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Tobirama’s incomplete seal matrix flares white against the dark creeping into his vision, a failure that has nothing to do with the blood running down over his eyes from a cut at his brow. His temple? It matts into his hair and exhaustion pulls at him.
The seal matrix takes, ripping chakra out of him. The white edges bleed a brilliant blue, almost as if—no, the seals etched into the cliffside glow brightly, ringing an ethereal blue portal with white light.
From the portal steps a warrior, cloaked in unfamiliar armor.
Then, another. The portal sputters and dies.
Scant feet away the second turns to Tobirama, as if scenting the air. Tobirama is bleeding out, two hands on the grip of his sword plunged into the ground the only thing keeping him from proper collapse.
The man has startlingly silver hair, gold eyes like a wolf’s, and a soft turn to his jaw that makes his age impossible to place. There is a silver coin hanging from his neck.
The girl has pink hair, two shades away from white—either that or she has white hair like them, and the blood of her last kill hasn’t quite washed away.
Something tight in his chest eases absurdly, heart pounding in his throat at the recognition that thrums through him.
“Don’t fret, Fire Shadow.” A dry, scratchy voice sounds like laughter even as utterly amused eyes take in the sea of enemies, like a tactician’s, an eagle’s. “This isn’t the battle you die in.”
Tobirama can scarcely believe it, laughter springing up like first life from what he’s increasingly sure is a half-collapsed lung.
Hope, so bitterly absent, warms his fading fingertips. He is breathless with disbelief and his injured ribs.
Another witcher.
Here, at the edge of the world, somehow:
Another witcher.
“Sakura.” The witcher’s voice doesn’t rise, yet Tobirama hears it clearly all the same. “Kill.”
The girl unsheathes a silver sword and sets her jaw.
She crosses the distance he’d managed to win by the skin of his teeth, the scant quarter mile separating him from the pissed-off remnants of an army.
He almost stops her, opens his mouth to do just that—but in her green eyes is the spark of something incredibly familiar, even in profile. She looks more angry than eager but to his senses—the blown open senses that, in his injured state, he can’t even begin to tamp down—she is filled with a righteous fury.
“She gets protective of her witchers.” The man says, somehow kneeling next to Tobirama.
He huffs.
For so long he has been alone.
“From the future then?” The words rattle against his throat, barely audible. He grimaces.
“Rest, Tobirama.” The gold-eyed witcher grins, and he’s close enough that Tobirama can see the harsh scar above and below one eye. “Like I said: you don’t die in this battle.”
“I would have your name.” The wolf-coin on his chest says enough, but Tobirama has always wanted more. More than the ‘barely enough’ their kind must contend with, more than this troublesome existence.
“You will always have that.” The witcher tips his head, a small smile playing on his lips. “It’s Kakashi. Hatake Kakashi. Sleep, Tobirama. You’re safe with me.”
Glowing hands pressed to his chest, the healing one witcher could offer another, and Tobirama realized with utter surprise that it was true.
“So I am,” He marveled, and then stopped fighting quite so hard.
He fell like a puppet with cut strings, sword slipping from wet fingers, and Kakashi caught him with the ease of long practice.
He’s the White Wolf, after all. He won’t let his husband die a second time.
They’d burn down this entire goddamn world first.