The countryside outside the Land of Fire. The night had grown deep.
A campfire crackled and popped, its orange-red light jumping in the darkness, throwing the shadows of those gathered around it long and short in turn.
A small ninja squad, stationed and waiting on a mission, sat resting in a circle around the fire.
Kakashi Hatake leaned against a boulder, his single visible eye fixed on the dancing flas, his face carrying an expression of undisguised restlessness.
He was bored.
The waiting period before a mission was always the hardest part. In the past, he would have reached into his pack by now and pulled out his beloved copy of Make-Out Paradise, settled back comfortably, and lost himself completely in the world Jiraiya had created for posterity's benefit.
But now -- he simply couldn't bring himself to do it.
The book was right there in his pack. He could see the cover from where he sat. He glanced at it once, and then deliberately looked away.
"Sothing wrong, Kakashi-senpai?"
A mild, unhurried voice ca from across the fire.
Yamato -- the man who had formally left the ANBU and been given a proper na of his own -- was sitting on the other side of the campfire, watching Kakashi with the expression of soone who had seen through him completely.
"If you're bored, just take it out and read. You were never this considerate before."
"Pretty rare, honestly -- seeing you care about what soone else thinks."
"Hey, Yamato, what exactly are you implying?"
Kakashi's voice carried a note of guilty protest.
"I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Don't go putting thoughts in people's heads."
Yamato said nothing. He simply kept watching with that sa expression.
In his own mind, he knew perfectly well that he was giving Kakashi a hard ti -- because after what had happened last ti, the more he had thought about it afterward, the more the whole thing had bothered him.
"The only man I've ever recognized among the younger generation is you" -- honestly, Kakashi-senpai, that was just straightforward emotional manipulation, wasn't it? The entire point of that speech had clearly been to make soone else pick up the bill.
Watching Kakashi sit there looking so unusually restrained and careful, Yamato felt a small, entirely unprofessional flicker of satisfaction.
"It's all right, Kakashi."
A young woman's voice rose from the other side of the fire -- a little self-conscious, but full of quiet warmth and understanding.
Rin Nohara sat with her hands folded in her lap, her cheeks lightly flushed. She knew exactly what book Kakashi liked to read.
"If you want to read it, go ahead. You don't have to worry about . I understand."
Rather than relaxing at this, Kakashi seed to sink further into his misery. He ducked his head lower, and the expression visible above his mask was one of pure, unambiguous mortification.
He didn't know what to say. He didn't know what to do. He simply sat in silence, like a student who had done sothing wrong and was waiting for the consequence.
"Kakashi..."
Minato Namikaze's voice ca from beside Rin. He was sitting next to her, his handso face carrying a warm, quietly proud smile.
"You've really grown up."
Kakashi's shoulders twitched slightly at those words.
Minato looked at the person who had once been his student and felt sothing deep and old stir inside him.
He still rembered what Kakashi had been like as a child. That prodigy. So proud, so cold -- soone who regarded the concept of "comrades" with genuine contempt, who placed mission completion and the rules above everything else without exception.
Back then, Minato had believed this boy would eventually understand. He had also feared it might take far too long.
But this Kakashi -- the grown-up version sitting across from him -- had clearly, genuinely, co to understand those things.
Minato thought of sothing Naruto had told him once. During the graduation exam when Naruto first beca a genin, Kakashi had put his new students through a test built entirely around the concept of comrades. And the man who had once placed rules above all human feeling had stood before those students and said it himself, without reservation: "A person who breaks the rules is scum. But a person who abandons their comrades is worse than scum."
Yamato sat nearby and watched, his surprise not entirely settled. He had never seen Kakashi like this before.
In front of anyone else, Kakashi was always that sa relaxed, self-contained person -- doing things at his own pace, indifferent to what anyone else thought. But in front of Minato and Rin --
He essentially did whatever he was told. He listened to everything that was said to him.
More obedient than the most attentive academy student Yamato had ever seen.
He reflected on it inwardly and found he couldn't entirely bla the man.
Because Minato was the Fourth Hokage. Because he had been Kakashi's teacher. Because he was the person who had given his life in the Nine-Tails incident. And because of Rin -- because of everything that had happened between Kakashi and Rin, everything that followed the Kannabi Bridge, everything Kakashi had carried alone for all those years.
When he thought of it that way, Yamato supposed it made sense.
A light breeze moved through the campsite.
It carried the night's distinct coolness and the clean scent of grass and leaves, passing gently across each face gathered around the fire.
Rin closed her eyes instinctively, letting the breeze wash over her, the loose strands of hair at her forehead lifting and settling.
Then sothing touched her leg.
Light. Delicate. As though sothing very small had landed there.
Rin opened her eyes and looked down.
A butterfly was resting quietly on her knee.
An ordinary butterfly -- wings a pale orange-gold, edged with fine black markings -- glowing with warm, amber light in the flicker of the campfire. Its wings were folded together, and it sat perfectly still, as though it had found exactly the place it had been looking for.
Rin stared at it.
She had seen many butterflies in her life -- on battlefields, in forests, in the village flowerbeds. But she had never encountered one quite like this. It seed completely unafraid of her. Its tiny compound eyes regarded her without hesitation, and its wings shivered faintly, as though it were checking on sothing.
Then it took flight.
Not in a startled rush. Not fleeing. But in slow, close circles, as though reluctant to leave. One circle. Two. Three.
It landed on her shoulder and touched the edge of her ear with the tip of one antenna. Then it lifted again, settled on the back of her hand, and opened and closed its wings steadily, like sothing trying to speak.
Without thinking about it, Rin had gone very quiet.
She watched the butterfly. She watched its tireless, looping flight. She watched the way it kept returning to her, patient and persistent and near.
Sothing moved inside her that she didn't have a na for.
"Oh -- an insect!"
Yamato's voice cut through the quiet. He rose to his feet and moved toward Rin, brow furrowed slightly. As a shinobi, his instinct was to be wary of anything unexpected that approached a comrade -- even a butterfly. You never knew.
"I'll get it away from you --"
"Don't."
A hand extended from the side, blocking his path.
Kakashi stood there, looking at Rin and the butterfly resting on her shoulder. "Yamato. Leave it."
Yamato stopped. He looked at Kakashi in confusion.
He didn't understand.
Why was Rin letting an insect rest on her? He wouldn't have expected a kunoichi to tolerate that. But Kakashi's expression made clear that he had been about to do sothing wrong.
Kakashi didn't explain himself. He was looking at Rin. At the butterfly. When he spoke, his voice was low and careful, and carried the quality of sothing he was almost afraid to say aloud.
"Rin... do you think it might be him?"
Yamato had no idea what that ant.
But Rin understood.
She looked down at the butterfly, which had returned to rest on the back of her hand. She watched its wings shiver -- faint and steady. She watched its small form, which seed to be saying sothing it had no other way to express.
Her eyes slowly grew bright.
"...I don't know."
Her voice was barely above a whisper. But the tenderness inside it, the longing inside it, was too dense to be held by so small a sound.
"But..."
The corner of her mouth curved, and a smile rose to her face -- the kind of smile that has warmth all the way down to its roots.
"If it were Obito, this is exactly the kind of thing he would do."
The butterfly seed to hear her. It rose from her hand, circled in front of her face twice, then ca to rest on her shoulder, folded its wings, and went still.
The campfire crackled on, its shifting light moving across each of them in turn.
Kakashi stood where he was, watching. The corners of his eyes felt warm.
Yamato still didn't fully understand what had just happened. But he saw the way Rin was looking at that butterfly. He saw Kakashi's silent silhouette. And he understood that this was not a mont for questions.
The night wind rose again, soft and brief.
The butterfly stayed on Rin's shoulder, unmoving.
Maybe it was tired.
Maybe it had simply found the place it wanted to stay.
Maybe -- it had only just, finally, let itself stop pretending.
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