I write a lot of AUs, and also just in general. A lot of it is too short, bad, or weird for AO3, so I post them here. For ease of access, I'll put links to every short story here. Those that belong to a greater AU will be sorted under the AU. Miscellanea will be posted just under the fandom. They will be ordered in a mix of size and chronology.
4-26-22 EDIT: I changed my URL, so I changed the links to suit the new URL. If I missed anything and any of the links are still broken, please let me know so I can fix it!
Fic under the cut.
MARVEL
Best Life
A pseudo fusion of the MCU, 1970s-80s Marvel Comics, and completely made up backstories. Exclusively utilizes the lamest superheroes I could find, including Moon Knight.
AO3 Fics [Starring Moon Knight]:
Mens Rea
Good Luck, Jake!
and Letter Column, an AO3 collection of the side stories listed below and more.
Side Stories [Starring other lame people, and sometimes Moon Knight being lame again]:
Dr. Strange Works Retail and Peter Parker Makes a Multiversal Mistake
Ghost Rider visits the Hell DMV
Colleen Wing and the Immortal Iron Fist Participate In A Cultural Exchange Program During The Weirdest Spring Break Ever
Moon Knight: Marc & Steven Meet Jake; Realize Youngest Siblings Are The Worst
Worldbuilding Notes & Meta
Matt Murdock: Ninja Union Organizer & Normal Guy
Assorted Marvel AUs
Moon Knight AU where Jake's the worst teenager you've met in your life; Jake Plays Minecraft, Marcâs a Wine Mom, and Frenchie & Layla Meet a Serial Killer
And companion piece Jake Stays Up Past His Bedtime, Meets His Contemporaries, and Wants a Dog So Fucking Bad.
STAR WARS
Roleswap AU
Roleswap AU set from the Clone Wars era to three years after ROTS. Family is found and lost. Children grow up and become angsty teenagers. Badly parented children become bad parents. Child soldiers become pirates. Local kitten adopted by pack of wolves thinks it's a wolf.
AKA: Rogue Jedi, Rogue Queen, and Rogue Clone go on a space adventure to rescue a dad, cry instead.
AO3 Fics:
Reel to Reel
Less Than Zero
SIDE STORIES:
Cody POV Interquel of Less Than Zero
Obligatory Canon Crossover
Mandalorian Crossover
Book of Boba Fett Crossover
[REDACTED] POV of Clone Liberation
NO CHIP AU: An extensive detail of situations in which, hypothetically, many people would be very bad parents.
I have officially done an entire rewrite of this series and posted it to AO3, which I am linking here! It is better, more coherent, and more complex than the stories here. There are also two extra POV stories. If you are at all interested in reading the rewrite instead, please skip reading these stories for right now (ESPECIALLY More Than Zero!!!!). If you're just a little interested, or don't know if you want to check out the full thing, then go ahead and check out the Order 66 story and see if you want to dive into the rewrite. Additionally, if you're interested in that kind of thing, then feel free to check out the stories here AFTER they're done being published and see the differences. The differences should illuminate a lot. I am leaving these stories up here for posterity.
TL;DR Read the rewrite on AO3, unless you don't want to, in that case go ahead. I'm not your mom. But if you're sure you want to read the rewrite, I very highly reccomend waiting.
Order 66: More Like A Suggestion This Time
Bly: The Perfect Boyfriend?
MORE than Zero?
Torture Adventures of Rex, Supernanny
SW:Rebels Depa Bilaba vs. Cartoon Villain Cody
Fox Takes A Really Nice Nap and what Mace Windu does during the nap
Rex, Padme, and Ahsoka's zany family hijinks
REALLY COOL SHIT THAT OTHER PEOPLE DID THAT I LIKE A LOT
@bobafett's Interquel Outsider POV
@nirelaz SUPER DOPE fanart of Ben & Blanche and another one!
OTHER STAR WARS
Boba Fett's childhood existential crisis
Fox & Leia's Holiday Special - this one is a less depressing AU of my other work Twilight on Owl Creek Bridge.
Obi-Wan is a depressed teen dad
Fishhooks (Jango Fett obtains a mail-order child, regrets it highly when child adopts two million clones)
AOTC Continuation of Fishhooks, just to make Obi-Wan Kenobi confused and miserable
THE MAGNUS ARCHIVES
(oh boy...)
WEB!JON AU
AO3 FICS:
Sucker's Bet
The technical nonsense that started this don't worry about it
SIDE STORIES:
Web!Jon roleplays canon Jon with mixed results
He's Just Not That Into You: Martin & Jon (this one is a sort of pilot to Sucker's Bet, it's not canon)
Not Your Queer-Coded Disney Villain: Annabelle & Jon
Desolation Destroyed My P----: Gertrude & Jon
THE CROW'S FUNERAL AU
Jon gets involved in local politics, regrets it
AU of AU Where Martin prevents the story from happening
Prequel: How Agnes, Gerry, and Jon met
HUMAN RELATIONS AU
Jon and Sasha versus Bad Telenovelas
Semi-Sequel, Never Completed
Jon and Tim versus the Internet
Jon and Jonah versus the Sixties
ROLESWAP AU:
People are bullied. Nobody does any work. Lesbians flourish. And, since being trapped in an infernal contract with a fear demon means that nobody can get ahead, everybody gets even.
Podfic of the entire series by @stonesfromglasshouses
Fear Demon Intern Michael Does Michael Things
Crossover With Canon
OTHER TMA:
Jon's Trapped In Temporal Time Out: A TMA Time-Travelling Tale
Fandom History: pleasedontaskpleasedontask
American AU: PLEASE don't ask
A short post-canon story of Bell, Book, and Candle & No Sin But Ignorance: Daisy Crashes A Date, Fuck You
NARUTO
TOBITO ROLESWAP AU:
A semi Team Minato roleswap in which Obito decides that the only way to succeed in a military dictatorship is to pretend to be Tobi 24/7.
As a note: the AU is ever-evolving as I tweak it, so some of the later stories retcon others. They are listed in order that they were posted. Rin's Story has rendered the first Kakashi POV uncanon, but don't let that distract from anything.
Most demented roleswap feat. the worst decisions Obito has ever made
Uchiha Family Values
Sasuke and Obito's Post-Massacre Bonding Hour
Kakashiâs a wifeguy, Rinâs a Girlboss, and Itachi gets adopted
Your dead backstory love interest strikes back (Rin's Story)
You Call This A Team Minato Reunion??
Ame 3 Backstory feat. Jiraiya's B- Parenting and the power of love (Rin's Story Pt. 2)
Kakashi joins the Akatsuki very normally in a normal fashion(Rin's Story Pt. 3)
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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AO3 codebase contributor here who really admires your work. Got any requests/bugs to report/pie-in-the-sky features?
AO3 writer here who really admires the highly skilled work and time you put into the AO3 codebase so millions of people can continue to enjoy one of the greatest big sites on the internet.
I am unambitious in my HTML, and since the last exclusion update I've been very satisfied as a user. Does anybody reading have any strong desires or requested bug fixes?
i always love the way that mtg strategists and high level players discuss red decks in articles. this quote has been going around the local mtg server:
and the thing is that i really love hot dog decks. this guy is so fucking right
I oscillate between âThere is undoubtedly an immense amount of skill involved in both constructing and piloting red burn decksâ and âheeheehoohoo bolt bolt boltâ on a monthly basis.
so many mvs where teto has a terrible time. also second mv ive seen where teto gets a pill addiction. flashing warning as well and a bunch of violence. she continues to endlessly suffer
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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sherlock holmes deduces you are trans before you've figured it out yourself and refers to you with those pronouns and then when you look confused is like "ah...had you not arrived at that conclusion yet?" and wafts away in his dressing gown to smoke seventeen pipes, leaving you in a gender crisis
Hercule Poirot deduces you are trans by accident because he suspected you of murder and broke into your house and searched your stuff then puts 2 and 2 together when Hastings makes an innocuous observation about your fashion sense or something and he jumps up and cries âmon dieu!!!â before striding over to you kissing you on both cheeks and saying âah, cher ami, you must live as you choose!â and then running off to confront the real culprit while you stand there in befuddlement
Columbo deduces you're trans from context clues while he's talking to you about the area, immediately uses your preferred pronouns and starts telling you about his cousin, who's also transgender, and how they got this job doing security, and how they told him that a security guard always locks up, and asks you if the guard locked up last night, and isn't it weird the place was open? And you're like, well, someone else must have opened it up. Maybe the guy in charge? He has a spare key. And then he nods and goes "the guy in charge has a spare key... well, how about that?" And then he offers you a cigar and wanders off, and a day later your boss gets arrested for murder.
Miss Fisher learns youre trans and simply gives you hormones, and a little cocaine as a treat. she also invites you out to a club to meet like minded individuals. at the club you watch as she seduces the bartender and then the next day the bartender is arrested for the murder.
As someone who was alive when Bob Ross (and William Alexander before him â thatâs where the approach is from) was on PBS, I can 100% testify that you can paint along with him.
You may need to learn how to set up your paints and such⊠but this is what people did, live, while the show aired. Thatâs what the show was for. I had family members create lovely works of art they enjoyed, which I still have on my walls, because William Alexander and Bob Ross both said:
SCREW METICULOUS CLASSICAL ART PRACTICES â JUST GRAB A PALETTE KNIFE AND BIG OLD BRUSH AND PAINT!
They freed a whole generation of people who were taught to paint detail and realism and exact representation of reality â people who largely gave up this kind of thing because it got tedious.
I watched the joy of family members as they rediscovered art as a messy fun spontaneous half hour activity.
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do you have any hcs on why/how chouji and karui got together (i wish he moved to cloud for her...)đ
Zero đ I had no idea who she even was before I heard about the ending. To me, they are an actually happy and monogamous pair of heterosexuals. In my mental Boruto they are the only normally married heterosexuals (Shikamaru's long distance thing, Kiba just dating and not being able to keep a girl RIP, everyone else in my mental Boruto is queer and frequently poly).
Of course, as we all know, the only true heterosexuals of Naruto are Minato and Kushina.
Naruto Tobito Roleswap AU: Team Minato's Very Wholesome Terrorist Reunion PART TWO:
âHow can Tobi be happy like this?â Tobi asked, voice tremulous. His body was on guard, but he wasnât pulling away yet. âThis is all my fault.â
âRin and I made our own bad choices,â Kakashi said. His voice was deep, now. Really deep and smooth and soothing. Rin was so lucky. âRin sees further ahead than human beings. I donât see much at all. You are the only innocent party. So donât cry.â
What crap. As if Tobi hadnât hurt Rin and Kakashi more than anybody else ever could. As if Tobi would do anything other than cry. But Kakashi always hated to see Rin cry. She had always tried to be so strong. Kakashiâs strength had always seemed effortless. Obitoâs strength had always been a paper-thin illusion. A genjutsu that the world shattered.
Tobi made an invisible Team 7 special signal. It involved a near-imperceptible fluctuation of chakra - one that only the four ninja most capable of extremely precise chakra control could do. Kushina-nee was excluded from Team 7 signals because she could not do the signal.Â
Why the hell did you break your cover, idiot!
In which Kakashi gives great pep talks, Tobi demonstrates his expertise at the art of provocation, and Gai steals the show.
And in which Sai unstacks a matryoshka doll.
A/N: This was part of the same meandering story as the chronicle of the first Team 7 reunion, but the story is literally so incoherent and random and what-the-fuck-ever that I split it in half and literally nothing was lost. I'm just doing whatever. All of these stories are so whatever. Did Sai have to come in so hard at the end there? No. But I love Sai. I love him. I loved writing him so much that he has his own story now. The world will know my Sai/Ino QPP headcanon.
Dramatics under the cut.
Tobi knelt in front of the memorial stone.
They had worked fast. Kakashi Hatake and Rin Noharaâs names were already filled in, leaving two awkward gaps a year apart. Guess they werenât really popular anymore.Â
Tobi used to have bad dreams about finding his own name on that memorial stone. Konoha or ROOT or somebody would have gone behind his back and chiseled it in. In those dreams, Tobi would always try to argue against his own tombstone. Thatâs a mistake, Tobi would say. Iâm right here. But Konoha said it would be too expensive to fix. Or maybe they just couldnât hear him. That was how those dreams would always go.
Sensei and Kushina-nee had their own special grave marker in another part of the cemetery. Right next to the Second and Third Hokages. Sometimes Tobi found Tsunade in front of Sarutobiâs grave at three in the morning, drunk as a skunk and ranting nonsense. Tobi had already knelt and talked to that grave today. He was always apologizing to that grave. Tobi knew he wasnât the only one, but sometimes he thought that everybody should.
Apparently Naruto visited it pretty often. According to Sakura, he could sit in front of that grave and chat for an hour about every little thing that came to his mind. None of it was important and half of it was updates about the lives of random people they met in another country two years ago. Tobi asked how Sakura knew this. Of course, Sakura and Sasuke went with him a lot.
There was a large Uchiha memorial in this graveyard as well. Tobi never visited it, but he knew Sasuke brooded in front of the thing sometimes. Tobi had checked it out when he came back to the village after his trip, only to see that nobody had filed off Shisuiâs name. Tobi didnât know if Sasuke forgot on accident or if he forgot on purpose - or what it would mean if he had or hadnât.Â
Tobi bowed to the stone. He bowed deep and low, with his hands on the ground in front of him and face turned towards the trodden grass.Â
Tobi didnât come here very often. The metaphor would be a little bit on the nose. He was his own walking graveyard, and his own unending memorial. But people all had their own weird senses of obligation, and once a year somebody always forced him into a nice outfit and dumped him in front of a grave marker. The number of people to visit grew as the number of people who took him dwindled. Right until the day he died, Shisui always took Tobi to see Tobiâs parents on the anniversary of their deaths. That didnât occur to anybody anymore. Sarutobi always took Tobi to Senseiâs grave on the day of the fox attack - the graveyardâs always hopping that day - and he didnât say anything when Naruto started coming too. Naruto never called out the Third on the mystery orphan situation, but that was definitely just because of Sasuke. The number grew smaller and smaller.
Gai still took him to Rin and Kakashiâs graves. Twice a year. Tobi didnât come much more often than that. He had always figured that the convoluted lying scheme was perfectly obvious from the afterlife, and that it would be vaguely insulting. Obito would have come all of the time.Â
He was still bowing, but he didnât have anything to say. Everything he wanted to say died in his throat, and everything he knew he had to say wouldnât come. He couldnât lie to this stone. He couldnât tell the truth. All he could do was apologize.Â
Bow from respect for the boy who saved your life, and the girl who loved you. They sacrificed it all for you. You never gave anything back. Tobi tried to acknowledge those sacrifices - acknowledge them loudly, whenever and wherever he could, when everybody else in the world refused - but it wasnât enough.
This was all his fault. If he had just been better, and if he hadnât been so worthless. If he hadnât been a burden. He couldnât even be kind. He had never even been a good friend. A good teammate. They should hate him. If he was them, Tobi would hate him. He already did. Â
Bow in apology. Iâm sorry that you were someplace else, and that I was not with you. I promised that you will never fight a battle without me; that somebody will always stand between Rin and the world as she saves Kakashiâs life. Tobi had broken Obitoâs promise. The hollow shell of your most powerful weapon, the spectre of resentment and hatred against the village that killed him. That shell was its own broken promise. If Obito hadnât started this mission, if he hadnât gone so far to live his own life - would something be different? Could he have saved Rin?Â
Would they have come back for him?
There was nothing to say. Nothing that Obito remotely wanted Tobi to say - nothing that should come from Tobi. So Tobi just rose from the bow, fell into a more comfortable cross-legged position, and cried.Â
That was always the nice thing about this restricted life - the ways in which he could live it however he wanted. If Tobi wanted to laugh, then he laughed. If he was sad, then he cried. In the midst of the fake laughter and tears, Obitoâs true feelings were allowed to exist. Obito hadnât been allowed to cry at his own parentâs funeral. Theyâd said he was being weak. He was a ninja now.Â
Obito Uchihaâs parents knew they had a genius on their hands. They trained him from the moment they could, far sooner than anybody thought possible. But they had fought tooth and nail to keep Obito out of the field. Obitoâs mother had argued with Fugakuâs father for hours, over and over again. She didnât want Obito even enrolling into the Academy until six or seven. She fully intended on dragging his training out until the war ended.Â
Two days after they died, Fugakuâs father processed the paperwork for the Academy assessment test. He would test out. Two days. Their bodies were barely cold. The life Obito ledâŠit wasnât the life they had wanted for him. They had wanted better.Â
Tobi sat there and wailed. Who was he crying for? Out of the three of them, the only person still dead was Obito Uchiha.
âRin thought you would be happy.â
Hook, line, and sinker.
Tobiâs wails halted - the specific sort of hard stop when somebody was surprised out of crying. He opened his burning eye, rubbing hard, and after a few blurry seconds the image of Kakashi swirled into place in front of him.
He was leaning against the memorial stone, arms crossed and slightly amused. Not very respectful. He clearly couldnât care less. Tobi had to wonder how he had mastered reading Kakashiâs obscure body language so quickly - how he knew what that tilt of the Anbu-like mask meant. Tobi hoped that people remembered to give props to Shikamaru. He had nailed Hound for a Konoha missing-nin due to that mask and codenameâs similarities to their own ninja. But Shikamaru had gone through their roster of missing and disappeared nin three times, and he couldnât find anybody who resembled Hound. He was gonna be smug about this.
 Tobi gaped at him, rubbing his eye again for good measure. He didnât have to show off and start fighting Kakashi - Tobi was famously conflict averse.
âHow can Tobi be happy like this?â Tobi asked, voice tremulous. His body was on guard, but he wasnât pulling away yet. âThis is all my fault.â
âRin and I made our own bad choices,â Kakashi said. His voice was deep, now. Really deep and smooth and soothing. Rin was so lucky. âRin sees further ahead than human beings. I donât see much at all. You are the only innocent party. So donât cry.â
What crap. As if Tobi hadnât hurt Rin and Kakashi more than anybody else ever could. As if Tobi would do anything other than cry. But Kakashi always hated to see Rin cry. She had always tried to be so strong. Kakashiâs strength had always seemed effortless. Obitoâs strength had always been a paper-thin illusion. A genjutsu that the world shattered.
Tobi made an invisible Team 7 special signal. It involved a near-imperceptible fluctuation of chakra - one that only the four ninja most capable of extremely precise chakra control could do. Kushina-nee was excluded from Team 7 signals because she could not do the signal.Â
Why the hell did you break your cover, idiot!
More and more ANBU were arriving at the scene. Appearing so openly in the middle of Konoha was idiocy, and it tipped a dangerous hand. They knew they had an enemy who was capable of fully infiltrating their village. Konoha was only getting more nervous.Â
âTobiâs brain knows that Kakashi-kun and Rin-chan are alive. The brain thinks it should make me happy. But Tobiâs heart doesnât care.â Tobi grasped the fold of fabric above his heart, curling his hand around the cloth. âTobiâs heart was sad. Because that heart doesnât know why you didnât come back for me.â
Kakashi was silent. Unamused, for the first time.
âIs it because I didnât come back for you?â Tobi was crying again. He hadnât really meant to. The sadness was too much for this shell. âI thought you were dead. Iâm sorry. Are you mad at me?â
Instantly, Kakashi said, âNo. Stop trying to remember that. Itâs not worth it. Donât think about it.â
âBut -â
âThe only thing worse than that hell,â Kakashi said, âwould be hell with you beside me. If you care about me, you wouldnât try to remember.â Well. When you put it like that. Tobi was still rubbing his nose, but he nodded miserably. âGood. Youâre being good right now.â
And Kakashi flared his own chakra. It was very, very Kakashi. To the word, it translated as, Whoopsie-daisy! Good thing I donât actually care!
Asshole. Obito twitched his eyebrow down. Kakashi knew that one. Obito Look of Disapproval of Your Actions Because Your Actions are Suicidal. It wasnât used as often as âBecause Your Actions are Stupidâ, but it was pretty broken-in. Because Kakashi was stupid and suicidal. Kakashi said that Obito was smart and suicidal. Rin said can we please stop fighting over something depressing. Rin had always wanted the fighting to stop. She had just wanted it all to stop.
Kakashi did the mask equivalent of looking up at the sky and whistling. It was mostly a twitch. And Tobi was very, very sure.
Did Kakashi know about Tobi? Obviously. That was uninteresting, if somewhat embarrassing.Â
Those first few days were crystal-sharp in Tobiâs memory, colored by stress. Everybody who came to visit them in the hospital - people used to do that in Konoha, they used to care about each other - had heard the rumors and wanted to confirm it for themselves. They had been hoping it was just an exaggeration.Â
And they all had the same damn looks on their faces when they saw him. Some, like Kurenai, were really uncomfortable and upset. Horrified. They fled the scene. But most people looked at him and felt disgust. Tobi could always see that disgust in their faces. Discomfort, anger - even sadness, sometimes. That feeling a ninja always had when they saw a comradeâs bandages fall off after he was immolated. How disgusting those injuries were. Disgust in his injuries, or disgust in Obito Uchiha - that he had allowed this to happen to himself. That he would shame and debase himself like this. They had no fucking clue.
Some people pulled Rin out of earshot and whispered to her that they had to mercy-kill him. Some people didnât bother hiding it. Others looked him in the eye and said it. Some people said it as if the only way Obito could ever pay penance for his actions was to do it himself. Â
 Hound had looked at him, but never strangely. Kakashi hadnât looked at him strangely at all. He didnât talk to him as if he was Obito. He had no idea how to talk to him, but he had known how to try. He knew that Tobi got nonverbal when he was overwhelmed. It was never on purpose. Obito chose not to interpret that one. But there were around five living people who knew that - his living babysitters, Gai, and Sasuke. Had Shisui known? How had Kakashi known so much and still struggled so hard to talk to him?
How did Kakashi know that Tobi was sitting here crying?Â
There was an obscene amount of ANBU around them. Nobody had ever successfully defeated Hound in a fight. Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura together had pushed him into a retreat, but he had gotten away. Naruto had interpreted that as a win. Sasuke had interpreted it as a loss, since he was not dead. Sakura had known it was just the start.Â
Ninjas didnât tend to follow weaker people, so that strength was making a few people anxious about Rin. A few. Most werenât. She was a healer!
Tsunade was worried. Tobi regretted bringing that woman back every day. She had called him out on his shit instantly.Â
Why was Kakashi admitting to the whole-ass Konoha that he could pop into Konoha whenever he wanted? That he heard the wails of an idiot in an empty graveyard?
âThereâs nothing to forgive. But you wanted to apologize to me, right?â The faceless man straightened, finally pushing off the memorial stone. The lack of respect for the dead had to be grating hard at most of the ANBU by now. âCan I tell you how you can apologize to me?â Tobi nodded automatically. âRin-sama asked me to deliver a message.â
This again? She wouldnât stop saying it - as if Tobi needed to hear it every day, or he would forget. Sheâd end every message with it. As if he didnât know. Maybe she just liked to say it. She ought to save it for more important circumstances. Long suffering, Tobi said, âTobi knows Rin loves him.â
âNot that sort of message.â
Whose side are you on, Obito?
It was a shit-ass question. Tobi was on the side of Team 7. Wherever that team happened to be, whatever it had become - they were almost the only people he had ever cared about. That unassailable fact had started splitting him in half. But only one side had the Konoha that he hated so much.
âOkay,â Tobi said. âIf it isnât bad.â
Kakashi stood in front of him. Tobi ought to stand up. Sitting on the ground, the tall man looked impossibly tall. That was what Tobi hated the most. If you were going to be alive, then you had to be a human about it.Â
Maybe he could tell. Kakashi took a squat, so he was almost at eye level with Tobi. In that same old monotone, he said, âYour Rin-chan saysâŠyou can tell them the truth now. What only Tobi knows.â
Kakashiâs hand reached out -
And he went flying.
He crashed through a stone memorial. It almost exploded, shards of stone flying everywhere as particulates burst in the air, and it didnât even break Kakashiâs impact. Kakashi ended up colliding with the gravestone several meters behind him, back cracking on the stone. The stone cracked too, a spiderweb fracture instantly splitting through it, but it held.
Maito Gai stood in front of Tobi. Tobi hadnât even seen him move. Tobi had seen the strike before he even saw Gai. He was in the opening stance of his personal school of taijustu, challenging and ready, but Tobi saw something a little different in him. Gai didnât look grim very often.Â
Kakashiâs mask cracked from the impact again. Tobi was fully aware of the force necessary to crack that mask. Kakashi was heaving deep breaths, rolling onto his back and carelessly pushing the mask off. He stared at the sky, eyes wild, as he struggled to breathe. Gai was judging if he should take advantage of this opening with another strike, or if he needed to wait. Tobi wasnât sure what Gai was waiting for.
Then Kakashiâs breathing evened out, and his stuttering gasps became smooth again. The injury had just healed. That was what Gai had been waiting to see - how long it would take for Kakashiâs body to heal a shattered ribcage. Because that kick had shattered his entire ribcage. He should be dying.
Tobi truly couldnât tell if there had been an order to strike if Kakashi made a move, or if Gai had gone off-script. He could be acting under orders to test out Kakashi and see what he was willing to do. But the rest of the ANBU were sure gonna get pissed at him if heâd gone rogue and kicked a guy through gravestones just because he was mad. Or worried? It was hard to tell.Â
It took a minute. It was a minute before Kakashi started laughing. Wheezy and strange and horrible, Kakashi pressed a hand over his eyes and laughed.Â
âI get it,â Kakashi gasped. âI finally get it. How happy this makes meâŠâ
A surprising amount of ninja found it an honor to get beat up by Maito Gai. Tobi was kind of impressed that Kakashi-kun was one of them. If that was what heâd meant.Â
 Iâm so happy, Obito.Â
Weâll make you perfectly happy.Â
What was with that? What was this fascination with happiness? Nobody in the world was happy. What did happiness matter?
âI profess the joy I felt when I learned you were alive.â Gai shouldnât say such a happy sentence so seriously. Gai always announced joy with such triumph. âBut this joy was colored by my anger at your actions. If Kakashi Hatake wishes to speak and explain himself, then I am willing to listen. But my comrades and I demand that you leave your old teammate out of this. He has suffered enough!â
Kakashi laughed again, wild and thin, as he rolled onto his feet. Gaiâs eyes widened, and Tobi knew that he was feeling the emotional whirlpool of seeing Kakashiâs face again. Maybe not âagainâ - Tobi remembered too late that Kakashi never took his mask off in front of their comrades. This was probably the first time that Gai had ever seen Kakashiâs face. He was probably stunned by how handsome he was. Very standard reaction. Sensei and Kushina-nee had been terrified that he was going to grow up to be a lady-killer. With that easy smile, Kakashi had said that Rin and Obito were enough of a handful. They did spend a lot of time together.
âGai-kunâŠâ Kakashi exhaled heavily, looking up at the pale blue sky. âI always thought that teammate needed more friends than just us. A half-assed ninja and a pacifist kunoichi. I thought you wouldnât give up on himâŠthat youâd see through to who he really is. Ah, GaiâŠyou never needed to wonder if your friend would have been proud of you. Every day, since the day we met. Every day, across those seventeen years. Your friends have been grateful for you. The only adult uncorrupted by the rot of this village. The good man of Konoha.â
Nobody else could have seen it. Nobody else was close enough, or had a sharp enough eye. But Tobi could see it: the tears brimming in Gaiâs eyes. He would not cry in front of an enemy. But it was difficult not to cry in front of Kakashi.Â
âOne cannot be a good person and walk the ninjaâs path.â Gai never faltered, and Tobi scrambled to stand up. âBut I cannot neglect the good inside of my comrades and friends. I will never fail to nurture the good in our children. If Kakashi and Rin believed in me, then they would accept offers of peace.â Gaiâs breath was strong and steady, never weakening. In anybody else, it would have faltered. âWhen the village ostracized me, you held out your hand. When I did not believe in myself, you believed in me. When I was friendless, you were my friend. I reach out my hand to you now. But I cannot forgive any more harm to your teammate. This must end!â
Tobi grabbed onto Gaiâs shoulder, clutching desperately onto his jumpsuit. It very directly impeded Gaiâs attempts to fight. Batshit stupid thing to do in front of an Akatsuki member. Of course, we all knew who we were talking about. The ANBU in the trees thought that Tobi was still dissociating/out of it/stupider than usual. Tobi wondered what Kakashiâs definition of freedom was.
âKakashi-kun hasnât hurt me!â Tobi cried. He was almost crying himself, confused and terrified. âGai-chan, donât fight him! Best friends shouldnât fight!â
âHey, Iâm not the one who made things violent.â Kakashi slouched and shoved his hands in his pockets - somebody unwilling to fight? Or somebody who knew that he didnât have to? âIâm not the one who turned him stupider than usual. The goodness inside your comrades did that. Even that goodness is corrupt. By that logicâŠarenât we all monsters?âÂ
Gai was about to strike. Tobi yanked harder at his jumpsuit, distracting him and pulling him off-stance. âTobi doesnât want friends to hurt each other! This isnât fair! Donât fight Kakashi-kun on his grave, Gai-chan!â
Almost too quick to see, firm and restrained, Tobiâs hands were removed from Gaiâs jumpsuit. A familiar ANBU member was pulling him away, even as more and more ANBU appeared on the field. An explosive katon ninjutsu swept the field, and the dirt beneath their feet trembled as somebody weaponized the stone underneath their feet.
The hands were pulling him away. Tobi clumsily fought against them, straining backwards to look at the sudden battlezone, but he was too busy freaking out to try and jump back into the fight. He considered it, but it wouldnât have been worth the repercussions. It had taken years before Neiji successfully figured out the nuances of Tobiâs bizarre physiology enough to effectively block his chi points, but Tobi really hated it every time he did.
Amazingly, Neiji was even tactful about it. Under his breath, he said, âGai would only be in danger if you got in his way. You can help once you calm down.â Neiji halted for a second as Tobi strained in his impressively iron grip, making his own decision, before he whispered something. âTobi-sensei, Iâm one of your friends. I want us someplace safe.â
Tobi finally stopped, staring at the ANBU member with the Snow Leopard mask in surprise, and Neiji finally took the opening to get them out of there. Poor kid. Thus were the demands of the ANBU. These blatant and humiliating lies.
That lie. Neiji had been directed to get the dangerous load out of there. It wasnât because Tobi was more likely to go along with somebody he knew. It was probably because Neiji could painlessly drop him the fastest. But nobody had asked him to reassure Tobi.Â
Whose side are you on, Obito?
He sure had sabotaged that fight so Kakashi could get away. That should say enough. Tobi knew which side had the Konoha he hated.
But as Neiji pulled him away with a beautifully perfected shunshin, so unrecognizable from his hastily constructed attempts five years ago, Tobi thought of that gaggle of kids. The ones who groaned when they saw him and never admitted that they came to him for advice. Some people called them the Konoha 12 - the strongest new generation, full of promise and potential. Naruto was there too.Â
Was that still true? Was Tobiâs world still so provincial? Or had he found a new world? Those kids, who admired kindness and compassion and hidden strength - could Tobi step into that new world?Â
Tsunade had said something batshit insane a while back. She said that heâd already built it. Tobi had said that he was too useless for that.
âYou four set up a weird-ass training rotation,â Tsunade said. âI see that Kurenai teaches that rookie class genjutsu, Asuma teaches them ninjutsu, and Gai teaches them taijutsu. Theyâre the best at their jobs, alright. But any ninja in the village could teach those kids that. I see you teaching them what nobody else can teach them. Youâre the only ninja in the village who can teach those kids to be people. You arenât unnecessary, so stop acting like it.â
Neiji was keyed into the estate wards, and he landed in front of the main house with an easy grace. Sasuke and Naruto were already waiting for him - covered in soot and soaked in sweat. Theyâd been sparring again before Sasuke felt Neijiâs chakra signature barrelling towards them.
Neiji carefully helped Tobi slide off his shoulders and onto his feet on the ground. Sasuke lurched forward, about to over-attentively scan him for injuries again, but Naruto just grabbed his shoulder. Even stranger, Sasuke listened to him.Â
Damn. Tobi really didnât want to panic like this in front of the kids. It wasnât as if he needed to look like a tough guy in front of the studentsâŠor as if that was remotely possibleâŠbut he wanted them to rely on him. Sasuke, in his own way, relied on him the most.Â
But he had to sound irrational and childish. Tobi couldnât pull a minute of the last fifteen minutes if they thought he actually understood what he was doing. Luckily, Kakashi was awfully obliging with this makeshift investigation. He even fought Gai about it. Seemingly. Tobi was sure that they thought they were fighting Kakashi.Â
You couldnât even begin to fight the guy without a Sharingan. There was a reason why Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke together had come the closest. And Tobi was well aware that the only person who could match that hideously overpowered Mangekyo wasâŠ
Anyway, so Tobi was forced to keep crying. Sasuke was barraging Neiji with questions - none of which he was answering. Sasuke really had to start locking down the identities of the active duty ANBU. He had a Sharingan. This was embarrassing. Kid was so lazy sometimes.Â
âHe encountered Kakashi Hatake,â Neiji said, clipped and flat. Sasuke skidded to a halt, eyes widening. âAnd Iâm only telling you that because he will. More ANBU will come to take his statement soon.â
Kid was completely failing to mention the ongoing fight. This was because he knew that Sasuke and Naruto would make literally everything worse by jumping in. And they would jump in. ANBU wasnât the type of organization to admit that these were the only three chuunin who ever got him to retreat. Tsunade would, and this was already making its way to her. Neiji was undoubtedly going to stay in case he needed to mobilize Sasuke and Naruto. Sakura and Tenzo were likely on a training day trip outside the village.Â
âEncountered!â Naruto exclaimed. âDid he escape? What did he want? Sensei, what even happened?â
Sasuke stepped towards Neiji, trying very ineffectually to look intimidating. âTell me what happened. Heâs targeting him, isnât he!â
âKakashi isnât targeting me!â Tobi cried, hiccuping with another sob. âKakashi and I were just talking. He didnât do anything wrong!â
âReally?â Naruto asked. Taking him dead seriously. Sometimes he was so much like Sensei and Kushina-nee that it burned. Other times, he clearly lived on his own very distinct Naruto-planet. Tobi made sense on Naruto-planet. Sometimes it was really concerning. Tobi didnât even live on Tobi-planet. âWhatâs the problem? Maybe he wanted to talk outside of a fight, yeah?â
Neiji kept his monotonous inflection. He did a very good job. His usual âyou are so stupid that I want to kill everyone in this room and then myselfâ monotone was very different. âUzumaki. That is not what happened. His injury is still acting up.â Very polite euphemism for âheâs not the most annoying five year old adult ninja genius we all know and barely tolerate, he actually thinks heâs fiveâ. âQuiet him down and get him inside. Iâll stay in case Hatake approaches.â
âWhat if they have to talk?â Naruto seemed to think this was an extremely reasonable question. Or a question anybody else but him would have. âIf I caught up with Sasuke for the first time in twenty years -â How old did he think Tobi was?! â - then weâd gotta hash stuff out too. Especially if Sasuke was dead and evil. Maybe they just gotta.â
âIf I was evil my blades would speak for themselves,â Sasuke muttered darkly.
âBut youâd drop some cool one-liners or something!â
Neiji was officially over this. How professional. He lasted twice as long as usual. He was going to say his own cool one-liner and disappear instantly, super-cool professional ANBU style. Teenagers were obsessed with the aesthetic. âI need to secure the perim -â
âTobi.â Sasuke put a hand on Tobiâs arm, and Tobi allowed the warmth to spread. âSnow Leopard has to go back to work. But heâs going to be around if we need him. If Kakashi comes back, Snow Leopardâs going to stop any fighting. Say bye to Snow Leopard, alright?â
Despite everything, that warmth spread to his heart. Tobi used to do this for Sasuke. Sasuke thought they were doing it for Tobi. After all this time - after the life-or-death fights and the near-death experiences and the One and Six and Nine Tails - Sasuke always made sure that Tobi felt safe.Â
Tobi would do the same. And the things he did to keep Sasuke safeâŠhopefully heâd never find out about that. They would be a little hard to explain.Â
Sasukeâs endless nightmares over Itachi returning. Tobi would take his hand and lead him outside, and he would talk loudly about how they had lots of guards here to protect them. He would point out the ANBU guard in the trees, making Sasuke goggle. The ANBU were always very embarrassed when this happened. To save their hiding places and stop Sasuke from learning how to spot ANBU, the guard would drop down and let Sasuke see them. The guardâs super-strong and super-cool, and they can keep us safe. Tobi knows that Itachi can kill the guard very easily, but the guardâs death would alarm the whole village. Then every ANBU will be here, and everything will be fine. Say night-night to the guard, Sasuke-chan.
âBye Snow Leopard,â Tobi said miserably. âYouâre really niceâŠâ
âIâll be here if you want me,â Neiji said, shockingly nice.Â
Then he disappeared. Just for fun, Tobi belatedly waved goodbye. Naruto waved goodbye too, brimming with enthusiasm.
Sasuke did his usual neat and efficient job of pulling Tobi out of a freak-out. As always, Naruto effortlessly distracted Tobi and acted as if he was a remotely decent conversational partner. Sasuke directed him in the role like an actor. Naruto didnât seem to be strictly aware of this.
Tobi laid in bed and stared at the ceiling. A good nap would bring him back down again. He had to get back to normal. He had been trying to get back to normal, but stupid Bakashi and Rin-chan were making his life difficult again.
A warmth bloomed in Tobiâs heart, and he found himself pressing his hand over that heart. He hadnât thought that sentence in so long. That hadnât been his life in so long. Inconvenienced, annoyed, dragged down. Loved. Loving. They must have invented it - that kind of love, so desperate and intense. The only real things in their world. The one and only truth.Â
Even if Rin and Kakashi love each otherâŠdifferently. Then they used to. They had a husband-and-wife style love now. Which was of course fine. Tobi and Rin had a brother-sister kind of love. Love changes. Childhood love more than any other. Seventeen years! Who wouldn't have a husband-and-wife style of love, right?
It was fine. Rin clearly still saw him as a little brother. Kakashi - probably did too? Logically? He seemed to confuse Tobi with an earnest puppy. A puppy that had enthusiastically almost ripped his arm in half. This was all fine. The bigger problem was the evil thing. Every problem was bigger.Â
This problem didnât matter at all. So long as Bakashi was Bakashi and Rin-chan was Rin-chanâŠthe rest of the world paled in front of that.Â
In front of what had to happen.
An hour later, Sakura, Tenzo, and Sai came spilling back into the house with hot button news. Sakura had probably broken a door in her excitement again. Turns out that Kakashi Hatake had been spotted in the graveyard! Turns out that this was old and very aggravating news!
Thankfully, Sakura also had more recent news. Kakashi Hatake was gone. He had actually left bare minutes after the fight started. It was possible that he could have left at any time. Gai had said that Kakashi hadnât approached him effortlessly, but he had been remarkably relaxed about it. Of course, Kakashi had once been relaxed about everything.Â
Nobody was happy. The Hokage was extremely unhappy. Sakura had rushed home to update the team, but she had to run and go back to doing assistant stuff soon. Sai cheerfully noted that rumors said Sensei had been there. Rumors about what he had been doing there had flown thick and fast. With some arcane wonder, Tenzo said that Sai had listened to a few of them before calmly and verbally ripping them to shreds for gossiping. It was mysterious, since Sai had probably said worse.
The question remained. What had Tobi been doing there?
Tobi sipped at his tea. They were all sitting around the tea table. They were also all staring at him.Â
Humbly, with the grace and wisdom of a monk, Tobi said, âTobi was paying his respects to the dead.â
Instantly, Sasuke said, âBullshit.â
âThatâs so mean, Sasuke-chan.â
âYou hate the graveyard.â Sasuke angrily smashed a tea cookie into his mouth. He stress ate. âYouâve been angrily muttering about throttling Hatake for days.â Heâs been what? âWhen you visited Shisuiâs grave, you stomped around and got pissy. Whatâs the real reason you visited the memorial? It wasnât just to apologize.â
âSensei hasnât been feeling well,â Tobi said, as Ninja Buddha once did.
âDo you have any idea how bad your tantrums get when you donât feel well.â
âYouâve been avoiding talking about the Hatake and Nohara situation completely,â Sakura said unhappily. Her hands were wrapped tight around the tea cup, searching for its warmth. âThe whole situation is so weird, and itâs only getting weirder. I get that you donât want to talk about it, but will you explain something?â
Sai nibbled at a tea cookie mildly and politely. âAn insider informed me that Sensei behaved treasonously because he âdid not know any betterâ.â The air quotes could have been painted in the air. âBut you seem to have bounced back quickly. Itâs very strange.â
He might as well set this up now. It had the benefit of being true. âSenseiâs fine. Very, very fine!â Tobi wriggled away from Sasukeâs deathly yet disbelieving glare. âSeeing Kakashi made me feelâŠitâs stressful for sensei. And not the kind of stressful that you can punch. And Kakashi-kun is really super stressful becauseâŠumâŠâ
Sakura folded her arms on the table. âBecause of why you were doing all of this.â
This was a good time to tell them. Tobi took a small yet regal sip of the tea. âSensei and Kakashi-kun share eyes. That means we share kamui. We always have. I can teleport lots of places with kamui. Since Kakashi-kun could visit today, that means he can use kamui to go places too.â Might as well. âTobi tested it out. I opened up a portal into the kitchen, and Sasuke didnât notice it at all. If Kakashi can open up portalsâŠor if his ghost powers can make him invisibleâŠâ
âHe can get in and out of anywhere he wants,â Tenzo finished.Â
âYup.â Tobi took another sip of his tea. âThatâs how Kakashi-kunâs been stalking Tobi.â
Everybody stared at him. Then they stared at each other. Sai fiddled with his brush.
Finally, Sakura took the fall. âYou have to be kidding.â
But Tobi just shook his head. âHe knows too much stuff. Heâs too familiar with Tobi. How did he know where I was? Or that I was crying? We donât know how long heâs been doing this. What he knows about Konoha, or about Team 7âŠhe could be listening to everything Tsunade-sama says. HmâŠnot good!â
Naruto groaned, throwing his head back. Everybody else looked far more than exasperated. âNo wonder we canât really beat him! What the hell are we gonna do about somebody like that?â
âWe donât even know what Nohara can do,â Sakura said glumly. âWhat have we seen of her? Just her summons? Some weird jutsu she used to throw us around? It reminds me of Gaara. How he used to decimate everyone in his path without moving a muscle.â
âAnd that eye.â Tenzo rubbed his chin, deep in thought. Sasuke scowled. âIâve already gone through every record on doujutsus Konoha that has. Sasukeâs gone through the Uchiha files. Iâve never seen a doujutsu like that.â
What? Tobi blinked. âRin-chanâs parents were civilians. They died in an attack during the second war.âÂ
She had been placed in a dormitory for young girls in the Uzushio district. It wasnât nearly as bad as Narutoâs situation, but sometimes Tobi thought that Konoha really needed some sort of foster care system. Rin had been friends with the other girls, had studied and worked hard enough from the start to get a scholarship to the academy, but a part of her soul had been lonely. Rin said that part of her soul had wanted family and love. What a horrendous assortment of orphans.Â
âShe showed it after Hatake grabbed you,â Sasuke said unhappily. âIt was purplish, and had concentric circles. Makes you kind of nauseous looking into itâŠâ
âNot me!â
âWe get it, Naruto, evil fox superiority, shut up -â
âHey, evilâs a pejorative term! Heâs really nice, actually! Well, no, but still!â
âI canât believe youâve started using the words I teach you correctly.â
Jiraiya. Jiraiya had mentioned that eye. He had asked Tobi to do his own research a long time ago. Guy believed in idiot-ass prophecies. They had found out a few things, but not nearly as much as they would like.Â
Almost every single existing record of the Rinnegan had been found among Madara Uchihaâs possessions.Â
That old pervert really had to start responding to his stupid mail.
âSensei doesnât know about all of that,â Tobi said. He was obviously getting a little distressed. âRin-chan and Kakashi-kun are basically good people. Even when theyâre being weird and annoying and kind of evil. So everythingâs going to be okay! If theyâre evil, Team 7 will just deal with that!â
âI donât want to deal with that,â Sai said.
âSai-san, we get paid to do a job.â
âI would really like to be Sai-kun, SenseiâŠâ
Sasuke slammed his hands on the table. Tenzo dived to keep his cup from spilling. âAnd I would have liked for you to start calling him sensei from the start instead of calling him a retard nonstop -â
Saiâs eyes darted around the room. âI recognize that usage of a word hurts your feelings.â
âDo I have to teach you what a slur is -â
âWhatâs a slur?â Naruto asked blankly.Â
Sakura sighed. âPeople make up new ones just to insult you, Naruto.â
âSakura-chan, that doesnât answer the question!â
Extremely seriously, Tenzo said, âI know what it is. A slur is something that doesnât need to be pointed out.â
Sasuke spilled his tea all over the table. Tobi swept his wood thumb over the seeping pool and stuck it in his mouth. Still hot. âTenzo-sensei, donât fucking tell me that youâve been trying to figure it out by watching me deal with Sai!â Tenzo mumbled something about unhelpful dictionaries. âAre you the teacher or what?!â
Humbly, Tobi said, âItâs alright, Sasuke-chan. Rin-chan always told me not to pay attention when people call me that. She always kicked them in the balls about it. And threaten to set them on fire. And maybe set one on fire?â
Sai, who had received upwards of a dozen threats of immolation from Sasuke, blinked.
As always, Sai had seen it first. He had understood, in his own strange and direct way. And, with increasing frequency, he decided not to say anything. He didnât really know what were good and bad things to say, so he thought it might be best to stop saying things. Sai was normally pretty good at shutting up and not saying anything, so he didnât know why it was so difficult with Team 7. Too many opportunities for really funny jokes, maybe?
Sai resisted the urge to make funny jokes, and nodded along to the chaos.
*
What Sai had seen was obvious. More troublesome was figuring it out. Because Sai could not imagine hating Konoha.
It was like hating gravity, or your own planet. It was like hating the fall and the impact on the ground. He couldnât even conceptualize it.Â
When you hated Konoha, what were you hating? Every square foot and inch of geography? Did you hate every piece of food within it? Did you hate every person? Hating every single solitary person in Konoha sounded extremely time consuming. There were seventy thousand people in Konoha. Nobody knew that many people.Â
Did you just promise to hate that many people? Make an oath? Maybe you just swore on your life to detest every inch of Konoha. It wouldnât make a lot of sense, but oaths didnât have to. But it would be an oath to raze Konoha into the ground and exterminate every living soul within it. Sai could imagine doing that, but he didnât particularly want to. And he was fairly sure Sasuke didnât want to. Konoha had a ramen stand.Â
These people were obsessed with ramen. Sai wanted to be obsessed with ramen too. He wasnât. He tried to fake it, but he hadnât done a good job faking it. Sakura told him that it was more about the family bonding and less about the ramen, so he could just eat whatever. The ramen stand only sold ramen, but it had started packing some onigiri for the busy ninja on the go. Sai had begun purchasing the onigiri. He liked how none of it got onto your hands or on the table. Sasuke didnât hate onigiri. How, then, could he hate Konoha?
Did he hate the idea of Konoha? What it meant, its signifier? Danzo talked about that a lot. There was a lot of tree imagery that Sai never understood. Something about pesticides and gardens and filth and The Good Paternal Gardeners and The Evil Maternal Gardeners and everything that Sai didnât know a lot about. Maybe Sasuke understood. He was very insistent that he knew everything. He said so, so it must be true.Â
That was sarcasm. You could tell by the emphasis on the middle word in each clause.Â
Maybe Sasuke hated an idea. In those nonsensical tree metaphors, he hated that metaphorical tree. Or something. But what did that matter? If you hated an idea, what did that have to do with hating its people?
Konoha wasnât an idea. People inside of Konoha had ideas. Konoha was a sewage system and a merchantâs guild and a torture department and a GDP. Where in that was an idea? Grass existed because it was rooted. Trees grew because seeds sprouted. Babies were born when - Sai would find that one out eventually. No ideas were involved.Â
So even if you hated an idea. The concept or the model or the dream. It wasnât the actual Konoha that you hated. So what was the point of making a subversively inspirational speech about how true pacifism was purifying the continent of the contagious rot of Konoha? What did purifying even mean in this context? Sakura explained that Rin Nohara probably wanted to kill a lot of people. Another logical fallacy: blood and corpses were a biohazard. The question remained.Â
But Sai was the âeternal learnerâ type - books that categorized people into distinct types should be the most helpful, but none of them adequately explained Naruto Uzumaki. Ultimately worthless for his real goals. It said that Sasuke Uchiha was a âType Aâ, but they already knew that. An eternal learner type always finds it out eventually.Â
Sasuke told him what happened.
It was the first giant debriefing meeting. All of the leaders of Konoha were in the room: the clan council, the top brass of the shinobi forces, and the Hokage. She had no cabinet. Apparently she had caught them lecturing the absolutely uncomprehending Sensei about how men shouldnât listen to women. She had tossed them out on the spot. Sai told Sakura that the Hokage was wrong to do so, because men shouldnât listen to women. Sakura told him that Sasuke was out of the village, so she couldnât fracture his cheekbone right now, and it would have to wait. Sakura rarely agreed with Danzo. Which was problematic: Sakura was the smartest person he knew, but Danzo was always right. Didnât match up. Books unhelpful.
Sasuke was sitting at the clan head table, serving as a figurehead of fallen royalty. Danzo said that Sasuke was a child with no political power and scant physical power. But he also said that Sasuke was a threat to Konoha and that he would topple the tree metaphor if he wasnât stopped. Sai did not highlight the discrepancy, because keeping Danzo happy was an unofficial, unstated, yet widely understood group ROOT mission.Â
Sensei was sitting at another table, with the high ranked ninjas. A lot of people in the room were probably wondering why he was there. He couldnât be defined as brass in any capacity, and nobody liked involving him in anything, and Konoha liked to keep him âout of sight, out of mindâ. Sai pitied those who undertook such futile efforts. Life must be hard when youâre stupid. Sai had tried ignoring Sensei once or twice, but it had never gone well. Sensei had just barely recovered from his child-like delusional hysterics. Even Saskue thought he should be home. But Genma had showed up at the door to take him, and Sasuke felt as if it was an order.
Genma had showed up two days prior to talk to Sensei about his conversation with Hatake. He asked the obvious. Hatake had undertaken a great risk just to pass on that message. What was so important?
Sensei had just anxiously spun his puzzle. Sai managed to solve one last week. This felt like an incredible achievement - until he realized that Sakura had solved two in that time. This was what the books would call a blow to oneâs self-efficacy. âI donât know. I feel bad, Genma, I donât knowâŠI donât wanna talk about Kakashi-kun right now.â
Bullshit. But Sensei had taken great pains to instruct Sai not to call him out on his bullshit among mixed company, so Sai didnât say anything. He always agreed with the lies.Â
Genma hadnât pressed. He just sat next to Sensei at the meeting, speaking to him in a low voice. Sai found out much later that Genma was begging for help with romantic drama and that Sensei was too pissed at him to fix his problems. So even ANBU had romantic problems. It was a troubling insinuation. Surely there had to be some class of person who did not experience romantic or sexual problems. The books said it was important to âfind your tribeâ.Â
Sasuke said that the meeting started a disaster, and continued a disaster. Sasuke refused to let anybody at a meeting talk over him, but even he was barely able to give his reports on every Team 7 encounter with Hound and Nohara. Gai reported on his team's first fight with Hound. It had almost killed Neiji, which would have been no societal loss. Shikaku gave a report on his teamâs assessment of the situation - what mysterious tableaus had been set up by Nohara, what previously unrelated event was likely part of the Akatsukiâs plan. Inoichi said that Noharaâs appearance matched up with their intelâs reports. When Tsunade asked, he had to admit that the intel source had dried up. Sasuke had noticed that Tsunade rubbed her mouth when he said that. Tell of worry.Â
The overall movements of the Akatsuki were growing more pointed. At least two tailed beasts were extracted, and two more jinchuuriki were unaccounted for. Another tailed beast had been missing for a while, and it was possible that the Akatsuki had extracted it -
âNohara seemingly committed suicide by stabbing herself in a bomb seal,â Genma said. The room fell violently silent. âThe Fourth Hokage found the sealing array in the cave where Kiri held her. It was reported as the array that placed the bomb seal on her, but he told me in confidence that it looked like a very rudimentary tailed beast seal. As the Sanbi had disappeared off the face of the planet, he thought that it had died with Rin.â He looked at Sensei, whose head was bowed. âInoichi and I were able to get the report from Tobi yesterday. He said that there had been a bomb and a jinchuuriki seal. Iâve heard reports of jinchuuriki surviving a lot worse than one sword to the heart.â
âAnd why did Uchiha not give us that report when it happened?â one of the council members demanded. âThe truth behind the cover story was never disclosed! We should have known this years ago!â
Patiently, Genma said, âTobi Uchihaâs eyewitness testimony was ruled incoherent and unreliable. He gave reports that conflicted with the scene. Since we had to cover up the whole thing anyway to prevent a war with Kiri, it was all thrown out.â
Much of the room had been there at the time, and much of the room had been the ones who decided to throw it out. They all knew it.Â
Tsume Inuzuka thumped her hands on the table, making Sasuke jump. Sasuke hated loud people. Sai found this difficult to believe. âI donât understand it! I knew Rin, we all did! That girl killed herself to save our village! She was a war hero, she was one of our best medics, and nobody was more loyal to the village than she was! She had no competing interests - no clan, no husband, no other affiliations. Her teacher was the Fourth Hokage! I just canât believe that she would do this!â
Weirdly enough, Kurenai jumped in. The woman was very quiet and gentle. Sai didnât trust her an inch. Sakura said that this explained so much about him. But Kurenai wasnât sounding very quiet and gentle now. âI agree. Rin was one of my best friends growing up. I knew her better than almost anybody. She never had a disloyal thought in her life. And she was the kindest, most generous, most loving person Iâve ever met.â
Hiashi Hyuuga had clearly disdained this show of sentimentality. âNoharaâs relationship with you has no relevance to her actions today. Amegakure and the Akatsuki are threats to Konoha.â
âWe all know that, Hyuuga-san. Weâre just trying to make sense of it all.â Shikaku rolled up the ancient report - far grimmer than Sasuke had ever seen him. âThe girl was a saint. If youâd known her for ten years, or if youâd known her for five minutes - everybody knew that. She is the last person who would have ever betrayed the village. If we donât know why, then we donât know what is really happening.â
âShe was a clanless orphan!â one of the council members cried. âHow could a clanless orphan be loyal to her village?â
âThe Fourth Hokage was a damn clanless orphan!â Tsume yelled, and then everybody really was yelling.Â
Sasuke said that it was impossibly grating. These damn meetings always had yelling and pointless arguments, but the size of the meeting and the urgency of the room made everything a thousand times worse. Somebody had just effortlessly infiltrated their village. Shikaku undoubtedly knew what Sensei had known - that they had no idea how long Hatake had been casually wandering through their village. It was an act of unprecedented inter-village espionage.Â
Sai understood the frustration, but it seemed provincial. Sensei could invisibly teleport his way around too. Sasuke said that what happens in Team 7 stays in Team 7, so donât tell anyone he can do that. Sai had nodded fastidiously. And he had wondered why that rule had become so self-evident to him. When had it become true? He didnât even know why the rule was so important. Or maybe he did know, and he just didnât want to admit it. That would be the answer to every question.
Kakashi Hatakeâs father was a traitor. The apple isnât falling far from that tree. Rin had become belligerent with mission assignments before her Hokage sensei had begun pulling strings for her. Because she was a damn saint, Choza Akimichi said. They all knew what he meant. The girl who made career sacrifices to take care of her mentally handicapped family member was, indeed, a saint. Sensei quietly sat on his bench. Sasuke said that he was looking extremely overwhelmed from all the yelling. He had gotten angry just recounting it. Had Rin Nohara found some boyfriend in Ame? Was she with the Amekage? Wasnât the Amekage married? Was he married to her? No, a report said that Nohara and Hatake seemed to be together. Then that was it, wasnât it - the traitor pulled her along?
Sensei giggled. Sasuke said that it sounded as light and happy as his other random laughter, and everybody had ignored it.
What did Ame want the jinchuuriki for? Why was it forging alliances with half the continent? It was a small and weak village in a poor country. Konoha had stomped all over it in the war, and they had barely even noticed. Any village with a jinchuuriki became a continental power. A jinchuurikiâs obligation as a ninja was to provide that power in service to their village. A jinchuuriki was a walking tool for the village. Sasuke wanted to strangle everybody in the room. If she had died for us, then why did she betray us?
Tobi laughed.
Most of the room kept talking, but a large portion glared at him or looked expectantly at Genma. As if Genma was a mother who should take her crying baby out of the silent temple. Sensei just kept laughing, louder and louder, and many of the clan heads and ninja brass started glaring at Genma and waiting for him to shut him up. Many were looking expectantly at Sasuke. Sasuke knew that laugh, but he was as surprised as anyone else. He normally only ever heard it in battle.
âYo, man,â Genma said easily. âWhatever youâre thinking, you should share.â
Sensei giggled again, clapping his hands. âGenma-kun, I got it! Tobi has the message now! Yay, Tobi did it! Tobiâs the smartest!âÂ
Hyuuga curled his lip. Sometimes Hinata showed up at the estate at ten at night, clutching an overnight bag and struggling heroically not to cry. Sensei always pretended that she was over because she loved parties and sleepovers just that much. Sakura did her hair and let her cry. âIf you canât control yourself, Uchiha, then excuse yourself.â
âShut up,â Tsunade told Hyuuga. Sasuke looked exceptionally gleeful as he told this part. âThis is what we needed. Genma.â
Just as easily, Genma said, âNice job, bud. You figure out what Kakashi-kun wanted you to say?â Tobi nodded helpfully. Sasuke saw a lot of the ninja brass snap to attention. Even some of the council members got it. âWell, spill.â
âRin-chan always hated Konoha!â
Everybody stared at Sensei. Shocked, disbelieving. Sometimes too disbelieving - rolling their eyes or looking away.
Genma just nodded, withdrawing a case of senbon from his jacket and tapping one into his palm. âWhy didnât you mention this before?â
Senseiâs face fell. âTobiâs supposed to do what Rin-chan says. She always said not to repeat anything that sounds badâŠoh, but I know I shouldnât do what Rin-chan says anymore. Except this time, since she said it was okay.â
âYou gotta start telling us things. Why did she hate Konoha, then?â
âWouldnât you?â
The senbon froze between two fingers. The room grew strange and still. Sensei had said it really calmly and curiously - innocently, so innocent that anybody would guess that he didnât know the meaning of his own words.Â
âBad guys used to come into my hospital room,â Sensei said plainly. âTobi was so scared of them. Rin-chan said that she wouldnât let them have me, and that I was safe with her. But Tobi knew that the bad guys upset Sensei and Rin-chan. Because they were secret operations, ROOT, or undercover research and development agents. Probably all three of them, because everybody wanted to loot my corpse. Sensei had to become Hokage just to make everybody go away and stop trying to hurt me.â Sensei tilted his head, scratching a little at his hair. âRin-chan was supposed to love that? Are you crazy?â
Genma flipped his senbon. âDid Rin say that?â
âDid Rin-chan have to? Tobi knows heâs stupid, Genma. But Tobi knew that Rin got sad when our friends told Rin that she should put me out of my misery. Almost everyone thought Obito getting tortured to death would have been good, because it meant they wouldnât have to look at me. Rin would cry about it. I didnât know how to make her happy. And Rin-chan told me that it was okay, and that theyâre mean and they donât matter. Rin told Tobi that she loved him, because Tobi was how Obito came home. Do you think Rin forgave you guys for that? When do you think she began wanting you dead? You started it!â
A lot of people in the room were whispering to each other - aides in ears, or teammate to teammate. Sasuke said that almost nobody looked like they actually listened to him. Sai said that they probably just hadnât paid attention to the emotional context of the story. Sasuke asked Sai if he wanted a cookie for recognizing that there was a human emotion in that room. It was sarcasm, so Sai did not say yes. Although he did want a cookie.
Shikaku, Inoichi, and the Hokage had definitely listened. Rinâs old friends had heard that feeling, and they were exchanging heavy glances. But Genma just flipped the senbon between his fingers. âThe village betrayed her first. It broke her trust, it abandoned her, and it hated her. But what actually bothered Rin was that it did these things to you. The most important thing to her was that it hurt you.â
Sensei smiled, nodding empathetically. âGenma-kun gets it! Youâre so smart.â
Genma shrugged, sticking the senbon between his teeth. âIâm acquainted with that feeling. But she couldnât have really hated it. She gave her life for her village.â
âThe village that treated her family so good,â Sensei said. He didnât sound bitter or angry at all. Just as if he was relating somebody elseâs story. Or an indisputable fact. âThat was so nice to Kushina-nee. And me. And Naruto. If Rin didnât want you dead for me, she would want you dead for Naruto.â There had been a strange weight behind that name. Sensei said it just a little differently. As if Naruto himself was some great original sin. âThat is the rot within Konoha. That is the cruelty and callousness that a clanless orphan could do nothing about. Rin Nohara has declared war on that cruelty.âÂ
Did people hear that? Did anybody in the room actually hear those words? Sasuke said that he knew how many people in that crowd only heard the word âwarâ. Sasuke said that some people heard the word âcrueltyâ too. Sai asked Sasuke which word he had heard first. Sasuke said it was Naruto.Â
Tsunade, of course, heard each and every word. A decent Hokage paid attention to everything. Even the things she didnât like to hear or didnât want to deal with. Tsunade dealt head-on with her professional problems so well that it built up and she went insane over her personal problems.Â
âShe must have learned psychological warfare somewhere along the way too,â Tsunade said. She was still writing notes down. âUsing you to say all of that was an opening strike.â
Sensei looked a little crushed. âDid you not like my information? Tsunade-sama is always telling Tobi to say more information. Tobi thought he did a good job!â
âYou did,â Genma said, saving Senseiâs spirit and passions. âI donât hear you speak that well very often.â
Sensei beamed, clapping his hands. âTobi knows Rin-chan really good! I know just what sheâd say. Thatâs called good information. Tobi has to tell Rin-chan about this. Sheâll be super happy!âÂ
âWill somebody get the Uchiha out of here?â Danzo said.
Tobi stopped short, blinking at Danzo, but Genma was already pulling Tobi up by his elbow and ushering him out the door. Sasuke wanted to do it himself, but he wasnât about to silence the Uchiha voice in this room. The argument afterwards had been just as bitter and angry as before. It was unsettled, too. But nobody was admitting that. A lot of people were creeped out, and nobody would admit that either. They could go back to ignoring Sensei soon enough. And their worlds would go back to normal.
A world where Nohara declared war because she was evil, and where Hatake comforted a crying friend in a graveyard as an opening strike. A world where Tobi and Naruto and Sasuke didnât have to exist, and where any regret could stop at harmless and easy guilt. Where there were no repercussions for what we did to the dead, because there was nothing left the dead could do to us.Â
Nobody in that room would have cared about a fourteen year old girlâs hurt feelings if she wasnât able to throw a tailed beast at them about it. That girl would have gone unavenged if she hadnât had the methods and means to avenge herself. To avenge her best friend, her sensei, her big sister, and her little brother. Everybody would have continued living happily if Rin Nohara couldnât inconvenience them. Nobody would have cared. They didnât care about Sensei and Naruto, who couldnât do anything to them. They only cared about Rin Nohara, because she could hurt them back.Â
Sai doodled a couple of pictures that night. They started off ordinary and quickly got a little stranger. Sai found that his paintings always got a little abstract or unrealistic when non-ideal events were occurring in his life. Sometimes he didnât paint a thing: just coated a page in a cacophony of black. Heâd have to figure out what art movement that was.Â
Sai doodled a picture of an Iwa Doll. He saw the trinkets in marketplaces all the time. It was of a big cylindrical geisha, with a white-painted face and pretty red dots for lips. But if you opened up the geisha, you could see a smaller geisha inside. It was an extremely exciting development, but only once. There was another geisha inside that one too. Another and another. Until finally, when the small geisha couldnât hold any more, there was a little bean of the littlest geisha of all.Â
Good painting. Very pretty. Sai didnât know why he was thinking about those dolls, but a good artist let those ideas flow.
After that, they got a little abstract. A large and undefined monster ate a smaller one. A wave crashed over another wave. Squares were in rectangles were in triangles. Strokes clashed. There was a page of only strokes: younger on the older, in collision.
Sai drew a little demon. He slashed a stroke through it, like a kunai slicing an enemy in half. Then he did another stroke. Unnecessarily, he added another. Sai slashed and slashed and slashed until the page was heavy with black ink. The enemy was gone. No more demons were left to be found.Â
The Big Wolf and Small Wolf appeared again. Sai knew that the Small Wolf was big now - that it was bigger than the Big Wolf would ever be - but he was always careful to draw it smaller than the Big Wolf. In the shadows of what Sai did not remember, Big Wolf would always be bigger.Â
The wolves were perched on a pile of corpses. The mass stretched from both ends of the page, and each individual face was sketched in minimalist but evocative detail. Sai liked drawing corpses. Nobody liked this about him.Â
There was a very, very big animal underneath the wolves. Sai wasnât sure what sort of animal it was. It was just one big black thing. The wolves were eating it. No blood flaked their muzzles, and their coats were spotless. The wolves were posed heroically on top of the desiccated remnants of their enemy.Â
Sai looked at that painting for a long time. He was crying again. He never understood that. Sai never knew why he cried.Â
âPeople cry because theyâre sad!âÂ
Sai carefully wrote this down. He knew that Sensei had been the right person to ask about this. Sensei loved crying. âWhat about ninja?â
â...ninja are people, Sai.âÂ
Sai was very skeptical about this, but he wrote down the operating assumption. Ninjas and people did have a lot in common.Â
Like a true investigative artist, Sai clarified, âWhat is sad?â
Sensei blinked at him.
They were sitting on the outside walkway at the Hatake estate. The cicadas were making their usual sound, but the sunlight dappled the trees in a new pattern. The shadows and light on the ground were different each day. Sai tried to come back each day and sketch the new shadows. Sasuke asked him why he kept showing up. He wasnât satisfied with Saiâs explanation. He said that there were shadows tons of places. He didnât believe Sai when he said that these shadows were the best. Sai didnât believe himself either.
Sensei blinked at him a few more times, organizing his extremely slowly performing thoughts, before he darted forward and pinched Saiâs arm. He pinched it very hard, and it actually hurt quite a bit. Sai didnât react. This was likely a test.
âDoes Sai feel pain right now?â Or perhaps this was yet another of Senseiâs demented whims? âThereâs two kinds of pain. Sai is feeling one kind of pain right now. But thereâs another kind of pain, that just lives in the mind.â Sensei tapped his chest. âSometimes you feel that pain in your chest, or your stomach. We cry because our body is hurt, and we cry because our mind is hurt.â
That was extremely comprehensible! Sai knew exactly what he was talking about! Sai quickly wrote all of this down.Â
âWhat about sadness? Is that a kind of pain?â
âItâs a kind of feeling,â Sensei agreed amicably. He tapped his throat. âSadness can be in your throat. If your throat gets tight and feels really weird, that can mean youâre sad. Then you cry.â
People were rarely this useful. Sai made careful note of all of this. Still - there were fallacies. âYou donât feel physical pain by remembering pain. But you feel mental pain if you remember things that caused you pain. So theyâre not directly comparable.â
âDo you feel sad when you remember things that cause you pain, Sai?â
âNot at all,â Sai said promptly. âI donât have feelings.â
âSensei isnât always so sure about that, SaiâŠâ
âI am a type of ninja. The type of ninja that I am does not have feelings.â Sai would have said something very different a few months ago, but he had learned to broaden his definition of ninja significantly. He decided at first that Team 7 just didnât count as ninja, but when they all beat him in a fight he had to admit that he didnât know what else they could be. âIf I had feelings, I would understand the concept. I do not have them, which is why I have to ask you.â
âSensei does not think that is how it works?â
Patiently, Sai said, âYou donât understand how it works because youâre retarded. If you werenât retarded, youâd get it.â
Sensei stared at him, and Sai remembered a little too late that everybody got mad when he said that. Sai wasnât exaggerating when he said everybody. Kiba attacked him when he said it, and Kiba wasnât even on their team. Hinata and Shino were also unhappy with him. He wasnât sure what they had felt.Â
Shikamaru and Chouji and Ino looked really disgusted. Especially Ino. Sai knew what disgusted looked like. That hadâŠthat hadâŠ
It had caused a sort of mental pain that Sai did not like.Â
Better conduct the social ritual. If he didnât do it, people got madder. âIâm sorry, Sensei, that was rude of me. It is disrespectful to a teacher and -â What was the other one? Sai had a good memory, but everybody kept giving him different words to say. â - mean. I will stop saying it.â
Sai was very good at conducting mission parameters. Social parameters were fiendishly difficult, but this one ought to be easy. Do this, donât do that. Under no social contexts or situations should you say that word. Sai was also told that these rules applied to other words, such as faggot. It should be easy. He didnât know why he kept doing it. Danzoâs instructions always overrode all other mission parameters, but it wasnât as if he gave Sai instructions to say that word. All he did was use it.Â
As always, the apology didnât make anybody happy with him. Sensei just tilted his head, looking at him. Sai finally recognized the look of Sensei in thought. It didnât happen often. At least Sensei never got mad. If he didnât mind, why did it matterâŠ
Finally, Sensei said, âWhen Sasuke almost died after the fight against Sasori. Sai was in a lot of mental pain, wasnât he?â
That was a good way to put it. Everyone had said that âhe actually looked upset?â and âwait, you care if we die?â. They kept on accusing him of having feelings about Sasuke almost dying - which, of course, he had to deny. He hadnât had feelings about it. Just mental pain. Even ninjas experienced mental pain. Sai was really warming to this concept. It explained a lot.Â
âSai kept on trying to give Sasuke painkillers,â Sensei said. âWhy did you do that?â
A theory was rapidly forming in Saiâs mind. âExtended contact with another person causes a mirroring effect in the brain. This is what is known as your âbondâ.â Sai had a small obsession with the word, although he tried not to show it. âDue to a âbondâ, Sasukeâs physical pain created mental pain in myself. Hence painkillers.â
âWhen you see Hinata cry,â Sensei said, âdo you feel mental pain?â
Hinata was not a teammate. Sai had no bonds with Hinata. Hinata just cried a lot because her dad treated her like she wasnât a person. Which was unfair, because Hinata was a type of ninja that was a person. Saiâs paintings were black when Hinata cried.Â
âYes.â
âNobody likes physical or mental pain. When a teammate -â That was shorthand for somebody with a âbondâ, if your teammates liked you. Naruto said precious people. Sai wanted to understand what that meant so desperately. â - has mental pain, we feel the mental pain too. That is why people donât like to hurt other people.âÂ
âWhat do words have to do with this?â
âInsults cause mental pain. The word retard is a very severe insult. That word meansâŠâ Sensei hummed, thinking hard. âIt means that Tobi is not a person, because he is stupid.â
What? Was that what it meant? âBut that isnât true,â Sai said. âYouâre barely a ninja.â
âThat word hurts Sasuke a lot,â Sensei said, âbecause that word is a kunai that has stabbed Sasuke many times. To Sasuke, that word means that his family is worthless. When you say that word, Sasuke feels mental pain. Theyâre mad that you donât have that mental pain too, Sai. Because it means you donât have a bond with us.â
Sai made a note in his notebook about this. Everybody told him to stop insulting them, and Sai was trying not to do it. It made them dislike him. The idea of words causing mental painâŠ
It should be false. Sai probably shouldnât believe that. But he did. Those words were causing mental pain right now. The mental pain was in his throat.
âPeople think that Sai does not care,â Sensei said, âbecause Sai causes mental pain that he does not feel.â Sai opened his mouth, but Sensei just shook his head. âSai does not have feelings? Is that true, Sai?â
âI am a ninja. It is true.â
âMental pain,â Sensei said, âis a feeling.â Sai had been tricked, lied to, and bamboozled. Sai did not know that this entire conversation was an elaborate series of lies. This had truly been a waste of his - âThere are many feelings. Mental pain is a type of feeling. Sensei talked to you about mental pain because Sensei knew it was the only feeling you would understand.â
In this world, Sai only understood pain. That was what Sensei meant.Â
Sai did not have anything to say for a while after that. For once, Sensei didnât talk either. Sai just stared at his scroll of notes, attempting to synthesize the new information presented.Â
Sai had a new painting idea. It was of Big Wolf and Small Wolf. The painting would show Small Wolf tearing out Big Wolfâs throat. But after the Big Wolf died - this would have to be a triptych - Small Wolf would lie down and howl very loudly. Small Wolf would howl and howl and howl, and he would howl so long that he would die. Small Wolf would die of sadness.
âYou canât die of sadness,â Sai informed Sensei. It was best when Saiâs paintings were realistic. His paintings only got weird when he was being weird. âYou can die of physical pain. But you canât die from mental pain. This doesnât seem true, but it is true.â
Sensei smiled, big and bright. âSai-sanâs smart! Even if we feel very sad, we do not die. We get up and we keep on living! Thatâs what itâs all about.â
âDid Rin Nohara die from her mental pain?â
Senseiâs smile fell.Â
That needed follow-up. âDid Kakashi Hatake die from mental pain?â
Senseiâs face looked a little different. Sai couldnât interpret it.
That wasnât a good face. More follow-up needed. âThe consensus in Konoha is that Obito Uchiha is dead. But that is not logically true. Reliable sources -â Danzo said this, while he was also saying the word retarded. â - claim that Obito Uchiha experienced a mental death due to mental pain. Sensei said that Rin Nohara experienced a fatal quantity of mental pain, due to the mirrored death and mental pain of Kakashi and Obito Uchiha. Now she is acting in ways that professionals deem uncharacteristic. That is also true of Obito Uchiha, who also began acting uncharacteristic after a mental death. Is Rin Nohara mentally dead?â
Sensei stared at him. In one strange glimpse, for one long second, Sensei looked very strange.
âTobi doesnât like Sai.â
âSai is aware of this.â
âI mean - fuck, itâs not your fault - ugh.â Sensei pinched the bridge of his nose, hard. âIt is not Saiâs fault he is terrible and sucks so much. Saiâs heart is not terrible and his heart does not suck so so so much. He just acts terrible. Sai, Sensei thinks it is important that you know that.â Sai made a big show of making a big note: Sai is not inherently terrible. Later on, Sai found himself referring to that page a lot. âRin-chan is not mentally dead. Sheâs Rin. Alright? Rin is Rin. Rin-chanâs just making bad choices. Kakashi-kun is Kakashi-kun and heâs making bad choices too. They arenât dead. They came back from the dead, thatâs the whole thing going on thatâs a really big deal. Donât say that.â
âKonoha agrees as a whole that Rin Noh -â
âKonoha is really fucking stupid, Sai. No. Stop writing that down.âÂ
Sai stopped writing it down. In a small note in the margins, he added - âSensei curses?â. âAre they not dead because Obito Uchiha is not dead?â
âYes,â Sensei said. âThat is why. Sadness cannot kill you. It makes you wish you were dead. And maybe it turns you into somebody else. Someone who makes bad choices, or - or is dumb. Someone like that. Maybe sadness makes you super crazy. Who cares. Not Tobi. Pain doesnât change who we are. It just makes us do stupid stuff.â He shrugged listlessly. âPainâs just pain. Thatâs all it is. Physical pain, mental painâŠsadness and grief. It doesnât mean anything we donât want it to mean. All it does is make us sadâŠâ
By that logic, Obito Uchihaâs mental pain did not change who he was. His mental pain simply made him do a lot of stupid stuff. For some reason, Sai didnât write that down. What happens in Team 7, maybe?
âI think Senseiâs in denial,â Sai said helpfully. âAnd that he just doesnât want to admit that his teammates as he knew them are lost to him forever.â
âSensei thinks that Sai should talk less.â
Even more helpfully, Sai said, âSensei is very aware that his teammates are crazy and that he is ret - stupid, and that he doesnât want to admit that he canât be loyal to them anymore without being treasonous to the village.â
âSensei is very proud of Sai for the self-censorship.â
Sai was very proud of himself as well! âThere are no logistical problems, Sensei,â he assured Sensei. Quite supportively, too! âEverybody thinks youâre too stupid to be treasonous. Konoha believes that Sensei doesnât understand the nuances of the situation, and youâre in denial that they are political enemies.â
âKonoha thinks, huh?â For the first time, Sensei looked faintly and distantly amused. âWhat does Sai hypothesize?â
Promptly, Sai said, âYou canât be in denial about something you donât understand.â
For the first time, Sensei looked faintly and distantly amused. It was a very, very different type of amusement than usual. âMaybe you should take your own advice.â
That punctured a hole in Saiâs self-satisfaction. Goes to show. These days, he never felt accomplished for very long. He found himself looking down at his notebook - cramped with his small, neat handwriting. He was halfway through it already. Social rules were numerous, and people hated that he was even asking. Team 7 were the easiest to talk to, but that was because they had gotten used to him. Tenzo had never been judgy about explaining, but heâd always given a bad explanation. Sakura knew, but she only recently stopped being super judgy about it. Sasuke still hated him and refused to explain anything. Naruto always gave the most nonsensical, self-referential explanation that made zero sense. He was also the only person who could ever successfully explain abstract concepts. Sai didnât know why this was the case either.
Bonds. What were bonds? Instruments of pain and pleasure. Saiâs fascination was a little addicting. He had never heard of the concept before Team 7 introduced it to him, and it was the first time he actually got invested in learning something. Social rules were just mission success. But bondsâŠ
Art was imperfect. You had an image in your head, and then you drew it. But you never drew it right. All you could do was approximate it. Sai couldnât put that wolf dying of sadness on paper, but he could do his best to send that message. Sai drew and drew and drew, searching for his own message.Â
Bonds. That word. An approximation of something that Sai had never understood. That incomprehensible feeling was the topic of many useless paintings. If Sai understood that feeling, then he could draw it. If he could draw it, then he could see it. He could see it again. Sai could see it again. Sai could see it again. Sai could see it -
Hanging around Team 7 and doing a lot of sketchy shit brought him closer towards that feeling. They said that feeling was a bond. They had a bond. If Sai got in on all of this âbondâ business, then he could experience that feeling again. Sai didnât even know what that feeling was. But that feeling was the ink in the stroke of a bond.Â
Ingratiate himself with Team 7. Experience the âbondâ. Feel the bond. Understand the bond. Draw the bond. See the bond. It was a simple but extremely laborious mission, partly but not limited to the fact that Sai wouldnât stop saying slurs.
âA bondâs what you got with your precious people!â Naruto announced. He didnât know that Sai was begging for the answer. To Naruto, of all people. â
Self-referential nonsense. âAnd what is a precious person?â
Just as self-importantly, Naruto said, âA precious person is someone who walks your way with you!â
At this point Sai began going insane. âAnd what does way mean in this context?â
âItâs like your nindo or something!â
âAnd what is a nindo.â
âItâs your way!â
âGive up,â Sasuke said.
âItâs not complicated!â Naruto protested. âSee, my nindoâs that I never give up and I never go back on my word!â They all knew that. âJust pick something. Itâs what you always do! Itâs what youâre already doing, or what you want to do, or whatever!â He pointed dramatically at Sensei, who was amusing himself with a childrenâs puzzle. âEven Sensei has a nindo! Thatâs the Team 7 nindo, youâve already heard it!â
Those who break the rules are trash, but those who abandon their teammates are worse than trash. Those words were the Team 7 bond. Sai never admitted it, but it was those words he wanted so desperately.
âCan that be my nindo?â Sai hazarded. âIt seems sufficient for the purposes.â
Sasuke sneered, then repeated what he said in a mocking voice. Rude, perhaps?
âThatâs the nindo of Team 7,â Sakura told Sai. She was sick of this conversation. âMy nindo is that I will achieve the dreams of my precious people. Sasuke doesnât talk about his, he says itâs private. Heâs just embarrassed by it. He said it really dramatically during a fight when we thought we were all going to die, though.â
âThat was a near-death moment,â Sasuke hissed.Â
âTeam 7 shares a nindo, which is why weâre precious people to each other. Thatâs the bond we share.â Sai perked up. He was a member of Team 7. Therefore? âUm. You were just assigned to us. That doesnât make you our precious person. Youâre horrible.â
âYou are a terrible person and I want you off our team,â Sasuke hissed.
Tenzo looked a little distressed. âI donât think this is a professional way to speak to our colleagues.â
âAre slurs professional, Tenzo-sensei?!â
âSai can be my precious person!â Naruto announced, throwing up his hands. âWhy not! Wanna be my friend, Sai?â
âI will accept that,â Sai said. Excitedly, but they couldnât tell.
Flatly, Sakura said, âNaruto asks mass murderers if they wanna be his precious people. That doesnât mean anything.â
âHey! Friendships mean everything!â
âHeâs not our friend. He sucks.â
âAh, the cute students are being passive-aggressive again.â Sensei popped up out of nowhere, patting Sakura and Sasuke on the head. When had he put down the puzzle? Where was he always coming from? âSai-san, you should try finding your own nindo. Maybe youâll be less terrible!â
âSenpai, we shouldnât call the students terrible.â
âUmâŠhe is, thoughâŠâ
Saiâs way. He still didnât know. But it was a mission success criteria. Self-assigned, and only one of many, but it was a priority mission. Once he knew, and once he shouted it during a dramatic moment in a fight and saved everyoneâs lives, heâd have bonds. He would have precious people. He would understand the bonds with his precious people. Then heâd draw the bond. Then heâd see the bond. Then he could hold it. Then he could have it again.
Sai sat on that walkway with Sensei, drawing Big Wolf again. But he still couldnât draw it right.Â
Sai đ he's trying so hard and being so annoying about it. He's my fav. Love him â€ïž
Honestly, I think I just love annoying characters. And you're so good at writing them where they're annoying in a funny/interesting way idk
Him reading stuff about finding your tribe was like lmfao. Of course he's reading those interpersonal self help type books. Like, you'll get there bud, I believe in you!! Lmao
I love drawing a vivid picture. I love doing it simply and elegantly. I love going "As the books say, Sai just has to find his tribe", and instantly painting a very vivid and really really really funny picture.
Genuinely love Sai. He sucks. He genuinely sucks. He's horrible to be around. I enjoy writing these guys, like, don't get me wrong. But what's so fun about Sai is that he is trying SO HARD. He is out here wanting the mythical Bestie and he is trying so hard to make Besties and everybody hates him. None of what he does is malicious or ill-intentioned. Like, he is often a massive bitch completely on purpose, but half of Team 7 are massive bitches and I think he had bad role models. He does shitty stuff because he was ordered to do it, and it's unreasonable to expect him to go against orders. He doesn't want to suck this much. He just does.
I hope that he didn't come off as autistic-coding, because the point is that none of this is who Sai is. Every issue he has is because somebody made him that way. So much of this story is about the exploitation of children, and how the powerful treat humanity as something that can be taken away.
Sai's backstory is a little bit different in this AU. I should find an excuse to reveal it during the Ino story. But we can already see how Sai's upbringing didn't take away how he felt - just his ability to understand or describe his feelings. It was massively fun to use Sai's art as a medium to depict the feelings his narration couldn't even acknowledge. All Sai can do is draw wolves. He doesn't know he's grieving, and he doesn't know what grieving is, and he's really really hoping that Naruto can tell him. Thankfully, he is in Naruto.
Tremendously fun to write. Love that outsider POV love that 'these people are freaks why am I going along with this' POV love the completely naive POV love the insightful POV love the really really really funny one. I need to finish 'Dropped In A Ghost Story Still Gotta Work', finish the fanfic of it I'm already writing in my brain, before going back to it, but it will be done!
Y'all this is a piece of history right here. Every single time you see a reference to a "shovel talk" in fic, defined here as "someone threatening harm to a potential romantic partner of a friend/loved one," it's referencing this scene. This scene specifically. Everywhere else that is not fannish internet, that interaction is referred to a "shotgun talk," referencing the father threatening a daughter's boyfriend with a shotgun. This scene gave a lot of people a chance to reframe that interaction in terms of a protective friend rather than a possessive father, which for a lot of obvious reasons resonated with people a whole fucking lot, and it immediately spread like wildfire into fannish and then general internet lexicon. I've seen people try and backronym it into an extension of the shotgun talk, as in, "I've got a shotgun and a shovel to bury you with," but I've asked a lot of rednecks from a lot of different necks of the woods and no one has ever encountered that variant in brickspace life. It's all Buffy, babey. This shit is linguistic history in the making.
Every inch of the Naruto romance endgames threw me, but the Sai/Ino thing REALLY threw me because where the FUCK did that come from???? The one time he said she was pretty??? Her made her blush a few times? How many other times did they interact?! Stupid-ass.
Anyway. They're such bitch4bitch energy. I think they sit around people watching and ruthlessly criticizing random stranger's outfits. All they do is share chisme, spill tea, and gossip. They're besties.
Ino has incredible social pressure to marry and have a kid, and her actual girlfriend Sakura is busy with her horrible polycule and three children, so she and Sai marry and co-parent. They still gossip and it's very functional. Naruto WILL legalize gay marriage but it'll take a while for it to catch on. I have a whole mental Boruto, don't test me.
That's the real headcanon, the joke headcanon is this:
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Sai đ he's trying so hard and being so annoying about it. He's my fav. Love him â€ïž
Honestly, I think I just love annoying characters. And you're so good at writing them where they're annoying in a funny/interesting way idk
Him reading stuff about finding your tribe was like lmfao. Of course he's reading those interpersonal self help type books. Like, you'll get there bud, I believe in you!! Lmao
I love drawing a vivid picture. I love doing it simply and elegantly. I love going "As the books say, Sai just has to find his tribe", and instantly painting a very vivid and really really really funny picture.
Genuinely love Sai. He sucks. He genuinely sucks. He's horrible to be around. I enjoy writing these guys, like, don't get me wrong. But what's so fun about Sai is that he is trying SO HARD. He is out here wanting the mythical Bestie and he is trying so hard to make Besties and everybody hates him. None of what he does is malicious or ill-intentioned. Like, he is often a massive bitch completely on purpose, but half of Team 7 are massive bitches and I think he had bad role models. He does shitty stuff because he was ordered to do it, and it's unreasonable to expect him to go against orders. He doesn't want to suck this much. He just does.
I hope that he didn't come off as autistic-coding, because the point is that none of this is who Sai is. Every issue he has is because somebody made him that way. So much of this story is about the exploitation of children, and how the powerful treat humanity as something that can be taken away.
Sai's backstory is a little bit different in this AU. I should find an excuse to reveal it during the Ino story. But we can already see how Sai's upbringing didn't take away how he felt - just his ability to understand or describe his feelings. It was massively fun to use Sai's art as a medium to depict the feelings his narration couldn't even acknowledge. All Sai can do is draw wolves. He doesn't know he's grieving, and he doesn't know what grieving is, and he's really really hoping that Naruto can tell him. Thankfully, he is in Naruto.
Tremendously fun to write. Love that outsider POV love that 'these people are freaks why am I going along with this' POV love the completely naive POV love the insightful POV love the really really really funny one. I need to finish 'Dropped In A Ghost Story Still Gotta Work', finish the fanfic of it I'm already writing in my brain, before going back to it, but it will be done!
Naruto Tobito Roleswap AU: Team Minato's Very Wholesome Terrorist Reunion PART TWO:
âHow can Tobi be happy like this?â Tobi asked, voice tremulous. His body was on guard, but he wasnât pulling away yet. âThis is all my fault.â
âRin and I made our own bad choices,â Kakashi said. His voice was deep, now. Really deep and smooth and soothing. Rin was so lucky. âRin sees further ahead than human beings. I donât see much at all. You are the only innocent party. So donât cry.â
What crap. As if Tobi hadnât hurt Rin and Kakashi more than anybody else ever could. As if Tobi would do anything other than cry. But Kakashi always hated to see Rin cry. She had always tried to be so strong. Kakashiâs strength had always seemed effortless. Obitoâs strength had always been a paper-thin illusion. A genjutsu that the world shattered.
Tobi made an invisible Team 7 special signal. It involved a near-imperceptible fluctuation of chakra - one that only the four ninja most capable of extremely precise chakra control could do. Kushina-nee was excluded from Team 7 signals because she could not do the signal.Â
Why the hell did you break your cover, idiot!
In which Kakashi gives great pep talks, Tobi demonstrates his expertise at the art of provocation, and Gai steals the show.
And in which Sai unstacks a matryoshka doll.
A/N: This was part of the same meandering story as the chronicle of the first Team 7 reunion, but the story is literally so incoherent and random and what-the-fuck-ever that I split it in half and literally nothing was lost. I'm just doing whatever. All of these stories are so whatever. Did Sai have to come in so hard at the end there? No. But I love Sai. I love him. I loved writing him so much that he has his own story now. The world will know my Sai/Ino QPP headcanon.
Dramatics under the cut.
Tobi knelt in front of the memorial stone.
They had worked fast. Kakashi Hatake and Rin Noharaâs names were already filled in, leaving two awkward gaps a year apart. Guess they werenât really popular anymore.Â
Tobi used to have bad dreams about finding his own name on that memorial stone. Konoha or ROOT or somebody would have gone behind his back and chiseled it in. In those dreams, Tobi would always try to argue against his own tombstone. Thatâs a mistake, Tobi would say. Iâm right here. But Konoha said it would be too expensive to fix. Or maybe they just couldnât hear him. That was how those dreams would always go.
Sensei and Kushina-nee had their own special grave marker in another part of the cemetery. Right next to the Second and Third Hokages. Sometimes Tobi found Tsunade in front of Sarutobiâs grave at three in the morning, drunk as a skunk and ranting nonsense. Tobi had already knelt and talked to that grave today. He was always apologizing to that grave. Tobi knew he wasnât the only one, but sometimes he thought that everybody should.
Apparently Naruto visited it pretty often. According to Sakura, he could sit in front of that grave and chat for an hour about every little thing that came to his mind. None of it was important and half of it was updates about the lives of random people they met in another country two years ago. Tobi asked how Sakura knew this. Of course, Sakura and Sasuke went with him a lot.
There was a large Uchiha memorial in this graveyard as well. Tobi never visited it, but he knew Sasuke brooded in front of the thing sometimes. Tobi had checked it out when he came back to the village after his trip, only to see that nobody had filed off Shisuiâs name. Tobi didnât know if Sasuke forgot on accident or if he forgot on purpose - or what it would mean if he had or hadnât.Â
Tobi bowed to the stone. He bowed deep and low, with his hands on the ground in front of him and face turned towards the trodden grass.Â
Tobi didnât come here very often. The metaphor would be a little bit on the nose. He was his own walking graveyard, and his own unending memorial. But people all had their own weird senses of obligation, and once a year somebody always forced him into a nice outfit and dumped him in front of a grave marker. The number of people to visit grew as the number of people who took him dwindled. Right until the day he died, Shisui always took Tobi to see Tobiâs parents on the anniversary of their deaths. That didnât occur to anybody anymore. Sarutobi always took Tobi to Senseiâs grave on the day of the fox attack - the graveyardâs always hopping that day - and he didnât say anything when Naruto started coming too. Naruto never called out the Third on the mystery orphan situation, but that was definitely just because of Sasuke. The number grew smaller and smaller.
Gai still took him to Rin and Kakashiâs graves. Twice a year. Tobi didnât come much more often than that. He had always figured that the convoluted lying scheme was perfectly obvious from the afterlife, and that it would be vaguely insulting. Obito would have come all of the time.Â
He was still bowing, but he didnât have anything to say. Everything he wanted to say died in his throat, and everything he knew he had to say wouldnât come. He couldnât lie to this stone. He couldnât tell the truth. All he could do was apologize.Â
Bow from respect for the boy who saved your life, and the girl who loved you. They sacrificed it all for you. You never gave anything back. Tobi tried to acknowledge those sacrifices - acknowledge them loudly, whenever and wherever he could, when everybody else in the world refused - but it wasnât enough.
This was all his fault. If he had just been better, and if he hadnât been so worthless. If he hadnât been a burden. He couldnât even be kind. He had never even been a good friend. A good teammate. They should hate him. If he was them, Tobi would hate him. He already did. Â
Bow in apology. Iâm sorry that you were someplace else, and that I was not with you. I promised that you will never fight a battle without me; that somebody will always stand between Rin and the world as she saves Kakashiâs life. Tobi had broken Obitoâs promise. The hollow shell of your most powerful weapon, the spectre of resentment and hatred against the village that killed him. That shell was its own broken promise. If Obito hadnât started this mission, if he hadnât gone so far to live his own life - would something be different? Could he have saved Rin?Â
Would they have come back for him?
There was nothing to say. Nothing that Obito remotely wanted Tobi to say - nothing that should come from Tobi. So Tobi just rose from the bow, fell into a more comfortable cross-legged position, and cried.Â
That was always the nice thing about this restricted life - the ways in which he could live it however he wanted. If Tobi wanted to laugh, then he laughed. If he was sad, then he cried. In the midst of the fake laughter and tears, Obitoâs true feelings were allowed to exist. Obito hadnât been allowed to cry at his own parentâs funeral. Theyâd said he was being weak. He was a ninja now.Â
Obito Uchihaâs parents knew they had a genius on their hands. They trained him from the moment they could, far sooner than anybody thought possible. But they had fought tooth and nail to keep Obito out of the field. Obitoâs mother had argued with Fugakuâs father for hours, over and over again. She didnât want Obito even enrolling into the Academy until six or seven. She fully intended on dragging his training out until the war ended.Â
Two days after they died, Fugakuâs father processed the paperwork for the Academy assessment test. He would test out. Two days. Their bodies were barely cold. The life Obito ledâŠit wasnât the life they had wanted for him. They had wanted better.Â
Tobi sat there and wailed. Who was he crying for? Out of the three of them, the only person still dead was Obito Uchiha.
âRin thought you would be happy.â
Hook, line, and sinker.
Tobiâs wails halted - the specific sort of hard stop when somebody was surprised out of crying. He opened his burning eye, rubbing hard, and after a few blurry seconds the image of Kakashi swirled into place in front of him.
He was leaning against the memorial stone, arms crossed and slightly amused. Not very respectful. He clearly couldnât care less. Tobi had to wonder how he had mastered reading Kakashiâs obscure body language so quickly - how he knew what that tilt of the Anbu-like mask meant. Tobi hoped that people remembered to give props to Shikamaru. He had nailed Hound for a Konoha missing-nin due to that mask and codenameâs similarities to their own ninja. But Shikamaru had gone through their roster of missing and disappeared nin three times, and he couldnât find anybody who resembled Hound. He was gonna be smug about this.
 Tobi gaped at him, rubbing his eye again for good measure. He didnât have to show off and start fighting Kakashi - Tobi was famously conflict averse.
âHow can Tobi be happy like this?â Tobi asked, voice tremulous. His body was on guard, but he wasnât pulling away yet. âThis is all my fault.â
âRin and I made our own bad choices,â Kakashi said. His voice was deep, now. Really deep and smooth and soothing. Rin was so lucky. âRin sees further ahead than human beings. I donât see much at all. You are the only innocent party. So donât cry.â
What crap. As if Tobi hadnât hurt Rin and Kakashi more than anybody else ever could. As if Tobi would do anything other than cry. But Kakashi always hated to see Rin cry. She had always tried to be so strong. Kakashiâs strength had always seemed effortless. Obitoâs strength had always been a paper-thin illusion. A genjutsu that the world shattered.
Tobi made an invisible Team 7 special signal. It involved a near-imperceptible fluctuation of chakra - one that only the four ninja most capable of extremely precise chakra control could do. Kushina-nee was excluded from Team 7 signals because she could not do the signal.Â
Why the hell did you break your cover, idiot!
More and more ANBU were arriving at the scene. Appearing so openly in the middle of Konoha was idiocy, and it tipped a dangerous hand. They knew they had an enemy who was capable of fully infiltrating their village. Konoha was only getting more nervous.Â
âTobiâs brain knows that Kakashi-kun and Rin-chan are alive. The brain thinks it should make me happy. But Tobiâs heart doesnât care.â Tobi grasped the fold of fabric above his heart, curling his hand around the cloth. âTobiâs heart was sad. Because that heart doesnât know why you didnât come back for me.â
Kakashi was silent. Unamused, for the first time.
âIs it because I didnât come back for you?â Tobi was crying again. He hadnât really meant to. The sadness was too much for this shell. âI thought you were dead. Iâm sorry. Are you mad at me?â
Instantly, Kakashi said, âNo. Stop trying to remember that. Itâs not worth it. Donât think about it.â
âBut -â
âThe only thing worse than that hell,â Kakashi said, âwould be hell with you beside me. If you care about me, you wouldnât try to remember.â Well. When you put it like that. Tobi was still rubbing his nose, but he nodded miserably. âGood. Youâre being good right now.â
And Kakashi flared his own chakra. It was very, very Kakashi. To the word, it translated as, Whoopsie-daisy! Good thing I donât actually care!
Asshole. Obito twitched his eyebrow down. Kakashi knew that one. Obito Look of Disapproval of Your Actions Because Your Actions are Suicidal. It wasnât used as often as âBecause Your Actions are Stupidâ, but it was pretty broken-in. Because Kakashi was stupid and suicidal. Kakashi said that Obito was smart and suicidal. Rin said can we please stop fighting over something depressing. Rin had always wanted the fighting to stop. She had just wanted it all to stop.
Kakashi did the mask equivalent of looking up at the sky and whistling. It was mostly a twitch. And Tobi was very, very sure.
Did Kakashi know about Tobi? Obviously. That was uninteresting, if somewhat embarrassing.Â
Those first few days were crystal-sharp in Tobiâs memory, colored by stress. Everybody who came to visit them in the hospital - people used to do that in Konoha, they used to care about each other - had heard the rumors and wanted to confirm it for themselves. They had been hoping it was just an exaggeration.Â
And they all had the same damn looks on their faces when they saw him. Some, like Kurenai, were really uncomfortable and upset. Horrified. They fled the scene. But most people looked at him and felt disgust. Tobi could always see that disgust in their faces. Discomfort, anger - even sadness, sometimes. That feeling a ninja always had when they saw a comradeâs bandages fall off after he was immolated. How disgusting those injuries were. Disgust in his injuries, or disgust in Obito Uchiha - that he had allowed this to happen to himself. That he would shame and debase himself like this. They had no fucking clue.
Some people pulled Rin out of earshot and whispered to her that they had to mercy-kill him. Some people didnât bother hiding it. Others looked him in the eye and said it. Some people said it as if the only way Obito could ever pay penance for his actions was to do it himself. Â
 Hound had looked at him, but never strangely. Kakashi hadnât looked at him strangely at all. He didnât talk to him as if he was Obito. He had no idea how to talk to him, but he had known how to try. He knew that Tobi got nonverbal when he was overwhelmed. It was never on purpose. Obito chose not to interpret that one. But there were around five living people who knew that - his living babysitters, Gai, and Sasuke. Had Shisui known? How had Kakashi known so much and still struggled so hard to talk to him?
How did Kakashi know that Tobi was sitting here crying?Â
There was an obscene amount of ANBU around them. Nobody had ever successfully defeated Hound in a fight. Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura together had pushed him into a retreat, but he had gotten away. Naruto had interpreted that as a win. Sasuke had interpreted it as a loss, since he was not dead. Sakura had known it was just the start.Â
Ninjas didnât tend to follow weaker people, so that strength was making a few people anxious about Rin. A few. Most werenât. She was a healer!
Tsunade was worried. Tobi regretted bringing that woman back every day. She had called him out on his shit instantly.Â
Why was Kakashi admitting to the whole-ass Konoha that he could pop into Konoha whenever he wanted? That he heard the wails of an idiot in an empty graveyard?
âThereâs nothing to forgive. But you wanted to apologize to me, right?â The faceless man straightened, finally pushing off the memorial stone. The lack of respect for the dead had to be grating hard at most of the ANBU by now. âCan I tell you how you can apologize to me?â Tobi nodded automatically. âRin-sama asked me to deliver a message.â
This again? She wouldnât stop saying it - as if Tobi needed to hear it every day, or he would forget. Sheâd end every message with it. As if he didnât know. Maybe she just liked to say it. She ought to save it for more important circumstances. Long suffering, Tobi said, âTobi knows Rin loves him.â
âNot that sort of message.â
Whose side are you on, Obito?
It was a shit-ass question. Tobi was on the side of Team 7. Wherever that team happened to be, whatever it had become - they were almost the only people he had ever cared about. That unassailable fact had started splitting him in half. But only one side had the Konoha that he hated so much.
âOkay,â Tobi said. âIf it isnât bad.â
Kakashi stood in front of him. Tobi ought to stand up. Sitting on the ground, the tall man looked impossibly tall. That was what Tobi hated the most. If you were going to be alive, then you had to be a human about it.Â
Maybe he could tell. Kakashi took a squat, so he was almost at eye level with Tobi. In that same old monotone, he said, âYour Rin-chan saysâŠyou can tell them the truth now. What only Tobi knows.â
Kakashiâs hand reached out -
And he went flying.
He crashed through a stone memorial. It almost exploded, shards of stone flying everywhere as particulates burst in the air, and it didnât even break Kakashiâs impact. Kakashi ended up colliding with the gravestone several meters behind him, back cracking on the stone. The stone cracked too, a spiderweb fracture instantly splitting through it, but it held.
Maito Gai stood in front of Tobi. Tobi hadnât even seen him move. Tobi had seen the strike before he even saw Gai. He was in the opening stance of his personal school of taijustu, challenging and ready, but Tobi saw something a little different in him. Gai didnât look grim very often.Â
Kakashiâs mask cracked from the impact again. Tobi was fully aware of the force necessary to crack that mask. Kakashi was heaving deep breaths, rolling onto his back and carelessly pushing the mask off. He stared at the sky, eyes wild, as he struggled to breathe. Gai was judging if he should take advantage of this opening with another strike, or if he needed to wait. Tobi wasnât sure what Gai was waiting for.
Then Kakashiâs breathing evened out, and his stuttering gasps became smooth again. The injury had just healed. That was what Gai had been waiting to see - how long it would take for Kakashiâs body to heal a shattered ribcage. Because that kick had shattered his entire ribcage. He should be dying.
Tobi truly couldnât tell if there had been an order to strike if Kakashi made a move, or if Gai had gone off-script. He could be acting under orders to test out Kakashi and see what he was willing to do. But the rest of the ANBU were sure gonna get pissed at him if heâd gone rogue and kicked a guy through gravestones just because he was mad. Or worried? It was hard to tell.Â
It took a minute. It was a minute before Kakashi started laughing. Wheezy and strange and horrible, Kakashi pressed a hand over his eyes and laughed.Â
âI get it,â Kakashi gasped. âI finally get it. How happy this makes meâŠâ
A surprising amount of ninja found it an honor to get beat up by Maito Gai. Tobi was kind of impressed that Kakashi-kun was one of them. If that was what heâd meant.Â
 Iâm so happy, Obito.Â
Weâll make you perfectly happy.Â
What was with that? What was this fascination with happiness? Nobody in the world was happy. What did happiness matter?
âI profess the joy I felt when I learned you were alive.â Gai shouldnât say such a happy sentence so seriously. Gai always announced joy with such triumph. âBut this joy was colored by my anger at your actions. If Kakashi Hatake wishes to speak and explain himself, then I am willing to listen. But my comrades and I demand that you leave your old teammate out of this. He has suffered enough!â
Kakashi laughed again, wild and thin, as he rolled onto his feet. Gaiâs eyes widened, and Tobi knew that he was feeling the emotional whirlpool of seeing Kakashiâs face again. Maybe not âagainâ - Tobi remembered too late that Kakashi never took his mask off in front of their comrades. This was probably the first time that Gai had ever seen Kakashiâs face. He was probably stunned by how handsome he was. Very standard reaction. Sensei and Kushina-nee had been terrified that he was going to grow up to be a lady-killer. With that easy smile, Kakashi had said that Rin and Obito were enough of a handful. They did spend a lot of time together.
âGai-kunâŠâ Kakashi exhaled heavily, looking up at the pale blue sky. âI always thought that teammate needed more friends than just us. A half-assed ninja and a pacifist kunoichi. I thought you wouldnât give up on himâŠthat youâd see through to who he really is. Ah, GaiâŠyou never needed to wonder if your friend would have been proud of you. Every day, since the day we met. Every day, across those seventeen years. Your friends have been grateful for you. The only adult uncorrupted by the rot of this village. The good man of Konoha.â
Nobody else could have seen it. Nobody else was close enough, or had a sharp enough eye. But Tobi could see it: the tears brimming in Gaiâs eyes. He would not cry in front of an enemy. But it was difficult not to cry in front of Kakashi.Â
âOne cannot be a good person and walk the ninjaâs path.â Gai never faltered, and Tobi scrambled to stand up. âBut I cannot neglect the good inside of my comrades and friends. I will never fail to nurture the good in our children. If Kakashi and Rin believed in me, then they would accept offers of peace.â Gaiâs breath was strong and steady, never weakening. In anybody else, it would have faltered. âWhen the village ostracized me, you held out your hand. When I did not believe in myself, you believed in me. When I was friendless, you were my friend. I reach out my hand to you now. But I cannot forgive any more harm to your teammate. This must end!â
Tobi grabbed onto Gaiâs shoulder, clutching desperately onto his jumpsuit. It very directly impeded Gaiâs attempts to fight. Batshit stupid thing to do in front of an Akatsuki member. Of course, we all knew who we were talking about. The ANBU in the trees thought that Tobi was still dissociating/out of it/stupider than usual. Tobi wondered what Kakashiâs definition of freedom was.
âKakashi-kun hasnât hurt me!â Tobi cried. He was almost crying himself, confused and terrified. âGai-chan, donât fight him! Best friends shouldnât fight!â
âHey, Iâm not the one who made things violent.â Kakashi slouched and shoved his hands in his pockets - somebody unwilling to fight? Or somebody who knew that he didnât have to? âIâm not the one who turned him stupider than usual. The goodness inside your comrades did that. Even that goodness is corrupt. By that logicâŠarenât we all monsters?âÂ
Gai was about to strike. Tobi yanked harder at his jumpsuit, distracting him and pulling him off-stance. âTobi doesnât want friends to hurt each other! This isnât fair! Donât fight Kakashi-kun on his grave, Gai-chan!â
Almost too quick to see, firm and restrained, Tobiâs hands were removed from Gaiâs jumpsuit. A familiar ANBU member was pulling him away, even as more and more ANBU appeared on the field. An explosive katon ninjutsu swept the field, and the dirt beneath their feet trembled as somebody weaponized the stone underneath their feet.
The hands were pulling him away. Tobi clumsily fought against them, straining backwards to look at the sudden battlezone, but he was too busy freaking out to try and jump back into the fight. He considered it, but it wouldnât have been worth the repercussions. It had taken years before Neiji successfully figured out the nuances of Tobiâs bizarre physiology enough to effectively block his chi points, but Tobi really hated it every time he did.
Amazingly, Neiji was even tactful about it. Under his breath, he said, âGai would only be in danger if you got in his way. You can help once you calm down.â Neiji halted for a second as Tobi strained in his impressively iron grip, making his own decision, before he whispered something. âTobi-sensei, Iâm one of your friends. I want us someplace safe.â
Tobi finally stopped, staring at the ANBU member with the Snow Leopard mask in surprise, and Neiji finally took the opening to get them out of there. Poor kid. Thus were the demands of the ANBU. These blatant and humiliating lies.
That lie. Neiji had been directed to get the dangerous load out of there. It wasnât because Tobi was more likely to go along with somebody he knew. It was probably because Neiji could painlessly drop him the fastest. But nobody had asked him to reassure Tobi.Â
Whose side are you on, Obito?
He sure had sabotaged that fight so Kakashi could get away. That should say enough. Tobi knew which side had the Konoha he hated.
But as Neiji pulled him away with a beautifully perfected shunshin, so unrecognizable from his hastily constructed attempts five years ago, Tobi thought of that gaggle of kids. The ones who groaned when they saw him and never admitted that they came to him for advice. Some people called them the Konoha 12 - the strongest new generation, full of promise and potential. Naruto was there too.Â
Was that still true? Was Tobiâs world still so provincial? Or had he found a new world? Those kids, who admired kindness and compassion and hidden strength - could Tobi step into that new world?Â
Tsunade had said something batshit insane a while back. She said that heâd already built it. Tobi had said that he was too useless for that.
âYou four set up a weird-ass training rotation,â Tsunade said. âI see that Kurenai teaches that rookie class genjutsu, Asuma teaches them ninjutsu, and Gai teaches them taijutsu. Theyâre the best at their jobs, alright. But any ninja in the village could teach those kids that. I see you teaching them what nobody else can teach them. Youâre the only ninja in the village who can teach those kids to be people. You arenât unnecessary, so stop acting like it.â
Neiji was keyed into the estate wards, and he landed in front of the main house with an easy grace. Sasuke and Naruto were already waiting for him - covered in soot and soaked in sweat. Theyâd been sparring again before Sasuke felt Neijiâs chakra signature barrelling towards them.
Neiji carefully helped Tobi slide off his shoulders and onto his feet on the ground. Sasuke lurched forward, about to over-attentively scan him for injuries again, but Naruto just grabbed his shoulder. Even stranger, Sasuke listened to him.Â
Damn. Tobi really didnât want to panic like this in front of the kids. It wasnât as if he needed to look like a tough guy in front of the studentsâŠor as if that was remotely possibleâŠbut he wanted them to rely on him. Sasuke, in his own way, relied on him the most.Â
But he had to sound irrational and childish. Tobi couldnât pull a minute of the last fifteen minutes if they thought he actually understood what he was doing. Luckily, Kakashi was awfully obliging with this makeshift investigation. He even fought Gai about it. Seemingly. Tobi was sure that they thought they were fighting Kakashi.Â
You couldnât even begin to fight the guy without a Sharingan. There was a reason why Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke together had come the closest. And Tobi was well aware that the only person who could match that hideously overpowered Mangekyo wasâŠ
Anyway, so Tobi was forced to keep crying. Sasuke was barraging Neiji with questions - none of which he was answering. Sasuke really had to start locking down the identities of the active duty ANBU. He had a Sharingan. This was embarrassing. Kid was so lazy sometimes.Â
âHe encountered Kakashi Hatake,â Neiji said, clipped and flat. Sasuke skidded to a halt, eyes widening. âAnd Iâm only telling you that because he will. More ANBU will come to take his statement soon.â
Kid was completely failing to mention the ongoing fight. This was because he knew that Sasuke and Naruto would make literally everything worse by jumping in. And they would jump in. ANBU wasnât the type of organization to admit that these were the only three chuunin who ever got him to retreat. Tsunade would, and this was already making its way to her. Neiji was undoubtedly going to stay in case he needed to mobilize Sasuke and Naruto. Sakura and Tenzo were likely on a training day trip outside the village.Â
âEncountered!â Naruto exclaimed. âDid he escape? What did he want? Sensei, what even happened?â
Sasuke stepped towards Neiji, trying very ineffectually to look intimidating. âTell me what happened. Heâs targeting him, isnât he!â
âKakashi isnât targeting me!â Tobi cried, hiccuping with another sob. âKakashi and I were just talking. He didnât do anything wrong!â
âReally?â Naruto asked. Taking him dead seriously. Sometimes he was so much like Sensei and Kushina-nee that it burned. Other times, he clearly lived on his own very distinct Naruto-planet. Tobi made sense on Naruto-planet. Sometimes it was really concerning. Tobi didnât even live on Tobi-planet. âWhatâs the problem? Maybe he wanted to talk outside of a fight, yeah?â
Neiji kept his monotonous inflection. He did a very good job. His usual âyou are so stupid that I want to kill everyone in this room and then myselfâ monotone was very different. âUzumaki. That is not what happened. His injury is still acting up.â Very polite euphemism for âheâs not the most annoying five year old adult ninja genius we all know and barely tolerate, he actually thinks heâs fiveâ. âQuiet him down and get him inside. Iâll stay in case Hatake approaches.â
âWhat if they have to talk?â Naruto seemed to think this was an extremely reasonable question. Or a question anybody else but him would have. âIf I caught up with Sasuke for the first time in twenty years -â How old did he think Tobi was?! â - then weâd gotta hash stuff out too. Especially if Sasuke was dead and evil. Maybe they just gotta.â
âIf I was evil my blades would speak for themselves,â Sasuke muttered darkly.
âBut youâd drop some cool one-liners or something!â
Neiji was officially over this. How professional. He lasted twice as long as usual. He was going to say his own cool one-liner and disappear instantly, super-cool professional ANBU style. Teenagers were obsessed with the aesthetic. âI need to secure the perim -â
âTobi.â Sasuke put a hand on Tobiâs arm, and Tobi allowed the warmth to spread. âSnow Leopard has to go back to work. But heâs going to be around if we need him. If Kakashi comes back, Snow Leopardâs going to stop any fighting. Say bye to Snow Leopard, alright?â
Despite everything, that warmth spread to his heart. Tobi used to do this for Sasuke. Sasuke thought they were doing it for Tobi. After all this time - after the life-or-death fights and the near-death experiences and the One and Six and Nine Tails - Sasuke always made sure that Tobi felt safe.Â
Tobi would do the same. And the things he did to keep Sasuke safeâŠhopefully heâd never find out about that. They would be a little hard to explain.Â
Sasukeâs endless nightmares over Itachi returning. Tobi would take his hand and lead him outside, and he would talk loudly about how they had lots of guards here to protect them. He would point out the ANBU guard in the trees, making Sasuke goggle. The ANBU were always very embarrassed when this happened. To save their hiding places and stop Sasuke from learning how to spot ANBU, the guard would drop down and let Sasuke see them. The guardâs super-strong and super-cool, and they can keep us safe. Tobi knows that Itachi can kill the guard very easily, but the guardâs death would alarm the whole village. Then every ANBU will be here, and everything will be fine. Say night-night to the guard, Sasuke-chan.
âBye Snow Leopard,â Tobi said miserably. âYouâre really niceâŠâ
âIâll be here if you want me,â Neiji said, shockingly nice.Â
Then he disappeared. Just for fun, Tobi belatedly waved goodbye. Naruto waved goodbye too, brimming with enthusiasm.
Sasuke did his usual neat and efficient job of pulling Tobi out of a freak-out. As always, Naruto effortlessly distracted Tobi and acted as if he was a remotely decent conversational partner. Sasuke directed him in the role like an actor. Naruto didnât seem to be strictly aware of this.
Tobi laid in bed and stared at the ceiling. A good nap would bring him back down again. He had to get back to normal. He had been trying to get back to normal, but stupid Bakashi and Rin-chan were making his life difficult again.
A warmth bloomed in Tobiâs heart, and he found himself pressing his hand over that heart. He hadnât thought that sentence in so long. That hadnât been his life in so long. Inconvenienced, annoyed, dragged down. Loved. Loving. They must have invented it - that kind of love, so desperate and intense. The only real things in their world. The one and only truth.Â
Even if Rin and Kakashi love each otherâŠdifferently. Then they used to. They had a husband-and-wife style love now. Which was of course fine. Tobi and Rin had a brother-sister kind of love. Love changes. Childhood love more than any other. Seventeen years! Who wouldn't have a husband-and-wife style of love, right?
It was fine. Rin clearly still saw him as a little brother. Kakashi - probably did too? Logically? He seemed to confuse Tobi with an earnest puppy. A puppy that had enthusiastically almost ripped his arm in half. This was all fine. The bigger problem was the evil thing. Every problem was bigger.Â
This problem didnât matter at all. So long as Bakashi was Bakashi and Rin-chan was Rin-chanâŠthe rest of the world paled in front of that.Â
In front of what had to happen.
An hour later, Sakura, Tenzo, and Sai came spilling back into the house with hot button news. Sakura had probably broken a door in her excitement again. Turns out that Kakashi Hatake had been spotted in the graveyard! Turns out that this was old and very aggravating news!
Thankfully, Sakura also had more recent news. Kakashi Hatake was gone. He had actually left bare minutes after the fight started. It was possible that he could have left at any time. Gai had said that Kakashi hadnât approached him effortlessly, but he had been remarkably relaxed about it. Of course, Kakashi had once been relaxed about everything.Â
Nobody was happy. The Hokage was extremely unhappy. Sakura had rushed home to update the team, but she had to run and go back to doing assistant stuff soon. Sai cheerfully noted that rumors said Sensei had been there. Rumors about what he had been doing there had flown thick and fast. With some arcane wonder, Tenzo said that Sai had listened to a few of them before calmly and verbally ripping them to shreds for gossiping. It was mysterious, since Sai had probably said worse.
The question remained. What had Tobi been doing there?
Tobi sipped at his tea. They were all sitting around the tea table. They were also all staring at him.Â
Humbly, with the grace and wisdom of a monk, Tobi said, âTobi was paying his respects to the dead.â
Instantly, Sasuke said, âBullshit.â
âThatâs so mean, Sasuke-chan.â
âYou hate the graveyard.â Sasuke angrily smashed a tea cookie into his mouth. He stress ate. âYouâve been angrily muttering about throttling Hatake for days.â Heâs been what? âWhen you visited Shisuiâs grave, you stomped around and got pissy. Whatâs the real reason you visited the memorial? It wasnât just to apologize.â
âSensei hasnât been feeling well,â Tobi said, as Ninja Buddha once did.
âDo you have any idea how bad your tantrums get when you donât feel well.â
âYouâve been avoiding talking about the Hatake and Nohara situation completely,â Sakura said unhappily. Her hands were wrapped tight around the tea cup, searching for its warmth. âThe whole situation is so weird, and itâs only getting weirder. I get that you donât want to talk about it, but will you explain something?â
Sai nibbled at a tea cookie mildly and politely. âAn insider informed me that Sensei behaved treasonously because he âdid not know any betterâ.â The air quotes could have been painted in the air. âBut you seem to have bounced back quickly. Itâs very strange.â
He might as well set this up now. It had the benefit of being true. âSenseiâs fine. Very, very fine!â Tobi wriggled away from Sasukeâs deathly yet disbelieving glare. âSeeing Kakashi made me feelâŠitâs stressful for sensei. And not the kind of stressful that you can punch. And Kakashi-kun is really super stressful becauseâŠumâŠâ
Sakura folded her arms on the table. âBecause of why you were doing all of this.â
This was a good time to tell them. Tobi took a small yet regal sip of the tea. âSensei and Kakashi-kun share eyes. That means we share kamui. We always have. I can teleport lots of places with kamui. Since Kakashi-kun could visit today, that means he can use kamui to go places too.â Might as well. âTobi tested it out. I opened up a portal into the kitchen, and Sasuke didnât notice it at all. If Kakashi can open up portalsâŠor if his ghost powers can make him invisibleâŠâ
âHe can get in and out of anywhere he wants,â Tenzo finished.Â
âYup.â Tobi took another sip of his tea. âThatâs how Kakashi-kunâs been stalking Tobi.â
Everybody stared at him. Then they stared at each other. Sai fiddled with his brush.
Finally, Sakura took the fall. âYou have to be kidding.â
But Tobi just shook his head. âHe knows too much stuff. Heâs too familiar with Tobi. How did he know where I was? Or that I was crying? We donât know how long heâs been doing this. What he knows about Konoha, or about Team 7âŠhe could be listening to everything Tsunade-sama says. HmâŠnot good!â
Naruto groaned, throwing his head back. Everybody else looked far more than exasperated. âNo wonder we canât really beat him! What the hell are we gonna do about somebody like that?â
âWe donât even know what Nohara can do,â Sakura said glumly. âWhat have we seen of her? Just her summons? Some weird jutsu she used to throw us around? It reminds me of Gaara. How he used to decimate everyone in his path without moving a muscle.â
âAnd that eye.â Tenzo rubbed his chin, deep in thought. Sasuke scowled. âIâve already gone through every record on doujutsus Konoha that has. Sasukeâs gone through the Uchiha files. Iâve never seen a doujutsu like that.â
What? Tobi blinked. âRin-chanâs parents were civilians. They died in an attack during the second war.âÂ
She had been placed in a dormitory for young girls in the Uzushio district. It wasnât nearly as bad as Narutoâs situation, but sometimes Tobi thought that Konoha really needed some sort of foster care system. Rin had been friends with the other girls, had studied and worked hard enough from the start to get a scholarship to the academy, but a part of her soul had been lonely. Rin said that part of her soul had wanted family and love. What a horrendous assortment of orphans.Â
âShe showed it after Hatake grabbed you,â Sasuke said unhappily. âIt was purplish, and had concentric circles. Makes you kind of nauseous looking into itâŠâ
âNot me!â
âWe get it, Naruto, evil fox superiority, shut up -â
âHey, evilâs a pejorative term! Heâs really nice, actually! Well, no, but still!â
âI canât believe youâve started using the words I teach you correctly.â
Jiraiya. Jiraiya had mentioned that eye. He had asked Tobi to do his own research a long time ago. Guy believed in idiot-ass prophecies. They had found out a few things, but not nearly as much as they would like.Â
Almost every single existing record of the Rinnegan had been found among Madara Uchihaâs possessions.Â
That old pervert really had to start responding to his stupid mail.
âSensei doesnât know about all of that,â Tobi said. He was obviously getting a little distressed. âRin-chan and Kakashi-kun are basically good people. Even when theyâre being weird and annoying and kind of evil. So everythingâs going to be okay! If theyâre evil, Team 7 will just deal with that!â
âI donât want to deal with that,â Sai said.
âSai-san, we get paid to do a job.â
âI would really like to be Sai-kun, SenseiâŠâ
Sasuke slammed his hands on the table. Tenzo dived to keep his cup from spilling. âAnd I would have liked for you to start calling him sensei from the start instead of calling him a retard nonstop -â
Saiâs eyes darted around the room. âI recognize that usage of a word hurts your feelings.â
âDo I have to teach you what a slur is -â
âWhatâs a slur?â Naruto asked blankly.Â
Sakura sighed. âPeople make up new ones just to insult you, Naruto.â
âSakura-chan, that doesnât answer the question!â
Extremely seriously, Tenzo said, âI know what it is. A slur is something that doesnât need to be pointed out.â
Sasuke spilled his tea all over the table. Tobi swept his wood thumb over the seeping pool and stuck it in his mouth. Still hot. âTenzo-sensei, donât fucking tell me that youâve been trying to figure it out by watching me deal with Sai!â Tenzo mumbled something about unhelpful dictionaries. âAre you the teacher or what?!â
Humbly, Tobi said, âItâs alright, Sasuke-chan. Rin-chan always told me not to pay attention when people call me that. She always kicked them in the balls about it. And threaten to set them on fire. And maybe set one on fire?â
Sai, who had received upwards of a dozen threats of immolation from Sasuke, blinked.
As always, Sai had seen it first. He had understood, in his own strange and direct way. And, with increasing frequency, he decided not to say anything. He didnât really know what were good and bad things to say, so he thought it might be best to stop saying things. Sai was normally pretty good at shutting up and not saying anything, so he didnât know why it was so difficult with Team 7. Too many opportunities for really funny jokes, maybe?
Sai resisted the urge to make funny jokes, and nodded along to the chaos.
*
What Sai had seen was obvious. More troublesome was figuring it out. Because Sai could not imagine hating Konoha.
It was like hating gravity, or your own planet. It was like hating the fall and the impact on the ground. He couldnât even conceptualize it.Â
When you hated Konoha, what were you hating? Every square foot and inch of geography? Did you hate every piece of food within it? Did you hate every person? Hating every single solitary person in Konoha sounded extremely time consuming. There were seventy thousand people in Konoha. Nobody knew that many people.Â
Did you just promise to hate that many people? Make an oath? Maybe you just swore on your life to detest every inch of Konoha. It wouldnât make a lot of sense, but oaths didnât have to. But it would be an oath to raze Konoha into the ground and exterminate every living soul within it. Sai could imagine doing that, but he didnât particularly want to. And he was fairly sure Sasuke didnât want to. Konoha had a ramen stand.Â
These people were obsessed with ramen. Sai wanted to be obsessed with ramen too. He wasnât. He tried to fake it, but he hadnât done a good job faking it. Sakura told him that it was more about the family bonding and less about the ramen, so he could just eat whatever. The ramen stand only sold ramen, but it had started packing some onigiri for the busy ninja on the go. Sai had begun purchasing the onigiri. He liked how none of it got onto your hands or on the table. Sasuke didnât hate onigiri. How, then, could he hate Konoha?
Did he hate the idea of Konoha? What it meant, its signifier? Danzo talked about that a lot. There was a lot of tree imagery that Sai never understood. Something about pesticides and gardens and filth and The Good Paternal Gardeners and The Evil Maternal Gardeners and everything that Sai didnât know a lot about. Maybe Sasuke understood. He was very insistent that he knew everything. He said so, so it must be true.Â
That was sarcasm. You could tell by the emphasis on the middle word in each clause.Â
Maybe Sasuke hated an idea. In those nonsensical tree metaphors, he hated that metaphorical tree. Or something. But what did that matter? If you hated an idea, what did that have to do with hating its people?
Konoha wasnât an idea. People inside of Konoha had ideas. Konoha was a sewage system and a merchantâs guild and a torture department and a GDP. Where in that was an idea? Grass existed because it was rooted. Trees grew because seeds sprouted. Babies were born when - Sai would find that one out eventually. No ideas were involved.Â
So even if you hated an idea. The concept or the model or the dream. It wasnât the actual Konoha that you hated. So what was the point of making a subversively inspirational speech about how true pacifism was purifying the continent of the contagious rot of Konoha? What did purifying even mean in this context? Sakura explained that Rin Nohara probably wanted to kill a lot of people. Another logical fallacy: blood and corpses were a biohazard. The question remained.Â
But Sai was the âeternal learnerâ type - books that categorized people into distinct types should be the most helpful, but none of them adequately explained Naruto Uzumaki. Ultimately worthless for his real goals. It said that Sasuke Uchiha was a âType Aâ, but they already knew that. An eternal learner type always finds it out eventually.Â
Sasuke told him what happened.
It was the first giant debriefing meeting. All of the leaders of Konoha were in the room: the clan council, the top brass of the shinobi forces, and the Hokage. She had no cabinet. Apparently she had caught them lecturing the absolutely uncomprehending Sensei about how men shouldnât listen to women. She had tossed them out on the spot. Sai told Sakura that the Hokage was wrong to do so, because men shouldnât listen to women. Sakura told him that Sasuke was out of the village, so she couldnât fracture his cheekbone right now, and it would have to wait. Sakura rarely agreed with Danzo. Which was problematic: Sakura was the smartest person he knew, but Danzo was always right. Didnât match up. Books unhelpful.
Sasuke was sitting at the clan head table, serving as a figurehead of fallen royalty. Danzo said that Sasuke was a child with no political power and scant physical power. But he also said that Sasuke was a threat to Konoha and that he would topple the tree metaphor if he wasnât stopped. Sai did not highlight the discrepancy, because keeping Danzo happy was an unofficial, unstated, yet widely understood group ROOT mission.Â
Sensei was sitting at another table, with the high ranked ninjas. A lot of people in the room were probably wondering why he was there. He couldnât be defined as brass in any capacity, and nobody liked involving him in anything, and Konoha liked to keep him âout of sight, out of mindâ. Sai pitied those who undertook such futile efforts. Life must be hard when youâre stupid. Sai had tried ignoring Sensei once or twice, but it had never gone well. Sensei had just barely recovered from his child-like delusional hysterics. Even Saskue thought he should be home. But Genma had showed up at the door to take him, and Sasuke felt as if it was an order.
Genma had showed up two days prior to talk to Sensei about his conversation with Hatake. He asked the obvious. Hatake had undertaken a great risk just to pass on that message. What was so important?
Sensei had just anxiously spun his puzzle. Sai managed to solve one last week. This felt like an incredible achievement - until he realized that Sakura had solved two in that time. This was what the books would call a blow to oneâs self-efficacy. âI donât know. I feel bad, Genma, I donât knowâŠI donât wanna talk about Kakashi-kun right now.â
Bullshit. But Sensei had taken great pains to instruct Sai not to call him out on his bullshit among mixed company, so Sai didnât say anything. He always agreed with the lies.Â
Genma hadnât pressed. He just sat next to Sensei at the meeting, speaking to him in a low voice. Sai found out much later that Genma was begging for help with romantic drama and that Sensei was too pissed at him to fix his problems. So even ANBU had romantic problems. It was a troubling insinuation. Surely there had to be some class of person who did not experience romantic or sexual problems. The books said it was important to âfind your tribeâ.Â
Sasuke said that the meeting started a disaster, and continued a disaster. Sasuke refused to let anybody at a meeting talk over him, but even he was barely able to give his reports on every Team 7 encounter with Hound and Nohara. Gai reported on his team's first fight with Hound. It had almost killed Neiji, which would have been no societal loss. Shikaku gave a report on his teamâs assessment of the situation - what mysterious tableaus had been set up by Nohara, what previously unrelated event was likely part of the Akatsukiâs plan. Inoichi said that Noharaâs appearance matched up with their intelâs reports. When Tsunade asked, he had to admit that the intel source had dried up. Sasuke had noticed that Tsunade rubbed her mouth when he said that. Tell of worry.Â
The overall movements of the Akatsuki were growing more pointed. At least two tailed beasts were extracted, and two more jinchuuriki were unaccounted for. Another tailed beast had been missing for a while, and it was possible that the Akatsuki had extracted it -
âNohara seemingly committed suicide by stabbing herself in a bomb seal,â Genma said. The room fell violently silent. âThe Fourth Hokage found the sealing array in the cave where Kiri held her. It was reported as the array that placed the bomb seal on her, but he told me in confidence that it looked like a very rudimentary tailed beast seal. As the Sanbi had disappeared off the face of the planet, he thought that it had died with Rin.â He looked at Sensei, whose head was bowed. âInoichi and I were able to get the report from Tobi yesterday. He said that there had been a bomb and a jinchuuriki seal. Iâve heard reports of jinchuuriki surviving a lot worse than one sword to the heart.â
âAnd why did Uchiha not give us that report when it happened?â one of the council members demanded. âThe truth behind the cover story was never disclosed! We should have known this years ago!â
Patiently, Genma said, âTobi Uchihaâs eyewitness testimony was ruled incoherent and unreliable. He gave reports that conflicted with the scene. Since we had to cover up the whole thing anyway to prevent a war with Kiri, it was all thrown out.â
Much of the room had been there at the time, and much of the room had been the ones who decided to throw it out. They all knew it.Â
Tsume Inuzuka thumped her hands on the table, making Sasuke jump. Sasuke hated loud people. Sai found this difficult to believe. âI donât understand it! I knew Rin, we all did! That girl killed herself to save our village! She was a war hero, she was one of our best medics, and nobody was more loyal to the village than she was! She had no competing interests - no clan, no husband, no other affiliations. Her teacher was the Fourth Hokage! I just canât believe that she would do this!â
Weirdly enough, Kurenai jumped in. The woman was very quiet and gentle. Sai didnât trust her an inch. Sakura said that this explained so much about him. But Kurenai wasnât sounding very quiet and gentle now. âI agree. Rin was one of my best friends growing up. I knew her better than almost anybody. She never had a disloyal thought in her life. And she was the kindest, most generous, most loving person Iâve ever met.â
Hiashi Hyuuga had clearly disdained this show of sentimentality. âNoharaâs relationship with you has no relevance to her actions today. Amegakure and the Akatsuki are threats to Konoha.â
âWe all know that, Hyuuga-san. Weâre just trying to make sense of it all.â Shikaku rolled up the ancient report - far grimmer than Sasuke had ever seen him. âThe girl was a saint. If youâd known her for ten years, or if youâd known her for five minutes - everybody knew that. She is the last person who would have ever betrayed the village. If we donât know why, then we donât know what is really happening.â
âShe was a clanless orphan!â one of the council members cried. âHow could a clanless orphan be loyal to her village?â
âThe Fourth Hokage was a damn clanless orphan!â Tsume yelled, and then everybody really was yelling.Â
Sasuke said that it was impossibly grating. These damn meetings always had yelling and pointless arguments, but the size of the meeting and the urgency of the room made everything a thousand times worse. Somebody had just effortlessly infiltrated their village. Shikaku undoubtedly knew what Sensei had known - that they had no idea how long Hatake had been casually wandering through their village. It was an act of unprecedented inter-village espionage.Â
Sai understood the frustration, but it seemed provincial. Sensei could invisibly teleport his way around too. Sasuke said that what happens in Team 7 stays in Team 7, so donât tell anyone he can do that. Sai had nodded fastidiously. And he had wondered why that rule had become so self-evident to him. When had it become true? He didnât even know why the rule was so important. Or maybe he did know, and he just didnât want to admit it. That would be the answer to every question.
Kakashi Hatakeâs father was a traitor. The apple isnât falling far from that tree. Rin had become belligerent with mission assignments before her Hokage sensei had begun pulling strings for her. Because she was a damn saint, Choza Akimichi said. They all knew what he meant. The girl who made career sacrifices to take care of her mentally handicapped family member was, indeed, a saint. Sensei quietly sat on his bench. Sasuke said that he was looking extremely overwhelmed from all the yelling. He had gotten angry just recounting it. Had Rin Nohara found some boyfriend in Ame? Was she with the Amekage? Wasnât the Amekage married? Was he married to her? No, a report said that Nohara and Hatake seemed to be together. Then that was it, wasnât it - the traitor pulled her along?
Sensei giggled. Sasuke said that it sounded as light and happy as his other random laughter, and everybody had ignored it.
What did Ame want the jinchuuriki for? Why was it forging alliances with half the continent? It was a small and weak village in a poor country. Konoha had stomped all over it in the war, and they had barely even noticed. Any village with a jinchuuriki became a continental power. A jinchuurikiâs obligation as a ninja was to provide that power in service to their village. A jinchuuriki was a walking tool for the village. Sasuke wanted to strangle everybody in the room. If she had died for us, then why did she betray us?
Tobi laughed.
Most of the room kept talking, but a large portion glared at him or looked expectantly at Genma. As if Genma was a mother who should take her crying baby out of the silent temple. Sensei just kept laughing, louder and louder, and many of the clan heads and ninja brass started glaring at Genma and waiting for him to shut him up. Many were looking expectantly at Sasuke. Sasuke knew that laugh, but he was as surprised as anyone else. He normally only ever heard it in battle.
âYo, man,â Genma said easily. âWhatever youâre thinking, you should share.â
Sensei giggled again, clapping his hands. âGenma-kun, I got it! Tobi has the message now! Yay, Tobi did it! Tobiâs the smartest!âÂ
Hyuuga curled his lip. Sometimes Hinata showed up at the estate at ten at night, clutching an overnight bag and struggling heroically not to cry. Sensei always pretended that she was over because she loved parties and sleepovers just that much. Sakura did her hair and let her cry. âIf you canât control yourself, Uchiha, then excuse yourself.â
âShut up,â Tsunade told Hyuuga. Sasuke looked exceptionally gleeful as he told this part. âThis is what we needed. Genma.â
Just as easily, Genma said, âNice job, bud. You figure out what Kakashi-kun wanted you to say?â Tobi nodded helpfully. Sasuke saw a lot of the ninja brass snap to attention. Even some of the council members got it. âWell, spill.â
âRin-chan always hated Konoha!â
Everybody stared at Sensei. Shocked, disbelieving. Sometimes too disbelieving - rolling their eyes or looking away.
Genma just nodded, withdrawing a case of senbon from his jacket and tapping one into his palm. âWhy didnât you mention this before?â
Senseiâs face fell. âTobiâs supposed to do what Rin-chan says. She always said not to repeat anything that sounds badâŠoh, but I know I shouldnât do what Rin-chan says anymore. Except this time, since she said it was okay.â
âYou gotta start telling us things. Why did she hate Konoha, then?â
âWouldnât you?â
The senbon froze between two fingers. The room grew strange and still. Sensei had said it really calmly and curiously - innocently, so innocent that anybody would guess that he didnât know the meaning of his own words.Â
âBad guys used to come into my hospital room,â Sensei said plainly. âTobi was so scared of them. Rin-chan said that she wouldnât let them have me, and that I was safe with her. But Tobi knew that the bad guys upset Sensei and Rin-chan. Because they were secret operations, ROOT, or undercover research and development agents. Probably all three of them, because everybody wanted to loot my corpse. Sensei had to become Hokage just to make everybody go away and stop trying to hurt me.â Sensei tilted his head, scratching a little at his hair. âRin-chan was supposed to love that? Are you crazy?â
Genma flipped his senbon. âDid Rin say that?â
âDid Rin-chan have to? Tobi knows heâs stupid, Genma. But Tobi knew that Rin got sad when our friends told Rin that she should put me out of my misery. Almost everyone thought Obito getting tortured to death would have been good, because it meant they wouldnât have to look at me. Rin would cry about it. I didnât know how to make her happy. And Rin-chan told me that it was okay, and that theyâre mean and they donât matter. Rin told Tobi that she loved him, because Tobi was how Obito came home. Do you think Rin forgave you guys for that? When do you think she began wanting you dead? You started it!â
A lot of people in the room were whispering to each other - aides in ears, or teammate to teammate. Sasuke said that almost nobody looked like they actually listened to him. Sai said that they probably just hadnât paid attention to the emotional context of the story. Sasuke asked Sai if he wanted a cookie for recognizing that there was a human emotion in that room. It was sarcasm, so Sai did not say yes. Although he did want a cookie.
Shikaku, Inoichi, and the Hokage had definitely listened. Rinâs old friends had heard that feeling, and they were exchanging heavy glances. But Genma just flipped the senbon between his fingers. âThe village betrayed her first. It broke her trust, it abandoned her, and it hated her. But what actually bothered Rin was that it did these things to you. The most important thing to her was that it hurt you.â
Sensei smiled, nodding empathetically. âGenma-kun gets it! Youâre so smart.â
Genma shrugged, sticking the senbon between his teeth. âIâm acquainted with that feeling. But she couldnât have really hated it. She gave her life for her village.â
âThe village that treated her family so good,â Sensei said. He didnât sound bitter or angry at all. Just as if he was relating somebody elseâs story. Or an indisputable fact. âThat was so nice to Kushina-nee. And me. And Naruto. If Rin didnât want you dead for me, she would want you dead for Naruto.â There had been a strange weight behind that name. Sensei said it just a little differently. As if Naruto himself was some great original sin. âThat is the rot within Konoha. That is the cruelty and callousness that a clanless orphan could do nothing about. Rin Nohara has declared war on that cruelty.âÂ
Did people hear that? Did anybody in the room actually hear those words? Sasuke said that he knew how many people in that crowd only heard the word âwarâ. Sasuke said that some people heard the word âcrueltyâ too. Sai asked Sasuke which word he had heard first. Sasuke said it was Naruto.Â
Tsunade, of course, heard each and every word. A decent Hokage paid attention to everything. Even the things she didnât like to hear or didnât want to deal with. Tsunade dealt head-on with her professional problems so well that it built up and she went insane over her personal problems.Â
âShe must have learned psychological warfare somewhere along the way too,â Tsunade said. She was still writing notes down. âUsing you to say all of that was an opening strike.â
Sensei looked a little crushed. âDid you not like my information? Tsunade-sama is always telling Tobi to say more information. Tobi thought he did a good job!â
âYou did,â Genma said, saving Senseiâs spirit and passions. âI donât hear you speak that well very often.â
Sensei beamed, clapping his hands. âTobi knows Rin-chan really good! I know just what sheâd say. Thatâs called good information. Tobi has to tell Rin-chan about this. Sheâll be super happy!âÂ
âWill somebody get the Uchiha out of here?â Danzo said.
Tobi stopped short, blinking at Danzo, but Genma was already pulling Tobi up by his elbow and ushering him out the door. Sasuke wanted to do it himself, but he wasnât about to silence the Uchiha voice in this room. The argument afterwards had been just as bitter and angry as before. It was unsettled, too. But nobody was admitting that. A lot of people were creeped out, and nobody would admit that either. They could go back to ignoring Sensei soon enough. And their worlds would go back to normal.
A world where Nohara declared war because she was evil, and where Hatake comforted a crying friend in a graveyard as an opening strike. A world where Tobi and Naruto and Sasuke didnât have to exist, and where any regret could stop at harmless and easy guilt. Where there were no repercussions for what we did to the dead, because there was nothing left the dead could do to us.Â
Nobody in that room would have cared about a fourteen year old girlâs hurt feelings if she wasnât able to throw a tailed beast at them about it. That girl would have gone unavenged if she hadnât had the methods and means to avenge herself. To avenge her best friend, her sensei, her big sister, and her little brother. Everybody would have continued living happily if Rin Nohara couldnât inconvenience them. Nobody would have cared. They didnât care about Sensei and Naruto, who couldnât do anything to them. They only cared about Rin Nohara, because she could hurt them back.Â
Sai doodled a couple of pictures that night. They started off ordinary and quickly got a little stranger. Sai found that his paintings always got a little abstract or unrealistic when non-ideal events were occurring in his life. Sometimes he didnât paint a thing: just coated a page in a cacophony of black. Heâd have to figure out what art movement that was.Â
Sai doodled a picture of an Iwa Doll. He saw the trinkets in marketplaces all the time. It was of a big cylindrical geisha, with a white-painted face and pretty red dots for lips. But if you opened up the geisha, you could see a smaller geisha inside. It was an extremely exciting development, but only once. There was another geisha inside that one too. Another and another. Until finally, when the small geisha couldnât hold any more, there was a little bean of the littlest geisha of all.Â
Good painting. Very pretty. Sai didnât know why he was thinking about those dolls, but a good artist let those ideas flow.
After that, they got a little abstract. A large and undefined monster ate a smaller one. A wave crashed over another wave. Squares were in rectangles were in triangles. Strokes clashed. There was a page of only strokes: younger on the older, in collision.
Sai drew a little demon. He slashed a stroke through it, like a kunai slicing an enemy in half. Then he did another stroke. Unnecessarily, he added another. Sai slashed and slashed and slashed until the page was heavy with black ink. The enemy was gone. No more demons were left to be found.Â
The Big Wolf and Small Wolf appeared again. Sai knew that the Small Wolf was big now - that it was bigger than the Big Wolf would ever be - but he was always careful to draw it smaller than the Big Wolf. In the shadows of what Sai did not remember, Big Wolf would always be bigger.Â
The wolves were perched on a pile of corpses. The mass stretched from both ends of the page, and each individual face was sketched in minimalist but evocative detail. Sai liked drawing corpses. Nobody liked this about him.Â
There was a very, very big animal underneath the wolves. Sai wasnât sure what sort of animal it was. It was just one big black thing. The wolves were eating it. No blood flaked their muzzles, and their coats were spotless. The wolves were posed heroically on top of the desiccated remnants of their enemy.Â
Sai looked at that painting for a long time. He was crying again. He never understood that. Sai never knew why he cried.Â
âPeople cry because theyâre sad!âÂ
Sai carefully wrote this down. He knew that Sensei had been the right person to ask about this. Sensei loved crying. âWhat about ninja?â
â...ninja are people, Sai.âÂ
Sai was very skeptical about this, but he wrote down the operating assumption. Ninjas and people did have a lot in common.Â
Like a true investigative artist, Sai clarified, âWhat is sad?â
Sensei blinked at him.
They were sitting on the outside walkway at the Hatake estate. The cicadas were making their usual sound, but the sunlight dappled the trees in a new pattern. The shadows and light on the ground were different each day. Sai tried to come back each day and sketch the new shadows. Sasuke asked him why he kept showing up. He wasnât satisfied with Saiâs explanation. He said that there were shadows tons of places. He didnât believe Sai when he said that these shadows were the best. Sai didnât believe himself either.
Sensei blinked at him a few more times, organizing his extremely slowly performing thoughts, before he darted forward and pinched Saiâs arm. He pinched it very hard, and it actually hurt quite a bit. Sai didnât react. This was likely a test.
âDoes Sai feel pain right now?â Or perhaps this was yet another of Senseiâs demented whims? âThereâs two kinds of pain. Sai is feeling one kind of pain right now. But thereâs another kind of pain, that just lives in the mind.â Sensei tapped his chest. âSometimes you feel that pain in your chest, or your stomach. We cry because our body is hurt, and we cry because our mind is hurt.â
That was extremely comprehensible! Sai knew exactly what he was talking about! Sai quickly wrote all of this down.Â
âWhat about sadness? Is that a kind of pain?â
âItâs a kind of feeling,â Sensei agreed amicably. He tapped his throat. âSadness can be in your throat. If your throat gets tight and feels really weird, that can mean youâre sad. Then you cry.â
People were rarely this useful. Sai made careful note of all of this. Still - there were fallacies. âYou donât feel physical pain by remembering pain. But you feel mental pain if you remember things that caused you pain. So theyâre not directly comparable.â
âDo you feel sad when you remember things that cause you pain, Sai?â
âNot at all,â Sai said promptly. âI donât have feelings.â
âSensei isnât always so sure about that, SaiâŠâ
âI am a type of ninja. The type of ninja that I am does not have feelings.â Sai would have said something very different a few months ago, but he had learned to broaden his definition of ninja significantly. He decided at first that Team 7 just didnât count as ninja, but when they all beat him in a fight he had to admit that he didnât know what else they could be. âIf I had feelings, I would understand the concept. I do not have them, which is why I have to ask you.â
âSensei does not think that is how it works?â
Patiently, Sai said, âYou donât understand how it works because youâre retarded. If you werenât retarded, youâd get it.â
Sensei stared at him, and Sai remembered a little too late that everybody got mad when he said that. Sai wasnât exaggerating when he said everybody. Kiba attacked him when he said it, and Kiba wasnât even on their team. Hinata and Shino were also unhappy with him. He wasnât sure what they had felt.Â
Shikamaru and Chouji and Ino looked really disgusted. Especially Ino. Sai knew what disgusted looked like. That hadâŠthat hadâŠ
It had caused a sort of mental pain that Sai did not like.Â
Better conduct the social ritual. If he didnât do it, people got madder. âIâm sorry, Sensei, that was rude of me. It is disrespectful to a teacher and -â What was the other one? Sai had a good memory, but everybody kept giving him different words to say. â - mean. I will stop saying it.â
Sai was very good at conducting mission parameters. Social parameters were fiendishly difficult, but this one ought to be easy. Do this, donât do that. Under no social contexts or situations should you say that word. Sai was also told that these rules applied to other words, such as faggot. It should be easy. He didnât know why he kept doing it. Danzoâs instructions always overrode all other mission parameters, but it wasnât as if he gave Sai instructions to say that word. All he did was use it.Â
As always, the apology didnât make anybody happy with him. Sensei just tilted his head, looking at him. Sai finally recognized the look of Sensei in thought. It didnât happen often. At least Sensei never got mad. If he didnât mind, why did it matterâŠ
Finally, Sensei said, âWhen Sasuke almost died after the fight against Sasori. Sai was in a lot of mental pain, wasnât he?â
That was a good way to put it. Everyone had said that âhe actually looked upset?â and âwait, you care if we die?â. They kept on accusing him of having feelings about Sasuke almost dying - which, of course, he had to deny. He hadnât had feelings about it. Just mental pain. Even ninjas experienced mental pain. Sai was really warming to this concept. It explained a lot.Â
âSai kept on trying to give Sasuke painkillers,â Sensei said. âWhy did you do that?â
A theory was rapidly forming in Saiâs mind. âExtended contact with another person causes a mirroring effect in the brain. This is what is known as your âbondâ.â Sai had a small obsession with the word, although he tried not to show it. âDue to a âbondâ, Sasukeâs physical pain created mental pain in myself. Hence painkillers.â
âWhen you see Hinata cry,â Sensei said, âdo you feel mental pain?â
Hinata was not a teammate. Sai had no bonds with Hinata. Hinata just cried a lot because her dad treated her like she wasnât a person. Which was unfair, because Hinata was a type of ninja that was a person. Saiâs paintings were black when Hinata cried.Â
âYes.â
âNobody likes physical or mental pain. When a teammate -â That was shorthand for somebody with a âbondâ, if your teammates liked you. Naruto said precious people. Sai wanted to understand what that meant so desperately. â - has mental pain, we feel the mental pain too. That is why people donât like to hurt other people.âÂ
âWhat do words have to do with this?â
âInsults cause mental pain. The word retard is a very severe insult. That word meansâŠâ Sensei hummed, thinking hard. âIt means that Tobi is not a person, because he is stupid.â
What? Was that what it meant? âBut that isnât true,â Sai said. âYouâre barely a ninja.â
âThat word hurts Sasuke a lot,â Sensei said, âbecause that word is a kunai that has stabbed Sasuke many times. To Sasuke, that word means that his family is worthless. When you say that word, Sasuke feels mental pain. Theyâre mad that you donât have that mental pain too, Sai. Because it means you donât have a bond with us.â
Sai made a note in his notebook about this. Everybody told him to stop insulting them, and Sai was trying not to do it. It made them dislike him. The idea of words causing mental painâŠ
It should be false. Sai probably shouldnât believe that. But he did. Those words were causing mental pain right now. The mental pain was in his throat.
âPeople think that Sai does not care,â Sensei said, âbecause Sai causes mental pain that he does not feel.â Sai opened his mouth, but Sensei just shook his head. âSai does not have feelings? Is that true, Sai?â
âI am a ninja. It is true.â
âMental pain,â Sensei said, âis a feeling.â Sai had been tricked, lied to, and bamboozled. Sai did not know that this entire conversation was an elaborate series of lies. This had truly been a waste of his - âThere are many feelings. Mental pain is a type of feeling. Sensei talked to you about mental pain because Sensei knew it was the only feeling you would understand.â
In this world, Sai only understood pain. That was what Sensei meant.Â
Sai did not have anything to say for a while after that. For once, Sensei didnât talk either. Sai just stared at his scroll of notes, attempting to synthesize the new information presented.Â
Sai had a new painting idea. It was of Big Wolf and Small Wolf. The painting would show Small Wolf tearing out Big Wolfâs throat. But after the Big Wolf died - this would have to be a triptych - Small Wolf would lie down and howl very loudly. Small Wolf would howl and howl and howl, and he would howl so long that he would die. Small Wolf would die of sadness.
âYou canât die of sadness,â Sai informed Sensei. It was best when Saiâs paintings were realistic. His paintings only got weird when he was being weird. âYou can die of physical pain. But you canât die from mental pain. This doesnât seem true, but it is true.â
Sensei smiled, big and bright. âSai-sanâs smart! Even if we feel very sad, we do not die. We get up and we keep on living! Thatâs what itâs all about.â
âDid Rin Nohara die from her mental pain?â
Senseiâs smile fell.Â
That needed follow-up. âDid Kakashi Hatake die from mental pain?â
Senseiâs face looked a little different. Sai couldnât interpret it.
That wasnât a good face. More follow-up needed. âThe consensus in Konoha is that Obito Uchiha is dead. But that is not logically true. Reliable sources -â Danzo said this, while he was also saying the word retarded. â - claim that Obito Uchiha experienced a mental death due to mental pain. Sensei said that Rin Nohara experienced a fatal quantity of mental pain, due to the mirrored death and mental pain of Kakashi and Obito Uchiha. Now she is acting in ways that professionals deem uncharacteristic. That is also true of Obito Uchiha, who also began acting uncharacteristic after a mental death. Is Rin Nohara mentally dead?â
Sensei stared at him. In one strange glimpse, for one long second, Sensei looked very strange.
âTobi doesnât like Sai.â
âSai is aware of this.â
âI mean - fuck, itâs not your fault - ugh.â Sensei pinched the bridge of his nose, hard. âIt is not Saiâs fault he is terrible and sucks so much. Saiâs heart is not terrible and his heart does not suck so so so much. He just acts terrible. Sai, Sensei thinks it is important that you know that.â Sai made a big show of making a big note: Sai is not inherently terrible. Later on, Sai found himself referring to that page a lot. âRin-chan is not mentally dead. Sheâs Rin. Alright? Rin is Rin. Rin-chanâs just making bad choices. Kakashi-kun is Kakashi-kun and heâs making bad choices too. They arenât dead. They came back from the dead, thatâs the whole thing going on thatâs a really big deal. Donât say that.â
âKonoha agrees as a whole that Rin Noh -â
âKonoha is really fucking stupid, Sai. No. Stop writing that down.âÂ
Sai stopped writing it down. In a small note in the margins, he added - âSensei curses?â. âAre they not dead because Obito Uchiha is not dead?â
âYes,â Sensei said. âThat is why. Sadness cannot kill you. It makes you wish you were dead. And maybe it turns you into somebody else. Someone who makes bad choices, or - or is dumb. Someone like that. Maybe sadness makes you super crazy. Who cares. Not Tobi. Pain doesnât change who we are. It just makes us do stupid stuff.â He shrugged listlessly. âPainâs just pain. Thatâs all it is. Physical pain, mental painâŠsadness and grief. It doesnât mean anything we donât want it to mean. All it does is make us sadâŠâ
By that logic, Obito Uchihaâs mental pain did not change who he was. His mental pain simply made him do a lot of stupid stuff. For some reason, Sai didnât write that down. What happens in Team 7, maybe?
âI think Senseiâs in denial,â Sai said helpfully. âAnd that he just doesnât want to admit that his teammates as he knew them are lost to him forever.â
âSensei thinks that Sai should talk less.â
Even more helpfully, Sai said, âSensei is very aware that his teammates are crazy and that he is ret - stupid, and that he doesnât want to admit that he canât be loyal to them anymore without being treasonous to the village.â
âSensei is very proud of Sai for the self-censorship.â
Sai was very proud of himself as well! âThere are no logistical problems, Sensei,â he assured Sensei. Quite supportively, too! âEverybody thinks youâre too stupid to be treasonous. Konoha believes that Sensei doesnât understand the nuances of the situation, and youâre in denial that they are political enemies.â
âKonoha thinks, huh?â For the first time, Sensei looked faintly and distantly amused. âWhat does Sai hypothesize?â
Promptly, Sai said, âYou canât be in denial about something you donât understand.â
For the first time, Sensei looked faintly and distantly amused. It was a very, very different type of amusement than usual. âMaybe you should take your own advice.â
That punctured a hole in Saiâs self-satisfaction. Goes to show. These days, he never felt accomplished for very long. He found himself looking down at his notebook - cramped with his small, neat handwriting. He was halfway through it already. Social rules were numerous, and people hated that he was even asking. Team 7 were the easiest to talk to, but that was because they had gotten used to him. Tenzo had never been judgy about explaining, but heâd always given a bad explanation. Sakura knew, but she only recently stopped being super judgy about it. Sasuke still hated him and refused to explain anything. Naruto always gave the most nonsensical, self-referential explanation that made zero sense. He was also the only person who could ever successfully explain abstract concepts. Sai didnât know why this was the case either.
Bonds. What were bonds? Instruments of pain and pleasure. Saiâs fascination was a little addicting. He had never heard of the concept before Team 7 introduced it to him, and it was the first time he actually got invested in learning something. Social rules were just mission success. But bondsâŠ
Art was imperfect. You had an image in your head, and then you drew it. But you never drew it right. All you could do was approximate it. Sai couldnât put that wolf dying of sadness on paper, but he could do his best to send that message. Sai drew and drew and drew, searching for his own message.Â
Bonds. That word. An approximation of something that Sai had never understood. That incomprehensible feeling was the topic of many useless paintings. If Sai understood that feeling, then he could draw it. If he could draw it, then he could see it. He could see it again. Sai could see it again. Sai could see it again. Sai could see it -
Hanging around Team 7 and doing a lot of sketchy shit brought him closer towards that feeling. They said that feeling was a bond. They had a bond. If Sai got in on all of this âbondâ business, then he could experience that feeling again. Sai didnât even know what that feeling was. But that feeling was the ink in the stroke of a bond.Â
Ingratiate himself with Team 7. Experience the âbondâ. Feel the bond. Understand the bond. Draw the bond. See the bond. It was a simple but extremely laborious mission, partly but not limited to the fact that Sai wouldnât stop saying slurs.
âA bondâs what you got with your precious people!â Naruto announced. He didnât know that Sai was begging for the answer. To Naruto, of all people. â
Self-referential nonsense. âAnd what is a precious person?â
Just as self-importantly, Naruto said, âA precious person is someone who walks your way with you!â
At this point Sai began going insane. âAnd what does way mean in this context?â
âItâs like your nindo or something!â
âAnd what is a nindo.â
âItâs your way!â
âGive up,â Sasuke said.
âItâs not complicated!â Naruto protested. âSee, my nindoâs that I never give up and I never go back on my word!â They all knew that. âJust pick something. Itâs what you always do! Itâs what youâre already doing, or what you want to do, or whatever!â He pointed dramatically at Sensei, who was amusing himself with a childrenâs puzzle. âEven Sensei has a nindo! Thatâs the Team 7 nindo, youâve already heard it!â
Those who break the rules are trash, but those who abandon their teammates are worse than trash. Those words were the Team 7 bond. Sai never admitted it, but it was those words he wanted so desperately.
âCan that be my nindo?â Sai hazarded. âIt seems sufficient for the purposes.â
Sasuke sneered, then repeated what he said in a mocking voice. Rude, perhaps?
âThatâs the nindo of Team 7,â Sakura told Sai. She was sick of this conversation. âMy nindo is that I will achieve the dreams of my precious people. Sasuke doesnât talk about his, he says itâs private. Heâs just embarrassed by it. He said it really dramatically during a fight when we thought we were all going to die, though.â
âThat was a near-death moment,â Sasuke hissed.Â
âTeam 7 shares a nindo, which is why weâre precious people to each other. Thatâs the bond we share.â Sai perked up. He was a member of Team 7. Therefore? âUm. You were just assigned to us. That doesnât make you our precious person. Youâre horrible.â
âYou are a terrible person and I want you off our team,â Sasuke hissed.
Tenzo looked a little distressed. âI donât think this is a professional way to speak to our colleagues.â
âAre slurs professional, Tenzo-sensei?!â
âSai can be my precious person!â Naruto announced, throwing up his hands. âWhy not! Wanna be my friend, Sai?â
âI will accept that,â Sai said. Excitedly, but they couldnât tell.
Flatly, Sakura said, âNaruto asks mass murderers if they wanna be his precious people. That doesnât mean anything.â
âHey! Friendships mean everything!â
âHeâs not our friend. He sucks.â
âAh, the cute students are being passive-aggressive again.â Sensei popped up out of nowhere, patting Sakura and Sasuke on the head. When had he put down the puzzle? Where was he always coming from? âSai-san, you should try finding your own nindo. Maybe youâll be less terrible!â
âSenpai, we shouldnât call the students terrible.â
âUmâŠhe is, thoughâŠâ
Saiâs way. He still didnât know. But it was a mission success criteria. Self-assigned, and only one of many, but it was a priority mission. Once he knew, and once he shouted it during a dramatic moment in a fight and saved everyoneâs lives, heâd have bonds. He would have precious people. He would understand the bonds with his precious people. Then heâd draw the bond. Then heâd see the bond. Then he could hold it. Then he could have it again.
Sai sat on that walkway with Sensei, drawing Big Wolf again. But he still couldnât draw it right.Â
âSensei? Do you know how to draw?â
âSensei doesnât know how to do anything!â
Ugh. Typical.
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