The sky gathered again
Rating: T-ish
Warnings: Bits of bad language, memories of blood and goriness.
Summary: Left or right, there's always a choice. Obito chooses to return, and the world rearranges itself from there. Part two of The Gathered Sky series, a string of non-chronological, interconnected shorts.
Word Count: ~1400
Pairings: pre-Kakashi/Obito
Disclaimer: I don’t hold the copyrights, I didn’t create them, and I make no profit from this.
Notes: So apparently this is now a chaptered story? Idk, whatever. My Obito muse keeps kicking me in the shin, so this series will mostly be written to shut her up. I'm going to jump around in the timeline, so a lot of these will be non-chronological. Bear with me.
For those who are confused, this is an AU hinging on the idea that Obito's devotion to his team (and really, with recent manga chapters this is actually fairly plausible) was enough for him to overcome or bypass the Curse. Cheers!
(Title is from Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas.)
2. The sky gathered again
It’s been months. Kakashi's grown a handful of inches-he’s taller than Obito now, which is a little strange when he’s always been the short and slender type. Like a weed, Minato-sensei jokes, eyes bright with relief and good humor. He’ll keep growing until he runs out of room.
Obito himself is the shorter one now, doesn’t seem to be growing all that much, especially for a boy of just-about-fourteen. The doctors say it’s from the trauma his body, getting partially crushed and then replaced with something entirely foreign. He’ll likely never grow much more, but Obito's fairly certain he can live with it-mostly because that he’s even alive to live it is a strange and wonderful thing.
The doctors come and go, whispering behind hands and clipboards as they poke and prod and study, but Obito can't fault them for it. He looks at himself, the skin of his chest, and sees the sharp division as it changes shades, a patchwork body pieced together by a madman. There's no understanding it, really-the nearest he can guess is that Madara thought he’d take up the banner, though it is…suspicious that Rin’s death came so shortly after their conversation about that dreamland utopia.
(But he can't think of that, won't-he’s already told Minato-sensei the details, watched his face turn dark and grim, and he can't bear to think beyond that, because she’s dead and he can't help but wonder-)
Kakashi stays, which is perhaps the most surprising thing about the whole situation. He’s there when Obito drifts to sleep at night, and he’s there when Obito wakes in the morning. If he ever leaves at all, Obito never witnesses it, though surely he must. Still, it’s a pleasant comfort, friendship where before there was only a race, Kakashi in the lead and Obito behind, trying to catch up desperately, desperately. It’s been that way for as long as they’ve known each other, Kakashi the genius and Obito the failure, but that’s all changing now, and Obito relishes it even as it twists him up in knots of confusion.
This isn't how it’s supposed to be. This isn't how it’s always been, and the change is enough to throw him off entirely.
He wakes one night from dreams of blood and corpses and branches like impaling fingers, like his fingers, stabbing straight through bone and muscle and delicate skin. Of death and murder and the moon hanging bloated and heavy and sullen above him, merciless with its pale light. He comes to shaking and gasping, tears running down his cheek, and hatred has never been something that Obito was good at-loyalty is better, trust and faith and blind devotion but never outright abhorrence-but he can see how it would have happened, if his eyes hadn’t fallen on Kakashi's weak-pale body at that moment. Rage and revulsion at a cruel and careless world had filled him then, underneath the cold moon, and even an ounce less devotion to his team would have hurled him headlong into the Curse of Hatred.
Obito is terrified to think that he could hate like that, that there was even the faintest possibility that he could have turned to Madara and followed him, given the old and dying man his devotion instead of Minato-sensei and Kakashi. It scares him all the more because it’s so very possible, and he shakes harder at the though.
But there are hands on his, in his, fingers around his wrist gripping to the point of a grounding pain. Obito raises his eyes-eye, eye, there's only one now-to meet the dark grey gaze fixed almost desperately on his face.
“Obito,” Kakashi says, the rough edge of hastily shed sleep in his voice. “Obito, stop, you're fine.”
He’s not-he’s a patchwork monster, bastardized form of a Senju body and half of an Uchiha's eyes, pieced together haphazardly and only maintained by Obito's own stubborn will. Obito rakes his hands through his hair-long, too long, longer than it’s ever been because he usually chops it all off himself with a knife and a mirror, since there's never been anyone to do it for him-and laughs, the sound strained and wild.
“Fuck,” he says, and the curse sounds good, feels good, a heartbeat of release before the tension comes crashing back down again. “What the hell am I? Kakashi, what am I?”
There's a feeling under his skin, branches rising up and breaking through, a vast forest inside of him that’s tossed by some fierce wind, rebelling and creeping past the boundaries of his control. It’s control he’s never had to have, before, because then he was just an Uchiha, and a poor one at that, not even the Sharingan to his name.
Now he’s got one half of a Mangekyo, one half of Senju Hashirama’s cells, and no idea what to do with either.
There's a hand around the back of his neck, pulling hi forward. Obito goes with it, lets Kakashi press his face into black cloth and wrap an awkward arm around his shoulders and twist his fingers in Obito's hair. The touch of someone else’s hand is very nearly overwhelming, because Obito is entirely unused to such things-he’s never known his parents, not even who they were, and the Uchiha clan is more military base than family home, at least in regards to him. Minato-sensei’s infrequent hair-ruffles are the closest he’s come to this, and this is…entirely different, though he can't exactly say why.
But Kakashi is warm, almost to the point of hot, and it eats away at the coldness growing in Obito's heart like some kind of beneficial acid, sharp and painful but good.
“You're Obito,” Kakashi answers, arm and hand unmoving even though Obito's mostly stopped shaking now. “You're a loser who can't get anywhere on time and almost choked to death on a piece of candy in the chuunin exams and you're my teammate. You're Obito.”
It’s harder than it should be, but Obito draws a heavy, shuddering breath and closes his eye, pretends that he can't feel the tear leaking down his cheek because he’s supposed to be a shinobi, supposed to be strong. But no one can see them here, and he knows instinctively that Kakashi won't say anything to anyone.
He trusts Kakashi, trusts him with his eye and his sanity and his life and everything else, and it’s not a new thing. Without Kakashi, without this…
Well. Obito knows himself, knows his depth of devotion, and can only think that he’d be firmly in Madara’s grasp if not for his rival and first-best-friend.
“I heard,” he says carefully, hesitant in this as he isn't in anything else, “I heard that one Sharingan alone is strong, but two together are a hundred times better.”
Kakashi's always been good at reading between the lines, see through masks. His grip on Obito tightens just a little bit, finders winding deeper in his messy hair, and he pauses. Then, carefully careless, he offers, “Guess we’ll have to stick together then. Because I'm going to be the best, even if I have to drag you along with me.”
“Idiot Kakashi,” Obito mutters, and if he’s grinning, well-Kakashi can't see it, so who cares? “Who said anything about dragging me? I’ll become the best first, and you’ll have to catch up with me!”
Warnings: Bits of bad language, memories of blood and goriness.
Summary: Left or right, there's always a choice. Obito chooses to return, and the world rearranges itself from there. Part two of The Gathered Sky series, a string of non-chronological, interconnected shorts.
Word Count: ~1400
Pairings: pre-Kakashi/Obito
Disclaimer: I don’t hold the copyrights, I didn’t create them, and I make no profit from this.
Notes: So apparently this is now a chaptered story? Idk, whatever. My Obito muse keeps kicking me in the shin, so this series will mostly be written to shut her up. I'm going to jump around in the timeline, so a lot of these will be non-chronological. Bear with me.
For those who are confused, this is an AU hinging on the idea that Obito's devotion to his team (and really, with recent manga chapters this is actually fairly plausible) was enough for him to overcome or bypass the Curse. Cheers!
(Title is from Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas.)
2. The sky gathered again
It’s been months. Kakashi's grown a handful of inches-he’s taller than Obito now, which is a little strange when he’s always been the short and slender type. Like a weed, Minato-sensei jokes, eyes bright with relief and good humor. He’ll keep growing until he runs out of room.
Obito himself is the shorter one now, doesn’t seem to be growing all that much, especially for a boy of just-about-fourteen. The doctors say it’s from the trauma his body, getting partially crushed and then replaced with something entirely foreign. He’ll likely never grow much more, but Obito's fairly certain he can live with it-mostly because that he’s even alive to live it is a strange and wonderful thing.
The doctors come and go, whispering behind hands and clipboards as they poke and prod and study, but Obito can't fault them for it. He looks at himself, the skin of his chest, and sees the sharp division as it changes shades, a patchwork body pieced together by a madman. There's no understanding it, really-the nearest he can guess is that Madara thought he’d take up the banner, though it is…suspicious that Rin’s death came so shortly after their conversation about that dreamland utopia.
(But he can't think of that, won't-he’s already told Minato-sensei the details, watched his face turn dark and grim, and he can't bear to think beyond that, because she’s dead and he can't help but wonder-)
Kakashi stays, which is perhaps the most surprising thing about the whole situation. He’s there when Obito drifts to sleep at night, and he’s there when Obito wakes in the morning. If he ever leaves at all, Obito never witnesses it, though surely he must. Still, it’s a pleasant comfort, friendship where before there was only a race, Kakashi in the lead and Obito behind, trying to catch up desperately, desperately. It’s been that way for as long as they’ve known each other, Kakashi the genius and Obito the failure, but that’s all changing now, and Obito relishes it even as it twists him up in knots of confusion.
This isn't how it’s supposed to be. This isn't how it’s always been, and the change is enough to throw him off entirely.
He wakes one night from dreams of blood and corpses and branches like impaling fingers, like his fingers, stabbing straight through bone and muscle and delicate skin. Of death and murder and the moon hanging bloated and heavy and sullen above him, merciless with its pale light. He comes to shaking and gasping, tears running down his cheek, and hatred has never been something that Obito was good at-loyalty is better, trust and faith and blind devotion but never outright abhorrence-but he can see how it would have happened, if his eyes hadn’t fallen on Kakashi's weak-pale body at that moment. Rage and revulsion at a cruel and careless world had filled him then, underneath the cold moon, and even an ounce less devotion to his team would have hurled him headlong into the Curse of Hatred.
Obito is terrified to think that he could hate like that, that there was even the faintest possibility that he could have turned to Madara and followed him, given the old and dying man his devotion instead of Minato-sensei and Kakashi. It scares him all the more because it’s so very possible, and he shakes harder at the though.
But there are hands on his, in his, fingers around his wrist gripping to the point of a grounding pain. Obito raises his eyes-eye, eye, there's only one now-to meet the dark grey gaze fixed almost desperately on his face.
“Obito,” Kakashi says, the rough edge of hastily shed sleep in his voice. “Obito, stop, you're fine.”
He’s not-he’s a patchwork monster, bastardized form of a Senju body and half of an Uchiha's eyes, pieced together haphazardly and only maintained by Obito's own stubborn will. Obito rakes his hands through his hair-long, too long, longer than it’s ever been because he usually chops it all off himself with a knife and a mirror, since there's never been anyone to do it for him-and laughs, the sound strained and wild.
“Fuck,” he says, and the curse sounds good, feels good, a heartbeat of release before the tension comes crashing back down again. “What the hell am I? Kakashi, what am I?”
There's a feeling under his skin, branches rising up and breaking through, a vast forest inside of him that’s tossed by some fierce wind, rebelling and creeping past the boundaries of his control. It’s control he’s never had to have, before, because then he was just an Uchiha, and a poor one at that, not even the Sharingan to his name.
Now he’s got one half of a Mangekyo, one half of Senju Hashirama’s cells, and no idea what to do with either.
There's a hand around the back of his neck, pulling hi forward. Obito goes with it, lets Kakashi press his face into black cloth and wrap an awkward arm around his shoulders and twist his fingers in Obito's hair. The touch of someone else’s hand is very nearly overwhelming, because Obito is entirely unused to such things-he’s never known his parents, not even who they were, and the Uchiha clan is more military base than family home, at least in regards to him. Minato-sensei’s infrequent hair-ruffles are the closest he’s come to this, and this is…entirely different, though he can't exactly say why.
But Kakashi is warm, almost to the point of hot, and it eats away at the coldness growing in Obito's heart like some kind of beneficial acid, sharp and painful but good.
“You're Obito,” Kakashi answers, arm and hand unmoving even though Obito's mostly stopped shaking now. “You're a loser who can't get anywhere on time and almost choked to death on a piece of candy in the chuunin exams and you're my teammate. You're Obito.”
It’s harder than it should be, but Obito draws a heavy, shuddering breath and closes his eye, pretends that he can't feel the tear leaking down his cheek because he’s supposed to be a shinobi, supposed to be strong. But no one can see them here, and he knows instinctively that Kakashi won't say anything to anyone.
He trusts Kakashi, trusts him with his eye and his sanity and his life and everything else, and it’s not a new thing. Without Kakashi, without this…
Well. Obito knows himself, knows his depth of devotion, and can only think that he’d be firmly in Madara’s grasp if not for his rival and first-best-friend.
“I heard,” he says carefully, hesitant in this as he isn't in anything else, “I heard that one Sharingan alone is strong, but two together are a hundred times better.”
Kakashi's always been good at reading between the lines, see through masks. His grip on Obito tightens just a little bit, finders winding deeper in his messy hair, and he pauses. Then, carefully careless, he offers, “Guess we’ll have to stick together then. Because I'm going to be the best, even if I have to drag you along with me.”
“Idiot Kakashi,” Obito mutters, and if he’s grinning, well-Kakashi can't see it, so who cares? “Who said anything about dragging me? I’ll become the best first, and you’ll have to catch up with me!”