"So, Team 7, huh! Are you excited to be their sensei?"

"I'll do my best," says Kakashi. He's perched on the back of a kitchen chair reading Jiraiya's latest. Well, pretending to read it. Actually he's been watching Obito make breakfast, an activity that takes Obito about five times as much movement and about ten times as much mess as a normal person. He's forgotten what's even happening in the new Icha Icha. He might have to start again from the beginning.

"Are you going to start them out with the bells test?" Obito pauses, tosses a handful of yesterday's dirty plates behind him (they all land, unbroken, in the sink) and grins. "You are."

Kakashi smiles back. He's wearing his mask, but Obito will see the creases around his eyes and know anyway. "If it works," he says. "I'm off. Don't want to be late."

"You're always late these days," says Obito, with a smug air because he knows that Kakashi being late for things is almost entirely Obito's fault. "At least stop to say goodbye to Rin."

"She's sleeping. She was on night shift."

"I'm awake, I'm awake, I'm here," says Rin from the doorway. She's leaning against the doorframe, wearing nothing but a thin yukata, and smiling. "Good luck today, Kakashi-sensei."

Kakashi thinks he hides his slight panic at the thought of being Kakashi-sensei without the joking tone in about half an hour quite well, but Obito laughs and Rin giggles all the same. Not that well. His old friends know him better than that. Rin comes over and takes both his hands. "You'll do a great job," she says, and pulls his mask down so she can kiss him. Her mouth is soft and warm.

"A great job," Obito echoes, unexpectedly serious, and he slings an arm over Kakashi's shoulder before he kisses him in turn.

By the time Kakashi manages to actually leave the house, he is late. It won't hurt his new students to wait. He was planning to spend a while observing them before he introduced himself anyway.

Naruto, Sakura, and Sai. Team 7. His students. For them this will be something like the day he first met Obito and Rin, the start of something hugely important for the rest of their lives. Kakashi can't imagine his life without Obito and Rin. They're an unconventional arrangement, the three of them, even for Konoha, but they work.

He takes to the rooftops to speed things up. It's a glorious bright day. He barely notices when a bit of dust gets in his eye and makes him blink away a shadow for a moment.

Kakashi thought the mission where he lost his eye would be his last. The moment half the world went dark, even through the pain, he knew. A half-blind ninja wasn't fit for active duty. But there were more immediate concerns, there was Rin, and he put it out of his mind and focused on the mission because the mission—the one he and Obito had appointed for themselves—was all there was.

Then Obito went down under the rockfall. The enemy were defeated, gone, but Kakashi still tasted sick fear in the back of his throat as he thought that Obito could still—that Obito was going to—

But Rin said, I can do this.

Wait, said Obito. Give Kakashi one of my eyes.

(He said that because—because—)

Rin gave Kakashi one of Obito's eyes, and then together they hauled him out from under the rocks and Rin healed him, saved him, and Obito laughed and didn't care at all about the way that his vision was ruined now. In the future, he said, there won't be wars, so I won't need to fight anyway. You might as well have that eye, Kakashi, it looks better on you!

(and there was something else about Obito's eyes, Kakashi thought once, some other reason—but the thought slipped away from him.)

That mission was a painful memory in some ways. Kakashi had made so many mistakes. But they'd all survived, and in other ways it was the best memory Kakashi had, because Obito—still smiling, with the patch over his eye—had sat up when Rin finished healing him and said, "Thank you," and kissed her. Kakashi had thought oh and turned his face away, but then the two of them broke apart and Rin held out her hand while Obito looked—for once—unreadable, and after that Kakashi was kissing them both, Rin then Obito, everything he hadn't known he wanted.

"How were your students?" Obito asks that night. All three of them are in bed, Rin in the middle as always. Obito has his hand curled around one of hers at the back of her neck. It should be awkward, but they look comfortable. After all these years Kakashi shouldn't be surprised to see them both there, together, smiling up at him. It takes him a moment to think back on his new genin.

"Sai is very quiet but very focused," he says, "and he has the best understanding of the importance of teamwork."

"They didn't fail the bells test, then?" says Obito.

"They didn't fail," Kakashi said, though he's amused all over again now thinking about Naruto's wild, stupid attacks. An odd kid, that one.

"What about the other two?"

"Sakura has some growing up to do, but she's got excellent chakra control. Naruto is a brash overconfident loudmouth. He reminds me of you." Kakashi leans into the pillows and Rin, basking in the warm feeling inside, as Obito yelps a protest and Rin laughs. "I think he's got something special, perhaps, all the same," he goes on. "And Sasuke—"

He stops, tripping over his own tongue.

"Who's that?" says Rin. Obito is frowning at him.

"I'm sorry," says Kakashi. "I don't know why I said that."

"I don't think there is a genin called Sasuke," says Obito.

"No," says Kakashi. "Of course not. No such person."

He dreams that night of that long-ago mission and the pain in his ruined eye. It's still dark outside when he wakes, panting, with a pounding headache starting at the base of his skull. He gets out of bed, puts his mask on, and goes through to the other room. For a long time he sits in the dark, watching the moon. Once he thinks he sees a shadow flicker across the rooftops, but it's only a crow.

It's still hours before dawn when he pads back into the bedroom. Rin is asleep but Obito is awake, waiting for him. "Kakashi? Are you all right?" he whispers.

"Bad dreams," Kakashi says, voice low so he won't wake Rin. She works all hours at the hospital. She needs her rest.

Obito holds out his hand. Kakashi doesn't bother trying to summon a smile, just goes to him and leans his face against Obito's shoulder and shuts his eyes. He just wants to sleep.

"Hey, Kakashi-sensei," says Naruto one day, "do you ever feel like something's wrong?"

"Wrong how?" says Kakashi.

Naruto screws up his whole face as he thinks about it. Kakashi has never seen him trying so hard to be thoughtful. Naruto is not a reflective kind of kid. "Missing," he settles on eventually. "Do you ever feel like there's something missing? Or someone?"

"Like who?"

Naruto looks frustrated. "Someone! I don't know!"

There's a name on the tip of Kakashi's tongue, but he can't remember what it is. Instead he hears himself say, "Don't worry so much, Naruto. Life is good."

Naruto still looks troubled for a moment, but then he grins. "Yeah! Yeah, it is! Hey, Sai and Sakura and I are getting ramen, you're coming, right?"

Life is good. Life is good. Kakashi doesn't know why part of him feels so terribly afraid of life being good when he's never known anything else.

The other two can tell there's something wrong. Rin touches him all the time, the soft pads of her fingers anchoring him to reality, the curve of her mouth against his skin dragging him away from the whirling confusion in his head. Kakashi thinks every now and then that what he really wants is for Rin to shout at him the way she used to when they were kids sometimes, but Rin never does that anymore. Rin is always loving and soft and kind.

Obito shows love a different way, because he's still that brash loudmouth at heart, so he cracks jokes and makes challenges, distracting, demanding. These days when he and Kakashi spar Obito wins as often as not. It would be embarrassing, but it's not like Kakashi has any problem exactly with getting pinned and lying on his back looking up into Obito's laughing eyes—

what?

—into Obito's single remaining eye.

"Admit it! I'm the greatest," Obito says.

"You're very good," says Kakashi blandly, surreptitiously testing Obito's grip on his wrists, "for a one-eyed shinobi who never trains." Obito's grip is unbreakable. And it is odd, Kakashi thinks, that he can still keep up with me considering—

Obito's grip on his wrists relaxes. Kakashi takes advantage of his inattention to flip him over, but it turns out that that was what Obito wanted. He leans up and kisses Kakashi over the mask, and then uses his teeth to tug it out the way and kiss him again properly. Kakashi completely forgets what he was thinking about.

It comes back to his mind that night as he's drifting off. Obito doesn't train and Obito doesn't work, Obito has no duties and doesn't seem to want any, and Obito never visits his family over in the Uchiha compound. It's like he's perfectly content just to stay in their house all day, or maybe doze in the sunshine sometimes, and wait for Kakashi and Rin to come back to him.

But why not? Kakashi thinks, right on the edge of dreaming.

The nightmares keep coming. Kakashi sees horrors in his sleep, gigantic monsters and broken bodies, a world ripped to pieces by war, and over and over again that long-ago mission and the pain in his ruined eye. If he leaves the bedroom, Obito's always awake and waiting when he comes back. Kakashi has a good life, has his friends and his students and his village and Obito and Rin, and he doesn't know what's wrong with him but in the occasional secret sick moment he thinks if it weren't for Obito waiting up for him at nights he would probably go mad.

Kakashi catches sight of Naruto down by the Uchiha compound, questioning the youngest of the Uchiha boys. Kakashi can never keep track of which of Obito's many cousins is which, but Itachi is memorable because he's the family's heir. He seems like a nice kid.

"Are you sure?" Naruto is saying.

Itachi laughs. "I definitely don't have a younger brother," he says. "I think I'd remember something like that."

"Weird," says Naruto. "Weird."

"What are you doing, Naruto?" says Kakashi.

"I just suddenly thought Itachi might have a younger brother!" Naruto says. "So I was checking, Kakashi-sensei!"

"What would I do with a younger brother? That would be annoying," says Itachi, and a shadow flits across Kakakshi's peripheral vision. Itachi would never say that, he thinks, suddenly and very clearly—

"I wish I had a younger brother," Itachi is saying. "I would take good care of him."

Kakashi shakes his head. His ears are ringing a little. Something is wrong. He can hear Itachi talking, but when he looks at him there's nothing there but a faint wavering shadow—

He blinks hard. The world goes back to normal. Itachi is walking away. Naruto's expression is troubled as he watches him go.

In his dream that night Kakashi sees a world gone still. Every person on the battlefield has slumped into the embrace of a sickly pale clone, and every head is tilted up towards the enormous shining moon. There are white tendrils—white arms—wrapped around Kakashi's own body, and he can feel the steady pulse of chakra from the subhuman thing that is sustaining his life. Not far away he can see an enormous beacon of chakra, so powerful it makes his teeth ache and his eye hurt—

his eye—

lying crushed under the rocks Obito says, take my eye and give it to Kakashi—

He says that because—because—

Kakashi wakes up. He's lying in bed with Rin and Obito, another vicious headache starting at the base of his skull, and the dream is slipping away from him. He keeps his eyes closed, listening to them breathe. Rin's breaths are soft. Obito snores. The bed is warm and comfortable and smells like the three of them.

If I don't open my eyes, Kakashi thinks, I can just go straight back to sleep.

The thought is very appealing.

His head hurts too much, though. He gets out of bed quietly, though he knows from experience that no matter how quiet he is Obito will always be awake when he gets back. He goes through to the kitchen and gets himself some water. A full moon is shining outside the window. Kakashi looks up at it for a moment or two, and sighs, puts his mask in place, and swings himself out the window and up onto the roof. It's a warm summer night. The moonlight pouring down is so bright that all the trees and buildings of Konoha have clear, dark shadows. Kakashi sits on the corner of the rooftop and looks out over his home.

A shadow moves in the corner of his vision. He hears the footstep behind him and turns.

A young man stands a few feet away. His clothes are battered and his body is scarred. In the moonlight he looks black-and-white, dark hair, pale skin, long black shadow. His eyes—

"Sasuke," says Kakashi, not knowing where the name comes from.

There's a stab of pain in the left side of his face and the whole world flickers and jumps. Kakashi's eyes are watering. His head hurts. "Kakashi?" says Obito. When Kakashi can focus again Obito is kneeling in front of him, looking worried. "Are you okay?"

He has dark hair, pale skin, and a long black shadow. "I thought I saw someone," Kakashi says.

"I came up here looking for you," says Obito. "Rin and I were worried."

It was Obito that Kakashi saw. Of course.

"Come back to bed," Obito says.

Rin is awake, waiting up for them. Kakashi shakes a little in her embrace. "Are you sure you're okay?" says Obito.

"I just need to sleep," Kakashi says.

He lies awake in the dark for an hour, two, until Rin's breathing is even and he can hear Obito's snores.

Then he opens his eyes and looks.

Nothing. Nothing unexpected. Rin is curled on her side in sleep, her hair spread around her on the pillow. Obito's arm is flung over her, his hand reaching out towards Kakashi. It's just normal, just like always. Kakashi sighs in relief and closes his eyes.

Obito said, take my eye and give it to Kakashi—

When Kakashi opens his eyes again his vision is doubled. His right eye sees what it saw before, Rin and Obito, their bed, their home, their lives.

His left eye tells him Rin isn't there. Rin was never there at all. Rin is dead. What Obito has his arm around is a flickering shadow, a ghost made of chakra, just like Itachi and probably half the people in the village. (Inoichi. Shikaku. Jiraiya. Neji and his father. Asuma, Kakashi thinks sickly, remembering swapping jokes with him this morning and remembering just as clearly attending his funeral last year.)

Kakashi remembers.

There's no time to waste. Obito will know as soon as he looks at Kakashi, as soon as he sees that the sharingan has somehow made its way into his perfect world. Kakashi slips out of the house and then takes to the rooftops and runs. He has to be fast, because if he doesn't do this at once then—then he doesn't trust himself to do it at all.

Life is good. Life is good.

The Uchiha compound, when he gets there, isn't quite empty. There's another chakra ghost training in the courtyard. Kakashi has to close his left eye to see that it's supposed to be Itachi; Obito's illusion is very thorough. Kakashi supposes he knows now why he visits his family so seldom. Obito is the god of this world, he must be able to tell who's real and who's a dream. Whose dream are the living, flourishing Uchiha? Several people's, maybe. Plenty of the older inhabitants of Konoha had friends among the dead clan.

He knew all along that Rin wasn't real, Kakashi thinks, and he feels sick.

He waits on the roof. The dream-Itachi keeps training. The real version, if he were alive, would have noticed an intruder at once. The real version was also never so happy as the nice kid who lives in this dream world. Dream-Itachi was never driven to extremes by the demands of the village—and he never had a brother. Kakashi remembers the flicker earlier when Naruto was cross-examining him—it must have been the illusion catching itself in an inconsistency, adjusting itself to match Kakashi's own beliefs and memories.

Eventually a flicker in the corner of Kakashi's eye resolves into Sasuke. "Took you long enough," is all he says. He doesn't even glance down at the illusion of his brother.

"Thirteen years," says Kakashi drily.

"Actually, more like ten days," Sasuke says. "But long enough."

"You've been following me. Watching me."

"I knew the sharingan would see through it eventually. Wake yourself up whenever you're ready."

Sasuke vanishes—not just from the roof of the Uchiha compound, but from the whole world. Kakashi's left eye can see him slipping effortlessly out of the genjutsu. He takes a deep breath. In a house on the other side of the village, Obito and something that looks like Rin are sleeping in a bed which has room for him too. All his friends are here, and all his students but one, and there's no war, and everyone is safe.

Kakashi lifts his hands to the edge of his mask. He feels the fabric under his fingertips. He's worn it over the sharingan for years. All he has to do is tug it lopsided and then he can turn around and go back, and—Obito will know, but he can tell Obito what he always tells him, I just want to sleep, and it's halfway to true. Obito will understand. Probably there's no one else alive who could understand better.

"Kakashi!"

Maybe thinking about Obito was what summoned him to the Uchiha compound, or maybe there's just no way to keep a secret from the god of this world. Kakashi lets out a breath and changes his stance slightly, pointlessly. He knows he can't win against Obito.

But Obito doesn't come in fighting. He coalesces out of the shadows where Kakashi is completely certain he wasn't standing a moment ago, and even with the sharingan Kakashi has to strain slightly to see his real form, his two burning eyes and his scarred face, under the rock-hard layer of illusion that's shrouding him. He remembers Minato telling them all years ago, genjutsu work best when you show your enemies what they expect to see, or better, what they want to see…

The face Obito's wearing is the face of Kakashi's best friend grown tall, the face Obito might have had if he'd lived the life he deserved. He looks like an Uchiha, all right—Kakashi wonders suddenly how many times he saw Sasuke in the corner of his eye and let the illusion convince him it was Obito—but he never quite fit the rest of his grim family, always too open, too cheerful, too loud, and now as a young man he has the very faint beginnings of laughter lines around his mouth and eyes. Obito laughs a lot; Obito is noisy, easygoing, happy. He's not smiling now, but as he steps forward his hands are empty and his expression is wide open. Kakashi can read hurt, grief, anger, love, written right there for anyone to see.

He forces himself to focus his sight. The friend he still remembers living with for thirteen years vanishes. The young face is replaced by an old one; Obito is the same age as Kakashi, but the man he's become looks a decade older at least. The two burning eyes, red and violet, watch Kakashi steadily. There are no laughter lines on the puckered and ruined side of Obito's face, which barely moves; there are a few on the other side, but they look wrong, making his face lopsided and vicious instead of open and easy. But the worst part is that his expression hasn't changed, for all it's an uglier face wearing it now. Hurt, grief, anger, love: Obito's heart was always right out in the open. Kakashi feels twisted inside. At least one of them is wearing a mask.

Neither of them has said anything since Obito called Kakashi's name. They stare at each other. Obito steps forward. "Don't go," he says without bothering to ask questions. "Why would you go? Stay with us."

If he hadn't said us—but the thought of that horrible ghost, that mockery of Rin—

"I'm not going to live in a lie," Kakashi says.

"I can make you forget again," says Obito. "Let me do it, I can help, I can make you forget as many times as you need to. Why would you want to see that other world? This is better. You know this is better. Everything I've done was to give us this. I know you're happier here. Aren't you?"

Kakashi looks away so he doesn't have to say the answer. The mask doesn't hide him well enough.

"Here I can even forgive you!" Obito says urgently. He knows he's winning. "Everything's all right again. It's not a lie. It's real. I've made it real. The other life, the one that hurt, that was the lie. This is true. The way I feel about you and Rin, that's what's true."

Kakashi can feel himself wavering. What comes into his head then is Naruto, screwing up his whole face in thought, saying, do you ever feel like there's something missing?

"I'm sorry," he says to Obito's pleading expression. "But I have another student, and I can't just abandon him."

That makes Obito's face twist angrily. "Oh, right, Sasuke, Sasuke! Do you think you can help him? I tried, Kakashi." He switches his tone abruptly, sorrowful instead of angry. "I know you care about your students, it's right that you care. But there's nothing you can do for Sasuke. I tried. He's my family, you know, I wanted to make it better. I made a place for him in this world and he wouldn't take it. I gave him everything he wanted and he just kicked it away. I gave him his vengeance, I gave him his family, I gave him everything he loves, and he still—listen, you can't save someone who doesn't want to be happy!"

Kakashi considers trying to explain that he worked that out years ago, that he knows very well that nothing can save Sasuke from his own choices except Sasuke, that he's already accepted that, that it's stopped being the point. He's not even sure what the point is anymore, unless it's that Kakashi failed Obito and failed everyone after him and failed Sasuke too, and maybe it's Naruto he's trying not to fail now.

Obito must see the resolution on his face, because he snarls and attacks.

Kakashi hates being so easy to read. No one else alive can do it. He only just manages to side-step Obito's charge, calculating possible counterattacks as he does it—but he realises almost at once that nothing he can do is a match for what Obito's become. There's no point trying. All those times in the last (thirteen years) ten days they've sparred, all the times Kakashi's won, Obito was letting him win.

Obito is watching him narrowly, waiting for his next move. He's still treating it like they're sparring—no, he's treating it like Kakashi will play by his implied rules and settle in to fight this unwinnable fight; he's treating it like they're friends, and that hurts more than anything. Kakashi puts his hands together for a seal, drawing Obito's eyes, making him wait.

Then he wakes himself up.

Or he tries to. The whole world seems to shriek in rage as it fragments around him and instead of the battlefield Kakashi finds himself dumped into another layer of genjutsu. He's a kid again, all three of them are, on one of their earliest missions with Minato-sensei, and when their teacher says, "Kakashi, do you have the target?" Kakashi nearly drops everything to go and look for a damn cat—

No. He wakes himself up.

"Hey, look what I can do!" yells Naruto, clearly on the verge of doing something likely to get himself and everyone in range killed, and Kakashi had better go and put a stop to it—

No.

Back on the battlefield, fighting an unwinnable fight, and one by one Kakashi sees his friends and allies and students fall, every last one, even Naruto, and something whispers, would it really have been so bad to live in a perfect world instead—

No.

"Kakashi?" says Rin. "What's wrong?"

No.

Suddenly everything is dark.

Something is pressing down on him from above, crushing him slowly, making it impossible to breathe. He can hear the faint rustling sound of the wind in the leaves overhead. He's all alone. no no no no no no no, he thinks. no no oh please i'm scared i don't want to die yet—

It only takes a few seconds for him to break that illusion and wake himself yet again, but the seconds stretch horribly. All those times Kakashi was standing in front of Obito's grave it was impossible not to think sometimes about the way Obito died, the slow horrible agony of it. He'd wondered. Now as he shakes off the fragments of Obito's memory he realises his imagination never even came close. "I'm sorry," he says to the gravestone in front of him. "I'm so sorry, Obito, I'm so—"

His voice cracks.

"It's all right," Obito says. "I'm here, I'm okay." He's sitting on the stone, wearing what part of Kakashi will always think of as his true face, the face of the man he might have been. His eyes are violet and red. "Please don't cry," he says, "it's really weird to see you cry…"

He trails off. His expression is wide open still. He looks ashamed of himself. "I lost my temper, I shouldn't have done that. Everything's going to be all right, you'll see. I just don't want anyone to ever be hurt ever again. That's all." He holds out his hand.

Instead of taking it, Kakashi very deliberately raises his hands to his face. Slowly, so that Obito can't make any mistake about what he's doing, he takes off his mask and drops it. Obito's mismatched eyes go wide. His hand wobbles in the air. Kakashi grabs it, hauls him to his feet, and embraces him.

Obito makes a surprised oof! noise and then his arms come up and he pats Kakashi awkwardly on the back. Kakashi closes his eyes, both of them, hides his face in Obito's neck, and breathes in the familiar smell of him. "All these years," he says quietly, "I would have given anything to have you back."

Obito holds him tighter. "I did this for you too," he says. "You know that, right? I… I couldn't forgive you, but it was for you as well, I wanted…"

"I know," Kakashi says, and he stabs the kunai he's imagined for himself in beside the spine and then up and through the lung.

He reminds himself as he's doing it that this isn't the real world and that it would take a lot more than this to kill Obito now. But it still feels terribly real, the way the flesh gives, and Obito's pained gasp. If he's calculated right, Obito's put a lot of himself into his own avatar in this illusion-world. Killing it will distract him, if only briefly. It should be long enough for Kakashi to wake himself.

He pushes (Obito) the illusory shape of a body away and drops the bloodstained dagger. He was right. The edges of the world have gone foggy, a little. The gravestone is half transparent.

Kakashi breathes deep, opens his eyes, and wakes.

EPILOGUE:

Naruto takes longer killing his Zetsu shell than either Sai or Sakura did, but that mostly seems to be because he's enjoying himself. Sakura is still picking bits of white stuff out of her hair, looking disgusted. Sai is watching the show with a bland unreadable smile. Sasuke clearly thinks he's being unreadable, but the slight irritated twitch in his jaw is giving him away. Kakashi generously refrains from pointing it out.

Naruto finally bounds up to the rest of them dusting off his hands. "Done!" he says.

"Are you sure, dead last?" says Sasuke. "You took so long I thought you were trying to get back to the perfect world after all."

"Idiot!" says Naruto. "How can it be a perfect world if you're not in it?"

Sasuke blinks at him. Kakashi keeps his expression neutral. It probably wouldn't help to laugh.

"Now let's kick that guy's ass!" Naruto says gleefully. "Team Seven, go!"