the big rat who makes all the rules

Tobi knelt in front of the memorial stone.

They had worked fast. Kakashi Hatake and Rin Nohara’s names were already filled in, leaving two awkward gaps a year apart. Guess they weren’t really popular anymore. 

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. That’s a mistake, Tobi would say. I’m right here. But Konoha said it would be too expensive to fix. Or maybe they just couldn’t 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 Sarutobi’s 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 wasn’t 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 Shisui’s name. Tobi didn’t know if Sasuke forgot on accident or if he forgot on purpose - or what it would mean if he had or hadn’t. 

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. 

Tobi didn’t 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 Tobi’s parents on the anniversary of their deaths. That didn’t occur to anybody anymore. Sarutobi always took Tobi to Sensei’s grave on the day of the fox attack - the graveyard’s always hopping that day - and he didn’t 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 Kakashi’s graves. Twice a year. Tobi didn’t 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. 

He was still bowing, but he didn’t have anything to say. Everything he wanted to say died in his throat, and everything he knew he had to say wouldn’t come. He couldn’t lie to this stone. He couldn’t tell the truth. All he could do was apologize. 

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 wasn’t enough.

This was all his fault. If he had just been better, and if he hadn’t been so worthless. If he hadn’t been a burden. He couldn’t 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.  

Bow in apology. I’m 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 Kakashi’s life. Tobi had broken Obito’s 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 hadn’t started this mission, if he hadn’t gone so far to live his own life - would something be different? Could he have saved Rin? 

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. 

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, Obito’s true feelings were allowed to exist. Obito hadn’t been allowed to cry at his own parent’s funeral. They’d said he was being weak. He was a ninja now. 

Obito Uchiha’s 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. Obito’s mother had argued with Fugaku’s father for hours, over and over again. She didn’t want Obito even enrolling into the Academy until six or seven. She fully intended on dragging his training out until the war ended. 

Two days after they died, Fugaku’s father processed the paperwork for the Academy assessment test. He would test out. Two days. Their bodies were barely cold. The life Obito led…it wasn’t the life they had wanted for him. They had wanted better. 

Tobi sat there and wailed. Who was he crying for? Out of the three of them, the only person still dead was Obito Uchiha.

“Rin thought you would be happy.”

Hook, line, and sinker.

Tobi’s 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 couldn’t care less. Tobi had to wonder how he had mastered reading Kakashi’s 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 codename’s similarities to their own ninja. But Shikamaru had gone through their roster of missing and disappeared nin three times, and he couldn’t find anybody who resembled Hound. He was gonna be smug about this.

 Tobi gaped at him, rubbing his eye again for good measure. He didn’t have to show off and start fighting Kakashi - Tobi was famously conflict averse.

“How can Tobi be happy like this?” Tobi asked, voice tremulous. His body was on guard, but he wasn’t pulling away yet. “This is all my fault.”

“Rin and I made our own bad choices,” Kakashi said. His voice was deep, now. Really deep and smooth and soothing. Rin was so lucky. “Rin sees further ahead than human beings. I don’t see much at all. You are the only innocent party. So don’t cry.”

What crap. As if Tobi hadn’t 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. Kakashi’s strength had always seemed effortless. Obito’s 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. 

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. 

“Tobi’s brain knows that Kakashi-kun and Rin-chan are alive. The brain thinks it should make me happy. But Tobi’s heart doesn’t care.” Tobi grasped the fold of fabric above his heart, curling his hand around the cloth. “Tobi’s heart was sad. Because that heart doesn’t know why you didn’t come back for me.”

Kakashi was silent. Unamused, for the first time.

“Is it because I didn’t come back for you?” Tobi was crying again. He hadn’t really meant to. The sadness was too much for this shell. “I thought you were dead. I’m sorry. Are you mad at me?”

Instantly, Kakashi said, “No. Stop trying to remember that. It’s not worth it. Don’t think about it.”

“But -”

“The only thing worse than that hell,” Kakashi said, “would be hell with you beside me. If you care about me, you wouldn’t try to remember.” Well. When you put it like that. Tobi was still rubbing his nose, but he nodded miserably. “Good. You’re being good right now.”

And Kakashi flared his own chakra. It was very, very Kakashi. To the word, it translated as, Whoopsie-daisy! Good thing I don’t 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 wasn’t used as often as ‘Because Your Actions are Stupid’, 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. 

Those first few days were crystal-sharp in Tobi’s 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. 

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 comrade’s 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 didn’t 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.  

 Hound had looked at him, but never strangely. Kakashi hadn’t looked at him strangely at all. He didn’t 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? 

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. 

Ninjas didn’t tend to follow weaker people, so that strength was making a few people anxious about Rin. A few. Most weren’t. She was a healer!

Tsunade was worried. Tobi regretted bringing that woman back every day. She had called him out on his shit instantly. 

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?

“There’s nothing to forgive. But you wanted to apologize to me, right?” 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. “Can I tell you how you can apologize to me?” Tobi nodded automatically. “Rin-sama asked me to deliver a message.”

This again? She wouldn’t stop saying it - as if Tobi needed to hear it every day, or he would forget. She’d end every message with it. As if he didn’t know. Maybe she just liked to say it. She ought to save it for more important circumstances. Long suffering, Tobi said, “Tobi knows Rin loves him.”

“Not that sort of message.”

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.

“Okay,” Tobi said. “If it isn’t bad.”

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. 

Maybe he could tell. Kakashi took a squat, so he was almost at eye level with Tobi. In that same old monotone, he said, “Your Rin-chan says…you can tell them the truth now. What only Tobi knows.”

Kakashi’s 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 didn’t even break Kakashi’s 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 hadn’t 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 didn’t look grim very often. 

Kakashi’s 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 wasn’t sure what Gai was waiting for.

Then Kakashi’s 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 Kakashi’s body to heal a shattered ribcage. Because that kick had shattered his entire ribcage. He should be dying.

Tobi truly couldn’t 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 he’d gone rogue and kicked a guy through gravestones just because he was mad. Or worried? It was hard to tell. 

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. 

“I get it,” Kakashi gasped. “I finally get it. How happy this makes me…”

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 he’d meant. 

 I’m so happy, Obito. 

We’ll make you perfectly happy. 

What was with that? What was this fascination with happiness? Nobody in the world was happy. What did happiness matter?

“I profess the joy I felt when I learned you were alive.” Gai shouldn’t say such a happy sentence so seriously. Gai always announced joy with such triumph. “But 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!”

Kakashi laughed again, wild and thin, as he rolled onto his feet. Gai’s eyes widened, and Tobi knew that he was feeling the emotional whirlpool of seeing Kakashi’s face again. Maybe not ‘again’ - 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 Kakashi’s 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.

“Gai-kun…” Kakashi exhaled heavily, looking up at the pale blue sky. “I always thought that teammate needed more friends than just us. A half-assed ninja and a pacifist kunoichi. I thought you wouldn’t give up on him…that you’d see through to who he really is. Ah, Gai…you 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.”

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 Gai’s eyes. He would not cry in front of an enemy. But it was difficult not to cry in front of Kakashi. 

“One cannot be a good person and walk the ninja’s path.” Gai never faltered, and Tobi scrambled to stand up. “But 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.” Gai’s breath was strong and steady, never weakening. In anybody else, it would have faltered. “When 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!”

Tobi grabbed onto Gai’s shoulder, clutching desperately onto his jumpsuit. It very directly impeded Gai’s 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 Kakashi’s definition of freedom was.

“Kakashi-kun hasn’t hurt me!” Tobi cried. He was almost crying himself, confused and terrified. “Gai-chan, don’t fight him! Best friends shouldn’t fight!”

“Hey, I’m not the one who made things violent.” Kakashi slouched and shoved his hands in his pockets - somebody unwilling to fight? Or somebody who knew that he didn’t have to? “I’m not the one who turned him stupider than usual. The goodness inside your comrades did that. Even that goodness is corrupt. By that logic…aren’t we all monsters?” 

Gai was about to strike. Tobi yanked harder at his jumpsuit, distracting him and pulling him off-stance. “Tobi doesn’t want friends to hurt each other! This isn’t fair! Don’t fight Kakashi-kun on his grave, Gai-chan!”

Almost too quick to see, firm and restrained, Tobi’s hands were removed from Gai’s 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 wouldn’t have been worth the repercussions. It had taken years before Neiji successfully figured out the nuances of Tobi’s 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, “Gai would only be in danger if you got in his way. You can help once you calm down.” Neiji halted for a second as Tobi strained in his impressively iron grip, making his own decision, before he whispered something. “Tobi-sensei, I’m one of your friends. I want us someplace safe.”

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 wasn’t 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. 

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. 

Was that still true? Was Tobi’s 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? 

Tsunade had said something batshit insane a while back. She said that he’d already built it. Tobi had said that he was too useless for that.

“You four set up a weird-ass training rotation,” Tsunade said. “I see that Kurenai teaches that rookie class genjutsu, Asuma teaches them ninjutsu, and Gai teaches them taijutsu. They’re 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. You’re the only ninja in the village who can teach those kids to be people. You aren’t unnecessary, so stop acting like it.”

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. They’d been sparring again before Sasuke felt Neiji’s 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. 

Damn. Tobi really didn’t want to panic like this in front of the kids. It wasn’t as if he needed to look like a tough guy in front of the students…or as if that was remotely possible…but he wanted them to rely on him. Sasuke, in his own way, relied on him the most. 

But he had to sound irrational and childish. Tobi couldn’t 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. 

You couldn’t 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 was…

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. 

“He encountered Kakashi Hatake,” Neiji said, clipped and flat. Sasuke skidded to a halt, eyes widening. “And I’m only telling you that because he will. More ANBU will come to take his statement soon.”

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 wasn’t 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. 

“Encountered!” Naruto exclaimed. “Did he escape? What did he want? Sensei, what even happened?”

Sasuke stepped towards Neiji, trying very ineffectually to look intimidating. “Tell me what happened. He’s targeting him, isn’t he!”

“Kakashi isn’t targeting me!” Tobi cried, hiccuping with another sob. “Kakashi and I were just talking. He didn’t do anything wrong!”

“Really?” 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 didn’t even live on Tobi-planet. “What’s the problem? Maybe he wanted to talk outside of a fight, yeah?”

Neiji kept his monotonous inflection. He did a very good job. His usual ‘you are so stupid that I want to kill everyone in this room and then myself’ monotone was very different. “Uzumaki. That is not what happened. His injury is still acting up.” Very polite euphemism for ‘he’s not the most annoying five year old adult ninja genius we all know and barely tolerate, he actually thinks he’s five’. “Quiet him down and get him inside. I’ll stay in case Hatake approaches.”

“What if they have to talk?” Naruto seemed to think this was an extremely reasonable question. Or a question anybody else but him would have. “If I caught up with Sasuke for the first time in twenty years -” How old did he think Tobi was?! “ - then we’d gotta hash stuff out too. Especially if Sasuke was dead and evil. Maybe they just gotta.”

“If I was evil my blades would speak for themselves,” Sasuke muttered darkly.

“But you’d drop some cool one-liners or something!”

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. “I need to secure the perim -”

“Tobi.” Sasuke put a hand on Tobi’s arm, and Tobi allowed the warmth to spread. “Snow Leopard has to go back to work. But he’s going to be around if we need him. If Kakashi comes back, Snow Leopard’s going to stop any fighting. Say bye to Snow Leopard, alright?”

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. 

Tobi would do the same. And the things he did to keep Sasuke safe…hopefully he’d never find out about that. They would be a little hard to explain. 

Sasuke’s 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 guard’s super-strong and super-cool, and they can keep us safe. Tobi knows that Itachi can kill the guard very easily, but the guard’s 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.

“Bye Snow Leopard,” Tobi said miserably. “You’re really nice…”

“I’ll be here if you want me,” Neiji said, shockingly nice. 

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 didn’t 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 Tobi’s heart, and he found himself pressing his hand over that heart. He hadn’t thought that sentence in so long. That hadn’t 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. 

Even if Rin and Kakashi love each other…differently. 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. 

This problem didn’t matter at all. So long as Bakashi was Bakashi and Rin-chan was Rin-chan…the rest of the world paled in front of that. 

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 hadn’t approached him effortlessly, but he had been remarkably relaxed about it. Of course, Kakashi had once been relaxed about everything. 

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. 

Humbly, with the grace and wisdom of a monk, Tobi said, “Tobi was paying his respects to the dead.”

Instantly, Sasuke said, “Bullshit.”

“That’s so mean, Sasuke-chan.”

“You hate the graveyard.” Sasuke angrily smashed a tea cookie into his mouth. He stress ate. “You’ve been angrily muttering about throttling Hatake for days.” He’s been what? “When you visited Shisui’s grave, you stomped around and got pissy. What’s the real reason you visited the memorial? It wasn’t just to apologize.”

“Sensei hasn’t been feeling well,” Tobi said, as Ninja Buddha once did.

“Do you have any idea how bad your tantrums get when you don’t feel well.”

“You’ve been avoiding talking about the Hatake and Nohara situation completely,” Sakura said unhappily. Her hands were wrapped tight around the tea cup, searching for its warmth. “The whole situation is so weird, and it’s only getting weirder. I get that you don’t want to talk about it, but will you explain something?”

Sai nibbled at a tea cookie mildly and politely. “An insider informed me that Sensei behaved treasonously because he ‘did not know any better’.” The air quotes could have been painted in the air. “But you seem to have bounced back quickly. It’s very strange.”

He might as well set this up now. It had the benefit of being true. “Sensei’s fine. Very, very fine!” Tobi wriggled away from Sasuke’s deathly yet disbelieving glare. “Seeing Kakashi made me feel…it’s stressful for sensei. And not the kind of stressful that you can punch. And Kakashi-kun is really super stressful because…um…”

Sakura folded her arms on the table. “Because of why you were doing all of this.”

This was a good time to tell them. Tobi took a small yet regal sip of the tea. “Sensei 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.” Might as well. “Tobi tested it out. I opened up a portal into the kitchen, and Sasuke didn’t notice it at all. If Kakashi can open up portals…or if his ghost powers can make him invisible…”

“He can get in and out of anywhere he wants,” Tenzo finished. 

“Yup.” Tobi took another sip of his tea. “That’s how Kakashi-kun’s been stalking Tobi.”

Everybody stared at him. Then they stared at each other. Sai fiddled with his brush.

Finally, Sakura took the fall. “You have to be kidding.”

But Tobi just shook his head. “He knows too much stuff. He’s too familiar with Tobi. How did he know where I was? Or that I was crying? We don’t know how long he’s been doing this. What he knows about Konoha, or about Team 7…he could be listening to everything Tsunade-sama says. Hm…not good!”

Naruto groaned, throwing his head back. Everybody else looked far more than exasperated. “No wonder we can’t really beat him! What the hell are we gonna do about somebody like that?”

“We don’t even know what Nohara can do,” Sakura said glumly. “What 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.”

“And that eye.” Tenzo rubbed his chin, deep in thought. Sasuke scowled. “I’ve already gone through every record on doujutsus Konoha that has. Sasuke’s gone through the Uchiha files. I’ve never seen a doujutsu like that.”

What? Tobi blinked. “Rin-chan’s parents were civilians. They died in an attack during the second war.” 

She had been placed in a dormitory for young girls in the Uzushio district. It wasn’t nearly as bad as Naruto’s 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. 

“She showed it after Hatake grabbed you,” Sasuke said unhappily. “It was purplish, and had concentric circles. Makes you kind of nauseous looking into it…”

“Not me!”

“We get it, Naruto, evil fox superiority, shut up -”

“Hey, evil’s a pejorative term! He’s really nice, actually! Well, no, but still!”

“I can’t believe you’ve started using the words I teach you correctly.”

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. 

Almost every single existing record of the Rinnegan had been found among Madara Uchiha’s possessions. 

That old pervert really had to start responding to his stupid mail.

“Sensei doesn’t know about all of that,” Tobi said. He was obviously getting a little distressed. “Rin-chan and Kakashi-kun are basically good people. Even when they’re being weird and annoying and kind of evil. So everything’s going to be okay! If they’re evil, Team 7 will just deal with that!”

“I don’t want to deal with that,” Sai said.

“Sai-san, we get paid to do a job.”

“I would really like to be Sai-kun, Sensei…”

Sasuke slammed his hands on the table. Tenzo dived to keep his cup from spilling. “And I would have liked for you to start calling him sensei from the start instead of calling him a retard nonstop -”

Sai’s eyes darted around the room. “I recognize that usage of a word hurts your feelings.”

“Do I have to teach you what a slur is -”

“What’s a slur?” Naruto asked blankly. 

Sakura sighed. “People make up new ones just to insult you, Naruto.”

“Sakura-chan, that doesn’t answer the question!”

Extremely seriously, Tenzo said, “I know what it is. A slur is something that doesn’t need to be pointed out.”

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. “Tenzo-sensei, don’t fucking tell me that you’ve been trying to figure it out by watching me deal with Sai!” Tenzo mumbled something about unhelpful dictionaries. “Are you the teacher or what?!”

Humbly, Tobi said, “It’s 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?”

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 didn’t 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 didn’t 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 couldn’t even conceptualize it. 

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. 

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 wouldn’t make a lot of sense, but oaths didn’t 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 didn’t particularly want to. And he was fairly sure Sasuke didn’t want to. Konoha had a ramen stand. 

These people were obsessed with ramen. Sai wanted to be obsessed with ramen too. He wasn’t. He tried to fake it, but he hadn’t 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 didn’t 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 didn’t know a lot about. Maybe Sasuke understood. He was very insistent that he knew everything. He said so, so it must be true. 

That was sarcasm. You could tell by the emphasis on the middle word in each clause. 

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 wasn’t an idea. People inside of Konoha had ideas. Konoha was a sewage system and a merchant’s 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. 

So even if you hated an idea. The concept or the model or the dream. It wasn’t 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. 

But Sai was the ‘eternal learner’ 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 ‘Type A’, but they already knew that. An eternal learner type always finds it out eventually. 

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 shouldn’t listen to women. She had tossed them out on the spot. Sai told Sakura that the Hokage was wrong to do so, because men shouldn’t listen to women. Sakura told him that Sasuke was out of the village, so she couldn’t 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. Didn’t 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 wasn’t stopped. Sai did not highlight the discrepancy, because keeping Danzo happy was an unofficial, unstated, yet widely understood group ROOT mission. 

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 couldn’t be defined as brass in any capacity, and nobody liked involving him in anything, and Konoha liked to keep him ‘out of sight, out of mind’. Sai pitied those who undertook such futile efforts. Life must be hard when you’re 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 one’s self-efficacy. “I don’t know. I feel bad, Genma, I don’t know…I don’t wanna talk about Kakashi-kun right now.”

Bullshit. But Sensei had taken great pains to instruct Sai not to call him out on his bullshit among mixed company, so Sai didn’t say anything. He always agreed with the lies. 

Genma hadn’t 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 ‘find your tribe’. 

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 team’s assessment of the situation - what mysterious tableaus had been set up by Nohara, what previously unrelated event was likely part of the Akatsuki’s plan. Inoichi said that Nohara’s appearance matched up with their intel’s 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. 

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 -

“Nohara seemingly committed suicide by stabbing herself in a bomb seal,” Genma said. The room fell violently silent. “The 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.” He looked at Sensei, whose head was bowed. “Inoichi and I were able to get the report from Tobi yesterday. He said that there had been a bomb and a jinchuuriki seal. I’ve heard reports of jinchuuriki surviving a lot worse than one sword to the heart.”

“And why did Uchiha not give us that report when it happened?” one of the council members demanded. “The truth behind the cover story was never disclosed! We should have known this years ago!”

Patiently, Genma said, “Tobi Uchiha’s 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.”

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. 

Tsume Inuzuka thumped her hands on the table, making Sasuke jump. Sasuke hated loud people. Sai found this difficult to believe. “I don’t 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 can’t believe that she would do this!”

Weirdly enough, Kurenai jumped in. The woman was very quiet and gentle. Sai didn’t trust her an inch. Sakura said that this explained so much about him. But Kurenai wasn’t sounding very quiet and gentle now. “I 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 I’ve ever met.”

Hiashi Hyuuga had clearly disdained this show of sentimentality. “Nohara’s relationship with you has no relevance to her actions today. Amegakure and the Akatsuki are threats to Konoha.”

“We all know that, Hyuuga-san. We’re just trying to make sense of it all.” Shikaku rolled up the ancient report - far grimmer than Sasuke had ever seen him. “The girl was a saint. If you’d known her for ten years, or if you’d known her for five minutes - everybody knew that. She is the last person who would have ever betrayed the village. If we don’t know why, then we don’t know what is really happening.”

“She was a clanless orphan!” one of the council members cried. “How could a clanless orphan be loyal to her village?”

“The Fourth Hokage was a damn clanless orphan!” Tsume yelled, and then everybody really was yelling. 

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. 

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 don’t 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 didn’t even know why the rule was so important. Or maybe he did know, and he just didn’t want to admit it. That would be the answer to every question.

Kakashi Hatake’s father was a traitor. The apple isn’t 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? Wasn’t the Amekage married? Was he married to her? No, a report said that Nohara and Hatake seemed to be together. Then that was it, wasn’t 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 jinchuuriki’s 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.

“Yo, man,” Genma said easily. “Whatever you’re thinking, you should share.”

Sensei giggled again, clapping his hands. “Genma-kun, I got it! Tobi has the message now! Yay, Tobi did it! Tobi’s the smartest!” 

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. “If you can’t control yourself, Uchiha, then excuse yourself.”

“Shut up,” Tsunade told Hyuuga. Sasuke looked exceptionally gleeful as he told this part. “This is what we needed. Genma.”

Just as easily, Genma said, “Nice job, bud. You figure out what Kakashi-kun wanted you to say?” Tobi nodded helpfully. Sasuke saw a lot of the ninja brass snap to attention. Even some of the council members got it. “Well, spill.”

“Rin-chan always hated Konoha!”

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. “Why didn’t you mention this before?”

Sensei’s face fell. “Tobi’s supposed to do what Rin-chan says. She always said not to repeat anything that sounds bad…oh, but I know I shouldn’t do what Rin-chan says anymore. Except this time, since she said it was okay.”

“You gotta start telling us things. Why did she hate Konoha, then?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

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 didn’t know the meaning of his own words. 

“Bad guys used to come into my hospital room,” Sensei said plainly. “Tobi was so scared of them. Rin-chan said that she wouldn’t 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.” Sensei tilted his head, scratching a little at his hair. “Rin-chan was supposed to love that? Are you crazy?”

Genma flipped his senbon. “Did Rin say that?”

“Did Rin-chan have to? Tobi knows he’s 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 wouldn’t have to look at me. Rin would cry about it. I didn’t know how to make her happy. And Rin-chan told me that it was okay, and that they’re mean and they don’t 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!”

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 hadn’t 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. Rin’s old friends had heard that feeling, and they were exchanging heavy glances. But Genma just flipped the senbon between his fingers. “The 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.”

Sensei smiled, nodding empathetically. “Genma-kun gets it! You’re so smart.”

Genma shrugged, sticking the senbon between his teeth. “I’m acquainted with that feeling. But she couldn’t have really hated it. She gave her life for her village.”

“The village that treated her family so good,” Sensei said. He didn’t sound bitter or angry at all. Just as if he was relating somebody else’s story. Or an indisputable fact. “That was so nice to Kushina-nee. And me. And Naruto. If Rin didn’t want you dead for me, she would want you dead for Naruto.” 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. “That 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.” 

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 ‘war’. Sasuke said that some people heard the word ‘cruelty’ too. Sai asked Sasuke which word he had heard first. Sasuke said it was Naruto. 

Tsunade, of course, heard each and every word. A decent Hokage paid attention to everything. Even the things she didn’t like to hear or didn’t 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. 

“She must have learned psychological warfare somewhere along the way too,” Tsunade said. She was still writing notes down. “Using you to say all of that was an opening strike.”

Sensei looked a little crushed. “Did you not like my information? Tsunade-sama is always telling Tobi to say more information. Tobi thought he did a good job!”

“You did,” Genma said, saving Sensei’s spirit and passions. “I don’t hear you speak that well very often.”

Sensei beamed, clapping his hands. “Tobi knows Rin-chan really good! I know just what she’d say. That’s called good information. Tobi has to tell Rin-chan about this. She’ll be super happy!” 

“Will somebody get the Uchiha out of here?” 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 wasn’t 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 didn’t 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. 

Nobody in that room would have cared about a fourteen year old girl’s hurt feelings if she wasn’t able to throw a tailed beast at them about it. That girl would have gone unavenged if she hadn’t 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 couldn’t inconvenience them. Nobody would have cared. They didn’t care about Sensei and Naruto, who couldn’t do anything to them. They only cared about Rin Nohara, because she could hurt them back. 

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 didn’t paint a thing: just coated a page in a cacophony of black. He’d have to figure out what art movement that was. 

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 couldn’t hold any more, there was a little bean of the littlest geisha of all. 

Good painting. Very pretty. Sai didn’t 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. 

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. 

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. 

There was a very, very big animal underneath the wolves. Sai wasn’t 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. 

Sai looked at that painting for a long time. He was crying again. He never understood that. Sai never knew why he cried. 

“People cry because they’re sad!” 

Sai carefully wrote this down. He knew that Sensei had been the right person to ask about this. Sensei loved crying. “What about ninja?”

“...ninja are people, Sai.” 

Sai was very skeptical about this, but he wrote down the operating assumption. Ninjas and people did have a lot in common. 

Like a true investigative artist, Sai clarified, “What is sad?”

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 wasn’t satisfied with Sai’s explanation. He said that there were shadows tons of places. He didn’t believe Sai when he said that these shadows were the best. Sai didn’t believe himself either.

Sensei blinked at him a few more times, organizing his extremely slowly performing thoughts, before he darted forward and pinched Sai’s arm. He pinched it very hard, and it actually hurt quite a bit. Sai didn’t react. This was likely a test.

“Does Sai feel pain right now?” Or perhaps this was yet another of Sensei’s demented whims? “There’s two kinds of pain. Sai is feeling one kind of pain right now. But there’s another kind of pain, that just lives in the mind.” Sensei tapped his chest. “Sometimes 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.”

That was extremely comprehensible! Sai knew exactly what he was talking about! Sai quickly wrote all of this down. 

“What about sadness? Is that a kind of pain?”

“It’s a kind of feeling,” Sensei agreed amicably. He tapped his throat. “Sadness can be in your throat. If your throat gets tight and feels really weird, that can mean you’re sad. Then you cry.”

People were rarely this useful. Sai made careful note of all of this. Still - there were fallacies. “You don’t feel physical pain by remembering pain. But you feel mental pain if you remember things that caused you pain. So they’re not directly comparable.”

“Do you feel sad when you remember things that cause you pain, Sai?”

“Not at all,” Sai said promptly. “I don’t have feelings.”

“Sensei isn’t always so sure about that, Sai…”

“I am a type of ninja. The type of ninja that I am does not have feelings.” 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 didn’t count as ninja, but when they all beat him in a fight he had to admit that he didn’t know what else they could be. “If I had feelings, I would understand the concept. I do not have them, which is why I have to ask you.”

“Sensei does not think that is how it works?”

Patiently, Sai said, “You don’t understand how it works because you’re retarded. If you weren’t retarded, you’d get it.”

Sensei stared at him, and Sai remembered a little too late that everybody got mad when he said that. Sai wasn’t exaggerating when he said everybody. Kiba attacked him when he said it, and Kiba wasn’t even on their team. Hinata and Shino were also unhappy with him. He wasn’t sure what they had felt. 

Shikamaru and Chouji and Ino looked really disgusted. Especially Ino. Sai knew what disgusted looked like. That had…that had…

It had caused a sort of mental pain that Sai did not like. 

Better conduct the social ritual. If he didn’t do it, people got madder. “I’m sorry, Sensei, that was rude of me. It is disrespectful to a teacher and -” What was the other one? Sai had a good memory, but everybody kept giving him different words to say. “ - mean. I will stop saying it.”

Sai was very good at conducting mission parameters. Social parameters were fiendishly difficult, but this one ought to be easy. Do this, don’t 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 didn’t know why he kept doing it. Danzo’s instructions always overrode all other mission parameters, but it wasn’t as if he gave Sai instructions to say that word. All he did was use it. 

As always, the apology didn’t make anybody happy with him. Sensei just tilted his head, looking at him. Sai finally recognized the look of Sensei in thought. It didn’t happen often. At least Sensei never got mad. If he didn’t mind, why did it matter…

Finally, Sensei said, “When Sasuke almost died after the fight against Sasori. Sai was in a lot of mental pain, wasn’t he?”

That was a good way to put it. Everyone had said that ‘he actually looked upset?’ and ‘wait, you care if we die?’. They kept on accusing him of having feelings about Sasuke almost dying - which, of course, he had to deny. He hadn’t had feelings about it. Just mental pain. Even ninjas experienced mental pain. Sai was really warming to this concept. It explained a lot. 

“Sai kept on trying to give Sasuke painkillers,” Sensei said. “Why did you do that?”

A theory was rapidly forming in Sai’s mind. “Extended contact with another person causes a mirroring effect in the brain. This is what is known as your ‘bond’.” Sai had a small obsession with the word, although he tried not to show it. “Due to a ‘bond’, Sasuke’s physical pain created mental pain in myself. Hence painkillers.”

“When you see Hinata cry,” Sensei said, “do you feel mental pain?”

Hinata was not a teammate. Sai had no bonds with Hinata. Hinata just cried a lot because her dad treated her like she wasn’t a person. Which was unfair, because Hinata was a type of ninja that was a person. Sai’s paintings were black when Hinata cried. 

“Yes.”

“Nobody likes physical or mental pain. When a teammate -” That was shorthand for somebody with a ‘bond’, if your teammates liked you. Naruto said precious people. Sai wanted to understand what that meant so desperately. “ - has mental pain, we feel the mental pain too. That is why people don’t like to hurt other people.” 

“What do words have to do with this?”

“Insults cause mental pain. The word retard is a very severe insult. That word means…” Sensei hummed, thinking hard. “It means that Tobi is not a person, because he is stupid.”

What? Was that what it meant? “But that isn’t true,” Sai said. “You’re barely a ninja.”

“That word hurts Sasuke a lot,” Sensei said, “because 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. They’re mad that you don’t have that mental pain too, Sai. Because it means you don’t have a bond with us.”

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 pain…

It should be false. Sai probably shouldn’t believe that. But he did. Those words were causing mental pain right now. The mental pain was in his throat.

“People think that Sai does not care,” Sensei said, “because Sai causes mental pain that he does not feel.” Sai opened his mouth, but Sensei just shook his head. “Sai does not have feelings? Is that true, Sai?”

“I am a ninja. It is true.”

“Mental pain,” Sensei said, “is a feeling.” 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 - “There 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.”

In this world, Sai only understood pain. That was what Sensei meant. 

Sai did not have anything to say for a while after that. For once, Sensei didn’t talk either. Sai just stared at his scroll of notes, attempting to synthesize the new information presented. 

Sai had a new painting idea. It was of Big Wolf and Small Wolf. The painting would show Small Wolf tearing out Big Wolf’s 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.

“You can’t die of sadness,” Sai informed Sensei. It was best when Sai’s paintings were realistic. His paintings only got weird when he was being weird. “You can die of physical pain. But you can’t die from mental pain. This doesn’t seem true, but it is true.”

Sensei smiled, big and bright. “Sai-san’s smart! Even if we feel very sad, we do not die. We get up and we keep on living! That’s what it’s all about.”

“Did Rin Nohara die from her mental pain?”

Sensei’s smile fell. 

That needed follow-up. “Did Kakashi Hatake die from mental pain?”

Sensei’s face looked a little different. Sai couldn’t interpret it.

That wasn’t a good face. More follow-up needed. “The consensus in Konoha is that Obito Uchiha is dead. But that is not logically true. Reliable sources -” Danzo said this, while he was also saying the word retarded. “ - 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?”

Sensei stared at him. In one strange glimpse, for one long second, Sensei looked very strange.

“Tobi doesn’t like Sai.”

“Sai is aware of this.”

“I mean - fuck, it’s not your fault - ugh.” Sensei pinched the bridge of his nose, hard. “It is not Sai’s fault he is terrible and sucks so much. Sai’s 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.” 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. “Rin-chan is not mentally dead. She’s Rin. Alright? Rin is Rin. Rin-chan’s just making bad choices. Kakashi-kun is Kakashi-kun and he’s making bad choices too. They aren’t dead. They came back from the dead, that’s the whole thing going on that’s a really big deal. Don’t say that.”

“Konoha agrees as a whole that Rin Noh -”

“Konoha is really fucking stupid, Sai. No. Stop writing that down.” 

Sai stopped writing it down. In a small note in the margins, he added - ‘Sensei curses?’. “Are they not dead because Obito Uchiha is not dead?”

“Yes,” Sensei said. “That 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 doesn’t change who we are. It just makes us do stupid stuff.” He shrugged listlessly. “Pain’s just pain. That’s all it is. Physical pain, mental pain…sadness and grief. It doesn’t mean anything we don’t want it to mean. All it does is make us sad…”

By that logic, Obito Uchiha’s mental pain did not change who he was. His mental pain simply made him do a lot of stupid stuff. For some reason, Sai didn’t write that down. What happens in Team 7, maybe?

“I think Sensei’s in denial,” Sai said helpfully. “And that he just doesn’t want to admit that his teammates as he knew them are lost to him forever.”

“Sensei thinks that Sai should talk less.”

Even more helpfully, Sai said, “Sensei is very aware that his teammates are crazy and that he is ret - stupid, and that he doesn’t want to admit that he can’t be loyal to them anymore without being treasonous to the village.”

“Sensei is very proud of Sai for the self-censorship.”

Sai was very proud of himself as well! “There are no logistical problems, Sensei,” he assured Sensei. Quite supportively, too! “Everybody thinks you’re too stupid to be treasonous. Konoha believes that Sensei doesn’t understand the nuances of the situation, and you’re in denial that they are political enemies.”

“Konoha thinks, huh?” For the first time, Sensei looked faintly and distantly amused. “What does Sai hypothesize?”

Promptly, Sai said, “You can’t be in denial about something you don’t understand.”

For the first time, Sensei looked faintly and distantly amused. It was a very, very different type of amusement than usual. “Maybe you should take your own advice.”

That punctured a hole in Sai’s 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 he’d 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 didn’t know why this was the case either.

Bonds. What were bonds? Instruments of pain and pleasure. Sai’s 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 bonds…

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 couldn’t 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. 

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 ‘bond’ business, then he could experience that feeling again. Sai didn’t even know what that feeling was. But that feeling was the ink in the stroke of a bond. 

Ingratiate himself with Team 7. Experience the ‘bond’. 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 wouldn’t stop saying slurs.

“A bond’s what you got with your precious people!” Naruto announced. He didn’t know that Sai was begging for the answer. To Naruto, of all people. “

Self-referential nonsense. “And what is a precious person?”

Just as self-importantly, Naruto said, “A precious person is someone who walks your way with you!”

At this point Sai began going insane. “And what does way mean in this context?”

“It’s like your nindo or something!”

“And what is a nindo.”

“It’s your way!”

“Give up,” Sasuke said.

“It’s not complicated!” Naruto protested. “See, my nindo’s that I never give up and I never go back on my word!” They all knew that. “Just pick something. It’s what you always do! It’s what you’re already doing, or what you want to do, or whatever!” He pointed dramatically at Sensei, who was amusing himself with a children’s puzzle. “Even Sensei has a nindo! That’s the Team 7 nindo, you’ve already heard it!”

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.

“Can that be my nindo?” Sai hazarded. “It seems sufficient for the purposes.”

Sasuke sneered, then repeated what he said in a mocking voice. Rude, perhaps?

“That’s the nindo of Team 7,” Sakura told Sai. She was sick of this conversation. “My nindo is that I will achieve the dreams of my precious people. Sasuke doesn’t talk about his, he says it’s private. He’s just embarrassed by it. He said it really dramatically during a fight when we thought we were all going to die, though.”

“That was a near-death moment,” Sasuke hissed. 

“Team 7 shares a nindo, which is why we’re precious people to each other. That’s the bond we share.” Sai perked up. He was a member of Team 7. Therefore? “Um. You were just assigned to us. That doesn’t make you our precious person. You’re horrible.”

“You are a terrible person and I want you off our team,” Sasuke hissed.

Tenzo looked a little distressed. “I don’t think this is a professional way to speak to our colleagues.”

“Are slurs professional, Tenzo-sensei?!”

“Sai can be my precious person!” Naruto announced, throwing up his hands. “Why not! Wanna be my friend, Sai?”

“I will accept that,” Sai said. Excitedly, but they couldn’t tell.

Flatly, Sakura said, “Naruto asks mass murderers if they wanna be his precious people. That doesn’t mean anything.”

“Hey! Friendships mean everything!”

“He’s not our friend. He sucks.”

“Ah, the cute students are being passive-aggressive again.” 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?  “Sai-san, you should try finding your own nindo. Maybe you’ll be less terrible!”

“Senpai, we shouldn’t call the students terrible.”

“Um…he is, though…”

Sai’s way. He still didn’t 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 everyone’s lives, he’d have bonds. He would have precious people. He would understand the bonds with his precious people. Then he’d draw the bond. Then he’d 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 couldn’t draw it right. 

“Sensei? Do you know how to draw?”

“Sensei doesn’t know how to do anything!”

Tobi knelt in front of the memorial stone.

They had worked fast. Kakashi Hatake and Rin Nohara’s names were already filled in, leaving two awkward gaps a year apart. Guess they weren’t really popular anymore. 

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. That’s a mistake, Tobi would say. I’m right here. But Konoha said it would be too expensive to fix. Or maybe they just couldn’t 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 Sarutobi’s 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 wasn’t 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 Shisui’s name. Tobi didn’t know if Sasuke forgot on accident or if he forgot on purpose - or what it would mean if he had or hadn’t. 

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. 

Tobi didn’t 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 Tobi’s parents on the anniversary of their deaths. That didn’t occur to anybody anymore. Sarutobi always took Tobi to Sensei’s grave on the day of the fox attack - the graveyard’s always hopping that day - and he didn’t 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 Kakashi’s graves. Twice a year. Tobi didn’t 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. 

He was still bowing, but he didn’t have anything to say. Everything he wanted to say died in his throat, and everything he knew he had to say wouldn’t come. He couldn’t lie to this stone. He couldn’t tell the truth. All he could do was apologize. 

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 wasn’t enough.

This was all his fault. If he had just been better, and if he hadn’t been so worthless. If he hadn’t been a burden. He couldn’t 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.  

Bow in apology. I’m 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 Kakashi’s life. Tobi had broken Obito’s 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 hadn’t started this mission, if he hadn’t gone so far to live his own life - would something be different? Could he have saved Rin? 

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. 

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, Obito’s true feelings were allowed to exist. Obito hadn’t been allowed to cry at his own parent’s funeral. They’d said he was being weak. He was a ninja now. 

Obito Uchiha’s 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. Obito’s mother had argued with Fugaku’s father for hours, over and over again. She didn’t want Obito even enrolling into the Academy until six or seven. She fully intended on dragging his training out until the war ended. 

Two days after they died, Fugaku’s father processed the paperwork for the Academy assessment test. He would test out. Two days. Their bodies were barely cold. The life Obito led…it wasn’t the life they had wanted for him. They had wanted better. 

Tobi sat there and wailed. Who was he crying for? Out of the three of them, the only person still dead was Obito Uchiha.

“Rin thought you would be happy.”

Hook, line, and sinker.

Tobi’s 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 couldn’t care less. Tobi had to wonder how he had mastered reading Kakashi’s 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 codename’s similarities to their own ninja. But Shikamaru had gone through their roster of missing and disappeared nin three times, and he couldn’t find anybody who resembled Hound. He was gonna be smug about this.

 Tobi gaped at him, rubbing his eye again for good measure. He didn’t have to show off and start fighting Kakashi - Tobi was famously conflict averse.

“How can Tobi be happy like this?” Tobi asked, voice tremulous. His body was on guard, but he wasn’t pulling away yet. “This is all my fault.”

“Rin and I made our own bad choices,” Kakashi said. His voice was deep, now. Really deep and smooth and soothing. Rin was so lucky. “Rin sees further ahead than human beings. I don’t see much at all. You are the only innocent party. So don’t cry.”

What crap. As if Tobi hadn’t 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. Kakashi’s strength had always seemed effortless. Obito’s 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. 

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. 

“Tobi’s brain knows that Kakashi-kun and Rin-chan are alive. The brain thinks it should make me happy. But Tobi’s heart doesn’t care.” Tobi grasped the fold of fabric above his heart, curling his hand around the cloth. “Tobi’s heart was sad. Because that heart doesn’t know why you didn’t come back for me.”

Kakashi was silent. Unamused, for the first time.

“Is it because I didn’t come back for you?” Tobi was crying again. He hadn’t really meant to. The sadness was too much for this shell. “I thought you were dead. I’m sorry. Are you mad at me?”

Instantly, Kakashi said, “No. Stop trying to remember that. It’s not worth it. Don’t think about it.”

“But -”

“The only thing worse than that hell,” Kakashi said, “would be hell with you beside me. If you care about me, you wouldn’t try to remember.” Well. When you put it like that. Tobi was still rubbing his nose, but he nodded miserably. “Good. You’re being good right now.”

And Kakashi flared his own chakra. It was very, very Kakashi. To the word, it translated as, Whoopsie-daisy! Good thing I don’t 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 wasn’t used as often as ‘Because Your Actions are Stupid’, 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. 

Those first few days were crystal-sharp in Tobi’s 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. 

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 comrade’s 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 didn’t 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.  

 Hound had looked at him, but never strangely. Kakashi hadn’t looked at him strangely at all. He didn’t 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? 

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. 

Ninjas didn’t tend to follow weaker people, so that strength was making a few people anxious about Rin. A few. Most weren’t. She was a healer!

Tsunade was worried. Tobi regretted bringing that woman back every day. She had called him out on his shit instantly. 

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?

“There’s nothing to forgive. But you wanted to apologize to me, right?” 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. “Can I tell you how you can apologize to me?” Tobi nodded automatically. “Rin-sama asked me to deliver a message.”

This again? She wouldn’t stop saying it - as if Tobi needed to hear it every day, or he would forget. She’d end every message with it. As if he didn’t know. Maybe she just liked to say it. She ought to save it for more important circumstances. Long suffering, Tobi said, “Tobi knows Rin loves him.”

“Not that sort of message.”

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.

“Okay,” Tobi said. “If it isn’t bad.”

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. 

Maybe he could tell. Kakashi took a squat, so he was almost at eye level with Tobi. In that same old monotone, he said, “Your Rin-chan says…you can tell them the truth now. What only Tobi knows.”

Kakashi’s 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 didn’t even break Kakashi’s 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 hadn’t 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 didn’t look grim very often. 

Kakashi’s 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 wasn’t sure what Gai was waiting for.

Then Kakashi’s 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 Kakashi’s body to heal a shattered ribcage. Because that kick had shattered his entire ribcage. He should be dying.

Tobi truly couldn’t 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 he’d gone rogue and kicked a guy through gravestones just because he was mad. Or worried? It was hard to tell. 

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. 

“I get it,” Kakashi gasped. “I finally get it. How happy this makes me…”

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 he’d meant. 

 I’m so happy, Obito. 

We’ll make you perfectly happy. 

What was with that? What was this fascination with happiness? Nobody in the world was happy. What did happiness matter?

“I profess the joy I felt when I learned you were alive.” Gai shouldn’t say such a happy sentence so seriously. Gai always announced joy with such triumph. “But 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!”

Kakashi laughed again, wild and thin, as he rolled onto his feet. Gai’s eyes widened, and Tobi knew that he was feeling the emotional whirlpool of seeing Kakashi’s face again. Maybe not ‘again’ - 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 Kakashi’s 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.

“Gai-kun…” Kakashi exhaled heavily, looking up at the pale blue sky. “I always thought that teammate needed more friends than just us. A half-assed ninja and a pacifist kunoichi. I thought you wouldn’t give up on him…that you’d see through to who he really is. Ah, Gai…you 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.”

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 Gai’s eyes. He would not cry in front of an enemy. But it was difficult not to cry in front of Kakashi. 

“One cannot be a good person and walk the ninja’s path.” Gai never faltered, and Tobi scrambled to stand up. “But 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.” Gai’s breath was strong and steady, never weakening. In anybody else, it would have faltered. “When 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!”

Tobi grabbed onto Gai’s shoulder, clutching desperately onto his jumpsuit. It very directly impeded Gai’s 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 Kakashi’s definition of freedom was.

“Kakashi-kun hasn’t hurt me!” Tobi cried. He was almost crying himself, confused and terrified. “Gai-chan, don’t fight him! Best friends shouldn’t fight!”

“Hey, I’m not the one who made things violent.” Kakashi slouched and shoved his hands in his pockets - somebody unwilling to fight? Or somebody who knew that he didn’t have to? “I’m not the one who turned him stupider than usual. The goodness inside your comrades did that. Even that goodness is corrupt. By that logic…aren’t we all monsters?” 

Gai was about to strike. Tobi yanked harder at his jumpsuit, distracting him and pulling him off-stance. “Tobi doesn’t want friends to hurt each other! This isn’t fair! Don’t fight Kakashi-kun on his grave, Gai-chan!”

Almost too quick to see, firm and restrained, Tobi’s hands were removed from Gai’s 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 wouldn’t have been worth the repercussions. It had taken years before Neiji successfully figured out the nuances of Tobi’s 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, “Gai would only be in danger if you got in his way. You can help once you calm down.” Neiji halted for a second as Tobi strained in his impressively iron grip, making his own decision, before he whispered something. “Tobi-sensei, I’m one of your friends. I want us someplace safe.”

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 wasn’t 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. 

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. 

Was that still true? Was Tobi’s 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? 

Tsunade had said something batshit insane a while back. She said that he’d already built it. Tobi had said that he was too useless for that.

“You four set up a weird-ass training rotation,” Tsunade said. “I see that Kurenai teaches that rookie class genjutsu, Asuma teaches them ninjutsu, and Gai teaches them taijutsu. They’re 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. You’re the only ninja in the village who can teach those kids to be people. You aren’t unnecessary, so stop acting like it.”

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. They’d been sparring again before Sasuke felt Neiji’s 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. 

Damn. Tobi really didn’t want to panic like this in front of the kids. It wasn’t as if he needed to look like a tough guy in front of the students…or as if that was remotely possible…but he wanted them to rely on him. Sasuke, in his own way, relied on him the most. 

But he had to sound irrational and childish. Tobi couldn’t 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. 

You couldn’t 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 was…

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. 

“He encountered Kakashi Hatake,” Neiji said, clipped and flat. Sasuke skidded to a halt, eyes widening. “And I’m only telling you that because he will. More ANBU will come to take his statement soon.”

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 wasn’t 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. 

“Encountered!” Naruto exclaimed. “Did he escape? What did he want? Sensei, what even happened?”

Sasuke stepped towards Neiji, trying very ineffectually to look intimidating. “Tell me what happened. He’s targeting him, isn’t he!”

“Kakashi isn’t targeting me!” Tobi cried, hiccuping with another sob. “Kakashi and I were just talking. He didn’t do anything wrong!”

“Really?” 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 didn’t even live on Tobi-planet. “What’s the problem? Maybe he wanted to talk outside of a fight, yeah?”

Neiji kept his monotonous inflection. He did a very good job. His usual ‘you are so stupid that I want to kill everyone in this room and then myself’ monotone was very different. “Uzumaki. That is not what happened. His injury is still acting up.” Very polite euphemism for ‘he’s not the most annoying five year old adult ninja genius we all know and barely tolerate, he actually thinks he’s five’. “Quiet him down and get him inside. I’ll stay in case Hatake approaches.”

“What if they have to talk?” Naruto seemed to think this was an extremely reasonable question. Or a question anybody else but him would have. “If I caught up with Sasuke for the first time in twenty years -” How old did he think Tobi was?! “ - then we’d gotta hash stuff out too. Especially if Sasuke was dead and evil. Maybe they just gotta.”

“If I was evil my blades would speak for themselves,” Sasuke muttered darkly.

“But you’d drop some cool one-liners or something!”

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. “I need to secure the perim -”

“Tobi.” Sasuke put a hand on Tobi’s arm, and Tobi allowed the warmth to spread. “Snow Leopard has to go back to work. But he’s going to be around if we need him. If Kakashi comes back, Snow Leopard’s going to stop any fighting. Say bye to Snow Leopard, alright?”

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. 

Tobi would do the same. And the things he did to keep Sasuke safe…hopefully he’d never find out about that. They would be a little hard to explain. 

Sasuke’s 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 guard’s super-strong and super-cool, and they can keep us safe. Tobi knows that Itachi can kill the guard very easily, but the guard’s 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.

“Bye Snow Leopard,” Tobi said miserably. “You’re really nice…”

“I’ll be here if you want me,” Neiji said, shockingly nice. 

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 didn’t 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 Tobi’s heart, and he found himself pressing his hand over that heart. He hadn’t thought that sentence in so long. That hadn’t 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. 

Even if Rin and Kakashi love each other…differently. 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. 

This problem didn’t matter at all. So long as Bakashi was Bakashi and Rin-chan was Rin-chan…the rest of the world paled in front of that. 

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 hadn’t approached him effortlessly, but he had been remarkably relaxed about it. Of course, Kakashi had once been relaxed about everything. 

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. 

Humbly, with the grace and wisdom of a monk, Tobi said, “Tobi was paying his respects to the dead.”

Instantly, Sasuke said, “Bullshit.”

“That’s so mean, Sasuke-chan.”

“You hate the graveyard.” Sasuke angrily smashed a tea cookie into his mouth. He stress ate. “You’ve been angrily muttering about throttling Hatake for days.” He’s been what? “When you visited Shisui’s grave, you stomped around and got pissy. What’s the real reason you visited the memorial? It wasn’t just to apologize.”

“Sensei hasn’t been feeling well,” Tobi said, as Ninja Buddha once did.

“Do you have any idea how bad your tantrums get when you don’t feel well.”

“You’ve been avoiding talking about the Hatake and Nohara situation completely,” Sakura said unhappily. Her hands were wrapped tight around the tea cup, searching for its warmth. “The whole situation is so weird, and it’s only getting weirder. I get that you don’t want to talk about it, but will you explain something?”

Sai nibbled at a tea cookie mildly and politely. “An insider informed me that Sensei behaved treasonously because he ‘did not know any better’.” The air quotes could have been painted in the air. “But you seem to have bounced back quickly. It’s very strange.”

He might as well set this up now. It had the benefit of being true. “Sensei’s fine. Very, very fine!” Tobi wriggled away from Sasuke’s deathly yet disbelieving glare. “Seeing Kakashi made me feel…it’s stressful for sensei. And not the kind of stressful that you can punch. And Kakashi-kun is really super stressful because…um…”

Sakura folded her arms on the table. “Because of why you were doing all of this.”

This was a good time to tell them. Tobi took a small yet regal sip of the tea. “Sensei 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.” Might as well. “Tobi tested it out. I opened up a portal into the kitchen, and Sasuke didn’t notice it at all. If Kakashi can open up portals…or if his ghost powers can make him invisible…”

“He can get in and out of anywhere he wants,” Tenzo finished. 

“Yup.” Tobi took another sip of his tea. “That’s how Kakashi-kun’s been stalking Tobi.”

Everybody stared at him. Then they stared at each other. Sai fiddled with his brush.

Finally, Sakura took the fall. “You have to be kidding.”

But Tobi just shook his head. “He knows too much stuff. He’s too familiar with Tobi. How did he know where I was? Or that I was crying? We don’t know how long he’s been doing this. What he knows about Konoha, or about Team 7…he could be listening to everything Tsunade-sama says. Hm…not good!”

Naruto groaned, throwing his head back. Everybody else looked far more than exasperated. “No wonder we can’t really beat him! What the hell are we gonna do about somebody like that?”

“We don’t even know what Nohara can do,” Sakura said glumly. “What 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.”

“And that eye.” Tenzo rubbed his chin, deep in thought. Sasuke scowled. “I’ve already gone through every record on doujutsus Konoha that has. Sasuke’s gone through the Uchiha files. I’ve never seen a doujutsu like that.”

What? Tobi blinked. “Rin-chan’s parents were civilians. They died in an attack during the second war.” 

She had been placed in a dormitory for young girls in the Uzushio district. It wasn’t nearly as bad as Naruto’s 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. 

“She showed it after Hatake grabbed you,” Sasuke said unhappily. “It was purplish, and had concentric circles. Makes you kind of nauseous looking into it…”

“Not me!”

“We get it, Naruto, evil fox superiority, shut up -”

“Hey, evil’s a pejorative term! He’s really nice, actually! Well, no, but still!”

“I can’t believe you’ve started using the words I teach you correctly.”

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. 

Almost every single existing record of the Rinnegan had been found among Madara Uchiha’s possessions. 

That old pervert really had to start responding to his stupid mail.

“Sensei doesn’t know about all of that,” Tobi said. He was obviously getting a little distressed. “Rin-chan and Kakashi-kun are basically good people. Even when they’re being weird and annoying and kind of evil. So everything’s going to be okay! If they’re evil, Team 7 will just deal with that!”

“I don’t want to deal with that,” Sai said.

“Sai-san, we get paid to do a job.”

“I would really like to be Sai-kun, Sensei…”

Sasuke slammed his hands on the table. Tenzo dived to keep his cup from spilling. “And I would have liked for you to start calling him sensei from the start instead of calling him a retard nonstop -”

Sai’s eyes darted around the room. “I recognize that usage of a word hurts your feelings.”

“Do I have to teach you what a slur is -”

“What’s a slur?” Naruto asked blankly. 

Sakura sighed. “People make up new ones just to insult you, Naruto.”

“Sakura-chan, that doesn’t answer the question!”

Extremely seriously, Tenzo said, “I know what it is. A slur is something that doesn’t need to be pointed out.”

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. “Tenzo-sensei, don’t fucking tell me that you’ve been trying to figure it out by watching me deal with Sai!” Tenzo mumbled something about unhelpful dictionaries. “Are you the teacher or what?!”

Humbly, Tobi said, “It’s 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?”

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 didn’t 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 didn’t 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 couldn’t even conceptualize it. 

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. 

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 wouldn’t make a lot of sense, but oaths didn’t 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 didn’t particularly want to. And he was fairly sure Sasuke didn’t want to. Konoha had a ramen stand. 

These people were obsessed with ramen. Sai wanted to be obsessed with ramen too. He wasn’t. He tried to fake it, but he hadn’t 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 didn’t 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 didn’t know a lot about. Maybe Sasuke understood. He was very insistent that he knew everything. He said so, so it must be true. 

That was sarcasm. You could tell by the emphasis on the middle word in each clause. 

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 wasn’t an idea. People inside of Konoha had ideas. Konoha was a sewage system and a merchant’s 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. 

So even if you hated an idea. The concept or the model or the dream. It wasn’t 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. 

But Sai was the ‘eternal learner’ 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 ‘Type A’, but they already knew that. An eternal learner type always finds it out eventually. 

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 shouldn’t listen to women. She had tossed them out on the spot. Sai told Sakura that the Hokage was wrong to do so, because men shouldn’t listen to women. Sakura told him that Sasuke was out of the village, so she couldn’t 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. Didn’t 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 wasn’t stopped. Sai did not highlight the discrepancy, because keeping Danzo happy was an unofficial, unstated, yet widely understood group ROOT mission. 

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 couldn’t be defined as brass in any capacity, and nobody liked involving him in anything, and Konoha liked to keep him ‘out of sight, out of mind’. Sai pitied those who undertook such futile efforts. Life must be hard when you’re 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 one’s self-efficacy. “I don’t know. I feel bad, Genma, I don’t know…I don’t wanna talk about Kakashi-kun right now.”

Bullshit. But Sensei had taken great pains to instruct Sai not to call him out on his bullshit among mixed company, so Sai didn’t say anything. He always agreed with the lies. 

Genma hadn’t 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 ‘find your tribe’. 

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 team’s assessment of the situation - what mysterious tableaus had been set up by Nohara, what previously unrelated event was likely part of the Akatsuki’s plan. Inoichi said that Nohara’s appearance matched up with their intel’s 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. 

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 -

“Nohara seemingly committed suicide by stabbing herself in a bomb seal,” Genma said. The room fell violently silent. “The 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.” He looked at Sensei, whose head was bowed. “Inoichi and I were able to get the report from Tobi yesterday. He said that there had been a bomb and a jinchuuriki seal. I’ve heard reports of jinchuuriki surviving a lot worse than one sword to the heart.”

“And why did Uchiha not give us that report when it happened?” one of the council members demanded. “The truth behind the cover story was never disclosed! We should have known this years ago!”

Patiently, Genma said, “Tobi Uchiha’s 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.”

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. 

Tsume Inuzuka thumped her hands on the table, making Sasuke jump. Sasuke hated loud people. Sai found this difficult to believe. “I don’t 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 can’t believe that she would do this!”

Weirdly enough, Kurenai jumped in. The woman was very quiet and gentle. Sai didn’t trust her an inch. Sakura said that this explained so much about him. But Kurenai wasn’t sounding very quiet and gentle now. “I 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 I’ve ever met.”

Hiashi Hyuuga had clearly disdained this show of sentimentality. “Nohara’s relationship with you has no relevance to her actions today. Amegakure and the Akatsuki are threats to Konoha.”

“We all know that, Hyuuga-san. We’re just trying to make sense of it all.” Shikaku rolled up the ancient report - far grimmer than Sasuke had ever seen him. “The girl was a saint. If you’d known her for ten years, or if you’d known her for five minutes - everybody knew that. She is the last person who would have ever betrayed the village. If we don’t know why, then we don’t know what is really happening.”

“She was a clanless orphan!” one of the council members cried. “How could a clanless orphan be loyal to her village?”

“The Fourth Hokage was a damn clanless orphan!” Tsume yelled, and then everybody really was yelling. 

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. 

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 don’t 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 didn’t even know why the rule was so important. Or maybe he did know, and he just didn’t want to admit it. That would be the answer to every question.

Kakashi Hatake’s father was a traitor. The apple isn’t 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? Wasn’t the Amekage married? Was he married to her? No, a report said that Nohara and Hatake seemed to be together. Then that was it, wasn’t 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 jinchuuriki’s 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.

“Yo, man,” Genma said easily. “Whatever you’re thinking, you should share.”

Sensei giggled again, clapping his hands. “Genma-kun, I got it! Tobi has the message now! Yay, Tobi did it! Tobi’s the smartest!” 

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. “If you can’t control yourself, Uchiha, then excuse yourself.”

“Shut up,” Tsunade told Hyuuga. Sasuke looked exceptionally gleeful as he told this part. “This is what we needed. Genma.”

Just as easily, Genma said, “Nice job, bud. You figure out what Kakashi-kun wanted you to say?” Tobi nodded helpfully. Sasuke saw a lot of the ninja brass snap to attention. Even some of the council members got it. “Well, spill.”

“Rin-chan always hated Konoha!”

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. “Why didn’t you mention this before?”

Sensei’s face fell. “Tobi’s supposed to do what Rin-chan says. She always said not to repeat anything that sounds bad…oh, but I know I shouldn’t do what Rin-chan says anymore. Except this time, since she said it was okay.”

“You gotta start telling us things. Why did she hate Konoha, then?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

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 didn’t know the meaning of his own words. 

“Bad guys used to come into my hospital room,” Sensei said plainly. “Tobi was so scared of them. Rin-chan said that she wouldn’t 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.” Sensei tilted his head, scratching a little at his hair. “Rin-chan was supposed to love that? Are you crazy?”

Genma flipped his senbon. “Did Rin say that?”

“Did Rin-chan have to? Tobi knows he’s 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 wouldn’t have to look at me. Rin would cry about it. I didn’t know how to make her happy. And Rin-chan told me that it was okay, and that they’re mean and they don’t 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!”

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 hadn’t 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. Rin’s old friends had heard that feeling, and they were exchanging heavy glances. But Genma just flipped the senbon between his fingers. “The 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.”

Sensei smiled, nodding empathetically. “Genma-kun gets it! You’re so smart.”

Genma shrugged, sticking the senbon between his teeth. “I’m acquainted with that feeling. But she couldn’t have really hated it. She gave her life for her village.”

“The village that treated her family so good,” Sensei said. He didn’t sound bitter or angry at all. Just as if he was relating somebody else’s story. Or an indisputable fact. “That was so nice to Kushina-nee. And me. And Naruto. If Rin didn’t want you dead for me, she would want you dead for Naruto.” 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. “That 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.” 

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 ‘war’. Sasuke said that some people heard the word ‘cruelty’ too. Sai asked Sasuke which word he had heard first. Sasuke said it was Naruto. 

Tsunade, of course, heard each and every word. A decent Hokage paid attention to everything. Even the things she didn’t like to hear or didn’t 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. 

“She must have learned psychological warfare somewhere along the way too,” Tsunade said. She was still writing notes down. “Using you to say all of that was an opening strike.”

Sensei looked a little crushed. “Did you not like my information? Tsunade-sama is always telling Tobi to say more information. Tobi thought he did a good job!”

“You did,” Genma said, saving Sensei’s spirit and passions. “I don’t hear you speak that well very often.”

Sensei beamed, clapping his hands. “Tobi knows Rin-chan really good! I know just what she’d say. That’s called good information. Tobi has to tell Rin-chan about this. She’ll be super happy!” 

“Will somebody get the Uchiha out of here?” 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 wasn’t 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 didn’t 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. 

Nobody in that room would have cared about a fourteen year old girl’s hurt feelings if she wasn’t able to throw a tailed beast at them about it. That girl would have gone unavenged if she hadn’t 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 couldn’t inconvenience them. Nobody would have cared. They didn’t care about Sensei and Naruto, who couldn’t do anything to them. They only cared about Rin Nohara, because she could hurt them back. 

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 didn’t paint a thing: just coated a page in a cacophony of black. He’d have to figure out what art movement that was. 

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 couldn’t hold any more, there was a little bean of the littlest geisha of all. 

Good painting. Very pretty. Sai didn’t 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. 

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. 

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. 

There was a very, very big animal underneath the wolves. Sai wasn’t 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. 

Sai looked at that painting for a long time. He was crying again. He never understood that. Sai never knew why he cried. 

“People cry because they’re sad!” 

Sai carefully wrote this down. He knew that Sensei had been the right person to ask about this. Sensei loved crying. “What about ninja?”

“...ninja are people, Sai.” 

Sai was very skeptical about this, but he wrote down the operating assumption. Ninjas and people did have a lot in common. 

Like a true investigative artist, Sai clarified, “What is sad?”

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 wasn’t satisfied with Sai’s explanation. He said that there were shadows tons of places. He didn’t believe Sai when he said that these shadows were the best. Sai didn’t believe himself either.

Sensei blinked at him a few more times, organizing his extremely slowly performing thoughts, before he darted forward and pinched Sai’s arm. He pinched it very hard, and it actually hurt quite a bit. Sai didn’t react. This was likely a test.

“Does Sai feel pain right now?” Or perhaps this was yet another of Sensei’s demented whims? “There’s two kinds of pain. Sai is feeling one kind of pain right now. But there’s another kind of pain, that just lives in the mind.” Sensei tapped his chest. “Sometimes 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.”

That was extremely comprehensible! Sai knew exactly what he was talking about! Sai quickly wrote all of this down. 

“What about sadness? Is that a kind of pain?”

“It’s a kind of feeling,” Sensei agreed amicably. He tapped his throat. “Sadness can be in your throat. If your throat gets tight and feels really weird, that can mean you’re sad. Then you cry.”

People were rarely this useful. Sai made careful note of all of this. Still - there were fallacies. “You don’t feel physical pain by remembering pain. But you feel mental pain if you remember things that caused you pain. So they’re not directly comparable.”

“Do you feel sad when you remember things that cause you pain, Sai?”

“Not at all,” Sai said promptly. “I don’t have feelings.”

“Sensei isn’t always so sure about that, Sai…”

“I am a type of ninja. The type of ninja that I am does not have feelings.” 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 didn’t count as ninja, but when they all beat him in a fight he had to admit that he didn’t know what else they could be. “If I had feelings, I would understand the concept. I do not have them, which is why I have to ask you.”

“Sensei does not think that is how it works?”

Patiently, Sai said, “You don’t understand how it works because you’re retarded. If you weren’t retarded, you’d get it.”

Sensei stared at him, and Sai remembered a little too late that everybody got mad when he said that. Sai wasn’t exaggerating when he said everybody. Kiba attacked him when he said it, and Kiba wasn’t even on their team. Hinata and Shino were also unhappy with him. He wasn’t sure what they had felt. 

Shikamaru and Chouji and Ino looked really disgusted. Especially Ino. Sai knew what disgusted looked like. That had…that had…

It had caused a sort of mental pain that Sai did not like. 

Better conduct the social ritual. If he didn’t do it, people got madder. “I’m sorry, Sensei, that was rude of me. It is disrespectful to a teacher and -” What was the other one? Sai had a good memory, but everybody kept giving him different words to say. “ - mean. I will stop saying it.”

Sai was very good at conducting mission parameters. Social parameters were fiendishly difficult, but this one ought to be easy. Do this, don’t 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 didn’t know why he kept doing it. Danzo’s instructions always overrode all other mission parameters, but it wasn’t as if he gave Sai instructions to say that word. All he did was use it. 

As always, the apology didn’t make anybody happy with him. Sensei just tilted his head, looking at him. Sai finally recognized the look of Sensei in thought. It didn’t happen often. At least Sensei never got mad. If he didn’t mind, why did it matter…

Finally, Sensei said, “When Sasuke almost died after the fight against Sasori. Sai was in a lot of mental pain, wasn’t he?”

That was a good way to put it. Everyone had said that ‘he actually looked upset?’ and ‘wait, you care if we die?’. They kept on accusing him of having feelings about Sasuke almost dying - which, of course, he had to deny. He hadn’t had feelings about it. Just mental pain. Even ninjas experienced mental pain. Sai was really warming to this concept. It explained a lot. 

“Sai kept on trying to give Sasuke painkillers,” Sensei said. “Why did you do that?”

A theory was rapidly forming in Sai’s mind. “Extended contact with another person causes a mirroring effect in the brain. This is what is known as your ‘bond’.” Sai had a small obsession with the word, although he tried not to show it. “Due to a ‘bond’, Sasuke’s physical pain created mental pain in myself. Hence painkillers.”

“When you see Hinata cry,” Sensei said, “do you feel mental pain?”

Hinata was not a teammate. Sai had no bonds with Hinata. Hinata just cried a lot because her dad treated her like she wasn’t a person. Which was unfair, because Hinata was a type of ninja that was a person. Sai’s paintings were black when Hinata cried. 

“Yes.”

“Nobody likes physical or mental pain. When a teammate -” That was shorthand for somebody with a ‘bond’, if your teammates liked you. Naruto said precious people. Sai wanted to understand what that meant so desperately. “ - has mental pain, we feel the mental pain too. That is why people don’t like to hurt other people.” 

“What do words have to do with this?”

“Insults cause mental pain. The word retard is a very severe insult. That word means…” Sensei hummed, thinking hard. “It means that Tobi is not a person, because he is stupid.”

What? Was that what it meant? “But that isn’t true,” Sai said. “You’re barely a ninja.”

“That word hurts Sasuke a lot,” Sensei said, “because 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. They’re mad that you don’t have that mental pain too, Sai. Because it means you don’t have a bond with us.”

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 pain…

It should be false. Sai probably shouldn’t believe that. But he did. Those words were causing mental pain right now. The mental pain was in his throat.

“People think that Sai does not care,” Sensei said, “because Sai causes mental pain that he does not feel.” Sai opened his mouth, but Sensei just shook his head. “Sai does not have feelings? Is that true, Sai?”

“I am a ninja. It is true.”

“Mental pain,” Sensei said, “is a feeling.” 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 - “There 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.”

In this world, Sai only understood pain. That was what Sensei meant. 

Sai did not have anything to say for a while after that. For once, Sensei didn’t talk either. Sai just stared at his scroll of notes, attempting to synthesize the new information presented. 

Sai had a new painting idea. It was of Big Wolf and Small Wolf. The painting would show Small Wolf tearing out Big Wolf’s 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.

“You can’t die of sadness,” Sai informed Sensei. It was best when Sai’s paintings were realistic. His paintings only got weird when he was being weird. “You can die of physical pain. But you can’t die from mental pain. This doesn’t seem true, but it is true.”

Sensei smiled, big and bright. “Sai-san’s smart! Even if we feel very sad, we do not die. We get up and we keep on living! That’s what it’s all about.”

“Did Rin Nohara die from her mental pain?”

Sensei’s smile fell. 

That needed follow-up. “Did Kakashi Hatake die from mental pain?”

Sensei’s face looked a little different. Sai couldn’t interpret it.

That wasn’t a good face. More follow-up needed. “The consensus in Konoha is that Obito Uchiha is dead. But that is not logically true. Reliable sources -” Danzo said this, while he was also saying the word retarded. “ - 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?”

Sensei stared at him. In one strange glimpse, for one long second, Sensei looked very strange.

“Tobi doesn’t like Sai.”

“Sai is aware of this.”

“I mean - fuck, it’s not your fault - ugh.” Sensei pinched the bridge of his nose, hard. “It is not Sai’s fault he is terrible and sucks so much. Sai’s 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.” 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. “Rin-chan is not mentally dead. She’s Rin. Alright? Rin is Rin. Rin-chan’s just making bad choices. Kakashi-kun is Kakashi-kun and he’s making bad choices too. They aren’t dead. They came back from the dead, that’s the whole thing going on that’s a really big deal. Don’t say that.”

“Konoha agrees as a whole that Rin Noh -”

“Konoha is really fucking stupid, Sai. No. Stop writing that down.” 

Sai stopped writing it down. In a small note in the margins, he added - ‘Sensei curses?’. “Are they not dead because Obito Uchiha is not dead?”

“Yes,” Sensei said. “That 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 doesn’t change who we are. It just makes us do stupid stuff.” He shrugged listlessly. “Pain’s just pain. That’s all it is. Physical pain, mental pain…sadness and grief. It doesn’t mean anything we don’t want it to mean. All it does is make us sad…”

By that logic, Obito Uchiha’s mental pain did not change who he was. His mental pain simply made him do a lot of stupid stuff. For some reason, Sai didn’t write that down. What happens in Team 7, maybe?

“I think Sensei’s in denial,” Sai said helpfully. “And that he just doesn’t want to admit that his teammates as he knew them are lost to him forever.”

“Sensei thinks that Sai should talk less.”

Even more helpfully, Sai said, “Sensei is very aware that his teammates are crazy and that he is ret - stupid, and that he doesn’t want to admit that he can’t be loyal to them anymore without being treasonous to the village.”

“Sensei is very proud of Sai for the self-censorship.”

Sai was very proud of himself as well! “There are no logistical problems, Sensei,” he assured Sensei. Quite supportively, too! “Everybody thinks you’re too stupid to be treasonous. Konoha believes that Sensei doesn’t understand the nuances of the situation, and you’re in denial that they are political enemies.”

“Konoha thinks, huh?” For the first time, Sensei looked faintly and distantly amused. “What does Sai hypothesize?”

Promptly, Sai said, “You can’t be in denial about something you don’t understand.”

For the first time, Sensei looked faintly and distantly amused. It was a very, very different type of amusement than usual. “Maybe you should take your own advice.”

That punctured a hole in Sai’s 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 he’d 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 didn’t know why this was the case either.

Bonds. What were bonds? Instruments of pain and pleasure. Sai’s 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 bonds…

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 couldn’t 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. 

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 ‘bond’ business, then he could experience that feeling again. Sai didn’t even know what that feeling was. But that feeling was the ink in the stroke of a bond. 

Ingratiate himself with Team 7. Experience the ‘bond’. 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 wouldn’t stop saying slurs.

“A bond’s what you got with your precious people!” Naruto announced. He didn’t know that Sai was begging for the answer. To Naruto, of all people. “

Self-referential nonsense. “And what is a precious person?”

Just as self-importantly, Naruto said, “A precious person is someone who walks your way with you!”

At this point Sai began going insane. “And what does way mean in this context?”

“It’s like your nindo or something!”

“And what is a nindo.”

“It’s your way!”

“Give up,” Sasuke said.

“It’s not complicated!” Naruto protested. “See, my nindo’s that I never give up and I never go back on my word!” They all knew that. “Just pick something. It’s what you always do! It’s what you’re already doing, or what you want to do, or whatever!” He pointed dramatically at Sensei, who was amusing himself with a children’s puzzle. “Even Sensei has a nindo! That’s the Team 7 nindo, you’ve already heard it!”

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.

“Can that be my nindo?” Sai hazarded. “It seems sufficient for the purposes.”

Sasuke sneered, then repeated what he said in a mocking voice. Rude, perhaps?

“That’s the nindo of Team 7,” Sakura told Sai. She was sick of this conversation. “My nindo is that I will achieve the dreams of my precious people. Sasuke doesn’t talk about his, he says it’s private. He’s just embarrassed by it. He said it really dramatically during a fight when we thought we were all going to die, though.”

“That was a near-death moment,” Sasuke hissed. 

“Team 7 shares a nindo, which is why we’re precious people to each other. That’s the bond we share.” Sai perked up. He was a member of Team 7. Therefore? “Um. You were just assigned to us. That doesn’t make you our precious person. You’re horrible.”

“You are a terrible person and I want you off our team,” Sasuke hissed.

Tenzo looked a little distressed. “I don’t think this is a professional way to speak to our colleagues.”

“Are slurs professional, Tenzo-sensei?!”

“Sai can be my precious person!” Naruto announced, throwing up his hands. “Why not! Wanna be my friend, Sai?”

“I will accept that,” Sai said. Excitedly, but they couldn’t tell.

Flatly, Sakura said, “Naruto asks mass murderers if they wanna be his precious people. That doesn’t mean anything.”

“Hey! Friendships mean everything!”

“He’s not our friend. He sucks.”

“Ah, the cute students are being passive-aggressive again.” 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?  “Sai-san, you should try finding your own nindo. Maybe you’ll be less terrible!”

“Senpai, we shouldn’t call the students terrible.”

“Um…he is, though…”

Sai’s way. He still didn’t 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 everyone’s lives, he’d have bonds. He would have precious people. He would understand the bonds with his precious people. Then he’d draw the bond. Then he’d 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 couldn’t draw it right. 

“Sensei? Do you know how to draw?”

“Sensei doesn’t know how to do anything!”