Notes: Eh, plot bunny. Character study of Rin. The formatting is sloppy because I'm sloppy and didn't have any plot/structure in mind when I started writing. It starts angsty and then… I don't know, man.

Warnings: Non-explicit references to death, mild description of fatal wounds (stomach, heart), psychological torture, purple prose.

Relationships: [Nohara Rin & Uchiha Obito], [Nohara Rin & Isobu | Sanbi | Three-Tails], [Nohara Rin & Haku], [Nohara Rin & Momochi Zabuza] (all platonic).

Title: Precision Work

Summary: Rin knew three things for certain: One—jinchuuriki could regrow vital organs in seconds. Two—she didn't die. Three—she couldn't go back. [Rin-survives!AU.]

Precision Work

— V —

Nohara Rin was a medic.

It was a career that had a few connotations attached to it, a lot of those negative. Most people didn't think much of medics. Apparently, they were soft and squishy. Rin had never thought so. The proof of them being anything but soft was evident in the way they handled death.

You see, for most shinobi their first death was on the field. Rin's first death was within village walls.

She was a genin. She had only just committed to becoming a medic nin. It was her third day in the hospital. She'd graduated a week ago and was as fresh as one could be: the greenest leaf in the tree. The other doctors treated her as their caffeine-slash-paperwork gopher.

Basically, she did grunt work.

While not the most fulfilling work, it was work, and Rin had long since made her peace with the reality of her situations, both as a shinobi and as a budding doctor.

Then a jōnin had crashed in through the doors and into her arms. Stomach wound. 18cm lengthwise, deep enough to expose organs. Face was jaundice. Hands were cold and clammy. He was bleeding out; all Rin could do was lay him on the nearest table and hold the torn skin together with her hands until a real medic could handle it.

Her first real duty? Keep him alive.

She didn't succeed.

She watched as the shinobi was wheeled past her to the morgue, her hands covered in blood, which she kept smearing on her clothes (pristine colors, bright colors, she hadn't known better at the time.) She couldn't remember ever crying so hard. A nurse had grabbed Rin's face in her hands and asked, "Is this your first time losing a patient?"

Through her tears she'd managed a pathetic, "What?"

"Is this your first time losing a patient?" The nurse repeated. Rin's hands trembled. She thought, 'Lose? Did I lose something?' The answer came easily. Yes. Yes, of course I did. "Nohara, answer the question. Is this your first tim—"

"Yes," Rin whispered, "Yes, this is my first—oh, Sage—he's dead, he's dead, I couldn't help him he's dea—"

"What training do you have?" The nurse waited for an answer. Rin searched for one and found her memories too slippery to observe. Clarity of thought escaped her. 'What training,' the nurse had asked. Rin's tongue was tied into knots. What training indeed?

"Do you know the protocols for stomach wounds? For chakra exhaustion? Blood loss? Do you know how to disinfect lacerations? What about sutures, do you know the procedure for them? What anaesthetic would you use—local, general, regional? In the event of cardiac arrest, what would your first plan of action be?"

The nurse carried on like this: sprouting out questions to which Rin had no answers for.

She found that the slippery memories hadn't been from shock. It had been, plainly, because the memories had not been there. She had no training which could qualify her to handle a situation like that. What training she did have was simple: reduce blood loss, minimize stress, keep the casualty awake, put pressure on the wound, wait for experienced help, don't promise anything.

And that was exactly what she had done.

The iron band compressing her ribs loosened. Suddenly, breaths came easier.

Rin went through her training.

'Reduce blood loss, minimize stress, keep the casualty awake, put pressure on the wound, wait for experienced help, don't promise anything.'

And in the event of cardiac arrest?

'I … I don't know. I'm not prepared for that.'

Rin wasn't prepared for any of it. She couldn't have done anything.

It was offensive—how much of a relief weakness could be. The lack of accountability was a weight off her shoulders. The nurse released her tight grip on Rin's cheeks. She reached into her deep pockets and produced a packaged antiseptic wipe, which she tore open and handed to Rin. The genin silently cleaned her hands, getting under the nails, and sat in silence, gathering her bearings.

The nurse allowed her a short amount of time. At least, until Rin's hands were mostly cleaned. Then she said, "You can't help everyone, kid. Sometimes, even the best medics can't outsmart the shinigami. Wanna know something?" Rin looked up. Her savior had dark, flat brown eyes like sinkholes. To be the target of them was as terrifying as it was transfixing, "That jōnin wasn't surviving a stomach wound like that. There was nothing anyone could do to help him, except to keep him calm until death took him. You did that."

Rin nodded slowly. "And that's all I could do,"

"And that's all you could do,"

It made it easier: breathing.

She closed her eyes.

(Rin was never quite satisfied with easier.)

"But … that's not my limit? Is it?" Rin dug her nails into her palms until the shock made way for the pain. She was a shinobi too, she knew how to focus past pain. "I can be better. I can—I can learn the protocols and procedures for a stomach wound. I can learn the difference between local, general and regional anaesthetic. I can be better."

The nurse was smiling as if she'd said the right answer. "Anyone can say it. It takes hard work to prove it."

Rin gritted her teeth. "I'm not afraid of hard work," She promised, and she meant it with every fibre of her being—meant it more than she'd ever meant anything in her life. It was more than being a shinobi. It was bigger than killing, than flashy ninjutsu or overpowered taijutsu. It was more important than everything Rin had ever done or promised before that moment.

A medic's first death was like a broken bone. Afterwards, the person was either never the same, off-balance and fractured for the rest of their lives, or they suffered a brief period of excruciating pain before coming back stronger than ever.

Rin was determined to be the latter.

She grew to be quite good at it. With Obito as a constantly warmth at her side, a harbour when the cycle of life and death wore at her, it was easy to keep moving forward. She and Obito were never considered prodigies and probably never would be: the time for that title was past. What they had is what they fought for.

Obito didn't let her falter, and so, Rin didn't.

She learned a lot, and thanks to the war, she learned it quickly. On the frontlines with her S-ranked sensei, a child genius teammate and her Uchiha best friend, she was not with them in the thick of it.

The only knife she would use to draw blood would be a scalpel, and she used it to save lives. She brought shinobi back from the brink of death. She reattached limbs, she saved people from career-ending disabilities, she brought back hope to the sole survivors of entire squadrons.

Rin walked into the scarred heart of war and she healed it.

But not always.

Rule the first: You can't save anyone.

Some things not even shinobi could come back from. Some wounds couldn't be healed. Sometimes, the best Rin could do for a person was a shock of chakra at a pressure point to put them into a permanent, painless sleep.

She got good at that, too.

Rin knew death. She knew it well. As a medic, Rin knew it better than anyone, even her amazing sensei. She knew when she could save someone from it and she knew when it was unavoidable. She had accepted it, because there was no other option: either she did, or she quit.

And Rin—Rin was a good. medic. She wasn't quitting.

Being a medic wasn't about—power, or natural talent, or kekkei genkai, or genius, or any of that stuff. It was determination. It was awareness, knowing your limits, knowing others limits. Above all else, it was precision.

And Rin was the best at that.

When Obito was crushed under those rocks, Rin knew.

'It would take a miracle to save you.'

Medics were not capable of those. It was one of the first things she was taught, right after "You can't always help" and "Sometimes, mercy kills are the only way to ensure we do no harm." It had never been such a bitter truth to swallow. Rin sobbed her heart out and thought, for the first time since she was nine, that she never wanted to heal someone again.

What good was it? How did it help? Her best friend was dead and a part of Rin, the warmest, gentlest part of her, the part of her that carried graphic bandages in her pockets, died with him.

Even Kakashi was shaken it, changed in a way Rin, in all her fascination and optimistic belief that he could be kinder, didn't see coming. It was clear that despite the fatal blows Kakashi dealt daily, he hadn't ever expected one so close to home.

And wasn't that ironic, considering his past?

(Rin cried for days in the darkness of her apartment. Kakashi had been right beside her the entire time, and that's why, that's why she's so sorry—he shouldn't be forced to do this—he held her hand, and she has no right—)

When the Kiri nin kidnapped her, when they put a demon inside of her, Rin was, first and foremost, furious at the sheer audacity of it. The rage had burned inside of her like a physical thing and more than she wanted to be free of them, Rin wanted them to pay.

Wasn't the war over? Hadn't enough people died for this treaty? Would these shinobi spit on the graves of all who had died—on Obito's grave—by inciting another war?

How could they?

Then the seal happened. It poisoned her heart against Konoha, there was nothing she could do short of destroying it completely that could save her home. She tried to walk away, wished desperately that her feet would take her anywhere else, but the seal had a chain around her will. Her body didn't belong to her.

Inside, the beast wailed.

Rin knew what wounds people could not survive. What wounds medics could not heal. The seal on her heart was one of them.

No heart at all was another one.

(One thousand chirping birds — she isn't the target, she isn't the target, she isn't the target — her heart is on fire the demon wants release, it wants to be free, so does she, she wants the same thing, can't you see? — Kakashi, she's so sorry, she's so sorry, how can he ever be okay after this — didn't she promise him that things would be okay?

How could she?

— Obito, could you ever forgive me for—)

It was the only way.

"Ka...ka...shi…"

There was no other option.

He touched her shoulder so gently before she fell.

Rin knew what the human body could and could not survive. She knew precision. She knew death. She knew what it meant to give up, to let go, and she was not scared of whatever came after. It was the natural course of all things living.

Rin was not afraid. She was sorry—for Kakashi, for Minato-sensei, for Kushina-nee—but she was not afraid.

(She wanted so badly to see Obito again—)

What Rin hadn't been taught was this:

Jinchuuriki were the most durable creatures on earth. Their healing factor was legendary, and was rumoured to be able to regrow entire limbs in mere minutes. Jinchuuriki were notoriously hard to kill that way. Rin had dismissed it as myth. Without knowing a jinchuuriki herself, there was no way to be sure.

She shouldn't have been so docile.

If she hadn't assumed that she knew everything there was to know about human limitations, maybe Rin would have stumbled upon the particular myth detailing how jinchuuriki could regrow vital organs.

It would have saved her a lot of trouble.

"It's dead!"

"It killed itself!"

"Shit … retrieve the corpse! The vessel still has use!"

Her heart was gone. Rin should have been dead (of course she should have been, she didn't have a heart) but there was more to Rin now.

Namely, a three-tailed chakra demon.

As she collapsed and the Kiri nin swarmed her corpse, a thick, bubbling crimson chakra surrounded her body. It released a mist which dispersed across the field. The Kiri nin saw her immobile on the floor, dead as a doornail, no signs of activity at all.

It was an illusion. That was the Sanbi's specialty, wasn't it? Tricks? Genjutsu? Self-preservation?

"Rin… I will… create a world where you're still alive…"

It wasn't her. That was a good thing, because if Rin had seen Obito in that moment, the world would have been a changed place. She would have stayed. She wouldn't have taken the blow to the heart in the first place. Obito wouldn't have gotten ideas of world domination in his head. The world, probably, would have been a better place if she had stayed.

But Rin, Obito and Kakashi were teenagers. Barely fourteen. They may have thought that they knew everything, but as Rin's regrown heart could attest, they really, really didn't.

So, Obito massacred the Kiri shinobi and cradled what he believed was Rin's body.

Meanwhile, the Sanbi had already carted her body halfway across the country. The chakra was potent, malicious, and it enhanced Rin's capabilities in way they definitely weren't meant to be. The strain was too much, and in the cold depths of her mind Rin begged for it to stop. The Sanbi didn't hear her, or didn't listen, or either one of them. The Sanbi had a mission.

Freedom.

And freedom could not be attained if his vessel died and took him with her.

She needed to heal and survive. If the human no longer had the will to remain in the world of the living, Sanbi would force her to. Jinchuuriki were more than just themselves and their weak human flesh, and the Tailed Beasts were legendary in their power, their ability to beat impossible odds.

The Sanbi fled to the nearest body of salt water, dropped himself into the lake until he sunk, sunk, sunk to the bottom, and tore his true form free from his mortal vessel.

The Sanbi breathed a sigh of relief from the floor of the lake and thought, 'Finally.'

'Finally, Father, I am free.'

Rin fell into a sleep. Some sort of … Tailed Beast induced healing coma? The Sanbi kept her mind preoccupied with illusions, and as much as she wished she could say otherwise, the illusions were not kind.

The Sanbi showed her nightmares, her own worst fears come to life: she relived Obito's death, over and over and over. She saw Kakashi fall with Obito and could do nothing to help them. She was with her kidnappers and her teammates did not come for her. She saw Minato-sensei turning away from her, call her "useless" and "fodder". She saw her parents at her empty-casket funeral, she saw Kakashi, shunned for the perceived assassination of his own teammate.

Most of all, she saw herself that night, escorted to Konoha by a well-meaning Kakashi, and she saw the Kiri nin's plan succeed. The seal activated and she unleashed the Sanbi on her home. She killed—oh, Sage, she killed so many people, so many families—women, children, it didn't matter, she crushed them all, and the worst part was that there was no remorse in it. Everyone died. These people were just dying a little earlier.

The Sanbi had turned her own medic values against her.

Rin was twisted by the experience. It wasn't her fault, being told that you were useless and in the way and guaranteed to hurt everyone you had ever loved was bound to do something to her psyche. It was a relentless attack and this time, Kakashi thought she was dead and Obito was dead. Unlike Kannabi Bridge, no one was saving Rin this time.

At least … at least no one would be hurt because of her.

At least there was that.