Chapter Text
If I was to be anyone in this world, Obito is the last person I would have picked.
It would have been easier if I had just been some no-name Uchiha, doomed to die stuck between a rock and a hard place for reasons beyond my control.
I am important. I am someone.
The thought is not a comforting one.
~
I cannot help but feel something that is almost guilt for my continued existence—my name and the face I bear do not feel like my own, and instead feel stolen.
And so it is for something like repentance that I make an effort to emulate the ghost of a boy who has never existed.
~
When Obito is finally able to join the academy, she is ecstatic. She has already spent years training her tiny body, but something that has not changed from her past life is her ravenous desire to learn more . But Obito is the black sheep of the Uchiha, and she can’t afford to be seen reading or excelling. She is tired of having to sneak away and hide just to get her hands on a good book. At the academy, she thinks, at least she will have an excuse to be seen with one.
The first day of the academy is the only day she is not late. She arrives early, and when she enters the classroom with stars in her eyes (because damn it, she missed this), her eyes zero in on one of the only students in the classroom. Hatake Kakashi.
She grins, and walks over to him. His nose is stuck in a book, she notes approvingly, and he looks up at her with bored eyes.
“Hi!” She says, and for the first time in a long while her wide smile feels completely genuine, and her excitement is real. While she knows in this world, they will not get along (it comes with the territory of her being deadlast and him, a prodigy), she can’t help the fondness she feels for the boy bleeding over from her past life.
“...Hello,” he says, when it becomes clear she is waiting for his response.
“My name is Uchiha Obito! D’you mind if I sit next to you?”
“Hatake Kakashi. Sure.” He turns back to his book.
She takes the seat next to him—he is sitting in the back in the seat closest to the aisle, and she wonders if he’ll appreciate the fact that she is preventing any potential fangirls from sitting next to him. Probably not.
Her whole body is practically buzzing with excitement, but in an effort to keep the fidgeting to a minimum and avoid bothering her classmate, she pulls out her sketchbook and begins to doodle.
Art is something she enjoyed in her past life, but had never really taken the time to pursue. In this life, however, it had become a tool to capture memories and practice her dexterity, as well as a way to pass the time.
She flips quickly to a new page and ponders it for a moment before beginning to draw the classroom from where she sits. As more students wander in she adds them to the drawing—none are particularly detailed, but they make the classroom feel less empty. After a moment of hesitation, she adds herself, bent over a sketchbook, and Kakashi, leaning on the desk with one elbow, face in one hand and book in the other.
Kakashi glances at her work every now and then, but makes no comment, though she can tell when he notices the sketchy, undefined portrait of himself when she feels him stiffen beside her. Before he can say anything though, they are approached by another whom Obito recognizes from her memories—Nohara Rin.
She sits down with a huff next to Obito and peers over her shoulder to try and get a better look at the drawing. Obito, embarrassed, hunches over it to obscure her view and reluctantly adds a new figure who is doing the same to the Obito in the drawing.
“Whatcha drawing?” Rin asks when her attempt at spying fails. Kakashi makes an odd noise from her other side and pretends to turn back to his book, pretending he isn’t keeping one eye on the interaction. He hasn’t gotten a good look at Obito’s drawing either, and as aloof as he likes to play himself to be, he's still curious.
Obito sighs, and leans back so that Rin (and Kakashi) can get a better view. “Just the classroom,” she mumbles. She hopes it isn’t suspicious that her drawing is so detailed for a 5-year-old. At least an art prodigy generally isn’t the sort of prodigy that attracts attention.
She gasps. “Wow, you’re really good!” She points at the latest and most detailed addition to the drawing. “Is that supposed to be us?”
Obito laughs, rubbing the back of her head—a nervous tick, but one she has consciously practiced (it felt in character). “Yeah, I hope you don’t mind. Sorry, I guess I should have asked first! I’m Uchiha Obito!”
“I don’t mind at all! I’m Nohara Rin!” She looks at the boy on Obito’s opposite, who says nothing. Obito sighs.
“This is Hatake Kakashi,” she says, gesturing to said boy. He gives her a flat stare, which she returns.
“...D’you mind if I draw you Kakashi-san?” she asks, sheepishly breaking the silence.
Kakashi continues to stare, though now his expression seems a bit more bewildered than anything. It’s kind of hard to tell with the mask, she thinks.
When silence goes on a bit too long, Obito frantically backpedals. “It’s totally okay if you’re not comfortable with it! I just like drawing people, and you were sitting right there. I can even erase it if you want!”
She lifts up her eraser to do just that when a voice interrupts her.
“...It’s fine.” He returns to his book.
Obito grins, setting down the eraser and picking up her pencil. Before she can begin drawing, however, their teacher enters the classroom and begins roll call.
~
Obito has finally started the academy, and it is… disappointing. Easy. She hadn’t expected the academy curriculum to be particularly difficult, but she finds herself hard-pressed to remain deadlast. If she loses focus, she falls back on her instincts and performs better than she means to.
Despite the fact that he is clearly leagues above the rest of the class, she remains on fairly good terms with Kakashi, and they continue to sit next to each other, along with Rin. While he is fairly prideful, and she is certain he looks down on her, he treats the rest of the class the same.
Obito likes to believe that despite all her perceived faults, Kakashi reluctantly admires her single-minded determination. It is a trait she has kept in both lives—the drive to put in everything she has in pursuit of a goal, so long as her passion burns bright enough.
Now that she has the academy as an excuse, she has stopped hiding the fact that she trains, and she has taken to keeping a book on her person at all times. She invests in a book sleeve to hide the fact that the book she keeps contains knowledge far above her perceived skill level and is swapped out frequently—nearly every spare second she has that isn’t spent drawing or training is spent reading. She has always been a fast reader, even if the language has changed.
If anyone asks what she is reading, she flusters, laughs, awkwardly changes the subject, and lets them believe whatever they want. Just in case, though, she keeps a second, more age-appropriate book in her bag in an identical book sleeve.
In class, she has taken to alternately catching up on sleep or doodling in the margins of her “notes,” of which she has just enough to make sure she knows what is on the test and how much she needs to know to just barely scrape by.
Because class is boring, she has also picked up the habit of being late. Being late was a bad habit in her last life too, and so at least this part of her personality is not fabricated, but she had always had her reputation as a curious and intelligent student to balance out her teachers’ opinions of her. In this life, however, she can not afford to be seen as studious, and she plays the part of the fool, because that is what is expected of her.
The lame excuses she gives the teacher are usually legitimate, and Obito is convinced she must have some sort of unknown kekkei genkai in addition to the sharingan that attracts people in need of help, because it is nearly impossible for her to go anywhere without coming across someone who looks like they could use a hand.
Obito doesn’t consider herself a particularly good person, and she is not certain that in her old life she would have helped as many of the people she does in this one. But she feels like she owes it to the Obito-who-never-was to be kind in his stead, and so she offers her aid to those who need it without any expectations of them returning the favor.
Generally, though, the reason she is late to class is because she doesn’t feel like going, not when she has a million better ways to spend her time.
Because the academy is useless, she does most of her training on her own. She befriends Maito Gai, and while she knows she will never be able to push herself in taijutsu to the same degree he does, he makes for a good training buddy and sparring partner.
Taijutsu is the only subject she does not completely hold herself back in, because it is something that is difficult to learn by yourself—and until she is older and her chakra reserves have improved, she does not feel comfortable risking her life by testing out the shadow clone jutsu, despite how much it pains her to wait.
She still throws many of her taijutsu matches by making deliberate, obvious mistakes for her opponent to capitalize on, and is scolded by her teacher for being reckless in fights. Gai, with whom she fights with everything she has, is confused by her sudden lack of skill when they spar in taijutsu class. When he asks, she claims she gets stage fright when being watched by the other students, or that the sun gets in her eyes, or she keeps missing a rock and tripping during the match, or some other, equally lame excuse.
Eventually he stops asking and accepts it. This does not stop him from pushing her even harder when they train together, or cheering her on in a way that is uniquely Gai in taijutsu class, much to her embarrassment; her apparent “stage fright” is the subject of a number of teasing jeers from the other students.
At night, Obito trains on the river, intent to improve her water-walking until it comes as easy as breathing. She practices whatever ninjutsu she can get her hands on, which, due to her status as an academy student, is unfortunately limited to the academy basics and the fire techniques of the Uchiha clan, as well as any others she was able pick up the hand signs for when she practices her stealth and spies on shinobi as they trained, wishing she had the sharingan.
Obito hates the role she has both been forced into and chosen to play, and when Kakashi graduates in a year just before turning 6, she congratulates him through grit teeth. It grates on her that she cannot join him, if only because she fears she is stagnating, wasting away at the academy, but at the same time she does not envy him, 5 years old and already a soldier.
She swallows her pride and plays the fool, because Kakashi needs Obito—or he will, in any case. When his father dies (because Obito is under no delusion that there is anything she will be able to do to stop his death), Kakashi will need someone to challenge the worldview he adopts, and Obito does not know if anyone could fill that role if she does not.
Maybe, when it is finally over, she can be herself again.