Chapter Text
He feels numb, in the aftermath of it all. His skull throbs, under all the bandages wrapped around his head. Staring into the white walls of the hospital room that he’s been momentarily confined to, Kakashi’s hand unconsciously reaches up to graze the edges of the bandages.
A bloody smile. The promise.
“I’ll become your eye, and see the future with you.”
He thinks he’s cursed, and haunted. Visions flash in the quiet of his mind, visions that he knows don’t belong to him. Inconsequential things, most of the time. A scene of Rin laughing good-naturedly, birds flying across a cloudless, blue sky. Kakashi’s back, at the docks, from many, many years ago trying to fish.
It seems like Obito isn’t content with seeing the future, as he keeps haunting Kakashi’s mind with visions of the past.
In the five days that they’ve been back in Konoha, Kakashi has been confined (trapped) in a bleary hospital room for a day and half. He hears furious whispers right outside the room, his sensei’s voice rising louder than he has ever heard before, and Rin’s charged yelling, pleading. On Kakashi’s behalf. On Obito’s behalf.
He cannot bring himself to do more than stare at the blank walls. His chest feels empty—hah he thought it had been fully emptied after that day he found his fath- him in a pool of blood in the study—and yet.
And yet the memories keep flashing behind his eyes. He wonders if it’s the original holder’s cells in the eye trying to fuse with his own that’s causing this influx of old memories.
Finally, someone steps into the room. It’s Minato-sensei, looking haggard. His eyebags have eyebags, from all the stress that comes along with having to co-ordinate your student’s funeral along with trying to keep an entire clan of Elders from ripping the eye out of one of his two remaining students.
“Kakashi are you— How are you feeling?”
Kakashi stares blankly at the wall again, and then looks back to Minato. He doesn’t give an answer.
Minato shakes himself out of his tiredness, eyes becoming sharper. “Right, so, they’re summoning us to the Hokage Tower. The Uchiha Clan Head and Hokage seem to have reached some sort of agreement. Er, summoning you, but I am to be present.” In case they decide to rip your eye from your socket in front of the Hokage, he doesn’t say, but Kakashi has an inkling as to what would’ve happened to him if the rest of his team hadn’t been so vehemently at his defense.
Something sinks in his heart at that realization. He’s been nothing less than an asshole at worst and a brat at best to them, and yet they hadn't paused for a second to reconsider before coming to his defence.
He really is worse than trash.
“Sensei I’m— thank you. Both of you,” he stammers out, standing up from the hospital bed, fists clenched at his side.
Minato’s eyes soften. “Rin left a few hours ago, but she’ll meet us at the Tower. You can thank her there, too.”
He doesn’t think as to why they’re being summoned. Best case scenario, Obito’s wishes will be acknowledged. Worst case, the Uchiha will try to claim what they think is theirs.
Kakashi fights a snarl at those words. The same Uchiha who shunned Obito, called him their black-sheep, excluded him from clan affairs, suddenly are the ones at the boy’s defense all because of his damn eyes.
They don’t even care that it’s not him wielding the eye. It makes Kakashi seethe.
They make their way to the tower in relative silence, Rin joining them halfway through the journey. Two ANBU escort them to the Hokage’s office, only to see Uchiha Fugaku waiting for them inside already.
“Ah, Minato-kun, you've arrived with your team,” comes the mild voice of the Third. Uchiha Fugaku seems to be glaring at both Kakashi and the Hokage to get to the heart of the matter.
“Hokage-sama, you called for Kakashi?”
“Yes, indeed. We have worked hard with both the Council of Elders and the Uchiha Elders to come to a solution to these… special circumstances.”
A scroll is handed to Kakashi.
‘Order for the retrieval of Uchiha Obito’s body [Clause: Right eye intact.]
Rank: A
EXTREMELY URGENT.’
The war may be winding down thanks to Iwa being subdued, but bloodline thieves run rampant in such chaos.
It has been five days since the battle at Kannabi Bridge.
Everyone in the room knows what the scroll is proposing. A suicide mission.
Kakashi accepts it.
A Sharingan that they cannot control is useless to the Uchiha, of course. And a dead boy’s eye is a flimsy excuse at best to get rid of the pest that's not in their pockets.
And yet, deep within his mind, he thinks of the flashes of memories he keeps getting, seemingly out of order and with no triggers.
If he's still— somehow— alive…
One of Kakashi’s biggest regrets is not talking to his father the months leading up to his suicide. He noticed his father’s mind slipping, his mood becoming less and less as the days went on and yet he hadn't said anything, his opinion too twisted by the hatred of the villagers to try and talk to a man whose silence meant death.
(His other biggest regret is not listening to Obito immediately when he'd asked to go after Rin. Maybe if they were a few minutes, a few seconds, a few moments earlier at the scene, they'd all still come out alive—)
So he accepts the mission, numbly bowing to the Hokage, not meeting his sensei or Rin’s eyes as he quickly shunshins out of the Tower to grab his mission pack and leave.
There are no public records of transplanted Sharingan sharing memories, and he isn't allowed access to any of the ones hidden away in the Uchiha Clan’s private library. All he has is his mind, the memories and the sharp tang of wolfish intuition.
A Hatake never doubts their intuition, something that is given down to them from the dancing thunder god in the skies, the feeling of jolt in their gut.
He doesn't know if he's going insane—he sure didn't act like this when he'd found his father’s body and had to subsequently dig his grave (because who would help dig the grave of the man who began the Third War)—so it wasn't his usual reaction to losing a precious person.
(And wasn't that a thought to realise? No matter how aloof and uncaring he may have tried to be, his teammates had wormed their way into his heart.
For, to be packless as a Hatake is a fate worse than death. One cannot ignore instinct.)
But something in his instincts screamed that he should go on this mission and find Obito. Not his body, or his eye. But the bright boy who gave up his life (he's not dead, not dead, not dead) for the sake of someone worse than scum.
If not to sate his instincts, just to give his sensei and Rin closure, he would go.
(He has absolute certainty that he will return, suicide mission or not. No one takes away a precious person from a Hatake.
His left eye burns.)
Once he's at his apartment, he changes into his gear. The bandages around his left eye come off, the scar already healed. He opens the eye for a second, feeling the drain on his chakra almost immediately before closing it. It still works. His irrational fears sated, he tilts down his hitai-ate over the eye to keep it covered, to at least mitigate some of the chakra drain caused.
Grabbing his mission pack from the back of his sparse closet, he rushes towards the main gate, which is where he finds Rin. He isn't really surprised that she showed up, and really, he owes it to her for the fact that his eye socket didn't get infected, and for dealing with his recklessness on that mission in general.
He can't quite bring himself to meet her eye (‘Worse than scum!’ something in his mind screams) but he bows to her from the waist. He had promised Obito he'd look after her, but his hand had been forced to go on this mission.
“Rin… thank you. For the healing on the mission and— and for helping protect Obito’s wish and… dealing with me. Thank you.”
He's surprised when he feels a weak punch on his shoulder, not really meant to hurt, and suddenly he's being pulled into an embrace. “I’m a fool… to think that you never cared. About us. About him. I nearly forgot about the little boy who used to share dinners with us. Sorry, ‘Kashi.”
He softens into the embrace just a touch. Pack, his traitorous mind whispers. He pulls away from it after a few seconds, quickly going through a few hand seals to safely secure his mission pack into his weapon’s pouch.
“I'll… see you later, Rin.”
He doesn’t wait for her reply, knowing all too well that there will probably be something broken. He already saw one of his teammates break, he couldn't handle another.
Besides, he had full intention of coming back from this mission alive.
It takes him two days of running with the bare minimum amount of sleep in-between to reach the collapsed cave. Suppressing his chakra, he carefully checks for any suspicious movement in the area. Finding none, he summons his ninken.
“Yo, little boss. Mission— what happened to your eye?” Pakkun exclaims. The rest of his pack look like they're very close to jumping on and inspecting him—he suspects they would have done so if it wasn't obvious that they were summoned outside the village for a reason.
Kakashi’s chest aches thinking about it. “I need you to help me find Obito’s body from that pile of rubble over there. It’s a— a collapsed cave.” He gives them a look saying that he would explain the rest later. First and foremost, it is important to find the body, or at least scent if—Sage forbid—the enemy had already got their hold of it.
Few outside Konoha know what the Sharingan truly does, but the appeal of a powerful dojutsu is too much for anyone to pass up.
‘If only they knew the absolute drain it causes on one’s chakra’, Kakashi muses. Bull and Urushi make quick and careful work of the rubble, digging right on the spot that Kakashi guides them to, and where Pakkun tells them that the scent of blood is strongest.
After quite a bit of digging they find—
‘Empty. This part is— empty? Deliberately hollowed out?’
He feels his heart beating in his ears. There's a clear patch of dried blood, but it seems like there was a trail. Fuck, he should have realised that someone had dug in already, the rocks were too loose to have sustained the impact of the collapse.
“Pakkun, Shiba, Ūhei. Track the smell of blood,” Kakashi orders as his mind falls into mission-mode to avoid his emotions taking over and panicking. “It seems that someone got here before us.”
The barely hidden rage behind his words affects his dogs too. Someone had desecrated the dead—or worse, barely alive—body of his teammate. Of Obito. He feels his fangs baring themselves under his mask, and breathes in deeply.
His ninken then get into position, carefully navigating through the marsh. The water should dampen the smell, but it seems like whoever the captor is, they avoided the water, sticking to the high trees and fungi growths, eventually going through Land of Fire territory.
‘Trees. Only Kohoha-nin are this comfortable traversing trees like this— especially with a body to carry.’ He does not like what this thought implies—either that there is a missing-nin on the loose or a traitor in their village.
They make it to another border that day, and then Kakashi calls for rest. Whoever took Obito’s body is good, and whatever reason they had to make such a stretch—in such less time, nonetheless—means that they probably are a skilled opponent too.
As he sets up camp, right before the Land of Fire border (it was safer to sleep within familiar territory), he wonders if the Elders or the Hokage knew this would be the result.
Probably not. They most likely hoped for remnant forces near the Kannabi Bridge to take care of Kakashi, or that the body was broken enough that he couldn't retrieve the eye, or, if the body was already—eugh—harvested, then they could put on another thing to blame him for in order to pressure him to give the Sharingan back..
They also probably hoped that Kakashi’s own injuries and mental toll would take him out. Fat chance at that, he was forced to sit and sleep in the hospital for nearly two days as they tried to make a decision with his statement, and besides, Rin was an excellent medic. His eye didn't even twitch anymore, the bandages having been cleared to be removed. It’s why he just slanted his hitai-ate over his left eye after all, the chakra drain from having the Sharingan open at all times was too much for him, as only those with Uchiha blood could turn off their Sharingan at will.
(Or at least, that's what he assumed.
No one would tell him anything about it, after all.)
After setting up traps around the encampment, Kakashi finally settles down on his bed-roll. It is too risky to make open fire for dinner, so ration bars it is. His ninken settle around him in a protective formation, nudging him to go to sleep.
“We'll protect you, pup. Sleep,” grouches Pakkun.
He knew as well as his pack that sleep would not come to him that night. The sight of the cave triggered his memories once more, and thus any sleep he manages to catch will be restless.
He is proven right, when a scant few hours later, he wakes up with his hands shaking, the memory of the boulder crushing the boy's body replaying in his mind and—
A dark cave. A man, with long, messy black hair. Two— Plants? People? Black and white.
“Hm. His body has stabilized.”
“The seal, Madara-sama, we should put the seal—” one of the beings, the white one, implores.
“Silence. His body is too weak at this stage. We shall wait longer.”
“Ohoho, he is awake. He is conscious,” the black one croons.
“The recovery is going well. A fine specimen you have chosen, Madara-sama. As expected of one of your kin, of course.”
Kakashi startles back to reality. ‘What the hell was that?’
It definitely wasn't the result of his nightmare—Kakashi doesn't think he even had the imagination to come up with whatever that scene was. Only then does he realise that his left eye is thrumming.
Could it be—
But no, all memories (if those even are that) so far have been things that already happened. Unless Obito was kidnapped before—which he knows hasn't happened—it could only mean that the Sharingan is actively transporting memories. Kakashi hastily shoves up his hitai-ate and exposes his left eye. The chakra drain is not as bad as before, and the world becomes clear.
A cave. That's more direction than he thought he would ever have. And a name.
Madara? As in, Uchiha Madara? Kakashi feels faint. That is not possible, his death was recorded by the Shodaime himself—
And yet his instincts were blaring. He does not doubt his instincts, they have never been wrong.
“Fuck,” he breathes out. Akino is immediately alert, and Pakkun looks at him with concern. Kakashi never swears, not if he can help it.
“Little boss? All good?” Akino nudges his snout against Kakashi's forearm.
Kakashi lets out a near-manic chuckle. Pakkun grows more concerned, while the rest of his pack close around him.
“No need to be alert. I… may have seen something,” Kakashi reassures.
Recounting the supposedly-shared-memory sounds more bizarre than actually experiencing it himself, and he can tell that his dogs think so too.
Assuming that the memory isn't something Kakashi hallucinated up, it means that Kakashi possibly has to face one of the strongest shinobi recorded in history all by himself. Which is not accounting for the two plant-beings (he's going to assume it's a kekkei-genkai or something because he truly cannot wrap his head around the fact that Uchiha Madara is possibly alive.)
“Can we truly not… call for backup?” Pakkun asks.
Kakashi feels his hysteria go down, and the new information settles like lead on his shoulders. His teeth pull at his mask, trying to think of a strategy to maybe just… take Obito out without alerting the other beings.
Slowly, something of a strategy forms in his mind. His hand clutches his weapon pouch, the other hand coming back up to put his hitai-ate back in place. Alerting his ninken, he makes quick work of the makeshift camp, telling them to continue tracking the scent.
He just hopes that his sensei was ready to see his promise through.