All of Konoha's jonin were crazy, one way or another.

Some of them were obvious. After all, no one sane would go around licking random genin, would they? But even the 'normal' ones- those who went through daily life as if there was absolutely nothing wrong with them- were more than just a bit off.

A and S-ranked missions were the most dangerous. They were the most psychologically scarring, the most bloody- assassinations, infiltration, even suicide missions were all fair game. In fact, it was almost surprising that the jonin still functioned as well as they did, taking into account the horrors they seen- and done.

In a well-meaning but ultimately useless response to this trend, the Sandaime had signed every single one of the village's jonin up for therapy.

Unsurprisingly, it didn't help any. Shinobi hated hospitals and and enjoyed telling civilians about their experiences and lives even less. Unsurprisingly, few jonin ever attended their appointments.

And so, the matter was swept under the carpet with deliberate nonchalance. So what if they were slightly crazy? They worked fast and got the job done. Most jonin kept such things to themselves, after all. And those who didn't... well, the village's hospital wing for the insane was large for a reason.

Kakashi Hatake had killed many in his lifetime.

His Chidori made him ideal for assassination missions and he had forgotten just how many hearts he had ripped out with his bare hands. In fact, he couldn't remember a time when his hands weren't bloodied with the life's blood of others.

His first kill had been at the age of five, an enemy nin had made a grave error underestimating the toddler he had encountered on the battlefield. By the time the man had realized his mistake, it had already been too late.

Outwardly, the Hatake seemed like a slightly weird, very perverted man- forever late to any meeting, no matter how important. One could often see him roaming around the village, a hand stuck in his pocket, mask-covered nose stuck between bright orange covers.

He was all of those things, true, and it was pretty easy for most people to assume that Kakashi was... well, maybe not perfectly sane, but only just slightly cracked.

Those people had no idea how wrong they were.

Since the day he had found his father's dead body on the floor of the family home, Kakashi found that he could no longer look at his own face without turning away in horror and disgust.

Most children were proud of their resemblance to their parents. Kakashi, on the other hand, did not appreciate his own face being nightmare fuel.

That night, the young boy had smashed all the mirrors in his home, vowing never to make the same mistakes his father did. Even decades after the fact, no reflective surfaces of any kind could be found in the Hatake family home.

Even now- though it wasn't quite as extreme as before- Kakashi disliked taking off his mask for reasons he deemed to be unnecessary. In all honesty, the jonin himself had only a vague memory of what he looks like, as he never used the mirror while unmasked.

Two decades after his father's suicide, and nobody in the village, himself included, had an idea as to what Kakashi Hatake was hiding beneath his mask.

In the years after Sakumo Hatake's suicide, Kakashi had confirmed rigorously to the shinobi rules, fearful of falling into the same trap his father did.

He was placed into a four man team- Minato Namikaze, the legendary Yellow Flash (and later, the Fourth Hokage) the leader, and two other chuunin, Rin Nohara and Obito Uchiha.

Kakashi had disliked his teammates at first glance; he ignored the medic nin's crush on him and treated her with complete apathy and thought Obito to be a complete failure of a ninja. Loud and obnoxious, the Uchiha seemed to him to be a mere crybaby, one who made inane excuses to cover up his own mistakes.

Then one day, Team Minato departed on a mission to Kannabi Bridge, and everything he thought he knew was turned upside down.

It had been Kakashi's first mission as a jonin and he had been arrogant, so eager to try out his new technique, Chidori- and his pride had led to the death of his teammate and a Sharingan implanted into his left eye.

That day, someone he had so foolishly assumed was useless and weak… had turned out to be one of the bravest people Kakashi had ever known. His adamant belief that the mission stood above everything else was completely and utterly shattered.

"While those who break the rules of the ninja world are trash, those who abandon their comrades are worse than trash."

Obito Uchiha had died that day, his entire right side crushed by a massive boulder. The last thing he ever did was to give his remaining Sharingan to Kakashi as a gift for achieving jonin rank.

It is widely known among Konoha's shinobi community that the place Kakashi Hatake frequented the most was not the local bar, like many of his fellow shinobi, or the hospital, or even his own home. It was said that if one ever needed to find the elusive jonin, one only had to make a visit to the Memorial Stone.

Every morning, the Copy Nin would stand for hours in front of the massive black rock, staring at the crudely engraved names of the most important people in his life. In the first few months, he would tell Obito about his missions, his Sharingan, and Rin.

Just a year after that fateful mission, both Minato-sensei's and Rin's name joined Obito's on the Memorial Stone.

Kakashi was now the only surviving member of Team Minato.

He still visited them, for hours daily, informing them of the newest happenings. He told them of the strange Akatsuki group, the new Godaime- Tsunade, could you believe that?- and of his new team, one that consisted of Obito's younger cousin, Sensei's son, and the pink haired medic nin whose skills rivaled Rin's.

He could only hope that the new Team 7 wouldn't turn out the way they had.

For some reason, Kakashi Hatake had always felt a strange niggling feeling at the back of his head, almost as if there was something vitally important that he had forgotten about himself.

The Kannabi mission had been a traumatic time for the then young jonin, and, to be honest, all he could really recall from the mission and the days after it were muddled, confused memories- of screams, tears, of pain. Both Sensei and Rin had treated him gingerly and carefully in the weeks and months after, as if he was a ticking bomb.

They helped fill in some of the blanks concerning the mission, but there were some parts they pointedly, awkwardly sidestepped. Though the information Kakashi was given did fit with the things he remembered, he had the constant nagging feeling that they weren't telling him everything.

He had thought about interrogating them in order to get the truth of the matter. But then, Sensei was chosen as the fourth Hokage and Rin had joined the ranks of the Konoha hospital medic nin. Kakashi himself had joined ANBU, and was too caught up in ending lives and getting back alive to care anymore.

Then the Kyuubi attack happened and Minato-sensei had died, sealing the Fox into his newborn son at the cost of his own life. Rin had been struck down by the burning timbers as she desperately tried to heal the wounded in the ruins of the village.

He was the last surviving member of Team Minato. If there had been anything important he had forgotten all those years ago, it was too late to find out.

Occasionally, the Hatake would remember snippets of memory in his dreams, or more frequently, his nightmares. They were short and confusing, and considering the little memory he had recovered in eighteen years, Kakashi found it unlikely he would ever regain all recollection of that day. It wasn't as if he really wanted it back, anyways.

He had already seen more than enough horrors for a lifetime.

But now, standing dumbstruck in the midst of the Fourth Shinobi War, Kakashi wished he had investigated further.

How else could something like this be possible?

The mysterious masked man- 'Tobi', who had previously claimed to be the long dead Madara- stood in the middle of the field. Mask destroyed by Naruto's Rasengan and face revealed to the world, he glared impetuously at the wide eyed Konoha shinobi.

But it was impossible- he couldn't possibly be-?

Though nearly two decades older than the last time Kakashi had seen him, the man was still recognizable as one Uchiha Obito, even with the horrific scar that spread over the right side of his face.

He stared impassively at both Gai and Kakashi, and the silver haired jounin remembered the strange, cryptic remarks Tobi had made during their fight-

"Where I got my eye? It was during the past World War... the fight at Kannabi Bridge..."

"I told you not to open your mouth so easily!"

But even so, it couldn't be. Could it?

There was just something so- inherently impossible about the masked man being his old team mate. Kakashi reluctantly admitted to himself that there really was no reason that Obito couldn't be Tobi. He had seen the dead been brought back to life, after all, and Obito's body had never been recovered...

And how else could their eye techniques be connected?

A look of recognition appeared on Gai's face and the man stammered, "You are... Obito...?"

The masked man looked at the two jounin with a look of complete disdain.

"No. Not anymore." He said, before explaining that he was no one, but he was Obito... or at least used that name in the past-

Nngh!

Kakashi clutched his head, his one eye wide in pain. Was this another one of Tobi's techniques? But the man looked as surprised as he did, and he groaned in pain, only to find himself

remembering-

He was in a cave, and it was so dark and he couldn't see anything except for the shouting and screaming and

Shitshitshitshit no he couldn't die here he couldn't-

and a whoosh

in his blind panic, he had stepped right into the path of a falling boulder- he could see it now, plummeting toward him from the cave ceiling, and he didn't even have the time to scream-

then his breath was knocked out of him and he hit the rocky ground with a yelp- someone pushed me, he realizes, but

a frightened scream from what sounded so very far away-

rin?

"Kakashi!"

He blinked away the strange images from his eyes. This was... abnormal. Nothing like this had happened in the decades after Kannabi Bridge.

The masked man- he refused to think of him as Obito- he decided, must have brought those memories out of the deep, dark corners of his mind where they were buried.

Naruto had noticed his discomfort and looked at him in slight worry. The silver haired jounin gave him a huge, albeit fake eye smile, coupled with an enthusiastic thumbs up.

Then with a serious expression on his face, Kakashi turned toward the- the imposter.

"You're not Obito. You can't be him." He said. "Even if you were somehow him... why would you wait until now to reveal yourself?"

The other man's eyes narrowed. "Because, Kakashi… you let Rin die."

rin

It wasn't as if Kakashi hadn't heard the medic nin's name after her death before, but this time, the mention of her death- his failure- sent a white hot flash of agony through his forehead.

This- this, somehow, was worse than before.

And as he kneeled down, clutching his head tightly with a white knuckled grip, Kakashi remembered-

everything

'Are you two… alright?'

He stands on unsteady feet, limbs still tingling with adrenaline. That voice- it came from the… the boulder- underneath the boulder- Rin already at their teammate's side, face wet with tears... and hands stained dark red with blood.

Underneath the boulder, he could see half of a body- his teammate. A flash of silver hair and a steely grey eye staring upwards blankly, clouded in pain

blood splattered over a black mask obscuring the other boy's face

no

it couldn't be

The images faded away along with the pain.

He got to his feet in one smooth motion, feeling a sense of complete rightness that had been missing from his life since Kannabi Bridge. Now that he had regained and assimilated those repressed memories, a lot of things have became clear to him...

First and foremost, the fact that whoever this 'Tobi' was and however he managed to make himself look like Obito, the Akatsuki leader was not him.

"Shut up." He says with a glare. "You don't get to talk about that."

The other blinked. "Excuse me?" He drawled, "I asked you to do one thing, Kakashi, and you failed it. You couldn't protect Rin. You let her die. I left her to you, and you-"

"Obito, you dobe, get over here-"

He crawls over, body half-numb with shock and still no no nonono

"You got me to come." It is said with a gurgling laugh. "You wanted to save Rin. So. I'm here, and she's safe. Now... I can't help you anymore, so now its your responsibility, alright? Keep Rin safe-"

The other boy coughs, a crimson stain appearing on the dark cloth of his mask. He whimpers slightly- and that was impossible, Kakashi's the genius, he's the one who's always composed, he doesn't whimper-

and he whispers

"I-I can't see."

"No. If you were really Obito, you'd know. Rin would never give up on anything. The night of the Kyuubi attack- the one you orchestrated- she was in the village hospital, treating the wounded and saving lives."

He sighed. "I can't stop her from doing her duty, from doing what she wanted to do. She was in the hospital when one of the Fox's tails smashed through the ceiling, killing her instantly. Rin is her own person. I can't control her decisions."

He took a deep breath.

"If there was anyone to blame for Rin's death... that would be you. But it wasn't you I made my promise to."

"Heh. Kakashi... you haven't changed at all, have you?" Tobi said knowingly. "Steadfastedly rejecting anything that doesn't fit your view of the world... well, I certainly don't fit as Obito for you, do I? After all I'm not the idealistic, foolish boy you remembered-"

"Actually, no." He corrected. "I don't know how you got that eye... but it isn't yours. I'm not sure how exactly you managed to look like Obito, but I know you are not him."

"I would have thought that you'd recognize the true owner of your Sharingan eye." The other man growls.

"I do. You're not him."

"...How are you so sure, Kakashi?"

Rin gulps, "His eyes- eye... it was struck by a rock, even before th-the boulder, if I had more time, I could heal it- but... we don't have that time- I need a few days to do it, at least-"

Kakashi was going to die here, Obito knew- nobody could survive getting crushed like this, not even the genius shinobi who made jonin at age twelve, and trying to get his teammate out from under the rock would cause another cave-in

but he couldn't die like this, gasping out his last breaths in complete darkness, unable to even see in his last moments

and Obito couldn't do anything about it.

No.

There was something he could do. He turned to Rin frantically and asks-

"Rin- how long does it take you to perform an eye transplant?"

The kunoichi seemed slightly confused at the question, but hesitantly answered, "A few hours at most-" Her eyes widened as she realizes just what he has in mind.

"Obito, you're not going to-?"

"Give one of my eyes to Kakashi. I- I'll see the afterlife with him."

The Uchiha turned to his teammate. "Hey, Kakashi, I was the only one who didn't give you a present at your jounin ceremony- I'll give you one now. Take my Sharingan- that way, I'll be there with you, wherever you end up."

Obito left their location with mismatched eyes- one Sharingan, the other a clouded steely grey.

He would see the future for Kakashi.

A week after Team Minato returned from their mission, minus one, Obito dyed his hair white. A few days after that, he started tying a piece of black cloth over the bottom half of his face and hiding his own eye under his forehead protector.

Rin had screamed when she first saw his new look and Minato-sensei had stared at him in shock and slight horror. They questioned to him as to why, but he gave no answer. He wasn't so sure himself.

The Uchiha Clan had disowned him after discovering that he had given the clan's kekkai genkai to his teammate- especially his dead teammate, whose body was deep in enemy territory where any Iwa nin could find it and steal the eye.

Not that he cared. Obito had never been treated especially well by his family. It didn't make much of a difference that he was now officially dead to them.

Sometimes, he forgot who actually died under that rock- Kakashi, or Obito. After all, Obito was the dead last, crybaby ninja- it would be no surprise for him to be caught unaware in a cave-in.

But Kakashi was the genius- the best shinobi of their generation, the one who became a genin at the age of five, and chuunin at the age of six... and finally, jonin at age twelve. He was the one who was the best of the best, the one forever composed and- and invincible, how could a mere rock kill him?

Kakashi couldn't die.

He, himself that was, was alive.

Obito was dead.

Kakashi is alive.

The obvious conclusion was

he was Kakashi.

That night, he looked into his full length mirror, smiling a rather deranged smile. Even after putting on the cloth mask he had bought the afternoon- the exact same color as Kaka- as his previous ones- he sensed a discrepancy in his appearance.

Kakashi had a scar over his Sharingan eye- the eye that Obito gave him- after all. He didn't.

He took out a kunai from his pouch.

Kakashi woke up in the hospital with something over his left eye. Rin was sitting by his bedside, and seeing he was awake, began berating him for doing such a stupid thing.

"Obito... I know you miss him, we all do, but now its getting too extreme, you're dressing like him- and now you-"

The jounin looked at her in slight confusion. "Why are you calling me Obito? I'm Kakashi- Obito's dead."

The medic nin stared at him in horror, and seeing that he wasn't joking- why would he joke? Wasn't it obvious he was Kakashi?- ran to get someone, probably Sensei.

A few moments later, Minato Namikaze walked in, looking at him with worried eyes. They talked- for some reason, Sensei was also under the same misconception as Rin.

"Minato-sensei, I can prove that I'm Kakashi. I can tell you something that only I know, alright?"

The Yellow Flash nodded hesitantly.

"My father- the White Fang- commited suicide when I was younger, after he valued his teammates over the mission. Sensei... only you, me, and the village elders know about it, remember? "

Strange. Minato-sensei looked as if he was caught between laughing and crying for the brief moment before he rushed out of the room.

Kakashi could overhear parts of the conversation Rin and Sensei were having outside. They were trying to be quiet, but the jounin had always had exceptional hearing.

"Sensei- he thinks he's-!"

"...I know- but some shinobi- some kind of disorder-"

"...can't tell him...?"

"...more damage than... don't. Keep... pretense."

"But-"

"He already... kunai... eye. What do you think... do if... knew?"

They came back in a few minutes later, an air of forced cheeriness around them. Rin told him that his eye injury had acted up again, and Sensei asked him to recount the entire Kannabi Bridge mission to his teammates.

He told them of what little he remembered- how Obito had saved him from that boulder, losing his own life in the process- how Obito had given his Sharingan to him, telling him that he will see the future with him. Rin kept sending worried looks in sensei's direction throughout his explanation.

Everything was relatively normal after that- for some reason, a few of the Uchiha Clan members stared at him as he walked past, but he marked it up as anger at him for having an implanted Sharingan. Obito had hated his clan with few exceptions. He owed them nothing.

Time passed and Kakashi joined the ANBU, losing himself in the endless slaughter. Minato-sensei became the Yondaime-sama, and Rin spent her time saving lives in the village hospital. Their team was never again the way it used to be before Obito's death, even before the Kyuubi attack.

The entire Uchiha Clan was killed in one night by the murderous Itachi Uchiha, and for whatever reason, Kakashi couldn't help but feel like he had dodged a metaphorical bullet- or sword, as it was.

Now that he remembered everything, the weeks after the Kannabi Bridge mission made much more sense.

Rin and Sensei must had been afraid that telling him the truth would aggravate him into doing something much worse than simply slashing his eye with a kunai- and thank Kami that hadn't caused any permanent damage to his remaining Sharingan.

After Minato-sensei became Yondaime... he must have purposely 'misplaced' some of those old mission records to keep the secret from coming out. Jiraiya must have known- he was Sensei's teacher, after all, and knew... Kakashi personally. The other shinobi of his generation were not told of the details of Kannabi Bridge, instead getting the revised version he had made up from his scattered memories.

Everyone who knew about the deception were dead. Minato-sensei, Sarutobi-sama, Rin, Jiraiya-san... Kakashi Hatake.

Kakashi.

'Tobi' must have gotten his eye from that Iwa cave, must have found the small corpse, half crushed under the massive boulder, a Sharingan in his exposed eye- and seeing an opportunity, took it and implanted it into his own eye socket.

It was almost strange how nobody else noticed that someone complete different had taken Kakashi's place. Apparently, bleach and covering two thirds of ones entire face can make any two people look alike.

The jounin stared in concentration at the Akatsuki leader with narrowed eyes, and suddenly, his one Sharingan swirled and faded back into the black pupil of the Uchiha Clan.

Naruto stared. "Eh? Kakashi-sensei, if you could turn it off the whole time, why would you cover it up all the time?"

He didn't answer, simple meeting the other's surprised eyes with his own.

"...Esteemed rival, were you not unable to deactivate your Sharingan due to receiving from Obito? How are you able to now?"

Instead of replying to his fellow Konoha nin, 'he fixed the imposter with a mismatched gaze.

"Hn. 'Tobi', I'll tell you. The reason I am so sure that you are not Obito Uchiha..."

He took off his mask in one fluid movement.

The blonde jinchuruki stared at his sensei in complete and utter shock and craned his neck, trying to catch a glimpse of 'Kakashi's exposed face. Did he have fish lips? Buck teeth?

The truth was even more surprising.

"Ne? How- Kakashi-sensei, you-!"

Under the mask... was an almost exact copy of the face under Tobi's mask, albeit without the disfiguring scars.

"...is because... I am Obito Uchiha." He finished.

A/N: ...Hope you enjoyed my 'serious' take on a crack theory. The way the Naruto manga is going right now... I don't think I'll be too surprised if this turns out to be canon- but I really hope not. Inspired by a post on Tumblr that said simply,

'Plot twist: Kakashi takes off his mask and he's also Obito.'

NEW (3.22.13): So six months and thirty reviews later... first of all, thank you all for the reviews! Seriously, they're probably the only reason I'm so inspired to write more in this verse as of now. I just finished a complete revamp of the oneshot, and I've decided that I'm going to write a continuation that will probably be posted... soon.

It won't be in this exact verse, probably, because it's pretty hard to continue from this point- especially since I will have to account for the new information that came out since. So this will probably be more of an AU than it is already (see: Rin's death). And from what I have right now, it will be some kind of AU mash-up between this AU and canon!verse.

Tentative plot is AU!Obito and Canon!Kakashi both travel back in time but both land in the same canon universe. Events occurred differently in canon than this verse, so there will be a lot that the former isn't expecting- especially Madara and Rin's canon death.

Yeah, it sounds pretty crazy, but I think I have quite a bit planned out for it. So I'll post a new chapter for this when the new fic goes up, and remove it- for all those people who have been following this fic since way back when. Thank you!