"OBITO!"
Obito is buried on a Sunday. There is no body to bury, but the sun blinds her eyes and everything is blurry and dreamlike because of her tears. There aren't many people, not even sensei is here, having been whisked away because of his duties.
"He wanted to be Hokage," Kakashi whispered as they laid down the flowers on the stone. Orange irises. Courage. Passion. Wisdom. Obito died for those things. Died so those things could be used by others, by his home. But Obito had also died because of them. And that has Ling wondering, where was the courage of her comrade? The passion? Where had the wisdom of sensei been in that cave, amidst the falling rocks and the grief and fear?
Uchiha Obito loved Konoha. And whatever its answer, whether it answered at all— There was no body to bring back. There were only wilting flowers and the cold heard stone.
"He could've been Hokage, Kakashi," she murmured. "He could've become Hokage if he lived."
"I'm sorry," he said. But sorry doesn't bring anyone back, does it?
"It's not your fault," she replied on reflex. No, but it is. They had lost him because Team Seven wasn't a compatible team, to begin with. Kakashi and Obi too headstrong, Ling being too independent and air-headed. It was almost as if they were destined to fail from the start. If Obito and Kakashi had been on different teams... If Minato-sensei had realized that there was something missing from their teamwork...
Could Obito still be alive? Could Obito have lived past thirteen?
Did Obito die because of Kakashi and sensei?
"Ling." She kept walking, anger and indignation welling up in the depths of her stomach. If Kakashi hadn't been so reckless, so egoistic...
"Ling."
"Ling, please." A plea, an entreaty— Please, don't leave me, too. The flowers fall. Roots cut, the pictures of a boy gone. Why were they here? What difference did it make? The weeps of those around, those that watch with empty eyes. They do not bring back the dead.
Those who break the rules are the scum. Those who abandon their comrades are worse than scum.
The lonely boy she loved was dead. What about the lonely boy who didn't die? What about the girl who destroyed the world one lonely boy made another promise to protect? Who would protect those that remained?
Obito… I swore back then… That I'd look after them, didn't I?
She extends her hand backward, fingers uncurled, even if her heart is telling her to stop, even as she shakes in anger, even as her head tells her that he should suffer. Because he had been the one to ultimately kill Obito.
A warmth curls around her finger.
"Let's go, Kakashi," she said.
Ling vowed that day, that if it was what it took to protect the person that Obito died to save, then she would follow Kakashi to the ends of earth.
The true entirety of it sinks in. Death is a hard thing to comprehend. And it's only the morning after that she realizes Obito is gone. Obito is gone and he will never come back again. And that heaviness settles over her like a blanket, a dark claw that has wrapped around her heart. She can't smile, can't feel, can't talk.
And her dorm is too quiet, too small and too filled with memories of another lonely boy keeping her company.
She decides to move out of her lodgings provided back at the academy and rent a place by herself.
Ling goes hunting for lodgings, there aren't many people who would house shinobi in fear of who they are, in fear of the war, but one old lady takes a look at her lost eyes and young features and softens. She leads her to her new apartment and provides the key before giving her a small, but weary smile and leaving.
Ling looks into the empty apartment.
Worn wood and large windows that would provide chill during summers and seal the warmth in winters. She had a single bedroom and a small, used kitchen with renovated stoves that looked out of place with its modern steel and clear-cut edges. There was a large, round table made of the same wood that seemed to be everywhere in the entire building.
This will be home now.
Ling opens the window and feels the breeze ruffle her hair. A few green leaves flutter past, and she notices some old, scissor-cut red civilian seals for good luck taped onto the window. Ling decides to leave them and sets a pot of orange irises beside the window.
She only has flowers to bring to her apartment. For the first few weeks, she sleeps on the floor with a worn blanket and no pillows. It was hard and cold, but it's better than the scorn of her parents and the chill of the dorms.
Weeks pass. More flowers make their way into her apartment.
"Hello," she says with a smile. The woman in front of her gives a flat look before giving her the application.
The Shinobi mission assignment desk isn't something that most shinobi apply for, but Ling does it because she needs money and she gets in because she's a student of Minato Namikaze.
The woman looks at her with a look that screams coward and the older, jaded shinobi call her selfish for throwing her career away.
Ling cries from their words, but deep down, she knows that this is the only way. She's not Rin, who wants desperately to help those injured and neither is she Kakashi, child genius and able to survive anything in his way.
Ling didn't become a shinobi for honour or for kicks, she did because it was either this or the flower district or a family that never thought of her as good enough.
"Kakashi!" She called, one evening as she returned from another thrift store, "If you wanted to come in, you could've just knocked. Don't hang out on my roof like a stalker."
Her former teammate dropped down from the roof, nonplussed. Ling gave him what she hoped was her best-unimpressed look, hugging her new teaset to her chest protectively— Kakashi Hatake outside of being ninja-y and a scary child soldier was so dense around things it hurt.
"Hi," she said flatly.
"Hi," He smiled awkwardly, a mere curving of eyes — the type he gives to Gai when he's trying to console the Green Beast of Konoha when Kakashi doesn't want to have a match. "Can I come in?"
"Well, I promised to let you come in if you've finished hide-and-seek, so," she opens the door, "yes, come in."
He dips his head in thanks(?) and shuffled in her door, surprising her by taking the package out of her hands. She raised an eyebrow and followed him in, noting the forest green scarf she had knitted him for his twelfth birthday was wrapped around his neck snugly.
"Where do you want it?" he asked monotonously.
She smiles flatly. "It doesn't matter."
"Ling." Her palm heats from the seal she applied to her skin as she places her now-burning hand on the kettle. The whistle blows fluxes of steam from underneath the lid. Ling wonders if she's trying to redeem Kakashi by trying to feel a sense of physical pain akin to his suffering ( but what if he deserves it? ) to the scrubbed red skin, the veins showing beneath pale wrists.
She rolled her eyes and waved a hand. "Just put them on the counter. You do know where that is, right?"
"I'm not that blind," he replied immediately, quick, childish annoyance clear in his tone. Obediently, he sets the package down. He takes an awkward position beside, looking like he wants to say something but isn't quite sure what to say.
Was she being foolish? Befriending the boy that had killed her best friend?
Or was she being foolish by not reaching out to him like she knows she should be doing?
She says nothing and sets a cup of tea in front of him. "The next time you decide to stalk me, bring me some flowers." Ling turns away again, and begins to ramble away about some TV show and a movie premier Rin had dragged her to about some crappy romance between a prince and an assassin.
"Do you ever get tired of talking?" he asked her when the teacups emptied and Ling was now attempting with stitching another nameless flower onto the tablecloth.
She raises an eyebrow. "If you cared so much, stop camping at my house and go back to your own. It's not like you're homeless or anything."
Kakashi sucks in a cold breath.
People think she's rude and callous. People think that she can't filter her words and that she hurts people by accident. He's still, but shaking and the single grey eye filled to the brim with guilt. But people don't know that she does it on purpose. And she isn't guilty, isn't repentant for the way she's ripping him apart, making him take on the burden for something she should hold equal weight for. One eye covered and another forever looking into the past.
But still—
Ling spends the night tossing and turning before getting up resolutely the next morning. She marches up to Gai with a speech about friendship planned and he turns to her with a bright smile.
"Gooooooood morning! Beautiful blossom of Konoha!"
Ling gives him a smile and turns back around. Nope. Not that door. Never that door. She's stuck moping for the next week and terrorizes anyone within a mile radius of her.
"Take this," she throws a grey fleece blanket in Karachi's face the next time she found him skulking around her apartment. "And this." She throws her key into his face too.
He catches both, the piece of shit he is. He gives her a wide-eyed stare, clutching both things in his arm. His eye narrow as he raises his chin. "What makes you I want this?"
Ling juts her own chin out because if they're playing the I'm so much better than you I don't need anything game, she's not about to be outdone. "If you don't want it then throw it out, I don't care," she says with an air of superiority and with a flip of her hair, she's gone, leaving Kakashi to stare into space with a wide eye.
The next time he returns from a mission, she finds herself one cup less, one couch less and up one silver-haired, emotionally stunted genius former teammate in her apartment.
She makes them watch some weird soap opera about icky, gross feelings that night just to spite him. Her small, hardly ever touched TV set finally has its use.
Ling doesn't want to go back to field duty. It's cowardice and it's so, so stupid. But like Rin, after Kannabi Bridge, she isn't too fond of returning to that active spreed of killing. The mission desk clears out, and the few nameless shinobi with it. War efforts are still going along, and with that, her hours at the mission desk become shorter.
She subs in for a few academy classes.
"Class," Tomoe-sensei introduces her. "This is Hongou-sensei, she'll be my assistant for a few days."
Ling laughs, remembering the awe she had been in when she had her own classes. "You can just call me Hongou-senpai, I'm not that old." Tomoe jabs her in the side and a few of the girls giggle.
The kids learn genjutsu that day and Ling watches with some wistfulness at a few of the kids. Ling herself excelled in all of the academic proportions of the academy right up until Kenjutsu and Taijutsu, which she still worked hard on in the academy. Since she had been a civilian, there were no parents to object (or warn) to graduating early, nor was there a clan sitting behind her to support her if she got mediocre grades.
Some people were born with the advantage. Others worked their entire lives to catch up. Others never did, or were never able to.
"Mayumi, Mayumi! How do you do this?" A little dark haired boy complains as he watches his dark-haired counterpart demonstrate a genjutsu— A fluttering butterfly flawlessly.
A boy beside them rolls his eyes and slaps him on the back of the head. "She's busy. Why didn't you just ask me, Jin?"
Jin rolls his eyes. "Because I don't like you, duh! Know-it-all Kaoru!"
Ling laughs again. "Stop fighting, children," she says as she drops onto a desk beside them. Vaguely, in some of the back corner of her mind, she realizes she sounds like Kakashi.
Two boys turn their nose up at him while the girl looks at her with curious eyes. "Can you do genjutsu?" she asked suspiciously.
Ling laughs sardonically. "Brat, even if I couldn't, I'd do it better than you."
Jin and Kaoru turn to her, the two boys likely ganging up on her to earn the favour of Mayumi, the girl who currently has her pinned with a pair of narrowed hazel eyes.
Ushi, Hitsuji, Uma, Saru. The classroom disappears and with it, comes a meadow — golden and alight with life beneath a setting sun. The wind sways briefly before the cries of white cranes cuts through the silence.
The cranes fly over the skies above them as Ling perches on the desk and watches the children— A few gasp and others stare in awe. Ah, academy kids are so easy to please, she thinks, pleased that she was able to influence something positive.
"Alright," Tomoe claps her hands. "Kai." A few of the kids sigh in disappointment as the woman's gaze sharpens. "That, is a low-level genjutsu. And if you don't pay attention, you'll never learn it. Now, let's proceed to dispelling genjutsus. Hongou, if you would."
She beams and lifts herself off of the desk and shuffled back towards the front of the room.
The class goes on for the day, but the moment it ends, Ling finds herself surrounded by eager faces asking for her to tutor them or to create a genjutsu landscape for them. It's not bad, she thinks.
So she comes back. It's not until a year after that she realizes, some of them will die.
"Oi," Something vaguely cold drapes over her shoulders. "Are you cooking?'
Ling shrugs him off. Kakashi was weirdly touchy in the morning. "Not for you," she snipes. "Go get some food from the market with the fortune you've amassed from those A-ranked missions you love."
"Too far. Cook, slave"
"I'll poison it, you bastard. All of it."
"So we can die together? I'm not into that, no thanks," he says cheerily.
"Kakashiiiiiiii," she drags out in frustration, and he just laughs at her for one, two, seven seconds and Ling realizes she is a ninja. Her apartment's stable enough to fend for itself against Kakashi for one evening, at least, is her verdict.
She was wrong. Oh, so, so wrong.
Kakashi's laughing beside her as she looks at the multiple puppies piled in her living room. Minato's there too, grasping at his stomach as he struggles to rein in his laughter. Ling would like to die. Yes, dying at Kannabi doesn't sound so bad compared to this.
Dogs were infesting her apartment. They were everywhere. She takes the only available seat next to Kakashi and buries her face into her hands.
Kushina chooses that moment to step in. Ling splits her fingers to look at her. Sharp blue eyes observe Ling's apartment. "Why didn't you hold a wedding before moving in?" She seems genuinely hurt and not at all joking or mocking like she usually was, blue eyes blink rapidly with confused tears. "We could've chosen wedding dress and flowers and—"
And she bursts out laughing.
Ling makes the sound of a dying whale and sinks into Kakashi, trying to disappear.
Oddly enough, he, on the other hand, seems to be weirdly pleased about everything.