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Obito had nearly lost it when he learned that Rin most likely would never be able to step foot inside Konoha again. He’d gone into the forest and Rin had heard the breaking of trees and the sound of screaming; when everything went quiet, she found him kneeling and hunched over, his long hair falling in his face, out from the ponytail he usually kept it in. There were fallen trees and wood debris everywhere around him.
She approached him as she would a wounded animal; as she got closer she could see his shoulders shaking and the tear streaks in the dirt that coated his cheeks. She kneeled as gently as she could in front of her best friend, waiting for his sobs to quiet down.
“It’s not fair,” Obito says, his voice raw from crying. And it’s not, Rin knows he’s right. Nothing is fair about anything that happened to the three of them.
“I know.” There’s not much else she could say at that moment. Obito has all the right to be angry about what happened to his two closest friends while he was gone. “I’m sure we’ll find a solution. You can always visit me outside of the village, right?” She tries saying, but there’s not much conviction in her voice. Obito is quiet for a long time after this. When he finally looks up at Rin, the look she sees in his remaining eye is so empty it makes something deep inside her writhe in pain. She could almost think it was Isobu empathizing with her pain.
(Certainly not his; the tailed beast has told her, even after she explained that she has known Obito for as long as she could remember and that he is her closest friend, that it doesn’t trust the Uchiha boy. It doesn’t trust the Uchihas, period. They can control us, it had said.)
“The Uchiha elders want to keep me in the village as much as possible. They think I’m unstable. They don’t trust me because I gave away my sharingan.”
Oh.
Rin can’t think of anything to say that could even remotely begin to comfort the both of them. Her vision blurs, and she pulls Obito’s limp form into a crushing hug, and they hold onto each other tightly.
It’s not fair.
They sit together in the dark, under the stars. The night air is cool and the grass is wet and all three of them try to ignore the two dozens of ANBU guards hidden in the trees around them. They put out their fire an hour earlier, and just sat in the darkness, Rin in the middle with Obito resting his head on her shoulder, Kakashi on the other side, folded in on himself but still reaching out and loosely holding onto Rin’s hand. Even earlier, before the sun had set, Rin had cut Obito’s hair short on his request. He almost looked like his old self, before Kannabi bridge. Before the Sanbi. Before Sakumo’s suicide.
Minato has promised he’d take care of them. The times he came by, he had looked aged, so much so that it was hard to still believe he was only in his early twenties. Their teacher had apologized, to Rin and Obito, as he felt he had failed them both, leaving them in situations they should not have had to handle. He had tried to talk with Kakashi, to put in words the months of emotional walls, but what do you say to a boy who found his own father’s dead body, who found the multiple letters he had written right before his suicide, what do you say to the son of a hero who was so villainized by an entire village he chose to end his own life? He had tried. Had tried to put a comforting hand on Kakashi’s shoulder. He had tried to reach out, but the boy was a wounded animal and had simply turned away from not only his teacher but the man who he had come to consider like an older brother.
(”Don't do this. This will break him, I assure you.” He had heard Minato say, calm anger clear in his voice even through the office door. That had been the day he had learned his father would not be buried inside Konoha.)
They’re nearing the end of April now, and still, nothing seems to be moving in their favor; instead of Sakumo, now Kakashi gets the dirty looks and the whispers from villagers; Obito’s emotions spill out more often than not, pushed to the brink by the clan heads holding him inside the village and watching his every move; Rin is in limbo stuck outside of the village but not allowed to seek a home elsewhere, awaiting directions and hoping she is not made to be a weapon. Rin reaches her free hand to take Obito’s (the left one; she always, always makes sure she holds his left hand).
“I’ve been thinking about leaving,” Kakashi suddenly says, almost too quiet for Rin to catch it, which means Obito has definitely not heard it. She turns to him, causing Obito to shift and look at them in confusion. He furrows his brows at Kakashi, after seeing Rin staring at him, making the younger boy sigh and hook a finger on the edge of his mask to pull it down.
“I want to leave the village. I’ve been thinking about it.” He repeats, this time with Obito being able to clearly read the words on his lips. The Uchiha’s eyes open wide, his glass eye indistinguishable from his real one in the darkness. Kakashi rests his chin against his knees, and in the dark, with the distant light of her camp, she can see the glint of a canine over his bottom lip. Maybe he was right.
They stay silent for a moment. Then, Obito shifts from his place at Rin’s side to face both her and Kakashi; the look on his face has a determination they have rarely seen on him.
“You’re serious.” He says, and it’s not a question, it’s just the repeating of a fact. “You want to go rogue.”
Silence again. Kakashi feels the weight of Obito’s eye on him, and he feels very, very small under that eye. They look at each other for a moment, like the Uchiha is trying to weigh Kakashi’s words.
“You’re right,” Obito finally says, and Rin is taken aback when he extends both his hands towards her and Kakashi, who hesitates before taking it. They’re all joined by their hands, their little triangle of teenagers beaten and bruised by the world; the three of them against the world. Somehow, Rin knows Obito’s next words even before he speaks them into existence.
“I think we should all leave, and do it as soon as possible.”
And so they leave, right before sunrise on the next day.
Rin seals everything they could need in scrolls, and they each pack the essentials for the road. Obito doesn’t have much. He’s ready to leave before Kakashi, which is a first in the history of their team.
Kakashi thinks long and hard about whether to take the scrolls his father left before his death; he hasn’t read any of them, but he assumed they were all letters or notes. This is what people do, when they choose to die the way his father did. They leave a note. The only one he had opened was a scroll he had recognized from when he was very young; it was a map that his father used when he would tell Kakashi stories of the Hatake clan, who lived secluded up in the north. In the end, he packs all the scrolls. Maybe he’ll find the strength to read them one day.
He makes a stop by his father’s grave before going back to Rin and Obito; he makes a promise to come back as often as he could so that Sakumo would know his son was safe out in the world.
Rin left a letter for Minato and Kushina in the tent, explaining the situation, and not to come and find them to bring them back; none of them feel like they have their place in the village anymore. They each sign it, leaving with the paper their forehead protector.
Right before they exit the tent, Kakashi pauses; there is one more thing he needs to leave behind. He makes quick work of removing the black mask always covering the lower half of his face, leaving it with the letter and their Konoha headband.
With everything ready and wrapped up, Kakashi turns around, looking at his two teammates, once again holding hands, and he gives them a smile.