Chapter Text
Obito’s staring down at what might be Kakashi’s dead body, floating listlessly in a foot-deep lake of rotting blood, and thinks, I kinda want my eye back.
Obito doesn’t really know what’s going on.
He’s pretty much on an errand run. Zetsu said something about a scroll, something about controlling the nations’ trading relations. He said it’s been implanted within an Iwa-nin’s right arm. Obito's supposed to get the scroll, or the arm, whatever, and come back.
It’s a hot day out, and this area is emitting a toxic stink ten miles out. It’s rancid, tangy, putrid, rotten meat. It’s fresh worm food. It’s soft, squishy spilled guts that burst open, cooked, in burning sunlight. It’s hard-boiled eyes, and it’s blue vomit.
Obito was curious.
Bloodless arms stick out of the lake like pale, old wood grasping for the sunlight. Dead, and dry enough that you could snap a finger off, or peel the leather off their bones like bark. Armor, pinned under waterlogged bodies, tries to slip out, up to the surface.
Obito isn’t even sure that he wants his eye back. Could be infected.
Standing at the edge of the pool, Obito can see that most of these bodies have a hole punched clean through them. Similar to a girl Obito once watched die.
Oh.
So this is Kakashi’s mess.
Obito almost leaves, then. He customarily avoids Kakashi’s bullshit to keep his identity safe. Just in case. But then Obito realizes that a large percentage of the glinting, sizzling headbands littered around the crime scene are stamped with Iwagakure’s symbol.
Oh.
Uh, fuck Kakashi, actually.
Obito peers into the blood and viscera for a moment, thinking.
He steps in and wades towards Kakashi's body, cloak dragging behind him, soaking up god knows what.
Obito hooks his arms under Kakashi's shoulders and drags the body out of the gore, just to see whether or not his eye is actually diseased.
Kakashi pushes at him unconsciously like some sleep-deprived teenager and Obito almost shrieks. He’s wearing that porcelain hound mask, which makes it way creepier. So Kakashi, living but probably almost dead, gets tied to a tree.
Obito searches for half an hour looking for the dude with his scroll.
Then, it strikes him that it's probably the guy who's missing an arm.
Obito has lobbed off a good share of appendages using Kamui. He knows what it looks like.
So, really, fuck Kakashi.
Kakashi wakes up tired.
He’s sticky with drying blood. He’s surprised he’s not dead. Irritatingly, he’s tied to a tree.
There’s a man wading through blood and bodies and feasting insects. He’s concentrated, scanning the area and occasionally picking up a corpse to examine more closely.
No doubt about it, he’s looking for the scroll.
Christ. How’s he gonna do this?
Obito turns around and Kakashi is gone.
There's a splash behind him, and don't look now but Obito undoubtedly has a knife to his neck.
He turns to face Kakashi slowly.
Honestly, when Obito wandered up to this little pond of carnage and feces, it took him a moment to recognize Kakashi, floating there half-dead. Kakashi’s distinctive feature has always been his hair, so seeing it slicked down, dripping rust red and drying like plastic where it stood, it threw him off for a second. You can’t see Kakashi’s eyes when he wears his Anbu mask, but the thing’s so goddamn creepy it's instantly recognizable.
So here Obito is, staring down a masked, eyeless Kakashi in the middle of a steaming pool of blood, flies buzzing about.
“You’re looking for the scroll,” Kakashi says, so emotionless it comes off as cold. His voice is a little muffled behind the mask.
“I’m looking for a new jacket,” Obito says seriously. “Maybe some summer shoes.”
Kakashi continues, ignoring him. “You aren’t affiliated with any nation so you’re a terrorist. Or you’re hired, which means that you're working for a terrorist.”
“Do you usually do this?” Obito says.
Kakashi doesn’t react. But he lowers the blade from Obito's jugular.
“I have it,” Kakashi says simply.
What?