Fire of Will

Chapter 6: Necessary Measures

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Hands shoved deep in her pockets, Shinju leaned casually against the doorframe of the famed ramen shop.

Naruto should be here soon…

Right on cue: the blonde's lanky shape popped out over the horizon of the dusty street. The late afternoon sun's light almost reflected off of his hair, setting it ablaze.

"Aka-san!" he yelled, jogging toward her with a carefree air. "I'm so glad you wanted to eat dinner today, usually only Chouji will eat ramen with me, but he's on a mission. Well, anyway, I'm glad!" He stood laughing, one hand behind his head and the other still waving even though they were an arm's length apart. What a great smile… the thought brought a grin to even her hardened face.

"Let's eat, runt!" She ruffled the taller boy's hair as if he was a child, and he grinned stupidly.

"Ha ha ha," they both laughed and entered the brightly curtained shop.

"Two pork miso ramen with extra naruto!"

"Coming right up!" The old man looked at the pair warmly. "Shinju, it's been too long since you last dropped by! I remember when you were at the academy, running around causing trouble like this one." He looked fondly at Naruto and managed to make their nostalgic thoughts sparkle with the happiness of the current one.

Shinju blushed a little as Naruto sat in mock-shock next to her, mouth hanging open and gasping, "Nooo, you didn't!" to Shinju

"Haha, nice joke, oji-san!" Naruto pushed Shinju playfully and turned as Ayame served them the large, aromatic, steaming bowls.

"No, Naruto, she really was just like you. Maybe worse, ha ha!" The old man laughed. "Right, Shinju?"

Her smile widened a bit and finally reached her eyes. "He's right." She said softly, looking down at her colorful dish. "I was a little tomboy. A trouble-maker." She looked a little bittersweet as she remembered.

Naruto made a face.

"Come on, Naruto. Everyone has good and bad to remember, I'm not just a killing machine," She laughed. "Are you?" She smirked at him, somewhat boyishly, and punched him on the arm. Finally, they turned to their now not-so-boiling-hot food.

"Itadakimasu!" They shoveled mass after mass of the steaming, thick noodles into their mouths. The two shinobi devastated five bowls apiece, patting their bellies satisfactorily.

"Man, I need to come here more often…"

Both she and Naruto stuck their faces into the bowls so they could get to the tasty juice at the bottom, and the tiny noodle pieces. Setting the bowl down one-handedly, Shinju wiped her face with the back of her long ANBU glove. Naruto burped and unzipped his lightweight jacket to reveal a very stretched out Jounin shirt with a very round belly peeking out from underneath.

"No wonder that seal leaks chakra…"

Shinju smiled broadly, and the pair laughed heartily over the tactless joke. Shinju set down her chopsticks along with a generous amount of money.

"Gochisou sama deshta!"

She tugged at Naruto's sleeve and they walked out of the shop together, into another beautiful evening in Konoha, the sun just getting ready for bed.

"You really didn't have to Aka-san…"

"It's ok. I wanted to," She smiled a small smile. "Where can I spend all that money I make on our S-class missions anyway? Why not spend it on my little brother?"

Naruto threw her a sidelong glance, sweat-dropping. "Little Brother?" he wondered.

"Hey, I thought you were supposed to be some kind of hard-ass!"

"Sometimes, people choose to show sides of themselves that make others think a certain way about them." Shinju looked warmly at him. "You of all people should know that, Naruto."

He nodded slightly. He could understand that, but purposefully not wanting friends? That sounded like someone he had known before, someone from another life…

"Why would you want to do that?"

Shinju sighed as they reached the KIA memorial, the black obelisk a shimmering orange and purple in the sunset. She turned to the young ANBU.

"Because of this, shinobi like Kakashi and I feel the same way. So many of our generation have their names carved here on this stone. I hope you don't have to feel as deeply as we do about it, but I want you to know, I want you to think about this, Naruto." She looked soulfully into his eyes. "Sometimes, you are just afraid of losing one more person, of letting someone get too close to you. Of being the person erased from the lives of the ones you love."

She breathed deeply of the air of the oncoming night. Crisp, and cold. Fall in Konoha. More and more stars appeared as she looked up.

"How do you think Sakura felt about you when we were in that hole together with Orochimaru? How did you feel about Sakura?" She looked back at the memorial and put her hands in her pockets. "That is the feeling I'm avoiding." She ended in a mumble, talking to herself, almost.

"Oh." Naruto shifted his weight, not knowing what to do or say. Why was she telling him all of this?

Shinju crouched next to the stone, running one hand over the rough, carved surface. So many names from recent years…

"Thank you, Naruto." She stood and put a hand on his shoulder. "If you ever need anything, you can find me at Ichiraku." She smiled again, a small smile warmer than any previous she'd ever given him. The faint light of the moon shone in her eyes, and Naruto smiled back, seeing their sheen of unshed tears. With one last pat, Shinju turned and walked away, hands back in her pockets.

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Shinju reclined on her roof, arms behind her head, face turned towards the stars. A week and a half had already gone by, and she hadn't left the village once. Sighing, she sat up. She had to know… she jumped down, hoping he was still awake.

Stepping lightly along the path, she finally came to the clearing and found who she was looking for. Noting her presence, the shock of silver hair turned slightly, but the rest of his body remained unmoving, standing relaxed in front of the memorial as she had seen him do hundreds of times in years before. Shinju padded up beside him and also stood, staring down silently at the tribute to her fallen comrades, their only remains engraved into the moonlit obsidian.

Several minutes passed. Shinju finally turned and whispered,

"Kakashi."

He turned and looked at her back, noticing the curve of her form-fitting uniform against the blue-white of the grass in the clearing. Suddenly, she threw herself onto his chest, hands curling up around the back of his neck and fingers lacing themselves into his thick, diamond strands. Kakashi wrapped his arms around her tightly in response, in a welcoming embrace. Her silent tears continued to flow and her shoulders heaved with each noiseless sob. It was all pouring out onto his chest; Kakashi could feel each hot tear drop onto his shirt and chill in the night air. The years of torture at Orochimaru's hands, all of the pain of friends made and lost in battle. The guilt of not being able to protect the people you love the most. He felt the weight of her arms around his neck, felt the weight of the burden on her heart similar to that pulling on his own. He brought her closer, tilting his own face toward her neck.

"Shhh…" he stroked her hair in a fatherly sort of way. "Daijobu desu…"

She tilted her face upward, and the two locked gazes. Kakashi could feel the pain written on her tear-streaked face hit his gut and twist around.

"Kakashi," she breathed again, and fought a sob down. "I love you."

Kakashi's mind raced and reeled, and instinct told him to push her away. Shinju could clearly see the confusion in his eye as he struggled with everything the words she finally said to him entailed.

Please… she prayed silently as she pleaded with Kakashi's heart. Please.

His gaze never wavered from hers, and as he calmed he placed both of his hands on her shoulders, breaking their embrace.

"I can't." He ground out, and for the first time in his life, he saw a genuine look of fear bloom in Shinju's eyes. She cried softly as she pushed Kakashi away, then she ran away from him, from the memorial, from everything she stood for, leaving a few shining drops clinging to his vest.

Kakashi touched them softly, as though they carried some fragile piece of the pained kunoichi, and a tear of his own rolled over the top of his mask into the grass at the foot of the memorial.

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She leapt across the rooftops of the sleeping village silently, blindly. Shinju felt an emptiness in her chest like never before, one different from the one she forced there when she became a killer, one different from the one that the warmth of friendship and family had once touched. She felt broken inside, and her head started to spin as she finally made it through her window and collapsed on the wooden floor, sobbing loudly. It was as though all the years came up in a fountain, seeking escape at last. Her mind throbbed with memories of missions failed and missions completed, of every beating and rape in Sound, of everything she lived for torn from her in the one instant she finally let her guard down. Shinju dragged herself to the side of her futon where she kept her weaponry. Piercing her thumb, she watched as the thick red liquid slowly exited the wound, forming a large crimson drop. She turned around and knelt, smearing her blood on the wood, drawing a seal on the floorboards next to her bed. At the center of the seal, the character for love reflected the moonlight. Forming three simple hand seals, she pressed her open palm onto the character and impregnated the seal with a message encoded using her chakra. Only he could open this message now.

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Itachi and Kisame watched from the tree outside of her house. How long would they go unnoticed? They watched as she performed some sort of jutsu on her floor. What in the hell was she doing?

Itachi didn't want to wait to find out. He watched as she took a firmer grip on her kunai, and wondered if she had detected their presence. She had long since stopped crying, thankfully. But if she intended to kill the pair, she would soon have a new reason to cry.

Shinju tightened her grip on the kunai in her hand. She couldn't be hurt anymore, she couldn't take anymore pain. This had just been a trigger, but now she focused on the moments that had just passed between her and Kakashi Hatake.

"I wanted so little, so little… but it's all over now. I've ruined anything we might have had before. Kakashi, why can't you love me? If I can love, after everything I've been through…

"Kakashi…"

She grasped the knife in both hands and swung it upwards, reached the apex of the arc and came back to slam the weapon down into her own throat, finally allowing her chakra with all of its killing intent to flare for one last time.

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"Shit!" Itachi panicked for a millisecond before trying to make it into the room in time. As soon as she let that particular intent loose, he knew that their mission was in serious jeopardy. As he reached her profusely bleeding body, he inspected the self-inflicted wound and realized that she had nicked her carotid artery, and would be dead within about five or eight minutes if left unattended.

"Shit!" Kisame scowled at their target and crouched next to Itachi who was holding her and pressing on the bloody wound. "How the fuck did we know this was her next move? Pein's gonna be sooo pissed."

"She'll live. Hatake is coming, he must have followed her home. Let's get out of here, Kisame." Itachi exhaled smoothly, gently laying her down on top of her jutsu. He brushed her hair out of her face and let a finger lay on her slightly parted lips for a moment. Warm breath…

The pair disappeared.

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Kakashi paused for a moment at the memorial, firstly out of shock at the events that had just transpired in his life, secondly to say goodnight to his fallen friends as he was about to leave the memorial. There was no way he would let her go home by herself, not in this condition, not after knowing her for so many years. He remembered Tsunade's words as he walked along the road into the main part of the village.

::flashback::

"I'm sorry but I'm going to have to start assigning missions to her. We have no choice. All of you as Jounin understand the situation, I'm sure."

She had sat with her fingers interlocking, looking out from under that luckless diamond on her forehead.

"One of you is going to have to be paired with her."

Tsunade paused expectantly. The Jounin seated around the table all looked at each other uncomfortably. No one really knew that much about her, except that she was just an average shinobi, and that she had been captured and marked by Orochimaru. Actually, they were both reasons not to want her on one of their teams. Finally, reluctantly, Kakashi had volunteered.

"Thank you, Hatake. This meeting is dismissed. Hatake, I want to see you in my office."

He had followed her there, Shizune and Ton-ton trailing the two. Not knowing what she could possibly have in mind for him, he stood in his usual spot, his hand already straying towards a certain orange paperback… no. He checked himself.

"Kakashi, there are a couple of things that you should know about Shinju. She has changed, she is not the same kunoichi that you knew from the academy. I am granting her the same elite status that you have, which is part of why I am so glad that you volunteered to have her on your team." Her face twisted into something smile-like. "I thought you would ask for her anyway. Don't know why." She really did smile now. Then the smile vanished.

"What a woman…" he remembered thinking. Talk about hard to read. Weirdo…

"Hatake, be careful around her. Never let your guard down. She is completely loyal to Konohagakure, I'm sure, but I'm not so sure about other things. During her stay with Orochimaru, she acquired powers that are almost unbelievable, powers that I would only expect from another Sannin." She paused here, pulling a bottle of sake out from a desk drawer. Shizune looked like she was about to say something, but shut her mouth when Tsunade glared at her. Ton-ton whimpered a pitiful 'pui!'.

"Shinju has an unmatched sense of duty to our village as well as courage and compassion. Her ability to maintain complete control in the line of fire is outstanding. What I'm worried about isn't her ability to succeed in missions or to survive in battle. What I'm afraid of is what goes on inside of her off of the field."

Tsunade took a long sip.

"The things that happened to her when she was in the Sound were less than pleasant. She doesn't sleep well, if at all. Somehow, she manages to continue with her life during missions and during the day without collapsing, god knows how. Her moods are extremely unpredictable, one moment she may be helping someone with something trivial like pulling weeds or cooking and the next moment she's staring into space or trying desperately to contain a killing aura within her chakra. She has never asked me for anything, only to allow her to be a shinobi and to keep a certain secret, but other than that she is fiercely independent. I don't suggest you interfere in a fight if she is attacked or picks one herself.

"My main point here is that you will have to put up with what comes your way as far as she is concerned. In regards to missions, you have the best on the field at your side. I'm just warning you to watch out for her more –personal side. Depression is like a wire trap, Kakashi.

She paused here and made eye contact.

"All it takes is a trigger."

Kakashi just nodded and left at the time, but now he understood. After two years of seeing her only in action and paying attention only to the thin veneer that separated her inner turmoil from the rest of the world, he was now paying the price for letting his emotional guard down. For accidentally attacking her. He was the trigger. Yet he wondered, for how long had these feelings for him been real for her? Years? Months? A decade was even a plausible timeframe in this case…

Suddenly, as he walked past Naruto's place, he felt a killer aura flare.

And he recognized the signature.

"Shit, I was right… I gotta get there in time!" Kakashi's inner self screamed at him and his body moved faster than he'd ever felt himself move in his life, driven by desperation and fear. As he neared the apartment, he could smell the blood, he could feel a certain… feeling… Somehow he was reminded of the day when, as a child, he had discovered his father's dead body and the suicide note that lay waiting for him by the futon.

"Masaka…" he whispered. Now it was Kakashi's test. Should he go into that apartment? What if he made it in time, if she was still alive… could he do something? If she was dead, what should he do? Kakashi didn't want to face this again, didn't want to see someone he cared for destroy themselves like this, like his father…

But he was already at her window, he was already kneeling by her body, he was already cradling her head in his arms, he was already screaming at her, cursing the blood that covered the floor, the kunai in her hand, the words she had said, himself. Her blood…

No… yes. It still flowed. Barely, but it did, out of the gaping hole she had torn in her neck. Kakashi panicked and adrenaline and instinct completely took over his body. He picked her up, wrapping one hand around her neck awkwardly, but he didn't care right now he had to get there, he had to get there right now right now right now…

He made it to the hospital where Shizune was on duty. Kakashi dumped Shinju on the desk and yelled at her, "Do something, do something right now, she's about to die! Shizune!"

Shizune was already inspecting the wound, mending the artery. She had a wide-eyed kind of look on her face, but there was no trace of fear or shock detectable in her features, just a kind of awe at the wound in Shinju's neck, and an almost worried look that said that she had been waiting for this to happen. Shizune looked up at Kakashi as she sealed the cut artery shut and understood. Tears flowed freely from the copy-nin's exposed eye, he looked at her for a long moment, then turned and stalked out of the hospital.