Chapter Text
For a long while, they sat in silence. Hitoshi had apparently foregone asking Shouta any more questions and Shouta had been at a loss for what to say. And what could he say?
I've completed rigorous training from T&I. I feel quite confident that nothing that the guy who was in here earlier does will match up. If they call in a specialist though, I estimate about three weeks before I crack. I'd kill myself before it got that point, of course.
I'll just kill the family myself.
I have killed many people for far less.
I am a shinobi of Konohagakure. I am Kakashi Hatake and I have killed hundreds.
It means I won't kill you.
I am not your son.
None of this made any sense. Whoever Hitoshi, Kakashi, was, it was not someone he recognized. And beyond that, none of this fit. Hitoshi simply wasn't old enough to have the kind of kill record Kakashi said he did, to be as indoctrinated as he was, to be as logical and coherent as he was in this moment but not know anything about where he was or what was going on. Christ, he didn't know he was in Japan. (Shouta elected to ignore the fact that, given the lack of recognition he'd seen, he didn't seem to know where Japan was either). There was no childish concern, no youthful hesitation or fear. It was as if another teenager entirely had woken up in Hitoshi's body.
And Shouta…Shouta didn't know what to do.
"Why don't our captors want me talking to them?" Hitoshi (Kakashi?) asked a while later, his voice splitting the silence in the room and startling Shouta out of his thoughts. Now Shouta was really confused.
"Because of your quirk?" He asked more than said, brow furrowing. Kakashi (Hitoshi?) just blinked at him.
"You…don't know what your quirk is? But how is that possible? Unless you're mentally younger than the age you manifested it, but that doesn't make sense either-"
"Hey," Kakashi's (and that was Kakashi. Not Hitoshi) sharp snap broke him out of his ramblings. His lone grey eye cut against him once again as the weight of his not son's gaze landed on him.
"What do they think I can do?" Kakashi emphasized. Shouta swallowed.
"Your quirk is called Brainwashing. When you ask a question, if someone responds, you can make them do whatever you want. Command them."
"Does it work on multiple people at once," Kakashi asked, taking everything in stride. (Shouta felt like he had fallen behind several conversations ago).
"Yes, but you can only activate it on one person at a time. In this situation, I fear by the time you had one villain under control, the other would already be in action. Plus, they'd have to answer your question. I have a feeling you could do it without the question, just with any response, but you've never told me if you could or not, and I never pushed," Shouta admitted. It was true that he suspected there was a bit more to Hitoshi's quirk than he'd told him, but he'd never confronted the boy about it, trusting him to know his own limits and abilities. Now, though, he wished he had a bit more insider information. (And how strange was that? Explaining someone's own quirk to them).
"But I have to talk and get them to respond no matter what," Kakashi said, clicking his teeth. "Unhelpful then, since they expect it and are prepared. What about my eye?" Shouta's brow furrowed.
"Your eye?" He asked, confused. Kakashi tilted his head at him. He was silent for a few moments, clearly debating his words.
"My left eye," he ventured, cautious, "has it always been red?" The tone in Kakashi's voice made him nervous.
"Yes," Shouta answered, apprehensive.
"Do I keep it covered?" Kakashi asked. Shouta's immediate response was no but then he paused and considered. Most of the time the answer was no and Hitoshi did have both eyes open. But every once and awhile, during spars with his classmates or during mock battle trials, Shouta would catch him slipping it closed. Never for very long, but enough to register that he was doing something other than blinking. Shouta decides to say as much.
"Sometimes, when you fight during spars you close it. But mostly you keep it open."
"Interesting," Kakashi murmurs and Shouta can practically see the gears turning behind his head.
"Why do you have it closed now?" Shouta ventured, feeling emboldened by their continued conversation and Kakashi's lack of declaration of bloodlust.
"Oh, I'm afraid if I open it, it will kill me instantly."
"What?" Shouta choked out, feeling like his heart was stopping in his chest at Kakashi's utterly blasé tone. The boy across from him just nodded.
"It's a valid concern. I don't know what it will do to me in this body. The way I am now I shouldn't be able to survive the strain of it, but I feel fine. Better than fine, actually. It's very alarming."
"What does it usually feel like? Why would it kill you?" Shouta asked, feeling panic creep back into him. (He used to think he was pretty level headed about crisis situations. Used to pride himself on his ability to keep his cool. But every word out of Kakashi's mouth this entire time has only been making that reputation crumble to pieces).
"In any case, the only way to find out is to try," Kakashi said, completely ignoring Shouta's questions (at least Hitoshi had the decency to pretend he hadn't heard him).
"DON'T-" Shouta barely got out before Kakashi's eye was open; wide, and red, and spinning. Well. He'd never seen it do that before. He swallowed around the lump in his throat as Kakashi's gaze tracked around the room. Just as easily as he opened it, the red eye that Shouta's never had a reason to question until now slipped closed.
"Very interesting," Kakashi remarked. A little bit of his edge receded and the tension in his shoulders released, just fractionally, as if the confirmation that his eye wouldn't kill him relaxed him. Shouta was afraid he cannot say the same for his own stress levels.
"Good news, Eraserhead," Kakashi remarked, "you get your wish. The family lives."
Before Shouta could even get a handle on what that meant, the sound of footsteps tapped outside the door.
Their captor was back.
🜘
Kakashi was, very dutifully, trying not to lose his shit. He was starting to get a better idea of what was going on, though he wasn't liking any of it. For Eraserhead to know about Pakkun, if he was telling the truth, meant that he indeed was close to Kakashi, in some way or another. Somehow, the man was important to him. Important enough to be told the name of his oldest and most trusted ninkin, something he very carefully told only his allies. It wasn't information an enemy, much less a stranger, should have. And for it to have supposedly come from himself…Well.
Kakashi didn't really want to dive too deep into what that meant. He could deal with it later, when he was out of this mess and could think more clearly and wasn't tied to a chair. He could deal with it later once he got Eraserhead out of here. He didn't know the man, didn't care for him, couldn't remember him. But somehow, he knew something only Kakashi's precious people would. For that, for now, Kakashi would protect him. (If you don't remember someone you love, does that make them less precious? All Kakashi ever seemed to do was remember. It was weird to protect someone still alive. But even if he didn't remember him, even if he didn't know who he was, Kakashi was sick and tired of watching his precious people die.)
But now, he was confident that later would come soon enough. It had been a long time since he'd felt a relief as immense as the one he'd felt as his vision had been washed in red, sharpening to a supernatural sharpness as the world lit up around him. The pressure of the sharingan spinning in his skull when he'd cracked his eye had been a bitter welcome. Just as before, he couldn't help but notice the lack of discomfort he felt as the sharingan pulsed in his head. There was no burning, no itching, no intense lurch and leach of his chakra as it was greedily funneled into the parasitic eye. Just a light warmth and a steady but not unpleasant pressure. He imagined that if he used it for long enough, the eye might ache, his body might sag in fatigue, but it wouldn't threaten to kill him, to consume him. Not as it once had.
It was clear that Eraserhead, whoever he was, didn't know about the capabilities of the sharingan, meaning it was safe to assume that his captors didn't either. They imagined that his "quirk", whatever that truly meant, was the most dangerous thing about him. That by silencing him, they had removed everything that made him a threat.
It would be a deadly mistake.
The loud bang of the door opening causes Kakashi to slide his gaze onto their captors. It hasn't been a terribly long time since they left the first time, only a few hours. Not nearly enough time to truly get him to sweat, to contemplate breaking. He wasn't even hungry yet. A good interrogation relies on the patience of the interrogator and this man has proven that he has none.
Kakashi doesn't bother listening to the small man, as he isn't even being the one addressed. Instead, the moment the larger man with the brightly colored spots enters the room, Kakashi slips open his left eye and tilts his head. And like a fool unaccustomed to fighting against a dōjutsu user, the man's gaze flicks up instantly to track the movement, making direct eye contact with Kakashi as he does so. He doesn't bother trying to hide the fact that he's caught the man in a genjutsu, allowing his body's natural reaction to tense up and his eyes to widen at nothing. Even if he thought his captor was smart enough to recognize that something was wrong with his partner, there would be little he could do anyway.
After all, the only way to break a genjutsu without chakra is pain and from what Kakashi has gathered, breaking your partner's bones isn't likely to be the first reaction the smaller man thinks of.
It only takes a couple of seconds for the brightly spotted man to fall to his knees, mouth slack and eyes unfocused. Against opponents completely unfamiliar with genjutsu, Kakashi sees no reason for finesse, for subtlety, for elegance. He wastes no time on details or elaborate illusions weaved on top of each other. He has no reason to. The men here have less resistance than a Konoha civilian, their minds pliable and susceptible in his hands. No, Kakashi goes for force. A barely chunin level mindbreaker genjutsu that no shinobi worth their salt would ever be caught in for more than a split second. But it is all raw, unfiltered infiltration, an overwhelming amount of information spilled into the lackey's head in seconds. A jutsu that Kakashi has barely ever used in the field, if only as a moment of desperate distraction, has taken down his enemy here in moments.
The small man stops in his ramblings as his partner collapses to the floor. For a moment he just looks at him, eyebrows raised.
"..Kisuke?" He asks after a moment, apprehension and confusion coloring his voice.
Kisuke does not respond
The smaller man whips around to Eraserhead.
"What is this?" He growls out though, Kakashi has heard more threatening sounds come from puppies. "What have you done?" Eraserhead's eyes are similarly widened, and, just as Kakashi wanted, his gaze flicks over to him. The enemy tracks his gaze, eyes landing in confusion on Kakashi.
A deadly mistake.
Kakashi's left eye reopens and Obito's sharingan spins.