Archive of Our Own ^beta

She packs methodically.

The majority of the preparations have been discretely accomplished over the better part of the past week, and all Sakura really needs to do the morning of is fix the corners of the almond flake tea sweets she had left cooling in the fridge the night before. Into her faded cloth napsack goes: two wide bento boxes. The first is clean and plastic in pale blue lines, rounded edges, a spray of cherry blossoms on the cover. The second is all polished black laquer and gold koi-print, as cool as the heft of the blue bento in her hands is hot.

She adds: a thermos the length of her arm, filled with freshly brewed tea. Oolong because it had been Sensei's favourite, and with far too much added sugar because her team had never been able to choke it down any other way. She adds: four understated ceramic sake cups taken from her mother's best sake set. Next to that, she places three sticks of high quality incense wrapped in tissue paper, and then the bundles of candied fruit snacks, one for each year she had missed.

The clock ticks past seven, and Sakura pats her hands clean on a towel before zipping her bag up tight. A glance out the window tells her what she already knows. Dawn is sweet today, glowing lazy gold and sending a glossy honey glaze over Konoha's rooftops, dropping in on Sakura's kitchen to spill over her counters. It's a good day for festivity purposes. Obito would have liked it.

Obito always did like sunny days.

Hopping down from the plastic kiddie stool, she slings her bag over her shoulder, pauses on her way out to swipe the bright bouquet of flowers she'd convinced her parents to purchase two days ago, still fresh and blooming in autumn-oranges and egg-shell whites and cherry-scarlets. In the backyard, a row of overgrown hedges and a spindly wooden fence hide her from the prying eyes of the neighbours. Her own parents are out at work. Mebuki will not be back until three, Kizashi until four in the afternoon. The only loose end is Nakamura-san, the elderly retired civilian who's been asked to check in on Sakura occasionally, but she isn't prone to visiting until nine at least.

Sakura leaves a bunshin anyways. Today is special, and there's no point in getting interrupted because Nakamura-san deviates from routine or the Harunos somehow, on the off-chance, return back early to find their four year old daughter conspicuously missing.

(She should probably explain the situation to them. She should. But they are good people, happy people and she thinks she's happy here too. Rin doesn't know how to break all the things she is and is not, exactly.)

The front door clicks shut behind her.

On the fridge, below the taped cake recipes, the calender reads: February tenth. 

 For all the architectural and layout alterations that had occurred after the Kyuubi attack, the memorial stone is still fixed in the same slot of land it had been for the past thirty years. Grey and looming, it is taller than Sakura and far broader than her. Constant and grounding for all the deaths the village had toiled through. On it, there are names and names and names and more names, each stroke of every kanji crisp and carved, and the ones near the top weathered from the erosion of time.

This is the honor of those who died for the wellbeing of Konoha. A warrior's death. A loyal soldier's death. 

Rin knows exactly where Obito's name lies. 

Three rows down, second column from the left, Uchiha first, and then Obito. The characters are worn at the edges. The strokes are smooth as river stones rather than the cutting sharp ledge they had been when the name was first etched in. Uchiha Obito, who was best friend and teammate. Who had offered to carry all her notebooks back in the academy only to trip and spill Rin's papers within five seconds of it. Who had loved summer best and winter next-best, who had always tried his best, tried his hardest, who was clumsy and never without a helping hand, whether it was to the retired ninja ladies that smacked him with a cane to move faster or the cats stuck in Konoha's infamously tall trees. Obito, who had been bright and hopeful and whose eyes creased when he smiled.

Rin had learned to write his name earlier than anyone else's save her own. She knows the letters, how to scratch them out in pencil or ink, ever since that first day in the Academy when Obito had shot into class late and scrambled into the empty seat next to hers, stammering out an anecdote on burning breakfast and inuzuka kennals and also I'm so sorry oops forget I'm here carry on. She traces her fingers over each crease in the rock, drags her fingertips down. Up. Across.

She'd loved Obito.

Fierce and burning and protective, she had loved Obito. She had watched him stumble through his early years, laugh and scowl and drag his way up through his later ones. She had patched up all the scrapes and broken things he'd sustained, inside and outside. Rin had loved Obito in a way that made her want to bury him in soft blankets, cocoon him away from the harshness of the world. In a way that made her gut clench and fingernails scrape palm whenever someone made him bleed. He was so precious. So, so precious. Obito had been family: her little brother in everything but blood. 

He'd also been the first of them to go.

Rin had been second.

She remembers it in vivid technicolour, all jagged sharp edges of vivid clarity in contrast to the lethargic haze the Mist nin had drowned her in to prevent complications during the sealing process.

Kakashi's hand through her chest, lightning crackling in her bloodstream. Sanbi's gurgle, half desperation and half impotent rage. The pitter patter of rain had been as soft as a whisper, the mud underneath her feet slick and wet. And Kakashi, Kakashi, poor, poor Kakashi: hair damp and fist bloodied, his single sharingan eye whirling red, whirling wet, spilling tear tracks down his cheek.

Rin had been gone before she hit the ground. Her last memory had been Kakashi's face: the startled terror in his widened eyes, the way his brows pinched, horrified and desperate. His sharingan wheeled and wheeled black stars in a red backdrop. Obito's sharingan. Obito's eye.

She'd never wanted Obito to see that.

But Rin had fallen; she had made Kakashi kill her. And that had been her genin team with half its pieces ripped out.

Unzipping her bag, Sakura takes out the blue bento first. It's a double-tier box, filled to the brim with meticulously arranged hot foodstuff. Expertly moulded rice balls in three different flavours are stacked in one corner, lightly grilled fish drizzled in a sweet spicy glaze in yet another. There's hamburger steak: made by the family recipe Rin had discovered when the boys had been going through their frankly ridiculous growing sprouts, and then on the top layer steams a hearty serving of yakisoba.

Obito's taste pallet had seemed to prefer the exact opposite of Kakashi's--sweet-spicy instead of salty and bitter--which had made preparing for team gatherings to be a night-long endeavour in balancing recipes and space. Minato-sensei, on the other hand, could and had eaten anything vaguely resembling food. His cooking abilities had been as stunted as Kakashi's truly trying social skills, and unlike Kakashi, Sensei couldn't actually survive on instant noodles and the cardboard tasting ration bars they dispensed at ninja department stores. 

He had Kushina-san to help though. Kushina-san had been an excellent cook.

Her grave had been harder to find then the others.

Both their names are carved in the memorial stone, threw rows below Obito's and a column to his right. Side by side, they sit: Namikaze Minato and Uzumaki Kushina. Sensei, Sakura knows, had been buried in the hidden enclave in the Hokage mountain, in the sacred place where Konoha's greatest leaders and warriors, their Hokages, rest after they die. Kushina-san's she had finally stumbled upon near the neat, impressive tombstones of Konoha's honoured jounin, after three hours of combing over cemetery after cemetery. 

There had been flowers by her grave. A bottle of well-aged sake had been propped up against the granite slab.

Kushina-san, in a way, had been a whole secret by herself. Sakura hopes that they had buried her body with Sensei, the same as Uzumaki Mito had been with the Shodai after she died, even if Sensei and Kushina-san's marriage had been a secret. 

Sakura had even visited her own grave, although it was more of a side-stop to the graves of her parents next to it. Both times, there had been offerings set in front of the smooth stone plaque, wilting flowers on the first time she had stopped by, and the second time a month later they had been swapped out with fresh, sweet-smelling lillies and clumsily made riceballs that spoke of awkward homemade culinary attempts. Kakashi never did make it past heating rice and ramen and bland ration bars. But considering the riceballs hadn't been lopsided this time around, Sakura thinks that it's improvement.

She digs out the sweets box. Chewy rich dango, delicate, picture-pretty tea-cakes sprinkled in powdered sugar and nut crumbles. Fresh fruit dipped in chocolate. Desert had been Obito's favourite, always. It is the least she can do to provide.

Setting out the sake cups, Sakura pours the tea, gentle and precise the way her kunoichi instructor had taught her a lifetime ago. Golden liquid sloshes inside, swirling translucent and streaming wisps of thin steam into the air.

Afterwards, she lights the three sticks of incense. The lighter wheel presses indents into her thumb as she jerks down, and Sakura kneels, head bowed and lips moving in silent prayer.

I hope we can meet again she tells Obito, imagining him in her mind's eye. There is something after death, that she knows for sure now. And wherever Obito is, whether it is in the afterlife, wandering free, reincarnated back into this world just like her, she prays that maybe, one day, she'll get to see him again.

Even if he doesn't remember.

Sakura doesn't know why exactly she remembers. She's pretty sure that she's not supposed to.

The air smells of spice and smoke. The incense, she sticks into the row of ashes nestled at the front of the stone. Sakura takes her cup, raises it. "Happy birthday, Obito," she says, and drinks for all of them.

Then she waits.

He'll come today. Sakura knows that he will. Today is Obito's birthday, and this is Kakashi, so he will come. 

And finally too. Sakura had been attempting to find him for ages, ever since her new-found freedom came in the form of a check up every few hours instead of the constant and stifling supervision in the form of genin teams or the old, retired ninja her parents had placed on baby-sitting duty. Civilians Sakura can dupe fine. But the basic bunshin is fooling exactly no one with field experience and they are all her reserves can manage. 

Sakura had attempted. Sakura had failed. Sort of. Kakashi had moved apartments and entire residential districts in the four almost five years while she had been occupied. She had found his new apartment with a bit of intelligence gathering. The problem is that Kakashi is never home, and breaking into his house is honestly more trouble than it's worth.

He will come today though. Or else Sakura is going to reconsider that breaking-into-his-apartment thing.

It's February, not quite winter but not quite spring, the inbetween made of thick woolen mittens and hot chocolate drinks, the temperature cold for Fire Country. Her breath comes out in slivery plumes of condensation. Around her, the ground not layered in stone has gone muddy and damp from the scant dusting of melting snow.

Kakashi moves like a ghost, no sound or light or hitch of movement. Sakura feels him anyway. It's not as if he's making an effort to hide his signature, even though his chakra is tightly coiled, razor-wire sharp, akin to a film of static underneath his skin. 

He hovers in the trees, still and unmoving. Sakura can feel his gaze at the back of her head. She stays as she is: her legs crossed, hands on her knees, chin tucked into the soft material of her red scarf, her eyes shuttered closed.

She can wait. She's already waited this long. Kakashi, she knows, is a bit like a feral, untrusting cat. With him, one has to be patient.

It takes twenty-seven hundred heartbeats before he finally comes down. 

His footsteps are invisible. She takes care to stay very still, as if she were dozing, until Kakashi is so, so close and Sakura can feel the itch of electricity on her hair.

She turns.

He is taller and broader. Nineteen years old right now, with none of that gangly youth in his limbs that he had at fourteen. His jaw is harder. There is a slouch in his posture, languid and lazy and terribly uncaring, a slant in his single eye communicating still apathy. He is nothing like her Kakashi and everything like her Kakashi. He has a book in his hand and his gaze flicks down.

The years have made him look so very tired.

Sakura moves to stand. The muscles in her legs protest and whine at the sudden motion, but she ignores them. She is four and small and he is not, so even standing, Kakashi looms over her. 

Tilting up her chin, she looks him square in the eyes.

"Hello Kakashi," Says Sakura. Says Rin, in a four year old girl's too high pitch and too bright hair, looking at this boy-- her boy who is no longer a boy anymore--with green eyes inside of brown, with a face soft and full from puppy fat.

She smiles at him with Rin's smile.