill count and how I'm a loyal idiot to the village who won't plot directly against its policies ,” Minato stresses, with stress. “But I was also asked to step up because I'm Obito's mentor and you did a good job so obviously I have to be better and pave the way so that when you get the hat inevitably things are going to look up instead of everywhere like it does now?”

“So you're a seat warmer,” Kakashi surmises.

“I don't want the hat. Not anymore. I'm good. I want to be your ambassador. Please please don't give me the hat,” he begs, but Minato wilfully ignores him to make room to lament about his terrible terrible fate and wow now he has to be in charge and he didn't ask for any of this and Obito feels like when things come down to it he won't have a choice whether he get the hat or not.

Kakashi wraps an arm around his shoulder once Minato leaves, to get measurements done for his Official Presidential Robes, with Kushina laughing for as long as a human can sustain breath. Obito, like an idiot, moves in to complete the hug, but Kakashi stills and stares at him like he's more of an idiot than usual and throws him to the floor, assessing him through a covered eye that is fraught with judgement and severe disapproval.

“Can you maybe chill a little,” he wheezes from the floor.

“We gotta train you up to good health. Once the war wraps up, we'll head to Kumo to get Rin back and if you don't recover by then she will kill you.”

It is the story of how he obediently admits himself in Konoha Hospital and asks for an assessment and recovery plan for whatever had gone wrong in him.

A lot. A lot had gone wrong, and now that the Senju Tobirama is back and running the hospital and terrorising officials from their chairs whenever he pays random visits everywhere, he can heal at a relatively faster rate. He thinks.

“Not a lot is broken, permanently,” Tobirama tells him after many many scans.

“Uh, what isn't broken?” He fears the question.

“A lot. Lie down, I'm healing your lungs.”

A month into his lung regrowth therapy and Kakashi nagging him to eat and sleep properly, as if the brat is the shining poster child for Healthy Shinobi Living, they get a weasel from Kumo. It reenacts a live performance of a lyrical rap about the joys and pains of hosting Nohara Rin and presents two conflicting opinions of can the menace child leave and can we keep her, respectively from the newly appointed Raikage A and the rest of Kumo who delights in being acquainted with Rin.

Minato asks if Rin can have maybe dual citizenship in both villages, and since he's Hokage now and A is highkey still afraid of him, after the whole being bested in direct combat in front of his own people and the whole incapacitated 1000 Iwa nins with the sheer force of his three pronged mini trident, so the newly appointed Raikage said I'll think about it.

Obito, in the hospital for his checkup, had agreed with Kakashi that that is pretty much a yes and Rin can go back to Konoha after they get a reply from Kushina's cousin from up north to undo all the curse seals on Rin.

Kakashi is asleep now, barely, and he is drafting a response letter that is politely communicating how much he would like the Fire daimyos to throw themselves off a cliff. Minato is brilliant, ideas firing off here and there about reforms and patching up the village, but he is so so terrible at paperwork that Kushina and Obito have coped all of his forms and bureaucracy niceties and complete them for him. Diplomacy and making nice with other leaders have Obito following along his sensei and negotiating an acceptable outcome for all parties, and Kushina is at the Tower, delegating tasks and supervising projects so that they get done. Minato is literally a puppet Hokage, no offence sensei, and his team literally does everything else. Sensei, literally get a grip.

Kakashi is running himself dry at completing rescue missions and training more genin and chuunin to be competent at rescue missions and trying to kick people out of the way so that they don't die stupid deaths. Somehow the legendary Tsunade came back, though it's got a lot with how Kushina was at Waterfall Country and found a supposedly dead Senju because they just do that now, pop up when they're thought to be dead, and Tsunade made that long trek back to Konoha and is helping Tobirama with healing people and stupid enemy nins who get captured.

Kiri and Iwa surrender by the time Konoha has a 10% population rise of citizens because the enemy nins are released per Obito's requests and roam free on the street and help civilians patch up their houses and those two villages kinda need their mercenaries back now please, they can't fight when a lot of their guerilla forces are gone.

Obito, in the guise of Minato, but really, he put forward this policy, he knows what he's saying, declares that Kiri and Iwa must help Kusagakure repair their village as compensation for their war crimes and an international tribunal will occur where those who had lost friends and families can sue the ones responsible.

Kakashi had blinked in surprise at that, because it seems terribly methodical and ruthless of him to hold a tribunal, but per his daily conversations with Madara and Tobirama, who are playing nice, sometimes public accusations with actual proof will assuage the agony of not knowing or not being avenged in some.

“Better hold those who are accountable now than have those who have been wronged seeking out justice later on by themselves,” he sighs, closing a draft on a proposal to expand more hospitals by the outskirt of the village.

“You really should think about getting the Hat.”

“Nah,” he lay back down on the couch, “I don't want to be the looming authority above everyone else, I want to be their equal. That's why the post of Hokage isn't adequate and simultaneously too much for me. We need a different system, and it can't become a reality if we don't spearhead this one. I don't want to perpetuate a system of absolute authority and systemic oppression. I've been through it. Your family. Kushina-san. We gotta change things, and they can't start if the Hokage seat stands there.”

“Sometimes you say the most brilliant things,” Kakashi marvelled. “I was almost touched.”

“Destroy my political ambitions, why don't you Bakashi?”

“I support you. No matter what you do, I'll be behind it. I gave up an eye for you, Obito, and I will not hesitate to give more. Whatever it is you want to shoot toward, count me in there.”

Obito had a feeling that was probably much deeper than a Bro™ pep talk, but he's a coward who can only bargain politically so he made some dumb jokes and got the moment out of the way and screamed at a tree at 5 the next morning because of how emotionally stunted he was.

War stops. Dead people who should be dead keep cropping up. He writes up more legislations, represents Minato at international conferences and summits and pushes for peace treaties. Madara is his only escort to those events and people cry with fear in their eyes whenever they see or hear him breathe.

Obito is trying to establish a protection scheme for jinchurikis because the host is terrible with the beasts, the village is shitty towards the jinchurikis and the beasts hate everyone and everything.

“Be grateful there is a person protecting you from literal rampage!” He roars at Iwagakure when he stops there for a visit.

Someone swears at him and lobs a rock at his direction. Madara disappears and returns in a blink of an eye, slapping his hands clean of dust as a miscreant undulates on a tree branch.

"Hey," he protests, not because Madara just stringed someone up a tree, but now they'll be known as harrassers instead of peace ambassadors. 

"Feels bad, I guess," his great uncle shrugs, entirely without remorse. 

“Have some fucking human decency,” he says in a speech at Takigakure.

“Use your brain cells. ThinIk. They didn't ask for this fate. You put the beast in them. Appreciate them for not turning against you, stupid assholes,” he tells Kiri.

At the end of his campaign, he returns to Konoha, runs smack bang into Rin in the street and is promptly headbutted into the emergency room for the third time that month.

He remembers Madara's roar of laughter as he goes down. The traitor.

Rin shoves him awake and off his bed from the hospital bed and regrettably informs him that she'll be staying mostly in Kumo because their meditation techniques are unparalleled and it should be taught. Someone is teaching her breathing exercises and she loves it so now he has one less of a friend but the world can gain one more advanced and trained medical professional. He lets her go, not without a lot of tears and badgering biannual visits from her. Kakashi apparently had met with her before him and while there were less tears, he manfully informed her that he hold her in high regards and would be saddened at her long leave.

It’s Kakashi for I love and will miss you please do good out there and it’s equally as beautiful as Obito’s snotty cries of Don’t leave me Rin I will die without you people keep trying to kill me.

Before she leaves, she holds her hand out in a handshake, but performs the seal of conciliation on him instead. He returns it back, puzzled, and she only smiles, wishes him good health and great navigation, and turns away to bound off with her personal Kumo escorts.

“Have fun reforming the government, Obito-kun!” She waves back.

“Okay?” He calls out, still reeling from his childhood friend leaving him to fend for himself.

He turns, and Kakashi is there.

“So how do I tell sensei to leave me alone when Kushina isn’t talking to him?”

People grow up, kids are birthed, Tobirama and Madara leave the village for travelling and indulging in goodwill projects and challenging the Fire daimyos for regular duels outside of their tall mansions. Obito grows taller and wiser, and Kushina eases out of Hokage-work and mostly focuses on teaching fuinjutsu, taijutsu for the civilians, keeping in contact and meeting up with her scattered clan, adopting some war orphans into the village, and Obito forever holds the post of Shadow Hokage to Minato’s Canary World Peace facade to everyone else.

But it’s not like nobody is unaware that he does actual paperwork and pushes for reforms and tries like twenty different people at trials and sets them creditable compensations to pay back the toll in life that they took away from others. He’s respected - it’s so weird, and Madara tells him to suck it up, princess - the Uchiha clan is respected, because Mikoto is ruthless and she will not hesitate in telling others off when they’re being a rude human being.

He regularly receives fruit baskets in the mail for his services to humanity. He's credited as a war hero, when all he did was use his words and some brain cells.

It makes him wonder if the standard for heroism is so low that they basically throw those out like free coins whenever they feel like it should be said.

Kakashi says he's being stupid, with intervals of are you dumb, punctuated by punches thrown to the left side of his face, you know, the side without an eye.

“Stop being an asshole!” He roars, gearing back and breathing out a column of flame at his partner's face.

“You stop being an idiot!” Kakashi yells back, copying his hand signs and countering the fire.

“I don't even know what I did wrong but I didn't do it!”

“Obito,” Kakashi drops in front of him. Minato is definitely teaching him the Flying Thunder God, or Tobirama is, or they both are. He moves faster now, and Obito can't catch up, lungs that are damaged always squeezing out limited breaths and he's floundering, trying to reach for shore and finding only sterilised hospital rooms in his wake.

“Kakashi,” he says back, because he may have a lot of crises, but he's never below being an absolute moron.

“Heroism,” his partner, because that's what they are, partners, right ? “Does not always equate to violence on the battlefield. Heroism requires you to do something that is needed, but it is something you fear the most. It requires you to step up and step out of everything you hold true and break a lot of rules. You did an incredibly brave thing, reforming policies, preventing a war from veering into bloodshed, helped with teaching other humans how to treat each other decently. That, is heroism, and that, is what a war hero looks like. You fought back with kindness, and it's the most blatant victory I had ever seen before my eyes.”

Obito clutches Kakashi's collar and hauls himself up, feeling like he's crushed under another rock again and he is searching for air and it's been a lot of years between now and then but the jolt through his chest is still the same. Still the same heartbeat that threatens eruption from his lungs if he doesn't speak the words, profess his heart.

"Am I enough, Kakashi?”

That is the wrong sentence and he should be sent to Idiot Jail before he goes on and say some stupider things.

“Never say that ever again,” Kakashi pulls him in closer. “You are more than enough. You are the only one worthy of everything.”

“I...I can't do anything right now, everything in my life had taken a backseat, I won't be enough,” for you.

“Oi,” Kakashi bumps their foreheads together, metal on metal. Just like before. Just like now. “I told you, didn't I? You're worth it.”

He cries then and lets himself be pulled in closer and closer, until there is no space left and they are but one shadow against the setting sun.

Years go and come, Kushina’s team of riffraffs graduated and constantly bombard her house with questions and gifts. Obito meets Shisui, somehow managing to drag Kagami back to care for the baby clone of himself.

The Hyuga wasn't too happy when the Raikage, son of the man who ordered the death of their beloved clansman. A apologised, and animosity still held, but he offered to repay back in whatever way that he can. It mends the broken cracks on the bridge from Konoha and Kumo in some sort of ways, when some Hyuga brats started to follow him everywhere and he failed miserably to teach them a safe jutsu and ended up trounced by 5 year olds.

That pleased Hiashi to no ends. But nobody heard that from him.

Minato is going to be a father. Which is precisely when he calls Obito to his office, and puts him in the Leader Chair.

“Here,” the blonde man tells him, giving him The Hat, “hold it.”

“When I said I wanted the hat,” he lifts the edge of the ceremonial hat up, all drawn nicely with fire at the front in red angry ink. “I remembered being 10, with two eyes, and very stupid. I also meant it as a metaphor. This is quite unnecessary, sensei.”

“So you don't want the hat?” Minato’s smile rapidly drops. “Since you talked about it so much, I thought…”

“Oh no, not the puppy dog eyes, uh, no, sensei, I love you and everything you stand for and how you support my stupid pre teen dreams, but - why are you both making that face.”

Kakashi and Minato both fail terrifically at maintaining a poker face.

“Oi,” he hedges, hackles raised.

"Congratulations on just being inaugurated as the Godaime Hokage! That's your problem now!” Minato cheers and slams down the ceremonial robes. "No refunds!" 

He stares, processing everything. He's even in The Chair, god damn, he's tricked and finessed into this entire ordeal, he can't escape now.

“But why,” he whines. “Don't you like being in charge?”

“Don't you?” Minato shoots back.

“Absolutely not,” he shoots it down. “I love shadowing and mocking your policies. I don't like being criticised for my policies.”

“He's got a point,” Kakashi pipes in.

Obito smiles, showing all his teeth and brilliant World Peace smile. It worked on all sorts of people before and he is not below using it on his sensei who is trying to pass him the hat.

“It's just until Kushina is able to separate Naruto and then you can pass it off to her,” Minato smiles apologetically. Or not really. He has one smile for everything, so it's hard to tell.

“I can’t believe I’m going to be a house husband is your excuse of retirement,” he scoffs, but stays anyway.

“Life is unfair that way, Obito-kun. Have fun, dismantle the system, come by at 6 for dinner, I’m making natto, love you all,” Minato winks, and blinks away from existence. The Hat sits heavy and light in his hand, and he thinks about all the things he still has to do and how he’s too young and hopefully sensei is joking, he’s 18, he can’t be trusted to be in charge.

“I can hear you doubting yourself,” Kakashi hums, “don’t.”

“Creepy clairvoyant,” he gripes back, no bite in his words, “and I was thinking about how there’s so much to do. It’s...not my dream anymore.”

“Nobody is stopping you from dismantling the government. Just say the word, and we can start tomorrow.”

“Ah,” he stretches, “let me be Hokage for a day. Then we’ll figure it out after sunrise.”