Prologue: In Which She Survives

They were surrounded. Everywhere she looked, there was another Mist ninja. Even through the thick mist, Rin could see that each of them already had their swords drawn, poised in front of them.

She was standing back to back with Kakashi, with a kunai drawn, but it didn't take a genius to figure out there was no way they could win even if Kakashi was a prodigy.

Her hand trembled, ever so slightly as Rin saw the Mist ninjas inch closer to the pair.

"Relax," Kakashi murmured. "I won't let my comrades die."

After the last word left his mouth, Rin no longer felt Kakashi's back against his. The sound of lightning crackling permeated through the silence; Kakashi had made his first move. She didn't have time to check up on him as a Mist ninja engaged her in battle. Rin deftly dodged to the side, raising her left hand to block another Mist ninja's sword with her kunai. Briefly after the clash of metal against metal, Rin jumped out of reach, tossing a kunai with a paper bomb attached to serve as a form of distraction.

Was there even a point in fighting? Perhaps if Rin surrendered, then at least Kakashi could live.

Except the Mist ninjas didn't want her to surrender. They weren't here to recapture her, but rather force her to return to Konoha, where the tailed beast that had been planted inside of her would be unleashed and wreck havoc on the village.

If there was one thing that Rin knew, she thought as she continuously parried off the Mist ninja's blows, was that there was no way that she was going to let that happen.

The only way to prevent that...was to die.

Rin saw an opening as she watched Kakashi charge up another chidori. Turning away from the opponents in front of her, Rin took off in Kakashi's direction, her legs carrying her to her destination faster than ever before.

In the few seconds that it took Rin to reach Kakashi, her life flashed before her eyes, starting from her academy days up to the mission where she was captured.

Rin leapt in front of Kakashi, mere centimeters before the chidori would rip through her chest. Both of his eyes, black and red, widened upon registering her presence, but it had been too late.

All she felt was an excruciating pain before everything went dark.

She jolted awake to the feeling of a hand shaking her shoulders. Rin blinked twice, and even pinched herself to confirm that she wasn't dreaming. She wasn't. Kakashi was standing right in front of her, hand outstretched.

Rin took his hand and Kakashi pulled her upright. She stumbled, hand shooting outward to steady herself with the wall. The blackness in her vision slowly faded away, until she could see again. See the concern etched all over Kakashi's face.

"We need to get out of here, before they realize I'm here."

"They?" Rin croaked, having only a vague recollection of how she ended up her current predicament.

"Mist nins," Kakashi answered as he pulled her along, down the dimly lit tunnels, leading away from her holding cell.

Rin blinked. Mist nins? Then what was that nightmare…?

The memories hit her like a tidal wave. Their mission, where Minato sensei had split up with them, with the promise of catching up to them soon. After being ambushed by foreign nins, who were later identified to be Mist nins, Kakashi and Rin had gotten separated. Rather than killing her, they knocked her out and carried her to this hideout where they sealed the third tailed beast inside of her.

When Rin came to, after passing out from the sheer pain of having a tailed beast sealed inside of her, the first thing that she noticed was foreign chakra inside of her. Most of it was attributed to the tailed beast inside of her, but there was a third chakra, concentrated right next to her heart.

A seal. A temporary seal, judging from the chakra that was constantly pulsing, almost like it was itching to be let loose.

From there, it didn't take long for Rin to put two and two together. The seal would break upon a catalyst. And that catalyst? Reaching Konoha's perimeters.

And the dream? It hadn't been a dream, but rather a foreshadowing of the events that were to come. The worst part was that Rin couldn't do a damn thing to change the outcome because there wasn't any other way.

"Kakashi," Rin called out, pushing herself to run faster so that they were running side by side. Kakashi's head cocked slightly in her direction, indicating that he was listening.

"I can't go back to Konoha," Rin blurted out, her words jumbled and rushed. "The Mist sealed the third tails inside of me and it'll be unleashed once I'm in Konoha's vicinity."

As expected, Kakashi was stubborn and adamant on going back. "We need to find Minato sensei. He'll know how to seal it."

"No, you don't understand," Rin protested, "There won't be time-"

The sound of metal clanging together cut her off.

The Mist had caught up with them.

Kakashi jumped backwards, tossing the kunai in the first Mist nin's direction, before launching a couple shurikens as well. The Mist nin was able to deflect all of the projectiles with his sword.

Rin unconsciously inched towards Kakashi until they were standing back to back. Her eyes took in their surroundings, from the way the mist was progressively getting thicker to the fact that they were completely surrounded.

Just like in her dream.

"Kakashi, you need to kill me."

"What? No. I made a promise to Obito...we're going to get out of this alive." With that, Kakashi took off, forehead protector already pushed upwards with a ball of concentrated lightning in his right hand.

The kunai in her hands trembled as Rin tried to muster up the courage to kill herself. As a medic nin, she knew over a hundred ways of killing someone, yet she was unable to end her life with her own hands.

It felt like deja vu as the Mist nin attacked her, pretending that they were going to take her back to the village. Rin deflected all of their blows, before backing away, tossing a kunai with a paper bomb attached, just like she had in her dream.

With her mind made up, Rin spun on her heels, taking advantage of the Mist nin's momentary distraction to sprint to Kakashi, where he already had a chidori charged up in his right palm.

Just like in her dream, Rin leapt in front of his chidori before she lost her courage. It was for the sake of the village, to protect everyone that she loved.

Just like in her dream, Rin saw Kakashi's wide eyed expression and his desperate, but failed attempt to change the trajectory of his chidori. Yet this time with startling clarity, Rin saw his Sharingan transform from three tomoes to a shuriken shaped pattern.

And just like in her dream, Rin felt the excruciating pain before everything went dark.

I'm sorry, Kakashi, Obito.

Kakashi's hand trembled uncontrollably as the lightning fizzled out. He pulled his hand, his hand that was tainted with Rin's blood, out of her body. His entire body shook as he caught her body before it fell to the ground before he collapsed onto his knees, one hand clutching his left eye.

The throbbing pain in his eye only served as a reminder that he had failed Obito.

Kakashi was only able to reach into his pouch to retrieve his jonin gift from Minato sensei, the three pronged kunai, and toss it a few inches away from him before he promptly passed out, right next to Rin.

Living up to his moniker, Minato appeared in a flash after sensing Kakashi's distress signal. With ease, he took out the Mist nins, who were still reeling from the shock at what Rin had done and wondering what their next move should be.

Body after body landed with a thump on the ground, before silence pervaded the area. Minato spotted two of his students laying in the clearing, side by side, in a pool of blood. Fear clenched his heart; was he too late again?

When Minato reached their sides, he pressed two fingers against Kakashi's neck, feeling relieved that he felt a pulse. Still, Minato feared the worst for Rin, the blood stain on Rin's clothes made it evident that the pool of blood was hers. He was hesitant in checking her pulse, his fingers shaking as they neared her neck.

What Minato saw surprised him. A series of criss cross black marks ran down Rin's face, along her neck and presumably to the rest of her body as well. The once gaping wound on her torso had closed completely, leaving no evidence that Rin had been wounded in the first place.

Minato placed his hand on Rin's forehead, lightly tugging off her forehead protector as the black marks began to recede back to its origin. A purple diamond. The strength of a hundred sealings. Tsunade's jutsu.

He hadn't even realized that Rin had been able to master Tsunade's jutsu.

It was hardly visible, but Minato wanted to cry out of out relief when he saw her chest rise ever so slightly. Rin was breathing.

Rin was alive.

Everything was blindingly white. Often times, Rin had pictured what heaven looked like, to comfort herself that her parents were in a better place now, yet this was far from what she imagined heaven to be like.

Or perhaps Rin had gotten it all wrong and this was hell?

But even so, Rin had pictured hell to be a much darker place. Not a vast plane of blindingly white space where there wasn't a single soul in sight.

She felt herself drifting forward, like there was a magnetic force pulling her forward. Rin didn't resist the pull; there was no point. She was already dead, so the dangers that she could potentially face didn't matter.

When she stopped drifting, there still wasn't a single soul in sight.

But there was a voice.

"Rin."

"Who are you?" Rin whispered softly. She made a full 360 degree turn, but there still wasn't a single person in sight. That, or perhaps she wasn't supposed to be able to see the owner of the mysterious voice.

"You may call me Romo."

That name didn't mean much to Rin, but perhaps that was how everyone was in afterlife. Mysterious and vague. Perhaps, it was time she started adapting.

"Is this what death feels like?"

A chuckle permeated through the area. Rin was taken aback. She hadn't expected that mysterious man Romo had it in him to laugh.

"You aren't dead."

"I'm not?" Rin questioned. Her hands ran up and down her torso, examining her body with the precision of a medic nin. Her wound from the chidori wasn't there and neither were the numerous scratches on her body, but Rin hadn't expected her injuries to follow her to afterlife.

"You are currently stuck in a limbo between life and death," Romo explained. "If you continue to your left, you will enter heaven. If you choose to go right, you will return to your own world." As Romo explained her current predicament, Rin's head turned left and right, seeing no difference between the two. How were those paths supposed to lead her to two completely different places?

"Are you stuck like me then?"

"No. I am the keeper of this dimension, to help lost souls find their way."

"Why didn't I die? Were you the one who planted the dream into my mind?"

"The strength of a hundred seals saved you. You unlocked it right as that boy impaled you with his jutsu. And yes, I was the one who planted the dream."

"But why?"

"I can see the future and the future is grim. I thought, perhaps, that something could be changed if I planted the vision into your mind."

"There was nothing that I could have done differently," Rin countered, "I will gladly die for my village a thousand times over."

"Yes, you made the same decision, but you survived this time, did you not?"

"Did I really?" Rin questioned, scanning the length of her torso once more, "None of this feels real to me."

"I understand that you are disorientated right now, but you will need to make a choice soon. Time is running out. Are you going to choose death or return to your own world?"

Rin pursed her lips in contemplation. On one hand, death meant that she would be reunited with her family once more and Obito, but there were still plenty of people in her world. Kakashi. Minato sensei. Kushina nee. Kurenai. Shizune. All of the people in her graduating class.

Rin felt the temptation tugging at her heart strings, to simply give up and rejoin her family. The family she hardly had memories of, the family that she had been robbed of spending more time with. It would have been so, so easy to just die. No more war, no more fighting, no more headaches over stubborn shinobi patients who tried every tactic to escape the hospital, but…

Rin shook her head rapidly, chucking out all of those thoughts. Obito would want her to live. He died to give her a second chance to live, and now that she was given a third, she should take it. No, Rin needed to take it.

Romo hummed in approval. If Rin could see the mysterious figure, she would have imagined the man nodding his head ever so slightly while stroking his beard, if he even had one.

"I see that you've made up your mind."

She was taken aback. Either Romo was a mind reader or Rin was entirely too expressive, however, the latter was more likely. Mentally, Rin swore that she would work on controlling her facial expressions when she got back.

"Yes," Rin responded firmly, her eyes fixated on a random spot of nothingness, "I need to go back."

"Need?" Romo questioned.

"Need," Rin affirmed, her voice full of nothing but conviction.

"Good, but before you go, I want to give you a gift."

"A gift?" she repeated. What powers did Romo have? Was he some sort of deity?

"I have subdued Isobu, the sanbi. He has agreed to be cooperative with you." Rin supposed that it was a good thing. She wasn't supposed to know about the kyuubi that was sealed inside of Kushina nee - her discovery had been a complete accident - but since then, Kushina would share tails of Kurama's rantings knowing that Rin would be the only one to appreciate the stories. Kakashi and Obito hadn't been aware of the kyuubi's existence in Kushina. Minato sensei would only worry about her well being.

"So my chakra control…" Rin drifted off, wondering if she would be subjected to the same fate as Kushina. Large reserves of chakra, but trash control.

Wouldn't that mean her career as a medic nin was over?

"It won't be affected as much since Isobu will be cooperative. However, I believe that it won't be at the level that you are used to. Regardless, you are an intelligent kunoichi, you'll find a way."

Will she? Was there still a point in returning to her own world if the only dream Rin ever had was going to be ripped away from her? Sure, she still retained the medical knowledge and theories, but that didn't mean anything if she couldn't perform medical ninjutsu again.

"I see that doubts are clouding your judgment," Romo whispered softly.

Perhaps Rin was wrong and Romo was a mind reader because this was the second time he had been able to deduce her train of thoughts.

"I won't be the same anymore."

"No you won't," Romo agreed. "But perhaps you can be someone even better."

Better. Now that wasn't a word that Rin heard in a long time. Rin had been so content and placid with her current self that she never thought about bettering herself. And that was what led her into this predicament in the first place.

She was weak. She caused Obito to die.

And she hadn't done a single thing about it.

"I need to go back." While her previous statements had been filled with conviction, this time, there was an unwavering resolve underlying her words.

"You may proceed."

Old Rin might have glanced at her left side, before heading right, because that was her. Hesitant. Unsure. Cowardly. But the new Rin walked confidently off to the right, in the direction of home.

Rin didn't look back once.

Minato was worried. Kushina typically, although jokingly, called him a worry wart, but this time, his fears were justified. While Kakashi had made it out with just a few scratches, bruises, and depleted chakra reserves, Rin had been a different story.

From what he gathered from Kakashi after he woke up, Rin had stupidly jumped in the trajectory of his chidori. He hadn't been able to divert its track, to which Kakashi admitted that he felt extremely guilty of, the chidori pierced straight through her chest, a mere two inches away from her heart. Normally, that would have been enough to kill a person on the spot, but the strength of a thousand healings saved Rin.

Saved her physically, but not mentally.

The medics informed Minato that the trauma of the event was what forced Rin's body into a coma. No one was sure if she would be able to wake up, especially when Tsunade, Konoha's best medic, was out of the village at the moment. His sensei, Jiraya, had been tasked to find her.

It had only been four days since Jiraya left the village, but to Minato, it felt like it was ages already.

Promptly at seven o'clock in the evening, Kakashi appeared next to Minato, hands tucked into his pockets, posture slouched, as his lone eye gazed at the prone figure on the bed. It was startling to see how deathly pale Rin was, matching the color of the bed sheets.

"No change?" Kakashi's voice had been so low, almost like he hadn't meant for anyone to hear that but himself, and if Minato hadn't paid attention, he would have missed it.

"The same."

The repetitive beeping from the machines filled the air as silence fell between teacher and student once more.

It was ten minutes later, when Kakashi was the one to break the silence once more. Uncharacteristic for him, but Minato supposed that he was lonely after losing one teammate and having another one at death's doorstep.

"Rin is a true hero," Kakashi murmured quietly. "I don't think I would have the courage to do what she had done. She protected Konoha, us."

Minato placed a hand on Kakashi's shoulder, knowing that his student was most likely blaming himself, taking it on as his burden like he did with everything else. "You protect Konoha in your own ways as well. Rin's situation was just more...complicated."

Complicated didn't even begin to describe it. The Mist nin captured Rin with the goal of planting the tailed beast inside of her - and somehow Rin survived the sealing process, which wasn't something that everyone could do - with the intention of using it to destroy Konoha before retrieving it back.

Was that a declaration of war? Was Konoha going to be embroiled in war so soon after the Third Great Shinobi War?

Minato could feel the incoming headache of the political implications of Kakashi and Rin's latest mission. Even if Konoha decided to turn a blind eye to the entire situation - something that Minato wouldn't allow since it was his students that had been involved - the Mist nin would surely want their tailed beast back. Perhaps, they would try to kidnap Rin again. Or perhaps, war will be declared.

Either way, now that the sanbi was in Konoha's hands...the power distribution was unbalanced.

Better yet, Minato hoped that the Mist would keep quiet about the incident, to not let other nations be aware that they had lost one of their tailed beasts. It was all wishful thinking and a problem for the future.

For now, Minato just fervently hoped Rin would wake up.

"I heard that you were nominated to become the Fourth Hokage."

Minato wasn't sure how Kakashi knew that, since the information wasn't to be made public until the end of the week, but Minato didn't question it. He wouldn't put it beyond Kakashi having overheard the higher ups taking about it.

"I am," Minato admitted. "But…"

"You don't want to take the hat until Rin wakes up," Kakashi filled in for him. He cocked his head slightly to the side, his lone eyes seemingly staring in Minato's soul. "Or are you having self doubts about your ability to protect the village when you couldn't protect your students?"

"Both." It was eerie how well Kakashi could read him, but they had known each other for about ten years. Minato considered himself an expert at reading the expressionless prodigy, so he wouldn't put it past Kakashi to be an expert at reading him as well.

"For what it's worth, you are a great sensei. You and Kushina looked after Rin and me when we were younger, after our parents died. I have faith that you'll be able to look after the village."

If those words came out of anyone else, Minato would have called bullshit, but this was Kakashi. Kakashi didn't waste words on meaningless compliments or praises and he certainly wouldn't feed lies to anyone. Kakashi was genuine and it made Minato feel better.

"As for Rin," Kakashi continued, surprising Minato. This was the most that he heard Kakashi say in a while, aside from bickering with Obito. "I have faith that she'll be awake in time to see your coronation."

Hope...Minato needed more of that in his life.

A/N: Hi guys! Thank you so much for taking the time to click on this story and making all the way to the author's note. This is my first Naruto fanfiction and honestly I am super excited to write this story. The idea for this story has been floating around in my head for a while now and I've written a few drabbles now and then, but now I am actually going to write this story.

Based on the current timeline, everything remains canon until the part where Rin is supposed to die. If Obito could survive being impaled by a chidori, why can't she? :)

Since we don't know much about Rin, I'm going to take some creative freedom and create my own background for her and "abilities" that she will have in the future.

Also bonus question! Can anyone guess who "Romo" might be?

See you next time!

-MM