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A stress-strain curve is a graphical representation of how a material deforms when subjected to an applied mechanical load. Or a mathematical way to cut your life into pieces to analyse how you ruined it all on your own.
Region 1 : Elastic region, where the material obeys Hooke's law of Linear proportionality. Stress is directly proportional to strain, and the material returns to its original shape if the load is removed. Or, life doesn't really care for the weight of your emotions. You ought to absorb everything that is thrown at you. Continue forward, or stay back. Either way the world continues to turn.
Minato hasn't really ever talked to Hatake Sakumo one on one. It was only when Jiraiya-sensei dragged him along after he had passed his chunin exams he had sat down with his sensei’s friends. One of them being Hatake Sakumo. Even in the brief span of the evening Minato sat with the man. He realised Hatake Sakumo was a man who loved. He loved strong sake, he loved his blade, he loved his teammates, he loved cracking unfunny jokes and he loved his son.
Four year old Kakashi was a tiny slip of a thing, with an attitude that did not match his stature. His hair was white and he kept his face covered. How he had managed to track down his father and come in undetected into the bar, gods knew. A strong boy. ‘He will be a strong shinobi,’ Jiraiya-sensei mumbled into Minato’s ear. A competition to challenge your title as ‘Genius’.
That was one of the petty things that shinobi loved gossiping about. Ranking each one by their strengths or looks. Minato did not dislike locker room conversations, but he wouldn’t really indulge in it. The strength rankings these people come up with are a tad bit too dependent on fickle things. Thus, Minato never took them to heart. But since Jiraiya-sensei was saying it, he decided to note it down in his mind.
Hatake Sakumo’s mouth curved into a fond smile at something Kakashi had said, the little thing had his hands crossed across his chest, as if berating his father. Hatake Sakumo excused himself from their dinner, looking no bothered at the fact that he was leaving his beloved sake, blade, teammates and jokes behind.
The next time Minato saw Kakashi, it was at Hatake Sakumo’s funeral.
For the past weeks, rain had been incessant. It was one such rainy afternoon, when the sun couldn't peek out of the gloominess, that Hatake Sakumo had killed himself in the Hatake ancestral home. His son had found him first, a few hours later. Had notified a nearby patrolling Konoha Police Officer. The officer had walked past the walls writ with words like ‘war-mongering mutt’, ‘killer’, ‘murderer’, and so on and such.
He had walked past such walls, over the entrance, hadn't bothered removing his shoes, and Kakashi had run out barefoot, so both of them had silently walked into the old creaking house tracking mud all over the tatami floors. And into the living room, over the tatami, Hatake Sakumo’s corpse had been slumped, an old tanto half held, half buried in him.
The police officer had stood beside the body and questioned Kakashi, “when did you find him like this?”
Kakashi said, as dull as the rain outside, “an hour ago. When I came back from the academy.”
“4:12 pm then,” the police officer looked at the watch that hung on the wall opposite to him. “The time of death will be noted as such. I will notify the higher ups immediately. Do you have any relatives you can stay with for the time being? Someone who can handle the funeral arrangement?” he asked.
Kakashi stared at him.
Hatake Sakumo was a man who loved. Yet, he had left behind his strong sake, his blade, his teammates, his unfunny jokes and his son.
Since time immemorial there has never been a cure to broken shinobi.
And that's how Jiraiya-sensei had rushed into the village, where he had refused to even set foot in three years ago. With him Tsunade-hime and Orochimaru-san had also turned up. The funeral was a bit lonely. Besides the three sanin and Minato and Kakashi himself, there was no one else.
The rain continued falling and Kakashi stood still under it. Jiraiya-sensei couldn't stay too long in the village and Kakashi had just turned into an orphan. Like Minato. Jiraiya-sensei did not care much about the matters of others, but he really wanted to help his old friend’s spirit rest peacefully, and how would he rest if he didn't know if there was anyone looking out for his beloved son. Someone who was in the village, and could protect him from the villagers. Minato got the hint.
The very next day, the Hokage and Minato tacitly agreed Kakashi would be put on his team. Anyways Kakashi was set to pass out in a few weeks. And Minato also did not have a team. The two geniuses could keep each other busy. The masses were appeased.
The law of the elastic region follows a simple rule that can be applied to humans as well: it promises that applying external force will create a predictable reaction, and once the force has been removed, the material will return to the shape it held before. Minato looked at the straight line of the boy’s spine under the gray downpour and believed the law would hold true. The funeral would end, the boy would go to the training grounds, and continue on with his life. He was a genius, after all. And geniuses are built to carry.
The afternoon sun is bright and glaring, even through the gaps between the leaves. Kakashi was running standard drills all by himself. His new chunin uniform hanging off of his shoulders awkwardly. Bunched together by the belt at his waist. He was fast, his body mimicking the weight of White Fangs fighting stances.
He hit the training dummy hard, his shoulder jerking back from impact and a sick crunch ringing into the clearing. Minato was there in an instant, catching the weightless boy before he could hit the ground.
“Kakashi! This was too reckless. You should know your own body better than anyone. This move is for pinning an opponent, with your stature this move is impossible, and you know it! Don't mimic your father’s every move,” sometimes Minato’s words get away from him. He is working on it, he stills suddenly, looking at the boy in his arms. For a second, his small fists clench tightly, his knuckles white. But before Minato could apologize, the boy nodded.
“Understood, Minato-sensei.” Kakashi gets up to his own feet, his arm hanging limply by his side. “I need medical assistance.” Minato’s shoulders relax, his mouth curling into a smile.
Kakashi was good. He was strong. He could taste defeat and get back up to deal with it. An ideal shinobi.
–
Region 2 : Yield point, where the material deforms permanently. An irreversible atomic dislocation occurs causing permanent geometric deformation. Or, you try your best, but your best was never good enough, and you spend your remaining life repenting for it.
Rin thought she was a pretty good shinobi. And she had the grades to prove it. Alas, in the real world- the shinobi classroom and the C and D-ranks rarely do prepare you for the missions carried out during war. Still she was good. Had figured out what interested her pretty quickly, unlike Kakashi, who didn't really seem to have a preference on which stream he would pick. And Obito. He was pretty much set on genjutsu. Even though he hadn't acquired his sharingan yet. That was fine though, he came from a founding clan and war was a good place to get his sharingan one way or the other.
Rin liked iryonin-jutsu. She loved the subtle bite of green glow of chakra along her palms, the way everyone’s shoulder seemed to relax knowing there was a medic on the team. She knew her strengths- healing bruises, ligament tears, bone fracture, muscle wear, stab wounds (minor and major), burns, internal injury, and such. Team Minato always brought her such delightful injuries. She had never even considered one could stab themselves with a kunai from their own pouch and injure their own waist. But Obito had somehow managed that!
It had punctured his small intestine, and a slip of it showed through the wound, because despite her warnings of never removing an object that had been stabbed into you, would Obito ever listen? She fixed it, not before delivering her lecture about ‘The importance of listening to your team medic’ with relish as Obito sat with his head cast down. She had been practising that.
Or when Kakashi was developing a new jutsu, where his hands were wreathed in a blue glow of lightning. Looked untameable, if the burn scars on Kakashi’s hand were anything to go by. He couldn't really control his body while wielding that jutsu, something about speed and body’s motion and inertia and such. Rin loved her warm blood gushing in arteries and veins, and the ways the human body could survive even under conditions designed to kill them.
It was no surprise when she had to remove a wooden spike that had lodged itself in Kakashi’s forehead when he couldn't stop himself in time from running into a tree thrice bigger than him. Wounds on head always bled more than they warranted it. More blood vessels and so on. But looking Minato-sensei prance around in worry and Obito shrieking in the tandem was a tad bit too funny for her to calm them down. And with Kakashi’s adorable pout, no doubt about it since Rin was standing so close to him, she had no hurry to assure them Kakashi wasn’t in any mortal peril.
Minato-sensei himself rarely ever got injured. Most, if not all, were just minor bruises and scrapes he could bandage himself or have his very new, pretty, and cool Kushina-neesan handle it. So Rin left him alone, sent him off with a cheerful wave, as he walked gingerly towards Kushina-neesan’s house.
Kushina-neesan was a force of nature. She was brilliant with anything she set her mind to. Her speciality was fuuinjutsu. Rin felt like she should learn it, just so she could spend more time with Kushina-neesan. But, learning new ways how to heal someone without hurting them more took too much of her time to focus on a new stream. There was always a later though.
Kakashi could learn it simultaneously while perfecting his new jutsu. He was a genius after all. He could dip his hands into all streams of chakra, and have teachers scrambling around to poach him.
Then, Kakashi became a jonin and Minato-sensei was not going to be with them on this mission.
Rin was excited, nervous and a tad bit scared. Obito was alright. Kakashi was good. But there’s nothing like having Yellow Flash at your back, knowing their opponent would rather run than engage. It felt right, when Kakashi and Obito competed on who took down most enemies, when Minato-sensei stood beside her and shook his head in commiseration.
Kakashi became a jonin, ergo he was the team leader.
It was Rin’s fault. She would admit. Later she would sit and teach herself how to knit flesh together after it has been crushed. But it started in a way that Rin had no control over. Three shinobi, skilled in ninjutsu, “kidnapped” her right in front of her teammates. Had she been someone who could martyr herself for the village's sake, she would have called out to her teammates and told them to pay her no mind. But alas, she was terrified. Couldn't help but bid her time, dig her short, neat nails into the thick rope wound around her hands and feet and hope if the worst came to worst, she would be granted only death. Her body would only carry the mark that killed her. Yet, couldn't help but selfishly hope Obito and Kakashi would come to her rescue.
She knew her teammates, knew the way Obito’s heartrate was a hummingbird under her fingers as she took his pulse, and Kakashi’s beat in a steady rhythm of a soldier on a march. She knew Kakashi was a jonin, and he was the team leader. Kakashi would follow the shinobi protocol until the day he died, and the protocol dictated that a teammate who became a liability be discarded if the mission was unfinished.
Couldn't help but prick her ears at the muffled sounds outside.
Couldn't believe her eyes when Obito and Kakashi, with a slashed eye, burst in to save her. Obito had tears in his eyes, and Kakashi had blood and a mess of bandages.
Rin healed them. She was a good healer. Her teammates' shoulders relaxed when they saw her.
But the cave rumbled. And rocks fell from above. She stumbled and fell. And everything went dark.
The falling rocks stopped and she and Kakashi stared at each other through the dust between them. His eye wide and frightened as he looked around for?
Obito was beside her, wasn't he?
Rin was a good healer. But she wasn't great. Obito’s body was crushed under a rock thrice as big as him. He gripped Kakashi’s hand like a lifeline. And the medic inside Rin yelled in panic at performing an eye transplant in such an unclean environment, but the hummingbird pulse of Obito’s heart had dulled. Stuttering between each beat.
Kakashi had Obito’s eye and the mission was still unfinished.
She had heard Anko-chan say that once, something about a yield point of a material. It dictated a threshold where the material can never bounce back to its original shape. Something, something about irreversibilities occurring at atomic level, such that even though the material looked alright to you, it has been permanently altered.
As they completed their mission and turned towards the village, Rin watched the hunched back of her team leader, couldn’t help but think that this is probably what Anko meant, and yet despite being a good healer couldn't help but think ‘I can’t fix this.’
–
Region 3 : Strain Hardening, where the material undergoes molecular and structural changes, allowing it to withstand further stress until it reaches its maximum load-bearing capacity, known as the Ultimate Tensile Strength. Or, the world rests on your shoulders, it is not a world you want to be a part of, but it is the world nonetheless.
Kushina loves a lot many things. The birds that chirp outside her window every morning without fail, sizzle of chillies as it burns her mouth, the cool rush of wind atop the Hokage Monument, the weight of kunai in her bare palm, the way the knowledge of her ancestors flow across the page, and even the sprawling lines across her stomach and what they contained.
She knows what it means to have everything taken away from you, yet expected to continue living. As if there isn't something inside of you that has completely been altered. Her grandmother was a proud woman. Uzumaki Mito. She had married one of the founders of this village not out of love, but politics and desperation. Uzushio was being targeted day in night out. They had the techniques to seal a beast but no beasts to seal. Mito-baasan saw a man who could control beasts and drove her village to ally itself with that man.
She knew how to put duty above her feelings. The girl she spent her life chasing, left alone in the village that was suddenly peaceful. Life was never fair. But the same beast had been sealed inside Kushina, and despite Konoha’s promise to protect the village, Uzushio has not survived the war that Konoha was barely surviving.
When something of such a scale was compressed, it cast a pressure that could rise up to multitudes of gigapascals. To contain that kind of load, a wall that doesn't yield and a container that doesn't hold isn't useful at all. To survive, the surface requires toughness and ductility.
Thus, Kushina had promised herself that if she had to act as a container for the beast, she would allow herself to be restrained by no other bounds. She ate what she liked and spat it out when she didn't. She laughed too loudly and loved too fiercely. And didn't care for others' thoughts about her. Her world was loud, bright and full of all the things that she couldn't find inside herself.
This is the first thing they teach you when learning fuuinjutsu: a seal is only useful if it can hold things. Inside or outside, is up to your design. Basic, but people never remembered it when it actually mattered. A seal is only meant to hold. Not suppress, not overpower.
To contain a being beyond human human comprehension, first you must understand it. People whisper about holding a beast inside and how it drives the vessel mad because the human mind cannot process the scale of the entity they are housing. But they are wrong. The mind can learn all the secrets of the universe if given enough ink and paper. The madness does not come from the knowledge of the beast inside you, but from the mismatch between you and the rest of the world. This is perhaps the last thing they teach you when learning fuuinjutsu.
It is never the knowledge that kills, only the total lack of understanding around you.
When she sees Kakashi after his latest deployment, she wants nothing more than to pull him into her kitchen, sit him down by the stove, and teach him these things. She wants to show him how to let his internal boundaries expand before the strain crushes him. But she doesn't. She is not his mother, and she is not his sensei. And the boy won't so much as look at her.
The boys had postured so much when they were together, snarling over rules and sharingan and who arrived three minutes late to the training field, but Kushina had seen how they kept each other tethered. Kakashi relied on Obito's chaos to drag him out of the rigid rules of the shinobi world. And Obito relied on Kakashi’s steadiness to keep himself from floating away. Without Obito he had no one to pull him out of his head. He has Rin, yes, but Rin is a different material entirely; she knows how to carve her own space in a world that doesn't allow them room to breathe. Kushina suspects what Kakashi felt for Obito was something that he could never feel for Rin.
Kakashi has been placed in ANBU now. He wears the white mask that matches his hair, the black uniform feels too big for him. Even though Minato had personally made sure the gear would fit Kakashi’s size. Yet, when Kakashi stands in their hallway, the dark cloth hangs heavy on him.
As Minato smiles at Kakashi in their house, he doesn't understand the boy isn't allowing him to be reshaped properly. Minato doesn't understand the weight of grief and how to contain it so it doesn't shatter you. Minato was so very young when he lost his parents and his siblings. He never had to grieve for anyone who knew him so deeply, that he would ache in their absence and silence.
Minato has changed since he became the Hokage. He understands the human psyche better than anyone, uses it in fights and knows how to run his golden mouth to craft his policies for peace, but he is not very good at handling the absences.
"Just a cup, Kakashi-kun," she says, her voice filling the quiet space of the hallway, offering him the same warmth that kept her own bones from splintering years ago. "The rain is heavy tonight. Sit by the stove for five minutes." Kushina reaches out with the steaming cup of barley tea, but the boy’s porcelain mask remains perfectly level, his eye fixed on a point three inches above her shoulder.
"The protocol dictates a three-minute turnaround for internal dispatches, Uzumaki-sama," he says. And for all the things that Kakashi says, there are hundred more he doesn't. "I am already behind schedule."
He slips out of the window before the steam of the tea can even touch him, and Kushina is left holding the warm ceramic and a sense of helplessness that never really goes away.
–
Region 4 : Necking, where the material undergoes localized thinning and the stress starts to concentrate into a single, unstable zone. Or, you are living, at least that's what they tell you. You are breathing, you can feel your heart beat, but are you really living?
Kakashi had a lot of things he used to like and dislike. The smell of the soft scent of fabric as his father washed the clothes, the scent of tea wafting in their house at all times, his ninken and rolling in the mud with them, the burn of muscles after stretching them to their limits and the softness of his hands, held between his fathers.
These days Kakashi doesn't really know what he likes and he doesn't. The smell of harsh citrus from floor cleaners follows him, an effort to scrub out the scent of iron off of the tatami. His house smells of the shinobi ration he eats as breakfast, lunch and dinner, if he remembers the three meal times, if all.
Sometimes he finds himself standing in the dark corner of his kitchen, holding a half-chewed bar of dry ration, entirely unable to remember if he just took a bite or if he has been standing there since yesterday. The world around him exists when around him when he isn't paying any attention. It slips by him.
His ninken have stopped talking to him, and when Pakkun does talk to him Kakashi doesn't hear it. Perhaps, he too has given up on Kakashi.
His muscles burn all the time with some sort of fever he hasn't been able to get rid of. His body is just the skin stretched tight over his bones and the pulsing eye in his head. ‘There is more? There is more? Again?’ His body asks. But he can't seem to get into bed to get some sleep.
Instead he sits on the edge of his window sill in the dead hours of night. He watches his knuckles under the moonlight and sees the bone underneath, the tendons pulled tight. The veins an ugly blue, as they run all under his skin.
He lives between one mission and the next. The coordinates of one target and the next. He is good at assasination, as he is good at everything.
These days, he can't help but focus on things that he really ought not to focus on. A mission in the Land of Waves, he couldn't look away from the hummingbird beat of his target's pulse. The branch snapping under him, or the kunai that brushed past his head, or the man running behind him all of them felt so far away. Tiger got nicked in the stomach trying to save him, he had called Kakashi’s name twice, before using his own body as a shield to protect Kakashi’s back. There was nothing else but the rush of lighting bathed along his hand, the world washed in red. The mission was a success. Their Target dead. Another mark of victory for the Copy Ninja Kakashi.
Killing in particular, is something he is talented at. His mother, father, Obito.
Soon it might be Rin, Minato-sensei or Kushina-neesan. Everyone that Kakashi gets close to dies. Everyone he cares about dies right in front of him, for him, because of him. It really is that simple when you look at it from an outsider's perspective.
He doesn't talk to Rin. He can't. She looks at him, tries to reach out in her own way. He knows she is hurting too. Reaches out with the pretext of checking on his eye. So he has to sit under her green glowing hands and look at her. His skin crawls. Wishes a tens, hundreds, thousands of times that it was him under the rock instead. The eye in his skull squeezes as if to remind him of the boy it belonged to had dreams and hopes and love. All the things that Kakashi had never really put much thought into.
The fact that he carries Uchiha Obito’s eye is the only reason he can't go his fathers way. It eats his chakra constantly, every second reminding him that he wasn’t meant to wield it. No matter how much he tries to keep the eye closed, hidden behind his forehead protector, his porcelain mask. There is no respite to be had.
He knows he is foolish. There is nothing worthy in the droll moments of everyday life. But he will remember these moments forever. The dust swirling in the moonlight and the smell of blood that's never too far from him.
The successor of this eye will never know why the previous owner closed his sharingan at the most important moments, watching a target's head hit the ground, the breath stutter and stop, to scan the surroundings for remaining threats. But it had detailed records of grandmothers crossing streets, and cats begging for treats and the view from Hokage monument that is unchanging.
–
Region 5 : Fracture, this is the final separation of material into two or more pieces under the application of stress. Or, you break under the world that’s upon your shoulders. But you have to be up and moving, even if you are dead.
Obito doesn't understand why he is still alive. I mean, you would expect someone buried under a ton of rock to be dead. He, himself, thought he had died. It was scary for a while then his body had turned so cold he could think of nothing else but it. Uchiha never really run cold, even in the freezing Konoha winters, their body runs warm.
The world is strange apparently. Turns out Madara was still alive, there was a thing called Zetsu and Hashirama could have been a god. Well, he doesn't really understand it. But he was saved by those three things.
Coincidences and miracles are pretty rare in a world where you could control the elements with the wave of your palm. It rings out and loud in his mind as he sees Kakashi’s hand drive itself through Rin’s chest. Rin dies within seconds, his sharingan, mangekyou now, captures it perfectly. The moment Kakashi’s lightning blade crackles and thrusts into her chest, her wound cauterizes in an instant, but Kakashi aimed well, he always did. It pierced her heart.
By the time he stands still the kiri-nin around him are all dead. And Kakashi is lying beside Rin’s dead body.
Kakashi killed her?
Kakashi killed her?
Kakashi killed her.
Zetsu wants him to return to the cave. Keeps talking about how the world is unfair. And of course it is. But. He is not in the habit of leaving teammates unprotected behind enemy lines, no matter if they are oath breaking scum. Hatake Sakumo was someone Obito admired, it wouldn’t do him well to leave his son behind, when the man had broken himself to bring his teammates back.
That's what Obito does. He doesn't know how he does it, managing to keep Zetsu and incessant nagging away. But as the sky lightens around him Konoha’s border comes into view. Kakashi is an almost dead weight on his back and Rin is an actual deadweight in his arms. He really doesn't understand this world.
It is Minato-sensei who sees him first. He looks shocked and then a tentative smile breaks over his face, looking at Obito. “I spent hours searching for your body-” he reaches out to touch Obito. Until he stopped by Rin's body hanging limply between them.
“Rin? Rin!” The joy he had mustered drops as soon as he realises the hole in the center of her chest. His hands are trembling as he hauls Kakashi in his arms, his eyes never leaving Rin, Kakashi’s neck jerks around roughly as Minato-sensei yells for medics. Well now he had three deadweight students to handle, Obito thinks as his knees buckle under him.
Obito wakes up, and they tell him a month has gone by. The nurses run around in a flurry calling the Hokage and his grandmother.
Around fifteen minutes later, his grandmother is sitting beside him, her hands wrapped around his human one. She has tears in her eyes and Obito truly can't bear to see her so. He looks at the apples and the fresh flowers and card kept on his bedside table and points his chin at those.
Apparently, Minato-sensei is the Hokage now. They had a kid. And they named him Naruto, of all things. Asuma has gotten promoted. Kurenai and him have made their relationship official. Anko has left the village. No one mentions the lighting chakra outside his window.
An hour later, when Minato-sensei arrives, his grandmother has washed the apples thrice, peeled them, cut them into little bunnies and fed him over a half of it bite by bite. He doesn't really feel hunger. Hasn't felt it since he woke up in the cave. But his grandmother’s hands have stopped trembling and she looks at Obito like he is alive. So that will have to do.
“Rin's funeral... we couldn't delay it, Obito,” Minato-sensei’s voice is quiet, “her parents buried her three weeks ago. We tried to wait for you but the healers couldn't predict when you would wake up….”
Minato-sensei hesitates, looking at Obito’s grandmother's hands as she shifts the apple on the plate side to side. “Her parents, they came to see you, while you were under. But they didn't really understand what was going on. They were afraid. They thought it would be best for Rin to be buried soon, so her spirit can pass away without regrets.”
Obito couldn't look at them. Didn't want to. So he stared at the ceiling and nodded.
The evening came as visiting hours ended. His grandma hadn't really said anything, and Obito hadn't wanted her to. She had left with a warm hand, resting gently on his inhuman side. And throughout it all the lightning chakra hadn't moved.
He looked out of the hospital window, Kakashi was sitting on a branch outside the glass. Kakashi looks pathetic. And that's saying something, since Obito himself looks like he had lived in a cave for months then restrained to this hospital bed for weeks. Kakashi looks like a dog waiting for scraps of attention. He doesn't know what Kakashi wants from him. Doesn't want Kakashi’s sharp lightning chakra so close to him, not when every time he closes his eyes, he can see the flesh cauterizing around it.
Kakashi leaves when Obito turns his head away. And Obito’s shoulders feel heavier.
The next day it is Minato-sensei who notices Kakashi’s absence outside his window. “Ah. I thought this might happen. The mission report. Penned by T&I’s Ibiki Morino as Hound couldn't correctly recall the details of the mission.”
Minato-sensei waits patiently as Obito reads the mission report once, twice and thrice with the sharingan just to be sure.
“She killed herself?” the words sound strange leaving his mouth. “Used Kakashi’s chidori?”
Minato-sensei ran a hand through his hair, looking older than the Hokage monument his face had been carved on, his face twisted in something like distress. “Kakashi hasn’t reported for ANBU duty since you brought him back-”
“Youve put him in ANBU?” Obito asks sharply.
Minato-sensei doesn't look at him, as he continues, “he has been ignoring every direct order. He spends all his time sitting outside your window, until he falls from chakra exhaustion. When your grandmother couldn't manage to follow along with your medical procedures, he was the one keeping up with the nurses and doctors. He won't speak to anyone beside your grandmother.”
“You put Kakashi in ANBU? He’s fourteen!” Obito reminds Minato-sensei as if hasn't watched the boy grow up himself.
“Fifteen now. And he’s one of my best operatives, Obito. The war…. We’ve lost too many. Someone has to keep going on.”
“So you’ve put him in ANBU?” Obito’s eyebrow is raised, the side that was still his, reeling with disbelief.
After that first day of waking up, Obito didn't feel the familiar chakra haunt him anymore. Two weeks later, Obito was all set to be released. ‘No there was nothing wrong with him’, ‘yes this was permanent’, ‘no he really doesn't feel hungry or thirsty’, ‘no it doesn't hurt’, ‘can he use mokuton? He is trying to control it, dammit.’
It is only when he is out on the training ground their team had used, he feels the prickle of ozone at his back. Watching him from the darkness of trees, as if protecting him. From what? The stray dogs he had fed on the way here? One of them had a fur of grey, his bones stark against his skin, and his one eye was a milky white. Obito hadn’t been able to stop himself from turning around the corner and buying dog food.
“Come out, Kakashi,” Obito said, his voice just enough for his shadow. The leaves rustled as Kakashi steps forward. His body still half submerged in shadows, his porcelain mask, with the stripe of red, denoting him a captain hanging loosely by his belt. His head was bowed, not unlike the dogs he had just left behind.
“I don't blame you,” Obito told the space between them, the fifteen steps that Kakashi won't dare to cross. Obito could only get so close to him, “you carry my eye well.”
Kakashi’s breath hitched. A tiny sound that would have been drowned into nothingness had Obito not stepped closer to him. Thirteen steps between them.
“I don't know what Rin was thinking,” Obito keeps talking, ten steps left, “she made her choice, I suppose. No matter how much we disagree or don't understand why she did that, she isn't gonna listen to us now anyways.”
Kakashi’s shoulders hunched further as Obito stepped closer to him. “It's okay, Bakashi. You did alright, without me around.”
–
Something they don't tell you : Annealing, where a strained material is held at high temperatures to relieve its residual stress, allowing the material to reorganize itself. Or, can something that was broken go back to the way it was before? You wonder.
Every night after that day, Kakashi left the latch on his bedroom window open. First it was for the cold bite of Konoha’s air, then it was for the snug hope of Obito’s flickering chakra, then the flaming touch of Obito’s palm on his.
The first night, Kakashi had been sitting on the window sill. As he often does. The world ceases to exist around him as he looks at the trees far away, the clouds passing by lazily and the rats scampering in the bushes.
Obito had walked right up to his apartment street. Had stopped. Stared at Kakashi, staring back at him. And leaned under the spluttering light pole, that was supposed to have its bulb changed three months ago. As Tanaka-obaasan kept complaining about it every week. But the local authorities didn’t care much for this part of the town.
Kakashi had stared at the phantom across the street. Until he slipped back into his room. Hoping for the ghost to follow him. And follow he did. His shoe box apartment is on the third floor, Obito was clumsy, couldn't scale one floor without stumbling, now he lets himself through the window with a grace so unlike him, Kakashi’s breath catches in his throat.
From there it had become a regular thing. The light bulb still hasn't been replaced. And their street is only illuminated by moonlight, when it's there. And Obito didn’t need to stand under it, when Kakashi’s window was wide open.
Obito has taken up smoking. Kakashi hates the smell of cigarettes, the curl of smoke as it wounds around his ribs and settles into his lungs. But when Obito smokes, his mouth parts open on its own, tasting the dry woody smoke Obito breathes out. ‘Seven stars’ it says in bold and black. Kakashi has the sun in his room, he won't ask for stars.
Obito sits by the foot of his bed, the tip glowing a cherry red between them, until Kakashi or Obito or the smoke pulls them close, and Kakashi can not breathe in anything other than Obito. The smoke, it curls up towards the fan that he doesn't really turn on, his body runs cold. The smoke and smoker warm him. Inside out. The blood and bones in him. His eye quiets in moments like these. Like it doesn't want to be remembered.
And when Obito’s hand curls around his, his hummingbird heart settles, drinking in the nectar offered to him. Sleep is a hard mistress to keep. Obito doesn't need her and Kakashi is left wanting until Obito is with him. Kakashi never remembers falling asleep, but sleep curls around his shoulder and drags him to bed. Obito just beside him. Holding him, guiding him.
Sometimes he thinks Obito needs this more than him. The closeness. The beat of Kakashi under him. Sometimes when his heart stumbles, Obito reaches out and touches him without the smoke between them, touches him and doesn't let go. Stares at their joined hands. Holds his dry, bloodstained hands and looks at them like they're something precious. Runs his thumb over the ridges of his knuckles.
Up, down.
Up, down.
Up, down, up and repeat.