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Rin didn’t have a kekkai genkai, massive chakra reserves, or genius ability. But she felt what she did have was a special sort of power. While she’d always been watching Obito, seeing every little thing he was doing, now she had Kakashi to watch over—and she seemed to be the only one who could see through the mask—the hard exterior he wore ever since the Kannabi Bridge mission.
Kakashi needed her just as much as she needed him, whether he admitted it or not.
The sight of Kakashi’s smile had been a rare blessing. Glistening white teeth, full lips, and a cute little mole were only bestowed upon Rin’s eyes when his mask came off after the most dire of missions. Rin suspected that these days, even without the mask, his smile would be nonexistent. Kakashi’s mask could hide his face, but it couldn’t conceal his feelings from Rin. He was as transparent to her as Obito had been before–
Rin released the air from her lungs in a quivering exhale. Steadying her trembling hands, she finished winding a bandage around Gai’s wounded ankle and hoped her team wouldn’t notice her shift in mood. This was no time for her to remember Kannabi Bridge. A mission was not the time to fixate on the perpetually sad look in Kakashi’s eyes—one his, one now Obito’s brilliant red Sharingan—and the fact that he was ignoring Gai’s every attempt to pull him out of his shell and get him talking. The only words in Kakashi’s vocabulary these days seemed to be limited to those used to give orders and refusals. It hadn’t been that way before. Well, maybe it had. But it had never felt quite like this.
When they were back in the village with another completed mission under their belts with a different team assembly than the one they’d naively assumed they would have for life, when Kushina and Gai and all the other well-meaning members of shinobi society had left Kakashi, Rin stayed by his side.
She didn’t pry. She knew he’d had enough of that. Frankly, she was just as tired of it as he was. There was nothing anyone could say to make their team whole again. Rin had lost a part of herself with Obito’s death. Kakashi had, too. While she could politely accept the platitudes because of the true feeling buried beneath them, Kakashi reacted to each and every one for exactly what it was, not who it came from, nor what it meant. He only saw Obito — and his absence. It must’ve been so hard for him to see Obito looking back at him every day in the mirror. Rin wished she could take that from him just as much as she wished to get him talking to her again.
Sometimes, when Rin dreamed, she saw Obito, too. Also, Kakashi’s tears on that fateful day—something she’d never thought she’d see. And yet in spite of Kakashi’s grief, she didn’t expect to ever see tears fall from his eyes again. Now, Kakashi masked that eye, too. If he kept that up, Rin was eventually going to be the only one who could see him. And even then, she wouldn’t be around forever.
After what happened to Obito, Rin saw her death coming sooner than she ever would’ve imagined before leaving the academy. Life was shorter, more precious. Kakashi was more precious to her. That was why it was such a shame that he was squandering his time closing himself off from the people who cared about him. Rin refused to sit idly by and watch him waste away, berating himself for losing a beloved comrade on the first mission he’d captained.
The next time they went out on a mission, Rin didn’t fall back and leave him alone.
She licked her lips and went to Kakashi, reaching for him when they rounded the corner of a brick building, away from all the others heading home from their missions. She knew even before touching him and feeling the chill through his forearm that they were the only two who weren’t feeling satisfied by their mission completion status. No amount of satisfactory missions seemed capable of canceling out the one they would have failed without the help of their jonin sensei. Rin knew deep in her heart that she had to feel differently about it eventually, but she didn’t believe Kakashi realized that.
When Kakashi turned, meeting her eyes with only the one that was his while the other remained covered by the headband he now slanted across it, Rin firmed her resolve. While Kakashi kept that Sharingan eye covered in order to preserve his chakra, Rin also believed that he thought he was sparing Rin from seeing Obito’s ghost every time she looked at him.
That couldn’t be further from the truth. Rin saw Obito’s ghost all the time, right alongside Kakashi’s solemn face kept covered behind a mask. Threads of navy and black couldn’t conceal from her the wistful way he casted his gaze from her hand on his arm, back into her eyes. She bit her lip before trying to tell him—but she had no words. The slightest narrowing of Kakashi’s visible eye told her there were no words he wanted to hear, either. He wasn’t ready.
Rin felt a flush cover her face as she brazenly slid her hand down Kakashi’s forearm, over the soft fabric of his glove and the hard metal of his guards to seek his hand.
His eye widened, finally showing Rin something else, if only for an instant. But he was just as quick as she was and hardened his gaze before Rin could curl her fingers around his. He tugged away, leaving Rin with tears in her eyes she would be left to cry alone.
She did more crying for Kakashi now than Obito. She didn’t know when that shift had happened, but it had. Obito’s absence would always be a dull, cruel ache from the bottom of her heart, but flutters of positive emotions occasionally reminded her that there was more to life than grieving. Obito wouldn’t have wanted her and Kakashi to waste their lives away fixating on his death, so Rin would not. She was determined to live for as long as this shinobi life might grant her. She was determined to make sure Kakashi did, too.
After the next mission, she fought past his stubborn resistance. She held his hand. She felt his guilt and his fear through his touch, even through his gloves. It was just like the expression on his face that she knew so well—and saw had finally changed.
