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Kakashi has always found the idea of a soulmate to be rather ridiculous. The idea that someone out there will be the most important person in his life and he won’t have any say in it is stupid. Irritating in the way so many of the obsolete rules of this world are.
His parents had been soulmates. Had fallen in love just like they were supposed to, built a home and a family. Had it all fall apart when his mother died on a mission, leaving Kakashi motherless and his father destroyed.
His father tried to hide it, of course. To be there for Kakashi in any way he could. It wasn’t enough; Kakashi could see the tiredness in his eyes, the world-weariness that came with losing the person who was supposed to be the most important in his life. Could see the way her death had broken his father in a way that couldn’t be fixed.
Kakashi’s father had been fracturing apart long before his suicide, before he came home with a failed mission and a living team. He’d failed, and Konoha would pay the price in war.
It was easy to hate his father, then. Easy to think that his father had been made weak by the death of his soulmate, and had become a traitor to Konoha for it. Had started a war because he was unable to see past his overactive emotions.
When Kakashi found his father dead in a pool of his own blood from a wound he had inflicted himself, Kakashi resolved to never fall in love. Resolved that if he ever heard his soulmate laugh, saw color bloom across his vision, he would ensure that no feelings could ensue between them. Would ensure that they never heard him laugh. After all, he was a shinobi, and it was clear that soulmates were the greatest weakness of all.
And Kakashi is a good shinobi. He hears the whispers that follow him, calling him a prodigy and a genius, toeing the line between fear and awe. He graduates the academy at five, makes chuunin the next year. He likes Minato-sensei; a genius like Kakashi well on the path to greatness, and utterly willing to accept Kakashi as a student. He never talks down to Kakashi, either, something adults always fail to do, too caught up in his age to see his skill. They see him only to be a child. He’s not one. Hasn’t been for a long time.
Kakashi makes jounin when he’s nine, and a year later, Minato’s assigned a genin team. There are to be only two genin, fresh from the academy, in the hopes that Kakashi and them will be a team . He stews in his own anger for days when he hears the news. Knows he’s sulking and doesn’t care to stop. He’s a jounin , he shouldn’t have to be placed on a team with wet-behind-the-ears genin.
On the morning of their bell test, Kakashi arrives exactly on time, unwilling to be late and wishing to avoid any unnecessary interaction with these potential teammates . He hopes they fail.
In the clearing where they were set to arrive are the two genin, fresh from the academy and unable to even cloak their chakra levels. He walks towards them, not even trying to sneak up on them, and they don’t even notice him.
Nearest him is a girl with short hair and markings on her cheeks. Her chakra levels are fairly average, not horrible but definitely not good. Across from her is a boy with dark, spiky hair, clothing a horrible mixture of dark and too-bright. He talks loudly, gesticulates wildly. His chakra levels are insane, though, and Kakashi feels a bolt of dread that they might actually stand to pass the bell test.
“So you’re the genin assigned to Minato-sensei?” Kakashi’s tone is less than impressed, and his worries are assuaged when the boy jumps nearly a foot in the air, having not noticed Kakashi at all. Kakashi raises a brow at him. The girl startles significantly less, but it’s still noticeable.
Kakashi sighs. Minato-sensei should be here by now, and Kakashi’s stuck with these two until he shows up.
“Who’re you?” The boy says, too loud yet again, tone irritated.
“Kakashi. I’ll be your new teammate, if you pass.” Kakashi can’t stop the way his lip curls at the word teammate , doesn’t bother to try.
“What!? But you’re like, tiny! Plus, you were never at the Academy, did you even graduate? You have to be a genin to be on a team.” The boy says, as if this is at all news to Kakashi.
“I’m a jounin.” Kakashi says, tone flat as ever.
The boy looks about ready to explode, but then Minato-sensei arrives and Kakashi is saved from having to deal with any more conversation.
They pass the bell test, and Kakashi feels a little bit of his pride die preemptively at the knowledge that he will be stuck on a team with these two. The boy’s name is Obito, Kakashi learns. The girl—by far the least irritating of the two—is Rin. She at least makes an attempt, and she seems to have an easy time recognizing that him being younger then them means less than nothing skill-wise.
Obito , on the other hand, has to be the most irritating person Kakashi has ever had the displeasure of interacting with. He antagonizes Kakashi as much as possible (not that Kakashi doesn’t do the same right back, but still), seemingly trying to get a rise out of him. It doesn’t take long for Kakashi to recognize that Obito’s desperately trying to impress Rin, and thinks that proving himself stronger than Kakashi will somehow accomplish that, never mind the fact that Kakashi’s skill level is so far above his.
Kakashi arrives early to their third training session, hoping to get there before the other two and hide out in the training ground until their training can start. They won’t find him. Probably wouldn’t even if he didn’t mask his presence.
Unfortunately, he has no such luck; Rin and Obito are already in the training ground, chatting about something or other that he has no interest in. Luckily, their spacial awareness is next to nothing, so it’s easy enough to walk past them and to the tree-line without them noticing.
Then, just as he reaches the edge of the tree-line, Rin apparently says something hilarious, because Obito is laughing. Bent over with it, when Kakashi turns to face him. Color bleeds out from his laughing form, and Kakashi feels his soul leave his body.
Well. At least it will be easy enough to not care too much about his soulmate, even if they are stuck on the same team.
-
They get stuck doing D-ranks. It makes sense, logically; it gives them time to build team skills in a safe environment without fear for their lives, gives his teammates time to get used to the more menial duty of shinobi. For Kakashi, though? It’s stupid and futile, only made worse by his teammates’ ceaseless complaining and inefficiency. Still, he can manage it if it means getting back on the field sooner.
After a couple of months of it, though? He’s ready to scream. Probably would, if he didn’t have such tight control over himself.
Obito has no such reservations, and quickly becomes both Kakashi’s favorite and least favorite thing about this arrangement. For one, this is irritating Obito to no end, and pissing him off and making him look dumb in front of Rin is becoming one of Kakashi’s key ways of passing the time.
Rin, on the other hand, quickly becomes Kakashi’s favorite member of their little trio, solely by virtue of knowing when to shut up and soldier on. She’s a diligent worker, willing to put in the effort and understanding the point of all this, perhaps even better than Kakashi. She gets saddled with the unfortunate position of middleman between him and Obito, but she still tries to make their little team work.
Minato, of course, is as present a teacher as he can be whilst also balancing his duty to the village and his newfound thing with Uzumaki Kushina. He’s trying to make them work as a team, Kakashi knows. Doesn’t trust Kakashi to be good enough on his own. Thinks he needs them, needs to interact with people closer to his age. Kakashi viciously kicks the kernel of hurt Minato's lack of trust in him spawns to the back of his mind.
He goes along with it. Tries his best to be part of the team without letting himself get attached. He still antagonizes Obito, of course, but he tries . He knows Minato cares, knows this failing would crush him, and unwilling to do that to him. Unwilling to drive another father to his grave.
Trying isn’t enough, though, doesn’t stop the constant fighting between him and Obito, and Kakashi finds himself running D-ranks with just him while Rin gets taught about seals by Minato. It’s irritating, and demeaning, and does nothing to assuage their mutual hatred.
By the time they’re running their last “mission” of the day—a rather pathetic excuse for a courier mission that is essentially running mail—they’re both ready to snap. They fight constantly, worse than its been before. More vicious, more biting and lasting and everything Minato had hoped to lenify.
Still, they finish the mission without more than added length for bickering, each unwilling to extend their miserable train of D-ranks any further than absolutely necessary.
They walk to the restaurant they had agreed to meet with the rest of their team at in relative silence, only broken by biting snipes and barbed tongues.
Then, Obito stops walking. Kakashi readies himself to send yet another verbal lashing Obito’s way-
Kakashi realizes belatedly that a stray cat has wandered over, small and fluffy and wobbling on its feet too much to be fully grown.
“You’re so cute -“ Obito gasps, grin clear in his voice, chasing away any semblance of the rage and frustration he’d worn throughout the day. He crouches down in front of the cat, holding his hand out for her to sniff. After a moment, she seems to approve, nudging closer to Obito’s hand.
Kakashi’s never been a cat person, never will be, but even he can admit that she’s cute. It’s hard not to, when her eyes are wide and guileless and her tortoiseshell fur sticks up in every direction like she’s been shocked.
And then Obito turns his bright grin on Kakashi, cheeks reddened in the sun and eyes sparkling . He looks like he glows, like this, sun illuminating his features as he momentarily forgets that it’s Kakashi he’s looking at. It hits Kakashi, then, that Obito is Pretty. Really pretty.
Oh, Kakashi feels himself think distantly. Oh fuck .
-
It’s lucky Obito hates him, Kakashi thinks (ignores the spike of pain in his chest at the thought), because this would be unbearable if Obito were to smile at him, because of him, or, god forbid, laugh. Kakashi very much needs that to not happen (wants it so badly it hurts).
Still, the whole ordeal makes Kakashi’s life much more difficult. He doesn’t plan to act on his feelings , is breaking code enough by having them in the first place. They change nothing, and Kakashi is determined to keep it that way.
…They keep the cat. Or, Obito does. It’s irritating, and impractical, particularly when Obito ties a makeshift Konoha forehead protector around her neck and starts calling her their team mascot. It is very determinedly not cute.
She follows them everywhere in the village, comes along with the D-ranks and makes things a little bit more bearable. She gets scared when they argue. Kakashi can’t stand it, can’t stand hurting another being who doesn’t deserve it, even if that being is just a cat.
Slowly, reluctantly, they become more of a team. It’s hard not to, with Rin rapidly improving at seals and Obito’s control becoming more and more passable by the day. They’re not as strong as him, of course, but-
Well. He knows jackshit about seals, has never had the mind for them, and Obito’s natural chakra levels are nearly three times Kakashi’s own. It’s hard not to want them at his back when they can so efficiently cover his weaknesses. He doesn’t admit it, of course, wouldn’t under pain of death, but they’re starting to grow on him. A part of him, the part of him that screams that his father died a coward, hates how he feels stronger from it. That part of him gets smaller every day.
Still, Obito being kind-of-sort-of-maybe-tolerable does nothing to help the fact that the idiot goes around wearing bright fucking orange . And Kakashi can’t even say anything about it, because that would mean admitting that he can see color in the first place.
He wishes Minato would fucking say something about it for once, but despite the fact that Kakashi knows Minato can see color, has been able to since he met the Red-Hot Habeñero, Minato remains glaringly silent on the issue.
He plans to do something about it, makes up an elaborate plan to trick Obito into wearing something that’s not a beacon informing any enemy nin who’ve met their soulmate to his position.
He doesn’t get the chance to use it.
-
Everything hurts, in the aftermath of the boulder. Seeing Obito crushed beneath it, crushed because Kakashi made the wrong choice and then wasn’t fast enough , made himself a liability that had to be paid for by Obito.
It’s only made worse by Obito’s sharingan. Kakashi would like to say that it was a nice reminder of who Obito was, that it gave him a piece of Obito to treasure. It’s true, to some extent. More than that, though, it’s a reminder of Kakashi’s failure. A reminder that Kakashi wasn’t good enough, would never be good enough to save those he cared about. A reminder that provides him with perfect recall of Obito’s crushed form, dying and in pain and captured in higher detail than anything else Kakashi had ever seen.
“ Those who abandon their mission are trash, but those who abandon their teammates are even worse trash.”
When Obito had said it, had he known? Had- had some part of him known that Kakashi’s failure to place his team above the mission would cause his death?
-
Obito had always wanted to meet his soulmate. Had wondered loudly just who he would be matched to. Had been so sure that his soulmate would be awesome, would be able to beat Kakashi up , as Obito had so delightfully phrased it. Still, Kakashi could see the way it wore down on him. Grew to recognize the faint sadness, the longing for someone meant for him.
Kakashi wished he’d told him. Wished he’d been unselfish enough to let himself laugh, just once, to let Obito know that he wasn’t alone. Obito deserved that much, at least.
But Kakashi has always been selfish, and his soulmate died thinking Kakashi hated him.
-
Rin blames herself too, he knows. Sees it in the way she throws herself into training, into learning the intricacies of seals and control and enough healing to pull together a broken body. They both know that it is too late for the person who she would wish to heal with it. Kakashi doesn’t say anything. Can’t, when he’s doing the same, training and forcing himself to do better, to be better, so that he never has to lose another teammate. Trains so much that he has no energy to think of the ways he’s failed, of a boy broken by his inadequacy when he was needed the most.
Minato doesn’t stop them, either. Blames himself too much. Pushes himself harder just as they do after the death of their fourth.
It’s a happy day when Minato earns the title of Hokage. None of them smile.
-
The Kiri nin ambush them, and suddenly Kakashi is faced with the possibility of losing yet another teammate, only made worse when Rin crumples behind him.
“Kakashi,” she says, voice strained, and he can do nothing but do his best to fight off the enemy nin even as they’re surrounded. “Kakashi, something’s wrong.”
“Rin-“
“No, Kakashi, there’s a seal- they put a seal on me. It’s radiating this horrible-“ Kakashi catches a kunai that had been aimed for Rin, slings it back and lessening the numbers of their enemies by one.
It’s not enough. Kakashi can tell that much, can tell when he’s fighting a losing battle, a teammate injured and unable to fight his only backup as the world begins to sway with his exhaustion, with his chakra reserves pushed far past where they should be by another’s eye in his socket.
One of the enemy shinobi apparently takes his swaying as weakness, goes for a head-on charge. A Chidori sets their corpse falling, and Kakashi with it.
At least this time he will die with his teammate, he supposes. Won’t have to be the one who survived after all this is over.
Then, the Kiri nin are screaming, and Kakashi has a moment to be confused as the trunks of giant trees grow up and through them before a masked figure is looming over him. Collapsing next to him, close enough to Rin to put Kakashi on guard, though he doubts he could do anything to this person who just killed all those nin in an instant. Especially like this, barely able to move his limbs.
Then, the mask opens. Curls outward and reveals a face Kakashi thought he would never see again, scarred and solemn but whole. Alive.
“Obito?”
-
It is only minutes later when Minato comes to check on them, to make sure everything is okay. It is minutes too late. Or- would have been, had Obito not shown up. Obito, with his too-long hair and his single sharingan and his limbs transplanted from the cells of the first Hokage .
Rin was right about the seal. Very right, as it turns out. To be made a jinchuuriki by force, to have the seal intentionally destabilized to let it rampage freely across Konoha, is such a detestable move that it makes Kakashi want to go back and kill the Kiri nin again.
Things get better, with Obito back. It’s a bit awkward, unfamiliar after the months of change on all their fronts, each of them vastly different people than they were the last time they were able to stand in the same room as each other. Despite it all, though, they all still fit together. Perhaps more so, with barbed comments replaced by banter and lighthearted bickering, with Rin no longer being relegated to peacemaker and Minato not having to stop the two from fighting every two seconds.
Perhaps Kakashi would try to make their relationship back to its usual levels of antagonism, if he wasn’t so plainly relieved to just have Obito back in the first place. If the sight of Obito didn’t warm something that had gone cold in his chest, didn’t soothe the hurt he had carried with him since the boulder.
But it does, and Obito doesn’t seem inclined to restart that hostility, so they remain in a comfortable balance. Perhaps it's easier now, when Obito can hold his own in a fight against Kakashi, when they are well on their way to becoming the most respected—and feared—shinobi in Konoha.
Rin isn’t far behind, of course, already making a name for herself as a seal master. But it is Kakashi and Obito who rise together, who become names uttered in the same breath, inseparable in a way that would have been unthinkable only a year prior. It’s hard not to be, when they share so much. When Kakashi has Obito’s eye and Obito smiles and tells him that it was a gift.
“When are you going to tell him?” Kakashi looks up from his reading, doesn’t bother to pretend he doesn’t know what Rin’s talking about. Knows that she has known since his breakdown after Obito’s death, since he was too broken and hollowed out to care.
“Maa, there’s so much time, why rush it?”
Rin’s face is less than impressed. She gives a long sigh that Kakashi would be offended by if he didn’t know he deserved it. “You have to tell him sometime,” she says, and then she’s gone.
-
Kakashi wasn’t surprised when the first thing Obito did upon his release from the hospital was to find some eye-scorchingly orange clothing, couldn’t even bring himself to be exasperated at the time, far too overwhelmed by the relief of having his teammate back.
Now, though? Now, he could be nothing but exasperated, given that Obito is a sloppy roommate who leaves his clothes everywhere. Which would be bad enough if said clothes weren’t eye-scorchingly orange, but Obito had truly found a way to elevate it to a whole new level of irritating.
When Kakashi trips over a shoe with neon orange laces, left in the middle of the pathway to the kitchen, he decides he’s had enough. He seethes in silent rage until Obito emerges later, tired and sleep mussed and still rubbing at his eyes.
“Obito~” he says, bright and cheerful. Obito’s immediately on guard; Kakashi is never in so good a mood this early in the morning, and he is very clearly smiling his barely-contained-rage smile. Good. Obito should be scared. “Why the fuck are all of your neon orange clothes laid about our apartment so carelessly?”
Obito has the gall to look irritated, furrowing his brows and readying to snark out some biting retort, when he pauses. Looks at Kakashi strangely.
“Neon orange?” He asks. Seems to consider something. Kakashi sees a flash of pain in his eye that disappears just as quickly, undetectable if Kakashi hadn’t known Obito so well.
“Yes?” Kakashi says, and then realizes his error. Shit. He feels the distinct urge to immediately defenestrate himself, resists.
“Is it Rin?” Obito asks, head tilting to the side in question.
And Kakashi- Kakashi’s tired . He’s tired of losing people, of hiding things. But he’s never been strong. Not in the way Obito is. Not in the way that matters.
“Ah- no.”
“Some other kunoichi, then? Or—what was his name?—Gai!”
Kakashi buries his face in his hands with a groan. There’s no possible way Obito’s letting this go now.
“Ha! It is Gai, isn’t it!?” And- Obito sounds so triumphant as he confidently declares that someone else is Kakashi’s soulmate, and Kakashi can’t help himself—he laughs. Loud and clear and true, real for the first time he can remember.
“Oh.” Is Obito’s only response as his eyes go wide in wonder, his face reddening at the realization.
Kakashi snorts, and Obito looks indignant. It’s cute.
Kakashi’s about to comment on Obito’s lack of decorum, at how long it took him to notice, but he doesn’t get a chance. Kakashi doesn’t mind, though, not when all he can think about is the warmth of Obito’s lips against his.