t couldn't be Obito. Except it was. The prisoner knew everything that had happened that day.
Obito was *dead*.
Kakashi could have stood there gaping for hours, but as shock wore off--quickly, as it had to for ninja--he realized he wasn't particularly elegant, and he couldn't hide the expression behind his mask. The mask was back at the inn.
"You look," Obito said, cocking his head, ". . . older."
"You're alive."
Obito scrunched his face up. "No s**t. I've *been* alive for the past seventeen years."
"Less than that," Kakashi murmured.
"Not by much," Obito said, words turning angry as he spoke. He lunged, reaching through the bars with his good hand, clawing for Kakashi's shirt--but falling short. "You son of a b***h! You were supposed to come *back* for me!"
"You were *dead*!" Kakashi bellowed.
"They tried to crush me with *rock*! They were *rock ninja*! You don't think that maybe--*maybe*--they might have had a special anti-rock jutsu?" The Sharingan eye flashed, blood red. The other eye remained covered, gone. "That maybe a bloodline limit like this could *interest* them just a little?"
Kakashi's stomach turned. "We have to get you out of here," he said quietly.
Desperation burned away the anger. "Yes," Obito said hoarsely. "Now, *please*, now."
Kakashi stepped close, examining Obito once more with the Sharingan, just to make sure. It wasn't a henge. It wasn't a clone. It wasn't a henge'd clone. He unlocked the door and let it swing open. Obito, who'd been leaning on the bars, nearly fell. Kakashi took a quick step forward to catch him, a bony shoulder landing hard against his chest.
"What happened to you?" Kakashi looped an arm around skinny ribs and lifted.
"I was buried by a ton of falling rock and then locked in a cell for seventeen years," Obito ground out. He glared up. "And you look like s**t."
Kakashi startled, looking down into the scarred face. "You're one to talk."
Obito glared. It was the same furious, impotent glare he'd had at thirteen. Kakashi grinned. Obito glared harder.
The door at the opposite end of the lab opened. Kakashi looked up and saw two men--one a ninja--staring at him in surprise. "You're all idiots," he said, and started walking toward them, practically carrying Obito.
"Grab him!" the civilian said, pointing. "We need those eyes!"
Kakashi snorted. From the way the rock ninja moved, he was barely Chuunin. Hired help, obviously--and not well paid, since they didn't lock him up effectively. "Didn't it occur to you," he asked nonchalantly, "that if I had a Sharingan, I was probably shinobi?"
The rock ninja looked at the civilian. The civilian looked at the ninja.
"Oh for pete's sake," Kakashi muttered. "Can you stand on your own?" he asked Obito.
Obito glanced around, then broke free and hobbled until he could lean against a wall. "Please, proceed with the killing. Preferably painfully."
Kakashi gave Obito a sharp look, but at the raw hate on the other man's face supposed that seventeen years of being a specimen might make someone a little bitter. Even someone like Obito.
He proceeded with the killing. It wasn't as painful as it could have been, but it was painful enough.
"There'll be more rock ninja," Obito said, arm around Kakashi's shoulder as they made their way out of the cellar. "There always are."
"Then we need to move fast," Kakashi said simply. He suited actions to words.
**
"They'll be looking for me," Obito murmured, curled on the bed in Kakashi's room, trying to look like he wasn't in agony.
Kakashi eyed him and didn't ask if he was all right. Everyone had pride, and the Uchiha had pride enough for everyone. "What can I do?" he asked instead, voice as matter-of-fact as he could make it.
"Get me out of here," Obito answered instantly. "We have to run. We have to--"
"We'll get out of here. In the morning," Kakashi said firmly.
"Now!" Obito nearly yelled. "We have to go before they--I'm not going back to that--!"
"No. You're not going back to that." Kakashi made his voice final, almost bored. He still couldn't wrap his brain around the idea that Obito wasn't dead, was in fact very much alive, but he was managing. Slowly.
Seeing Obito as nearly thirty, rather than thirteen, and . . . scarred, was difficult. It had been night when they'd left the cells. They'd returned to the room and Kakashi had flipped on the lights before he'd gotten his first real look at Obito. It wasn't the round-faced child he'd known, anger and frustration constantly turning pale skin pink. This was an adult with hollow cheeks and a sharp jawline, one half of his body twisted and broken, a single scar running through the other eye. Kakashi's eye.
Now, he glanced over the other man clinically, trying to stay detached. Most of Obito's pain seemed to be coming from his leg. Kakashi sat gingerly on the bed and watched the chakra patterns, hoping it might tell him something. "Did they even bother setting this?" he muttered at last, realizing the scars and pain were all old.
Obito breathed a humorless laugh. "Of course not. They didn't want me trying to escape." He looked around sharply with his one working eye, jumpy and near panic. He kept rubbing his thigh, fingers curled into a fist.
Kakashi cupped his hands around Obito's knee, funneling chakra into the twisted limb. He felt Obito stop moving, felt the regard of that one-eyed gaze.
"What are you doing?" Obito asked in a hushed tone.
"Pain management," Kakashi murmured. He kept his concentration on the way the other man's chakra felt, on smoothing out the spikes and jagged edges of scarred pathways. He felt it when Obito relaxed, heard a deep breath drawn and released. The muscles, knotted painfully, began to ease.
When Obito spoke again his voice had faded, leaving him sounding brittle and faint. "How do you know about that?"
Kakashi tied off the ends of power and looked up. "Your Sharingan. During the last war I made it a point to learn all the medical jutsu I could manage . . ." He stopped, watching Obito blink exaggeratedly in an effort to keep his eye open. "You should sleep," he said, wondering how long it had been since the man had slept painlessly.
"I'm fine," Obito answered. "We should go."
"We're safe here," Kakashi said with a frown and a shake of his head. "We'll leave in the morning."
Obito's good eye flashed. "Safe here? *Here*? In the room you were kidnapped out of?"
That was a rather annoying fact. "They drugged my food," he said blandly. "I wasn't expecting it. I am now."
"And I should just believe you?" Obito said, voice rising. "You've got to be kidding! Did you even get to *remain* a Jounin with one eye?"
Kakashi's eyebrow twitched. He understood stress, but really. "Oddly enough," he said blandly, "I did."
Obito opened his mouth, expression still annoyed, and Kakashi interrupted before he could snarl something else. "I'm sorry," the Copy Ninja said smoothly, "I wasn't aware being *rid* of pain would make you grumpy. Do you need a nap?" He smiled as condescendingly as he could. Every muscle in Obito's shoulders and neck tensed. Kakashi regretted the words.
Just a little, though.
"Thank you," Obito said through gritted teeth.
An uncomfortable silence fell, draping over them like molasses. "You should sleep," Kakashi repeated again when Obito blinked several times at the far wall.
The man, old before his years, Kakashi thought, closed his eyes tightly. His Adam's apple bobbed. "Can't," he murmured, and his eyes opened again. He stared intently at the wall and the closed window.
"Can't?" Kakashi asked.
A look flashed over Obito's features, but was gone before Kakashi could identify it. "Can't. If I sleep, when I wake up this might be--you might--" Pale skin went ashen. Obito didn't move. "Can't."
"Obito," Kakashi said slowly, "I'm not going to leave."
"Won't have a choice," Obito whispered. Kakashi didn't think the other man was speaking to him anymore. "I'll wake up and it'll all be gone, and I'll be back . . . *again*."
Kakashi shoved his hands in his pockets, keeping the traitorous things from reaching out. "Obito. This isn't a dream. I'm not going to let them take you."
"It was a dream before," the Uchiha said, black eye flinching with pain only he could feel. "Every damn time." His lip curled. He kept staring at the wall. "Only I was always dead . . ."
With a chill, Kakashi thought of his hallucinations. But no. Those were just that--hallucinations. Nothing more. He marched to the other side of the bed, planting himself between Obito and the wall, grabbing a twisted and scarred face and yanking the man's gaze up to his. "This *is not* a dream. I *am not* going to leave. Feel that?" He squeezed. "Dreams don't feel that way."
Obito stared at him, eyes going slowly wide. "You are *still* a son of a b***h," he said with wonder in his voice.
Kakashi smirked. "I try. Now, we can't travel far if you're injured *and* exhausted. You *must* sleep."
Obito watched him out of a single uncovered eye, opposite to Kakashi's. "You'll stay here," he said, the words falling somewhere between question and statement.
Kakashi nodded.
Obito took a long, shuddering breath. Kakashi let him go when he relaxed back into the mattress, eyes falling shut. It took a long time--every few seconds Obito's eyes would slit open to make sure Kakashi was there--but eventually the man's breathing evened out, and he slept.
He slept lightly. When Kakashi so much as shifted, Obito woke, terror plain on his face for a brilliant second before he saw Kakashi again and settled.
It was a long night.
**
Obito was asleep nearly fourteen hours later, when the rumbling of Kakashi's stomach necessitated finding food.
Obito was awake fourteen hours and thirty-three minutes later, when Kakashi returned with something gelatinous that he had been assured was food-*like*, if not actual food.
Obito's eye was wide and staring, and he'd hobbled over to the window, now thrown open, to stare outside. He turned an accusing gaze on Kakashi, panic flushing his white cheeks. "You *left*!"
Kakashi lifted the food. "Breakfast."
"You *left*!" Obito yelled again.
Kakashi frowned slightly. He'd only been gone for a short time, and he hadn't expected the other man to wake. He'd even brought back food, and now he was getting screamed at. Obito was a ninja, damn it. "I'm sorry," Kakashi said, not feeling in the least sorry. "I was hungry. I brought enough for you."
"You said you wouldn't *leave* and you *left*!" Obito bellowed, scooping up a pitcher off the nightstand and hurling it.
Kakashi sidestepped and it smashed rather impressively against the wall behind him. He looked at the pieces on the floor. Water caught in the slats between the wood and spread. He looked up at Obito and asked dryly, "Would it make you feel better to hit me?"
"Yes!" Obito snarled, leaning against things as he made his laborious way back to the cot.
Kakashi frowned. Damn. He hadn't expected that response. "Well . . . you can't," he said finally.
Obito shot him a foul look, then dropped his gaze to where he was putting his feet.
"Since you're up," Kakashi drawled, wandering over and sitting gingerly on the mattress as Obito lowered himself on the other side, "eat something. We'll get going, be back in Konoha in just a few days." He handed Obito the gelatinous mass and then spent several minutes looking at the twisted leg, tracing chakra patterns again.
The work from the night before was gone. The scarring and spikes were all back, dragging obvious pain through raw channels. Kakashi gave a small sigh and formed seals, focusing his chakra bright and hard through his hands, then releasing it into Obito's leg. He solidified it as the edges smoothed, forcing Obito's chakra to run the pathways Kakashi made.
"Hey," Obito hissed through clenched teeth.
"Sorry," Kakashi mumbled back, intent on his work.
"Hey. Hey! Ow!"
"I know. I'm sorry," Kakashi repeated. Flesh moved as he watched, tendons and muscles twisting into something approximating correct, working around the badly healed bones.
"Ah! a*****e!" Obito shouted, hands clenching into fists in the sheets, tears burning his single good eye.
"It's a field dressing," Kakashi muttered through his focus. "It'll make you able to walk better. It'll stop hurting soon." At that, Obito fell silent. The man's chakra rushed and snarled, though, beating against the blocks Kakashi jammed into place. Finally, it was solid enough that he knew Obito's energy wouldn't tear it down--at least, not right away. He stopped, feeling his muscles relax, and glanced up.
Blood slid down Obito's chin, caught in the scars and dripped off at an angle. His lip, snagged between his teeth, was red with it.
"I'm sorry," Kakashi repeated, grabbing the corner of a blanket and wiping off the man's face.
Obito yanked back, grabbed the cloth himself, and scrubbed. "It's fine," he said, voice husky.
It wasn't, but Kakashi didn't say so. It wasn't his place to say what Obito could and couldn't deal with. "Try standing," he said instead, and stepped away to give the Uchiha room.
Obito pushed past the forgotten breakfast and gingerly put both legs on the floor. The right leg was still badly twisted, would be until they could re-break and jutsu the hell out of it, but the tendons, ligaments and muscles had been pulled into a better position. Slowly, Obito put weight on it.
It held.
"Whoa." Obito took a half step, then another, watching his feet.
Kakashi moved aside again, smiling grimly at his work. "Good," he said simply. Then, "We should go."
Obito nodded. "Get me out of here," he said, the near-desperation returning. "I want to go home."
**
They were much, much slower than Kakashi had anticipated. Even with the muscles and tendons working better, Obito could only go so fast--and what strength he'd had at thirteen had vanished over the years, leaving him weak and feeble. They couldn't move quicker than a jog, and had to drop to a walk every few minutes. Kakashi tried not to push, watching Obito's face go more and more ashen, his lips tightening farther into a pale line. It made him anxious.
He stopped them at lunchtime, his desire to get farther away overridden by the fact that if Obito couldn't keep going at all, they'd move even *slower*.
He watched the other man collapse to the ground, leaning against a pale gray boulder. Obito glanced up, then away, shamefaced. "I'm fine," he said, sounding like he was convincing himself.
Kakashi debated. They didn't have time for false heroics, but if he didn't *need* to shatter what was left of Obito's spirit . . . Eventually, he just nodded. "All right." He could keep them safe until they were home. He *didn't* need to damage Obito.
But Obito only tensed further, glaring at the rock as if it had committed a cardinal sin.
Kakashi pulled Icha Icha out of his scroll-pocket and flipped it open, staring at the pages to disguise the fact that he was watching for enemies.
"What is that?" Obito asked wearily.
Kakashi glanced at him. "Icha Icha Paradise." When Obito looked blank, he added, "Soft porn."
Pale cheeks flushed. Kakashi's eyebrow rose. *That* was an entertaining reaction. Then he realized that Obito hadn't really had human contact of any sort since he'd been thirteen. A little young to do . . . anything.
It brought with it a wave of guilt. They should have gone back. They should have made sure he was either alive or dead. They've shouldn't have assumed. He could blame the Fourth, say that if the Fourth assumed Obito was dead, Kakashi couldn’t have been expected to think otherwise . . . but he should have gone back.
"You going to stand there giving the book turtle-faces, or you going to let me see?" Obito demanded loudly.
Kakashi jumped, caught mentally elsewhere. Then he smiled brightly and handed the book over.
Obito snatched it, settling back against the boulder and opening to the first page. He did his best to not react, Kakashi could tell, but his blood was traitorous. His face kept turning pink. Watching Obito try to not-react was almost entertaining enough to distract Kakashi from guarding.
Almost.
He spun to one side as a barrage of kunai whipped past. One was aimed too close to Obito; Kakashi slapped it with the palm of his hand, drawing a line of blood, and watched it skitter over stone.
The three Rock ninja came at them silently, no banter, no wit, nothing but edges and steel. Kakashi heard Obito scramble to his feet, but discounted the other man. Even if the Uchiha thought to use the Sharingan to copy jutsu, he didn't have the chakra control anymore to be able to use the techniques. Kakashi had seen that simply watching him stumble over rock.
He wasn't going to be any help.
The first Rock ninja closed with him rapidly, moving too fast for the naked eye to see. Any naked eye except another Jounin's. Kakashi whipped around, tried a kick quicker than the man was moving, missed, and continued the turn, changing it so he could pull a weapon and fling it at the ninja headed for Obito. The man dodged and altered his path, but was still rounding on the last non-treasonous Uchiha.
Kakashi wasn't going to get there in time; not with two other Jounin closing on him.
Sharingan spinning madly, Obito managed to get out of the way at the last minute. A hail of senbon missed him by centimeters. Kakashi leapt, ripping chakra through his pathways, hands forming seals fluidly. Getting the water to come through the rock took more power than he'd expected; getting it to come as fast as he needed took more still. But when the wall of liquid shot upward, sending stone and gravel flying ahead of it, it was worth it.
None of the Rock ninja knew what to do with a wall of water, and the protective circle gave Kakashi enough time to regroup.
Three of them. Three Jounin, no nonsense shinobi, against him and Obito. He glanced at the Uchiha, braced on his good leg and one hand, panting and staring, wide-eyed, at the water. He was going to have to *protect* Obito. Three ninja against him, and he had a handicap. Damn it.
Water poured down on them, ice-cold from having lain dormant far below the ground. It dripped down his back, hitting him in giant, heavy drops, plastering his clothes to his body, dragging his hair down into his face. He could see every one of Obito's ribs. "It'll be fine," he said, watching bones heave as Obito pulled air into his lungs, eye wide and panicked, spinning red.
The water was starting to dissipate. Kakashi grabbed his scroll, tearing through his thumb and painting the paper red with blood. Muttered words and specific seals, and two large dogs entered reality with a pop of displaced air.
"Protect him," Kakashi said, drawing several kunai and wrapping an exploding note around one. He could see shapes through the water wall, now, and knew they could see him just as well.
They couldn't see an exploding tag, though.
He threw a barrage of kunai, adding a great deal more force than he'd normally need. They punched through the water without changing course, flying straight toward one of the figures. The shape leapt, avoiding all of the missiles. Then the tag exploded. That single kunai shattered, the blast carrying all the other kunai with it, spinning them off in wild directions. One man dropped, screaming.
Kakashi took a deep breath and dove through the water wall as it finally fell apart. He came through on the other side with the Chidori blazing. The uninjured ninja cursed and leapt away, to the top of a boulder that Kakashi promptly hit. The rock shattered brilliantly, and the shinobi spun through the air, twisting to land upright, skidding twenty feet before finally stopping. Kakashi was about to hit him again, summoning chakra for another jutsu, when the earth erupted out from under him. One moment he stood, the next he was falling into a tunnel and the world was closing over his head. As the darkness became complete he scrambled for a solution, snapping both arms out in a vain attempt to hit the sides and slow his fall.
There were no sides.
If he kept falling, no amount of chakra strengthening the bones of his legs would keep them from shattering. He needed--he needed--damn it! He ran through the elements in his mind, casting jutsu types aside as useless. Fire, water, earth--
Air.
Kakashi formed seals and bellowed the words, releasing his chakra into the tunnel explosively.
Wind began to slow his fall. The breeze became a tornado, and he was shot back upward. He streamlined his body, twisting to go back up feet-first, hoping the ninja hadn't sealed the hole over *too* thickly.
There was a certain element of luck to being a ninja. Kakashi's had always been good.
His heels hit stone, and chakra-reinforced bones compacted and held under the smash of body and wind against rock. Then the rock cracked, and he was pinwheeling into the sky, sucking in great lungfuls of air as the wind, now able to travel in all directions, dissipated. He twisted as he began to fall again.
"Son of a b***h!" he heard a man snarl, and looked around as he plummeted. The injured ninja stared at him, a look of supreme frustration on his face. Kakashi formed seals and blew a fireball at the man, crashing back to the ground as he did so. There was more screaming. Having almost been buried alive, he didn't feel so bad.
A dog yelped. Kakashi twisted in time to see one ninja fighting off his mastiff, and the other stalking Obito, who backpedaled rapidly.
"Look," the stalker said, "we'd rather have you alive than dead. The eye's still useful. Just come along--"
Kakashi snatched a fistful of senbon and threw them. The stalker leapt out of range, shooting an annoyed look over his shoulder and reaching for some sort of weapon. The Copy Ninja was debating on another fire jutsu when his mastiff screamed.
The third Jounin yanked a broadsword out from the dog's stomach, eyes hard. Two canine bodies lay perfectly still.
Kakashi's eyes narrowed, and he focused all the chakra he could into the fireball, cupping both hands and shoving it forward, dropping to one knee as the mini-explosion tried to force him backward.
"Kakashi!" he heard out of a strangled, hoarse voice. He swept around and saw the ninja whipping a rope around. As it arced, the air shimmered and turned silver, and suddenly Kakashi could see *through* it to . . . it looked like cells.
The portal was between him and Obito, and the ninja stood beyond the Uchiha. Anything he threw wouldn't hit. No blasts. Something from behind--
The man swung the rope again, and it swept up and over them, beginning to drop, the portal with it, over the two men.
Obito yelled, chakra burning brightly as tangled fingers formed seals and he threw himself up and away.
The earth opened beneath the Rock ninja and, screaming, the man fell. Boulders closed over the hole.
Kakashi stared. The earth moved, and Obito's face paled as he fed chakra into the jutsu, holding the form against whatever the ninja did inside.
Falling. The ninja was falling. Kakashi knew it suddenly, realized it was the same jutsu that had been used on him. Used by a highly focused, well-trained Jounin.
He whipped around to stare at Obito just as the man's single red eye flickered and went out, fading to black before rolling up into his head.
Obito hit the ground before Kakashi could reach him.
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