"Why should we suffer any more?"

"Why should they suffer when we could help?"

Kakashi eyes her with an unreadable expression, bandage in place of his hitai-ate over the Sharingan and around his chest and his arms. He looks like a mess. A terrible, awful, cruel mess and Rin feels angry, she's actually kind of furious and it surprises her but she rolls with it, rolls with this raw emotion that comes so easy after crying her heart out in Minato and Kushina's arms because she feels she is entitled to it.

"You're alive then," she says, attempting to keep her voice carefully level and failing awfully because it shakes and wavers and even hisses a little bit.

Kakashi still watches her with that guarded expression. "Yes. Thank you."

Rin grits her teeth. "What were you thinking?"

He looks confused, a little shocked at her tone. She doesn't think she's ever spoken to him like this. "Thinking? I was on a mission, Rin. It wasn't like I intentionally went out to get stabbed."

Stabbed, he was stabbed twice in the ribs, puncturing the lung. Once in the leg, barely missing the artery. Cracked skull and shattered femur and chakra exhaustion and so much blood loss—

Rin sees a flash of steel, feels cold metal sliding into her heart, is suddenly equally grateful and resentful of her fury because it brings tears to her eyes with these memories but keeps her upright and breathing and decidedly not collapsing into a quivering mess.

"I mean," she hisses, wrapping her arms around herself to keep herself together and whole. "I mean what were you thinking coming to me, baka!"

Kakashi blinks as though he has no idea what she's talking about, which is ridiculous because he knows, he knows what she is and what she has inside her what the Kiri-nin put inside her what Madara forced on her— Kakashi knows and should have known better. "You're a healer. You saved my life."

"I could have killed you," she chokes out, and the horror of the possibility grips her and turns her red hot fury cold, chills her so that she starts shaking and she is holding herself together, holding herself so that she doesn't fracture and spill across the hospital floor even as she hears a mocking laugh echoing in her skull and sees the shadow cast by the curtain morph into something more human-like and terribly familiar. "You— You almost died, Kakashi-kun, I almost didn't save you."

And he has the gall to look exasperated. "I knew you'd be fine—"

"Have you heard how my lessons with Kushina-san have been going? Have you? Because my chakra control is so poor I can't even perform a kawarimi."

Kakashi seems frustrated, good, that's how she feels. "But you were fine—"

The shadows move and she knows it's just her seeing things because Kakashi doesn't even twitch and she knows it's time to leave. "Get well soon, Kakashi-kun."

And she leaves trailing blood that only she can see.

Rin goes home. As soon as she opens the door the scent of disinfectant and wood polish hits her, and her eyes instantly move across the room to the stain on the floor. Barely visible, certainly clean, but still darker than the wood around. The shadow is in her home. He's looming and waiting with a belt and knives and lightning and he smiles.

She stares at the spectre that isn't really there but stands where Kakashi's bleeding body once lay and she shakes and she's sinking, sinking to the floor and she should run away fast and never stop running but he doesn't move, he just stands there and grins and the laugh echoes around her apartment and she's back, she's back in the cellar she's going to fucking die—

There is a knock against her window.

Rin blinks and the shadow is just a stain on her floorboards and a memory cursing her mind. She really ought to start leaving snacks out for her ANBU. She's pretty sure she isn't actually supposed to know they're there but they've been doing a pretty lazy job of hiding themselves. (She's grateful.)

Rin unsteadily gets to her feet, skirts round the stain and goes to her room. She closes the door behind her, shutting the memory away. She showers, and she changes, and then she jumps out the window all to avoid the stain.

Rin is barely aware of where her feet are taking her, soaking up the sunlight and revelling in the absence of oppressive silence. Shapes that aren't people and are more like bolts of lightning flicker at the edges of her vision, but she can't hear any birds over the commotion of the lively streets so she'll take what she can get. But it gets quieter, she finds, quieter and quieter and soon enough she's coming to a standstill and the only sound is that of the unseasonably strong wind blowing through gravestones.

Nohara Takuma and Nohara Yumiko's names stare coldly up at her from nondescript gravestones.

It's odd, being here. Rin thinks that maybe she shouldn't have come. Perhaps it is too soon. Here, her parents have been dead since the first month of the war. Taken on different missions, two weeks apart from one another.

Rin remembers her mother answering the door to receive the black scroll containing Takuma's body. Rin remembers opening the door to receive her mother's scroll only four days after the funeral.

(Obito, Obito you held me, you held me and let me cry and you cried too because they treated you more like family than your own ever did, Obito. Obito, where are you now? Where are you now I have another family to mourn?)

She doesn't have graves, doesn't have names, doesn't even have faces— Her memory has failed her and all she has are anecdotes of a family she can't properly recall. She feels— drained. Tired in a way she hasn't felt since coming here. All the crying and the anger, it's really taken it's toll but in—in a good way, she supposes. She feels less like a ticking time bomb but knows that at any moment she could start sobbing and it's a raw feeling.

It is too soon for her to be here. Rin doesn't have anything to say to them, doesn't know how to tell their ghosts that their daughter has been stretched and snapped and bent into new and uncomfortable shapes just to fit into her own flesh, doesn't know how to tell them she could burst out at any moment and scream and scream and scream until she dies. Can't think of the words to tell her parents this, can't bring herself to admit that these people are her parents just as much as the ones she left behind.

Rin turns to leave, sick with the mistake of coming here, and she sees a man with hair like ink and skin like snow.

She can't move, because here is another stark reminder that the story she knew from a television is reality, here is Orochimaru standing at the graves of his parents just as she had been. A real man, with real thoughts, and the very real potential for destruction.

Slitted golden eyes meet her stare, and Rin has a split second of motionlessness as adrenaline works its way around her body and she thinks fight or flight and then thinks stupid stupid stupid he isn't a traitor yet and then thinks he will make a monster of Uchiha Sasuke and does he know about the Sanbi.

Rin turns and flees the cemetery at what she hopes appears to be a casual stroll but must look far too stiff and awkward to really pass.

(And she thinks, she thinks she has a memory of the Academy where she watches Kakashi across the playground greeting his father Sakumo at the end of the day and she thinks she recalls a beautiful man with long black hair and a face she couldn't ascertain to be male or female and a smile that was as soft as it was exasperated as he exchanged words with Sakumo. Rin remembers seeing Orochimaru and thinking what a beautiful person and she can't relate that distant encounter to the figure she knows to be a cold blooded child killer. This is what rainy days with her brother couldn't tell her, what the show and her journals can't prepare her for: the bare, naked humanity of these real, breathing people.)

Kushina opens the door to Rin's quiet knocks, smiling warmly. "Come on in, Rin-chan."

Tea is brewed and they sit on the sofa in comfortable silence, but of course with Kushina it isn't to last.

"Is Kakashi-kun feeling better?" she asks, tucking a long lock of crimson hair behind her ear.

Rin stares into her tea. "Aa. Cheerful as ever."

Kushina snorts. "That brat could do with a time out in the hospital, dattebane. Maybe he'll finally cool down from his latest craze of volunteering for stupidly dangerous missions."

She holds back a wince. Rin has been so absorbed in herself, so wrapped up in her problems, that she never stopped to consider the problems of those around her. Kakashi is a year younger than her and thinks Obito is dead, holds Obito's eye in his skull and has the weight of the Uchiha clan's disapproval bearing down on him near enough every day, still has people hissing and cursing his father's name at him as he walks through the streets. Rin has been selfish, but she's still kind of mad at him.

"He was stupid. He shouldn't have come to me," she says.

Kushina sighs. "Rin-chan, last night you did something truly amazing. If yesterday morning someone had told me you could perform the Mystical Palm to save a dying boy I would have laughed in their face and told them they'd had a few too many to drink. But Rin—" And here she laughs, bright and cheerful in spite of Rin's sullenness and Rin has to look up and face Kushina's glorious cheer. "You showed such incredible chakra control I could hardly believe it when Minato told me what had happened."

She flushes bright red, unable to help herself. She has been trying for so long — so, so long now — to regain some semblance of the flawless chakra control she once had. Rin can still scarcely believe the previous day happened. It feels like a dream — or a nightmare, depending on how you look at it.

"I just— I just had to save him. I—I was scared," she whispers, looking away.

"Oh, Rin," Kushina says so, so gently, and Rin doesn't startle as her hair is pushed back from her face with a comforting hand. "Don't be too mad at him for coming to you, dattebane. Kakashi knows his limits and I think last night he knew he'd reached one. That much blood loss and chakra exhaustion, he probably just wanted to see you after being away for so long."

Before, Rin wouldn't have dared think Kakashi was possible of sentiment like that. But after night after night after long, painful night of having him there watching over her just so she could catch a few hours sleep Rin has learnt that what runs through Kakashi's mind is unknown to her even after years of being on his team and watching him in another life.

Rin remembers what she was like Before. In both worlds she was medically inclined, wanting to help people to the best of her ability simply because she cared too much. After—Well, after, she thought the possibility of being an iryō-nin was lost to her. Too much chakra, too dangerous with a bijuu trapped inside her. Now though Rin thinks of possibilities, the potential for her to actually become a healer.

(She wonders if Tsunade, as a Senju descended from powerhouses like Hashirama and Uzumaki Mito, ever struggled with chakra control. Rin wonders where she is and, for a moment, she thinks about Orochimaru once again, alone and friendless without his teammates in Konoha.)

"Do you think," Rin begins, thinking and thinking and a strange feeling in her chest. "Do you think I could still be an iryō-nin?"

"I think after yesterday you've proven that with enough focus and determination you can be anything you want to be," Kushina says, and she sounds so sure of it.

Rin smiles, and it's a real smile. It doesn't feel plastic and after a few minutes it begins to hurt her cheeks but she can't stop even after they move onto other topics.

That odd sensation in her chest feels like hope.

In her journal, she writes:

"Obito thinks I am dead. He will come for the Kyuubi on Oct. 10th in approximately two years, already fully trained with the mangekyou sharingan and mokuton. Madara has some influence over him — a seal? or just the promise of a dream world? — and Obito will not hesitate to kill both Minato-sensei and Kushina-san.

If I can get close to him and show him I'm alive, will that be enough to stop him? Or will he be too far gone by then?"

"What do I do? What do I become? Minato-sensei will only have the time to teach my Fuuninjutsu until he becomes Hokage, but Kushina-san may be willing to teach me the Uzumaki sealing arts. My medical training is on hold until my chakra control is better but I know I have the ability to do it now. I can still be a medic.

I want to help people.

I want to save people."

Rin turns from her journal to find Kakashi on her windowsill, leaning against the frame. She sees the smallest sliver of bandage peeking out from the gap where sleeve ends and glove begins and feels some guilty that Kakashi feels obligated to spend every available evening with her.

"Are you sure you should be out of hospital?" she asks uncertainly, not knowing if he's mad about her yelling at him earlier.

Kakashi mutters something that sounds like sorry.

Rin stares for a second, then smiles. She makes tea for two, grabs Kakashi's blanket and hands him his cup (and now it really is his cup, she supposes, after how often he's used it; a hideous thing she loves with a very poorly painted scene of running dogs). Rin pushes herself up beside him on the windowsill and they sit, quietly, watching the sun set over houses and the Hokage Monument.

She sips her tea and lets her eyes slide shut, the last rays of golden light burning even through her eyelids. She feels the static buzz of chakra from Kakashi like she's standing next to a towering pylon, and hears the slightest pulsating hum from her ANBU guard. Rin can't say how many are watching her, but definitely more than one, she thinks. This is definitely a new ability courtesy of the Sanbi.

But Rin doesn't want to think about her bijuu right now. That is a problem that will require some serious contemplation — another day. Now—Now Rin just wants to sit, and to be.

She looks at Kakashi, who has an expression of utmost boredom on what she can see of his face. Sometimes Rin thinks about asking why, why does he stay, why does he come back night after night when all she does is wake up sweating or screaming or flailing her arms at things that aren't really there. But that wouldn't be fair. Kakashi has his reasons, and she doesn't doubt for one minute that he cares about her in his own emotionally stunted way. So she never asks, she just lets it be and enjoys it for what it is. A girl who is scared of her own shadow and her looming protector, yes, but also two friends who don't have an awful lot left.

"Kakashi-kun?" she asks.

He hums, sliding his eye over to her.

"Want to spar tomorrow?"

The look of surprise is only there for a second before Kakashi is raising an eyebrow. They haven't sparred since Before. Her chakra control has been too poor, her injuries still too fresh and scars too tight for her to even use taijutsu against him. Rin knows that she won't improve quick enough, won't be ready for Obito unless she does something other than practise bunshin and kawarimi in between the occasional stronger jutsu. She must be better. She doesn't have long.

"Fine. Don't expect me to go easy."

Rin huffs. "Yeah? Well, right back at you."

His smile is brief, evident only in a slight twitch beneath the mask but it has Rin feeling lighter, turning back to the darkening sky with a little smile of her own.

"I will save my precious people."