Part VI | Chapter 3
His hand pressed to the wooden door and he sent a spike of chakra through it. The blue swirls and characters of the seal shone, soaked in Gohama's chakra, and the door unlocked for him. Kakashi didn't know how to feel about the fact that she still had his chakra in her locking seals afters years, even after he had disappeared from her life.
The door creaked as he slowly pushed it open. Kakashi didn't understand why there was hesitance in his gesture, it wasn't as if he associated the interior of the apartment with Gohama. He had only been there once before when Root kidnapped her and he remembered how impersonal the space had felt, with only her smell and clothes to attest to her living there. And the book, of course, he had never forgotten the tragic words of a dead mother, a mother he had killed, as Hansuke read them to him.
The apartment was the same as it had been three years ago. A sofa, a coffee and dining table and a built-in bookshelf with only one book in it. His nostrils flared at the unmistakable scent of Gohama, one he had familiarised himself with like no other after living a month with her. There was also dust and staleness that irritated his nose but Gohama was here, and it made his heart squeeze.
Kakashi didn't even know what he was doing here. It was the first time he had left his apartment and he had decided to torment himself with this. His feet had been pulled there, his eye always wandering onto the direction of her apartment as he tried to return to his normal Konoha habits and visit the Memorial Stone. He had had to get over this, close the last piece of Gohama in this village, and so now he was here, smelling her scent, shifting on his feet and staring at that one lone book in her massive shelf.
Kakashi missed her. The feeling was so foreign to him it had taken a week in Konoha for him to understand what was this discomfort and longing inside his chest.
The first night he had woken up from a nightmare with a start, staring up at his white ceiling and not a decorated coffered one and alone. If he extended his arms to the side he would hit his wall or let his hand fall over his bed, there was no soft shoulder or quiet presence that he had to carefully not disturb, there was also no gentle hand shaking him awake and offering him a glass of water when the nightmare became to ruthless.
Kakashi had brushed a heavy hand over his face and turned on his side to find a wall and not the curve of Gohama's body under the duvet or the flow of her dark hair. With only inhale there had only been the musty smell of dust and a closed home and his own, no lemon scented shampoo or feminine musk.
He hadn't allowed much of his attention to fall on the holes that had seemed to open in his routine. It was common after a long mission to wake up and find himself surprised for being back home. It usually left only a sense of comfort as he pushed his nose onto his pillow and wiggled inside his duvet with a sigh. This time there had been that sense of displacement. Kakashi hadn't allowed himself to dwell on it, sure that with a few more nights sleeping in his own bed and shitting in his own bathroom the feeling of home would return full force.
It did feel amazing to sit down on his own toilet, but not as much to wake up alone.
Kakashi hadn't even realised how ingrained their routine had become, especially when during those full weeks he had constantly reminded himself that all of it was fleeting, all of it was an interlude in both their lives.
He had found himself making tea for two people in the morning, as he had usually been the one to wake up earlier – when he wasn't, it meant Gohama hadn't slept at all. He had found himself sighing forlornly, as a kid sad at a rainy day, as he sipped his tea, ears overwhelmed with the noises of a village, and glanced out the window to find buildings and rooftops and not the lush weeds of the backyard. Or sighing as he ate his dinner with his mask carelessly pooled around his neck, in his high table and chair, delicious and take-out, not some game meat poorly seasoned or dry river fish.
It was ridiculous and it shocked him. Kakashi had always been entirely too comfortable in his unchanging twenty-year-old routine and petty little month had suddenly unveiled how completely lacking it was. If he hadn't been feeling too miserable to leave his apartment, he would even had sought out Gai out of his own accord or munched some lunch out of Tenzo's pocket, gotten a drunk at Ippon.
The worst wasn't even his ruined routine, habits were easy to return too and he wasn't naive enough to think he wouldn't slid back into being a comfortable loner in a few weeks. The worst was how much he missed Gohama, how much he actually missed their freak of a life in Buki.
One day he had woken up, his eyes closed as he turned to the side, the side where Gohama usually slept, the image of her unguarded serene expression vivid behind his eyelids and he wasn't even using the sharingan's memory.
"I miss you." Kakashi had whispered without thought. It wasn't the first time he had made secret whispered confessions to a sleeping Gohama, even if this one was only his imagination.
His eyes had snapped open already expecting to find the white wall before them and not Gohama's sleeping face. Still the sight had pierced through him. Somehow, saying it out loud, marking it clearly in his heart, made the hole darker and the missing more painful. Kakashi hadn't left his bed that day, masochistically going through memories of her, not only in Buki, even if those were his favourite, but since the beginning, the second beginning at least, when she had first arrived to Konoha.
He missed how she laughed at his stupid jokes, the sound rumbling like a purr in his chest. How she teased him just as mercilessly as he teased her, sometimes even worse. How she would hide behind her hair and Kakashi usually pretended it was an efficient cover. How when she was training in the backyard and him reading on the engawa, his eyes would wander towards her movements and she would look at him with a shy bright smile with flushed cheeks.
Kakashi missed hearing Gohama talk, he enjoyed the constant murmur of her voice, as present and touchable as if she had her hand resting on his arm or knee. And she actually talked a lot. It wasn't constant, she could spend two days without saying more than necessary comments for two people living and training together, and suddenly she would find something to talk about and wouldn't shut up for an hour. Kakashi would have a book opened or simply look at her, nodding sometimes, other crinkling his eyes in a small smile, depending on the theme he could talk back just as much.
Or how Gohama would pick wild flowers to lay by her people's graves and a bouquet always found its way to a small vase on the table where they ate. How his place at the table was facing the backyard and hers at his side so she could turn away for him and he could eat restfully without worrying over revealing his face.
How she would like his food, which he had never let fill into his ego, seeing as Gohama was a terrible cook, which he had also teased her about, except her rice, her rice was actually very good. She would also silently ask him to serve her and force herself to eat whatever he had put in her plate, even when each chew and swallow became more of a struggle. Now Kakashi worried, certain that she wasn't eating properly when it had never been more crucial as a missing-nin.
Gohama would spend most of the day training while he had read on the engawa. It had felt like a vacation sometimes, not that he truly knew what one felt like, seeing as he had never taken one. She would take her breaks, in warmer days walking towards him on those toned legs with strained lean muscles from exercising, skin glistering with droplets of sweat and the water she was sipping at spilling down her chin and chest.
Kakashi always thought she was trying to get a reaction out of him, but then she would sprawl herself on him, definitely more cute than sexy, taking his book with her. A gesture somewhat reminiscent of his ninken when they wanted attention. Kakashi hadn't known how to deal with it, his ninken required only a few pets, the woman with her cheek pressed to the floor, her ass in the air and stomach locking his hands between his legs was more complicated, especially when it wasn't his place to touch her.
She would whine about being sweaty, which he could already feel and smell, and whine that he was too hot and slid down to press herself onto the cool wood floors of the engawa while making an obscene sigh of delight.
He had once found her singing to herself, some of those ordinary songs about love, as she studied a fuinjutsu scroll laying on her lap while her feet, crossed at the ankle, shook at the rhythm of her little humming. Kakashi had watched the scene with an amused delighted smile and the weight of his gaze pulled Gohama from her absorption. Her lips had snapped shut as her eyes met his. There had been a small delay before the brightest shade of red he had ever seen on her skin spread from her forehead down her chest.
His mouth had been itching to speak the teasing lines his brain had relayed in an instant, but that would have come at the cost of Gohama's oblivious singing. So instead he had smiled at her, all the delight in his chest spilling through his eyes, and gone back to reading his book. Her gaze had been pinned on him for a long time before she had cleared her throat awkwardly and continued her fuinjutsu study.
It had taken her an entire week to obliviously fall back into humming and after that it had happened six more times. Kakashi still didn't understand why singing to herself had left her entirely too embarrassed while dancing with his ninken, her hands holding their paws up while they paced around at the sound of radio static, hadn't fazed her even with his teasing. He had never thought his ninken would enjoy being manhandled while standing on two legs, but even after years they could still surprise him.
His stomach quivered as he remembered he had yet to summon his pack – they were probably wondering why he hadn't called them in days – and explain to them that Gohama would no longer be around. He could see Pakkun's 'I told you so' look in the back of his lids. Kakashi had told it himself, that it was fleeting, that it was an interlude and he would let her go.
Nothing could have softened the blow. While his habits were easily fixed, there was no way to fix the missing of Gohama in his life. Kakashi could only endure and hope that the hole would fade. It wouldn't, but he could pretend it would.
Maybe because he was a masochist in his miserable self-pitying and pining, Kakashi reached for the book. His fingers gliding over the drawing on the cover, a blue dragon painted in traditional style, one of the main kami worshipped in Snow and probably based on Seiryu, and then the title, Myths and Folktales of the Land of Snow.
With careful fingers, even if they were trembling – why were they trembling? It was just a book -, Kakashi opened it, his eyes falling onto the elegant flowing calligraphy of Kyura Misaka.
"My dear Hama-chan, happy birthday! I hope this is your first book of many others. It's still a few years before you can read what I wrote, but until then (and, if you let me, after) I'll read this book to you, as my mother read it to me.
May its stories free your spirit and kindle your dreams.
You are the snowdrop of my life.
With love,
Mother."
Fuck. Kakashi hadn't thought it would hit him this hard, but still he felt as if Tsunade herself had pouched him, his chest caving in on itself, lungs straining to get air and heart desperate in its rhythm.
Kakashi closed the book in a snap and, as he was putting it its rightful place, he found a thin stem peeking through the pages. With the same care as before, for a moment forgotten in his franticness, he let his nail slid between the papers and separated them. Pressed into the pages were a few dried snowdrops and a thin thread of jute.
He knew those, he had given them to Gohama himself, left them in her window sill for her, after she had made a henge on a stone to turn it into snowdrops on the anniversary of Obito's death. Kakashi had been letting the grief and guilt swallow him whole at the Memorial as Gohama had stepped out of the training grounds with her two teammates.
Her sudden presence had been like a beacon, her bubbly laugh jingling above the others, but he had expected her to pass without even realising he was there. Instead of ignoring him, as he had been avoiding her then, she had kneeled in front of the stone and placed the pebble-made-flowers there.
It had taken over him, the same as in Buki, his affectionate need for her and all the alcohol in his blood had robbed him of his caution until he saw his fingers had reached for her smooth skin. Kakashi had pulled himself out of the thoughtless daze before he touched her and had warned her, told her to leave. He hadn't deserved her compassion.
And so, on an impulse as the following day he had passed by the Yamanaka flower shop, he had ordered snowdrops from the Land of Snow and placed the simple bouquet on her windowsill.
Kakashi didn't know how to feel, except of the prickling sensation in his eyes, as he watched the dried flowers against the character inked pages. Even the thread she had saved.
With a shaky breath through a lump in his throat, Kakashi closed the book gently and saved it in one of his vest pockets, where he usually kept Icha Icha.
Was it stealing? Probably, but this book was a precious thing that shouldn't be left here to whither, forgotten and abandoned. Kakashi would keep it safe, safer than any of his Icha Icha, even the special signed first edition of Paradise, if he ever saw Gohama again he would return it. It was a justifiable theft, unlike him stealing the Kyura Anthology right out of Kyura Misaka's office, her poem about Gohama still inside it and Gohama's hand still seared onto the burnt leather cover.
It was becoming too much, being here inside Gohama's apartment with her scent and the impersonal feel of the furniture, quiet and blank, lifeless without her here.
The sun was warm, unlike Buki's late autumn, against the uncovered skin of his face and arms. Kakashi made his way towards the Memorial, as he had meant to do before his detour. The book settled as a token burning into his chest. With each step, each rustle of his vest, he became hyper-aware of its weight.
From the distance he could already see the casual figure leaning against the red rail of the bridge, but Kakashi couldn't find the energy to stray from the usual path he took. It also wouldn't take long for Gai to find him now that he was out of his apartment, it was best to get used to people talking to him.
Gai had come by, knocking on his door and calling out for his eternal rival, instead of barging through the door and yelling at the top of his lungs. And when Kakashi hadn't answered he hadn't pushed, leaving with a quiet almost gentle goodbye. Kakashi would have to find a way of paying him back for all the years of his sparkling and reliable friendship.
Hands deep in his pockets and eye pinned in front of him, he walked as if alone in the streets.
"As a friend, I should warn you that you look like shit, Kakashi."
"My thank you, Genma." Kakashi answered with a small nod without altering the rhythm of his steps.
"Kakashi." Genma called, voice firm, and he continued on his way, even if he knew Genma had been waiting for him there. He also knew what he would want to talk about.
"Don't evade me, bro. Not when I finally got hold of you." Kakashi's feet never stopped the sluggish path, his dark eye straining against the bright light of Fire's sun with no buildings to mellow it. "I fucking swear, Hatake, I'll chain you down if I have to."
"Maa, I'm not into that kinky shit, Shiranui." He drawled out, his fingers shifting into the familiar seal, ready to disappear in a cloud of smoke now that his attempt at returning to normality was ruined.
"Not from what I've heard."
It took Kakashi every ounce of his shinobi training not to react at those words. It appeared that all of Konoha already knew how Hansuke's team had found him. Fucking ANBU and their big mouths. It wasn't shame that boiled through his veins, it was anger. Anger at the endless gossip and ill fame pretending they knew who Gohama was, who Kakashi was, meddling with things they knew nothing about.
There was helplessness too. Konoha would never know the true reason for its sour relationship with Gohama and Konoha would never know how it had been an accomplice to the massacre of an entire village. All they cared about was the infuriating resentment towards Gohama because that entertained and that was easy and blind and fit into their preconceptions.
Chakra was making its way towards his fingers, but Genma's voice stopped him from sending chakra into it. "Kakashi, please. I'm in the dark here. Gohama is my friend."
He turned around to face him. "Why not ask Hansuke or Nikato?"
"They weren't with her for a month."
"She left to honour her village."
"Don't bullshit me, Hatake. That's not the only thing that happened. If so, she wouldn't have just left out of nowhere at the end of a mission, leaving her goldfish behind, not saying goodbye to anyone. Her team wouldn't look depressed and you, Kakashi, you that last I knew were avoiding her like the plague wouldn't have fucking disappeared to stay with her."
A hand pulled his bandana off and brushed through his long hair, senbon looping frantically across his lips.
"And then she tried to kill you? I'm so confused, okay? I know Gohama, at least I thought I knew… and I know she wouldn't have tried to kill you for no reason, even with how much you hurt her before."
"She didn't try to kill me, she threatened me, but she didn't touch me. It was chakra exhaustion from the sharingan. The rest is classified."
"Just tell me Gohama's not… just… how bad is it?"
Kakashi turned his eye from the worried, even scared, ones of Genma, the fear circling there so painful as it mirrored his own.
"That bad…"
"I don't know. I can't tell you much, but know that what Konoha says about her isn't true."
"I know that. And Kakashi…" His eyes shifted to where they followed the course of the rived to Genma's gentle understanding ones. "I don't know what happened between you two, but there are a lot of things going around… What I do know of Gohama from her drunken moments of honesty is that she doesn't take having sex with someone lightly, she needs to trust that person. She's not like me, Hansuke or even you. I don't know if that makes sense with what happened but I thought you should know that."
Kakashi didn't say anything, what could he say to that when he didn't even know what to think of it. The memory that spurred in his mind wasn't even of their first and last night together, but of that one night on a fucked up mission when Gohama had said that she trusted him, had let him touch her and for a moment erase the violence of Dazai seared into her skin.
"Wanna go for a drink? My treat." Genma asked, pulling him out of the sharingan image of Gohama's bottomless green eyes under the darkness of the room and the feel of her cheek under his calloused fingertips.
"Another day." Kakashi answered with a wave and turned around.
"It's a date, Hatake! I'll drag you if I have to!" Genma called out for him before his signature disappeared.
The space around the Memorial was fortunately empty and he stepped into the slot of frayed grass in front of it, the familiarity washing away some of the tension in his muscles. Kakashi still wasn't ready to share all that was weighing in his chest, yet it was with a small wave of relief that he realised he had missed this. Kakashi anchored himself into it, as a man lost on high sea.
His fingers played around with the pebble inside his pocket before he pulled it out. His rough pad brushed over it, a few grains of dirt loosening from the smooth surface. Kakashi closed his palm around it and after squeezing one last time. The small pebble from the monastery's ground and made of Snow's rock that he had saved to later rest it at the foot of the memorial. He felt Tsukate deserved to have a token of his sacrifice there, even if he had been Buki until his last breath.
When he had conspired to Konoha's attack, his allegiance had been not only to his own people but to every life that would have been lost with a new war. Tsukate had fought for Konoha's people too and the cenotaph that engraved in memory and stone the lives of ninja given for the people of Konoha should also have his, even if silently, even if Kakashi would be the only one to know of it. He would bear the oblivious gratitude of an entire village.
His fingers traced the names of his precious people, Obito, Rin, Minato, Kushina. And even if it wasn't carved there, Gohama.
It wasn't the first time he had found himself whispering her name in his mind. He was constantly making up lines he wanted to say to her but never would. That habit had started here, at the cenotaph, with Obito's death. He would stand there, his mind running with words and speeches and narrations for his dead friend to hear, even though he knew he never would. With each person he lost, he found one more to add to the list of listeners, until he had found himself in the habit of writing thoughts in his mind that were meant for no one but himself to hear.
And now he did the same with Gohama and she wasn't even dead.
A familiar signature approached him from behind, making her chakra clear. He didn't feel like enduring the presence of anyone and anything but his own self-pity, but he didn't puff away, Sakura had been smart enough to hide her chakra until even he wouldn't just ditch someone.
"Kakashi-sensei." She called in a quiet hesitant voice.
Now he felt like an asshole, it wasn't anyone's fault but that he was in a bad mood, and he didn't want Sakura to feel uncomfortable around him, her former sensei, even if it was mostly a rank title with no practical weight, he hadn't taught her anything. "Hmm?"
"Tsunade-sama is summoning you to her office." She informed him and already he could feel her signature walking away.
Kakashi turned around and in a nonchalant way with wide careless strides caught up to her. "Are you going that way?" He asked with a nod of his head.
"Yes."
And now that they were walking towards the village side by side, Kakashi realised it wasn't that easy to act like a normal nice and invested human being when he felt worse than scum. In the small instants between hearing her hesitant voice and catching up to her, Kakashi had decided he would try to salvage a semblance of a relationship between two comrades with Sakura.
They had been through so much together in the few years they had known each other. Sakura was one of the few people he actually felt comfortable around and definitely one of his precious people. Still Kakashi had never let his aloofness drop around her. Maybe it was because she reminded him of Rin.
Shit. That was a dangerous thought. After his failure to Sasuke, and all of team 7, he had tried to stay away from the impulse of seeing a reflection of his own genin team in them. Everyone was his own person and comparisons could only hurt them.
"How is your genjutsu?" Kakashi started, while fixing his gaze straight ahead.
"Average. I prefer a more direct approach and have been focussing my training on that." From the corner of his eye, Kakashi could see the tilt of Sakura's head as she eyed him curiously. "Why?"
Kakashi still remembered one of the scarce moments when he had acted as a teacher towards her. He had commended her on her genjutsu affinity. And that had been it. He hadn't even bothered with teaching her one single genjutsu of the hundreds he knew.
What a joke of a sensei. And what was more aggravating to him was that he didn't even know why. He could have found excuses in the time and patience Sasuke and Naruto had required from him, but that still wouldn't have hindered a simple afternoon for teaching Sakura.
He had helped her train for the chunin exams after Naruto left with Jiraiya and it hadn't been because he was free of Sasuke and Naruto. It had been Gohama.
Gohama had asked if he would train her, already suspecting that he would drop Sakura as a student. It had offended him and his pride had been the thing to actually make a sensei out of him, even if for only a couple of days. And Gohama had been right, he had dropped Sakura. It was fascinating. Even in her first week in Konoha Gohama had managed to get under his skin.
Maybe it was Gohama's doing again, this whole attempt at being present for the people he actually cared about. Kakashi knew he wouldn't suddenly spread hugs and speeches like Gai did with his team, but he could try to shed some of his distance.
Kakashi gave a sidelong glance to Sakura, a confused frown on her face as she looked at him. There was a new fierceness in her that hadn't been there on their year as Team 7, the same one that had shone through when she had unearthed him with her sole fist. He was glad Sakura had found her way as a kunoichi and had never actually listened to anything he had said.
"I can see how punching your way through a battle fits your style better."
"What's that supposed to mean, Sensei?"
Now it was Kakashi's turn to frown at the eyes narrowed at him, and he lifted an eyebrow in surprise. He knew Sakura, much like her shisho, had a short temper, but why was she mad at him?
"I may not be at level with the sharingan, but I can still get my way around genjutsu better than Naruto, and even Sai."
Oh. She thought he was degrading her abilities. "That's not what I meant. You have affinity to genjutsu and I was wondering if maybe you'd want me to show you some genjutsu. But I guess I'm quite a few years late for the teaching role."
"Oh." Sakura looked down at her hands, the sudden shyness reminiscent of twelve-year-old-girl that had first entered his team. "I would like that."
"You would?"
"Of course, Kakashi-sensei! You're probably the best ninja in the village at genjutsu! I had been thinking of asking Kurenai-sensei to teach me a few genjutsu, but after… and now that she is expecting, I wouldn't want to put that burden on her."
Kakashi clenched his jaw as he turned to look straight ahead. Sakura hadn't even considered asking him and from her words it was clearly not because of her doubt in his abilities. Did she think herself a burden to him?
Now that he looked back, between her fight with Sasori, Chiyo's death, meeting Sasuke, Akatsuki's growing threat, when had he asked Sakura how she was doing? He had a habit of crossing her path a few times a month to see with his own eyes, but usually did nothing more than give her one of his crinkled smiles. Normal people wouldn't take that as a sign of concern.
"How have you been doing, Sakura?" Kakashi asked as he held door of the Hokage Tower opened for her to pass under his arm.
"Good."
"And now the real answer."
"I don't know… overwhelmed, determined… scared…"
There was shame in the way her eyes fell to look at the path their feet were making. If only Sakura knew how terrified he was below all the aloof slouch of his shoulders.
"Fear isn't a bad thing. It's what actually keeps us alive, and you probably know more than me about the biology behind that. The shinobi that tells you they wouldn't be scared fighting enemies like Akatsuki, or of watching their friends die is lying."
Kakashi watched her intently, seeing if she understood the hidden confession behind his words. From her wide eyes, she did.
"It's okay to feel fear, you just can't let it freeze you. And considering you fought Sasori and lived to tell it, I'm sure you don't have many problems with that."
"Thank you, Sensei." Sakura said earnestly with a small nod of her head. "And you, how are you doing?"
"Maa, there's a new Icha Icha movie coming out, so I can't complain." Kakashi answered with a smile before turning around and walking down the corridor. "Meet you at training ground 3, at 8AM tomorrow." He called out feeling Sakura's eyes follow him down the corridor.
The nonchalance didn't leave him as he opened the Hokage's office door without knocking and stood before Tsunade's desk with a slouch. The Hokage didn't say anything, her eyes lowering to the ANBU vest resting on her desk, and Kakashi let his eye land on it too.
«Tsunade. How's the weather back in Konoha? Here has been rather cold. It snowed the other day, very charming. You should come during the spring, though. There's quite a voracious gambling town for you to spend your loaners' money on.
Anyway, on to the boring diplomacy hitch. I leave these ANBU alive as a token of my good faith. You're welcome for having me kill missing-nin and the Akatsuki. I do hope I don't come across any more hounds, next time I may not be this generous.
The jinchuriki of the ten-tailed beast, Seiryu, the Head of the Kyura and Shuriken of Bukigakure,
Gohama»
Gohama was like a ghost looming over him wherever he went, from his mind, to his heart, to his habits, she was there, raw and throbbing.
She had used her chakra to burn the material of the vest and write on it. Certainly it was an interesting way of sending messages. He could understand, the postal fees between countries were truly outrages.
"Those are a lot of titles." Kakashi hummed as his fingers glided over the chakra-burned text.
"Is that all you're going to say, Hatake?"
It was saying a lot. Last time he had seen Gohama she had been firm on saying she was nothing.
"That's Panther's vest. He wasn't particularly happy." Tsunade commented. Kakashi knew Panther, everyone in ANBU did, he was one of the best taicho, arrogant, proud and skilled. His ego had to be hurting now. "This was a warning. She wanted ANBU to find her."
"How many?"
"Twenty. No casualties."
"You really do want her dead."
"More like those two hags of the council. And Danzo obviously, he wants to get his hands on that Kyura and tailed beast chakra."
Her foot pulled a drawer open and she took out two cups and a bottle of sake from it. With a pointed look, she asked him if he wanted some and Kakashi declined. Tsunade poured her cup to the brim and drank it in one long sip before serving another one, equally full, and falling back onto her chair.
"You know, Kakashi, I used to threaten Gohama with banishing her from the village and unleashing hunter-nin on her… It seemed far more satisfying in my head." Tsunade shared as she looked down at her sake. "It's a waste of manpower but the truth is that Gohama is a serious liability to Konoha and as the Hokage I can't ignore that. If Danzo wants Root after her I'll let him."
After her words, she met his gaze with a golden piercing one, challenging him to defy her decision. Kakashi just stared back, nothing passing through his face, especially not his agreement. Danzo would send Root either way and, with Tsunade's sanction, the elders would ease their restless pressuring.
"Since the day that girl stepped foot in this village I knew she was trouble. She's too much like my shisho… I loved that woman but I'd never let her inside this village while sitting on this chair."
Tsunade took another shot and pulled another drawer open, this time taking out a sheet from it.
"I need you to update her stats for the Bingo Book." She extended the form carelessly towards him and, when he didn't take it from his hand, she pinned him with the same cutting eyes of before. "You don't want to do it." Tsunade stated.
Another pour of sake and this time, as she fell back on her chair, nursing the cup between her hands, her eyes were more probing than challenging. "Is it guilt?"
"Excuse me, Hokage-sama?"
"Since Kyura first came to the Village you've taken an interest in her. Considering you were the ANBU that assassinated the Yukikage, I would suppose your guilt made you feel responsible for her."
Kakashi already knew the path Tsunade wanted to follow with this line of interrogation. When he first returned to Konoha, he had been surprised she hadn't touched the subject, perhaps out of consideration, even if she hadn't been considerate enough when almost beating the shit out of him. Kakashi supposed that if he would have to endure it eventually, he might as well do it now.
"Her uncle was a friend and asked me to look after Gohama in Konoha."
"A friendly promise so… It may explain some things, but not all of it." She let the silence stretch when he didn't answer, forcing words out of him with her scrutiny. "I see, you're just going to give the old Kakashi bored look. Be careful, Kakashi. I don't know what happened between you two, but Kyura's dangerous and a traitor to the Village. I hope you know where your loyalty stands."
"Don't worry, Hokage-sama. I'm a Konoha shinobi above all." She threw him the blank form for ninja stats and this time he accepted it. "Is this everything you wanted from me?"
"No, actually. Orochimaru's dead. Uchiha Sasuke killed him."
"Look if it isn't a stray Uchiha." Gohama commented as she leaned with crossed arms against a tree trunk.
Sasuke raised his eyes, muscles tense and sharingan spinning. Gohama's pride inflated, he hadn't noticed her approaching. "What do you want, Kyura?"
"Nothing. I was just curious to see what the fuss was all about. Seems it's just a pretty face." A smirked twisted the corner of her lips, as she looked him up and down. "Itachi's is prettier."
Gohama averted the path of the lighting spear meant for her head with her chakra-soaked tanto, the lightning chirping right beside her ear. She raised an eyebrow at his sudden aggression. Her chakra flowed onto the skin of her palm and she wrapped it around Sasuke's jutsu, using her own energy to push the lightning away.
With a twist of her wrist, she broke the flow and a piece of the spear, bringing it into her eyes view. "Now this is interesting. Kakashi-sensei would have been proud" She threw the piece so it stabbed into a tree trunk and the lightning dispersed into the tree, searing its wood. "Maybe not, considering you use it for everything that goes against what he believed in."
Her hand fell back at the wrist, a small ball of lightning buzzing in her palm. "I still find the wild controlled chaos of his raikiri exceptionally more beautiful. It's a shame I can only get to this."
Sasuke let his lightning spear recede from where it hovered beside her face and snorted with an arrogant sneer. "Did Kakashi also teach you that?"
"It's more that I stole it. It's only fair I believe, considering stealing was his modus operandi."
"Do you also want to take me back to Konoha? Did Kakashi send you?"
"That would have been very difficult now that he's dead, not that I'm above following dead people's commands."
His eyes narrowed slightly, sharingan still activated. "Kakashi's not dead."
"Of course he is, I killed him myself."
"You obviously didn't do a very good job. His mutts have been following us around."
Gohama continued to lean against the tree, her gaze unmoving as it looked down on him. She kept the same relaxed slack in her muscles and forced her heart to calm itself from the sudden jerk inside her chest. The cold mask of Shuriken descended through her body and locked the swirling impulsive thoughts deep in her mind.
The sharingan could read every little change in her posture, heartbeat, breathing, temperature and each one of those she controlled tight in her mask of cold indifference, tuned and perfected since she had taken the role of Shuriken.
A red haired girl adjusted her glasses and cleared the throat, an Uzumaki from her chakra and hair. "I have also sensed a chakra signature that matches his profile."
Her mouth was dry now and cold fingers seemed to clench around her stomach.
"Now that we've determined your lack of skill, what do you want, Kyura?"
Her eyes snapped back Sasuke, brain slow and words a mere background hum in her mind, now filled with the chaotic pulls and pushes as she tried to stop herself from falling into thoughts of Kakashi.
Why had Gohama come there? It was if she had suddenly forgotten. Why had she even cared about the boy under her when Kakashi could be alive in the same forest as her?
Not him. Not now. But it had been for him too, hadn't it? Uncle through Itachi and even the boy in front of her, who both irritated her and reminded her of herself.
"I fought your brother." Sasuke tensed at her words, his fingers holding onto the hilt of his chokuto. "I didn't kill him. I left him alive for you."
"Tch, am I supposed to thank you for that?"
"Even if you were thankful you wouldn't actually thank me." Gohama pushed her shoulder from the tree, legs a little unstable but she pushed the reason for it back, deep down into a tight sealed box in her mind. "I'm here to tell you not to kill him."
"Fuck off."
"Uchiha Itachi has information you want."
"I said fuck off!" He shouted with a wide gesture of his arm.
His chakra expanded through the air, burning and electrifying as it sent a shudder through her spine and ignited in her that sharpness and thirst for battle. Beside him, his companions readied themselves for a fight. Sasuke was unwavering in the confidence he had in his skill, but so was Gohama. Intimidating tactics wouldn't work with her.
"I'm not here to fight you, Uchiha, so calm down. I fought your brother and I left him alive while he's Akatsuki, the ones after me and the ones that massacred my village. Why would I do that?"
His chakra didn't recede from the space around her but it lost some of its killing intent. "The fuck if I know."
"Don't kill him and you'll know." Gohama answered with a tone of finality, eager for being alone.
"Why do you care, Kyura?"
"Who says I do?" She shrugged before flickering away from them.
Gohama's fingers buried into the rough bark, as she leaned on the tree trunk. Her head was cast low as she stared blindly at the roots burring into the earth, her hair falling on either side of her head, hiding everything around her except for that patch of land and her thundering heart.
Her other hand clasped onto the fabric above her heart, trying to contain it inside her ribs as they shook with every beat, as they heaved up and down. Her breaths were coming out in fast grasps that Gohama couldn't control. A drop fell onto the ground and Gohama brought a trembling hand to her cheek. It was wet. She was crying. Why was she crying?
What was it that she was feeling and why was she freaking out?
"Gohama."
"Seiryu… Stay… I just need a moment… but stay."
After the fiasco in Buki, Seiryu and Gohama had had a serious conversation over their connections. They had agreed that she would not breech them again, even in moments where she needed her solitude. If Gohama wanted him absent he would retreat, but she would not shut him out and cage inside the seal, while he worried over her.
She managed to quiet the chaos in her chest and pull herself from the tree. Her back hit the truck as she sagged onto it, her head falling back, eyes closed under the weight of all the emotions. So tired, Gohama was so tired of it.
"This is good, Gohama…" Seiryu commented gently, whether in an attempt to soothe her or remind her.
"We don't even know if it's true. I saw his face, I felt his chakra, I—I—what if he is dead?"
"Did you check his pulse?"
Her fingers swirled into her temples as she searched through the memories of that night, memories she had desperately tried to push down, shove away into that unspeakable box of things not to recall.
"I did. I think I did…" She found nothing relating to his heartbeat but she was also running through her memories with glazed hasty eyes, never lingering on any detail. "I… I must have… why wouldn't I?"
"Maybe you wanted him to be dead."
"I did try to kill him, didn't I, lizard?"
"Gohama. Don't pretend with me. You know what I mean. You let your mind think he was dead precisely because you didn't want to kill him."
"I could never just trick my mind into seeing death where it wasn't there. I felt it, his chakra, I felt it. I know what death looks like, what it feels like."
"After his fight with Itachi, you had thought it too. Maybe your reliance on your chakra sense made you think depletion was death."
"I can't. He is still as dead as he has been for the past weeks. I can't believe otherwise only to… I can't."
"What are you going to do?"
She was going to summon Yukine right after she learnt why one of the ninja with Uchiha Sasuke had come to meet spied from the corner of her eye as the one with bright orange hair, which painfully reminded her of Nikato's ginger tone, stepped from behind a tree to face her.
"It was relief what you felt." He spoke softly and evasively. Gohama continued to stare silently onto the gaps of blue between leaves. Both of them would know her obliviousness at what he had meant with his words would be a complete game of pretend. "I can ask the birds to find him."
"I don't need you to."
"I'll do it anyway. We also need the information."
Her glance found itself fixed on him, the back of her eyes flooded with memories of better times in Konoha. Times when Nikato would pester her about everything, times when she hadn't just massacred an entire missing-nin syndicate and had made an impulsive run after Uchiha Sasuke in an attempt to balance what was not possible to balance.
And of course Kakashi had to be in the middle of it, dead or alive. Her vision of him in that inn bathroom had been oddly insightful in all its madness. Gohama was his, she was chained to him, everywhere she went the ghost of him followed her, in her thoughts, in her heart, in the people and spaces around her.
With a frown, she realised when he had spoken of birds he meant the ones living in the forest. A couple of them chirped as they flew towards him, settling on his shoulder and the back of his raised hand. It would have been an amusing image, if there hadn't been a strange endearing beauty gleaming through it. A large muscled man with stout chakra had the gentleness to call forest animals to him.
"I thought you were talking of summons not actual birds." Gohama commented as the birds flew away from him. "What's your name?"
"Jugo."
"Gohama." She answered with a small nod. "So, what's a nice bird-talking guy doing with the revenge crazed Uchiha over there?"
"It started as a way of honouring a friend by finishing his mission. But my debt is also to Sasuke. My bloodline limit makes me fall into a thoughtless bloodthirsty berserk mode. He's my cage and I'm his shield."
"I think I can understand that."
There was nothing quite as terrifying as the feel of Seiryu's chakra taking control of her own body, her own judgement. Thankfully since finishing her jinchuriki training, Gohama had yet to fall onto a material cloak.
"Don't let him kill Uchiha Itachi."
"Did you come here just for that?" Jugo asked and Gohama kept silent. "Why? Why do you care about Sasuke?"
"It's not Sasuke I give a shit about. He defected his village."
"You too."
"Konoha's not my village. It never was."
Jugo responded to her harsh tone with a simple soft gaze, his eyes were an unusual red, unlike the sharingan's blood colour, his was brighter and strident, with none of the sharingan's menace. Again she wondered over how such a piercing colour could hold that gentle look. It made his bloodline limit more tragic.
"Itachi?" He asked.
Her head fell back on the trunk, eyes back to watch the sky and rustling leaves. "Maybe it's as you said, Jugo, a way of honouring someone's life through others. Or maybe of preventing others from falling on the same path… or of paying a debt to the world, to myself. Or maybe none of those. Impulse was a big part of my decision."
Gohama turned her head down to watch him and actually chuckled, the rumblings a surprise in her throat, because there was no bitterness in them, no cynicism. Here she was, talking with a guy she had met minutes before and he actually made her feel a sip of peace when for the past week her muscles had been wired in edginess. Here she was comforted by a guy that talked with animals as a creature out of a tale and eased the frenzy of mere minutes before.
Gohama smiled at him. "You're that annoying type of people that can make others spill their guts."
The birds returned, more this time, their flapping wings and chirping rustling though the air as they hovered around Jugo. One small sparrow parted from the group and Gohama stood still, not wanting to frighten it in its parting flight. It was with a jolt of surprise in her stomach that she realised it was moving towards her. Its little fragile feet settling like a whisper on shoulder. Without any expectation, Gohama raised her arm and the bird jumped to rest on her hand instead.
Its little head cocked from side to side with frantic movements, the small signature of its chakra as restless as his breathing. Sparrows always acted as if they lived a thousand times faster than the rest of the world.
"The forest likes you." Jugo commented, his fingers gently soothing down the fur of a squirrel.
Everything about this was surreal, a good kind of surreal.
"Well, it doesn't know me very well."
"Maybe it does." The animals around him dispersed and the sparrow in her hand fled with them. "There's a group southwest of us, running northeast. It's likely that he's there."
"I suppose you better warn Uchiha Sasuke of that." Gohama pushed herself from the tree, ready to move once more. There was little else she could do here and Jugo's information had returned some of the frenzy back to her stomach. "Thank you, by the way. It was nice meeting you, Jugo."
"You too, Gohama."
With two mirroring nods, they jumped onto opposing branches. Gohama ran a few minutes southwards until she stopped by a stream. With a flow of chakra, she pushed her hand into the ground and Yukine appeared before her.
"Yukine. Sorry to summon you again so soon. I need you to find a group of people. They're southwest from us."
His intent gaze fixed on her and already she could feel him shedding through her skin, his muzzle wiggling slightly as he breathed her scent. That sneaky nose of his. It reminded her of Kunimaru with his byakugan and his attentive critical eyes. It brought the agitation in her emotions back onto the surface.
"What is it, Gohama? Who do you need me to find?"
"It's a long shot, I… I have no expectation but… He's supposed to be dead."
Thankfully, she didn't even need to say his name for Yukine to understand. The syllables were stuck inside her chest, it felt as if it would cut her tongue to speak them.
"Gohama, I need you to calm down and talk to me."
She attacked him with a sharp unyielding glare. "I am calm."
Yukine returned it with an almost disappointed one. "You can't fool my nose, Gohama. Why do you think he is here?"
"Uchiha Sasuke said his ninken are following him. And… well, it makes sense, he was his sensei, that's something he would do, if not for himself for his students… But I.. I killed him, I killed him…"
Gohama tried to rip the flash of memories draped over her eyes, as a smothering wet cloth pressed to her mouth and nose. The memory of his ghostly paleness crossed by that red trail of blood seeping down his closed sharingan. No matter how much her nails scratched into the cloth she couldn't tear it away. Her attention focussed on Yukine but all she saw was his face, his dead face.
"Just try to find him, please, Yukine. I'd go with you, but his ninken know my scent really well and I'm not ready to… If you see him I know it's true."
"Of course, Gohama."
"Hair between grey and white, dark eye. Konoha hitai-ate may be covering his left eye, if it's not you can see a scar over the eye, a sharingan eye. Lightning chakra. His ninken have vests with hemonomoeji on them."
Yukine was making his way through tree branches and the ground.
Becoming Gohama's summon had been one of the biggest astonishments in his life. Since she had been a little girl, small enough to ride on his back through snow and the streets of Buki, Gohama had ventured through dreams of forming a bond with him. He had known it was mostly born from her admiration for Inaku, but it was still endearing to him.
Then the massacre had happened. The white wolves had suffered only a few casualties, the true devastation had come from losing their summon partners, from the horror of the violent abrupt tear of the bonds with Kyura, or their slow merciless fraying, powerless to fight it.
Their pack had lost their counterpart. They had been lost, waiting for a meaning that would not come. Yukine had taken his quiet cursed years to teach the young cubs of his pack, a useless lesson that meant nothing without actuality, and still the elders had decided their ways would live on.
Slowly the half ripped out of him had seized bleeding, leaving behind a ragged healed scar.
One day, while eating with his family, Yukine had felt the tingling of chakra, Kyura chakra, calling after him. With wide eyes, he had stared at the ones before him and whispered, with as much awe as incredibility, 'I'm being summoned'. Before they could process their words into reactions, he had already disappeared in a cloud of smoke.
Before him had kneeled, Kyura Gohama, not a child anymore, but a woman.
Her face had been a pale hollow image of weariness and grief and still she had smiled, wide and earnest, enough to force him to trap the howl of emotion in his throat.
Gohama had wanted to make the proper ritual for contracting the bond. It had reminded him of Misaka, with her grace and solemnity. His Inaku had never captured that, his movements awkward and strained, always too self-aware.
It reminded him of the same intent solemnity of when she had played the koto, fingers dealing graceful plucks to the strings, and of when she had hunted, the same movement as she pulled the string taunt and released it. It even reminded him of when she had been a little child dragging him onto a corner in Misaka's garden, water can in her hand, and explained to him how she cared about her flowers and how beautiful they were as they grew bright blue and white against green leaves.
When she fought, that solemnity changed into sharp and coldness. Other times Gohama would fall into a frozen quiet and the hollowness in her eyes would fill with all the anguish in the world.
Yukine had known that, after eleven years, there had had to be something that had made her bond with him. Gohama didn't speak of it, she spoke almost of nothing besides the essential for him to know.
The first evening together, she had been eating their game around a fire when her eyes had focussed, unseeing, on the embers. "Akatsuki." Gohama had blurted out. "They were behind the massacre. After Seiryu. They're still after us. I've lived for four years in Konoha and defected last month. Also after me. Uncle is dead."
That had been the only information and since then Yukine had tried to put on the pieces together from the little things that she would inevitably let out. He tried not to dwell on how Inaku would suffer if he knew of Gohama's life now. He tried not to dwell on the dangerous question of if it had been the right choice to save her on that night.
With lowered hesitant eyes, she had asked him to sleep beside her and made sure he knew she would understand if he had to return to his home. Yukine had reassured her that he could stay. He should have been ready for the nightmares, but he hadn't. He would wake her with a nuzzle to her face or hands when they became too unsettling.
Gohama whispered one name more than any other, Kakashi.
Yukine knew she wasn't calling out for a scarecrow and for days wondered over the secret man, until he had watched her roll out the scroll and had seen the name written there, the lines fluid and graceful, long and thick, framed by the smaller names under and above it. It could have been used as a decorative hanging scroll if not for the odd red colour of the ink. Hatake Kakashi.
Gohama's chakra had spiked, grief overflowing through it, and Yukine had known it wasn't from writing the name of the man dead at her feet.
The Hatake clan was an old one from the Land of Fire and Yukine remembered knowing only of a Sakumo from Konoha. Inaku had once cooperated on a mission with him, before the Third Ninja War, and Yukine remembered clearly his hound summon and his white lighting chakra, the colour of his hair.
His memories had flashed through the night of the massacre. Kneeling before a defeated Inaku, his Inaku had been a masked ninja with lightning chakra and silver hair. It hadn't surprised him to realise Konoha had been involved, Yukine had known of the negotiations with the Uchiha over the coup d'état. But could this Hatake Kakashi be the killer of Inaku?
When Gohama had taken off the Shuriken mask and rested against a tree, Yukine had laid beside her, her fingers easily falling into light strokes over his fur. "Who was Kakashi?" Her hand had stopped its movements, chakra feverish in her pathways and through their bond. "You call for him in your sleep."
"I killed him. He killed Mother and Father and I killed him."
"And who was he to you?"
Gohama had pulled her knees to her chest and hid her face there. "I don't know…"
Yukine hadn't pushed for more answers then, his muzzle pushing through the gap between her stomach and legs so he could rest his head on her lap. Gohama hadn't tried to accommodate him but she had accepted his presence there as she cried against her knees.
Now he was running through the Land of Fire, his nose had already found Hatake Kakashi's scent. Yukine had drawn his smell deep into his lungs on that night and he hadn't forgotten it. He would never forget the smells of the massacre.
Hatake Kakashi was alive. If his scent existed on some lost forest after weeks of his supposed death he needed to be alive.
Still he moved in, his nose was infallible, but he needed to see him for himself, silver hair and lightning chakra, as Gohama had asked. And there he was, a mirror of her description, except for the mask, she had forgotten to relay that significant detail. Yukine doubted stealth was the reason for it, seeing as the group of shinobi was everything but furtive.
His movements were effortless as he moved through the trees, almost lazy, a cape flowing back from where it was pinned around his neck. He did not hold himself as the ANBU killing machine that had slayed a Yukikage, and apparently he didn't act as one. Following his missing-nin student showed his sentimentality as it was clear the group were not hunter-nin meant to dispose of a defector. 'That's something he would do,' Gohama had said, 'if not for himself for his students'.
Did Gohama love him? Or was her anguish born from guilt? There needed to be care at least for her to grieve so deeply the man that had killed her parents. Even Yukine that had never been inclined to hatred could feel it rumble in his chest, making his lip curl over his teeth, as he watched him.
He remembered his Inaku then and how he had looked at his killer with no rage even as he held him defeated in his own garden. Perhaps because Hatake Kakashi had allowed Inaku to summon him, endangering his own life when his victory had been certain.
The mask alone told Yukine there was more about this man than just a mask. One only wished to hide because there were things worth hiding. Why would the lower part of a face be worth concealing when his hair and his attitude were extremely distinctive?
Yukine's eyes watched more, from a distance, his nose taking in the scent of this man as if it would teach him all the mysteries behind his mask, behind his relationship with Gohama.
All it told him was that he was a man that used unscented shampoo, looked older than he truly was and had been running for quite some time.
The pug running beside Hatake Kakashi's feet suddenly stopped, snout up and searching. Hatake Kakashi stopped beside him. "What is it, Pakkun?" His voice was a low lazy drawl.
Yukine decided that staying hidden and unmoving, so he wouldn't agitate his scent farther.
"Nothing. Just a wolf."
They continued on their run as Yukine stayed rooted. Now the difficult part would come, relaying the news to Gohama.
He stepped onto the grassy bank of the stream. His gaze rose to where Gohama was sitting on a branch, her movements relaxed as she sharpened the edge of a kunai, but her scent didn't lie nor did the nebulous outline of her emotions leaking through their bond.
Her eyes suddenly met his own, a frightening sharpness in their green, the same as when she watched him through the slits of a mask, the same that was nothing but a shell easily cracked. From his own eyes, she already knew the answer and still Gohama jumped down and silently requested that he spoke. She needed to hear him say it.
"It was him, Gohama. Hatake Kakashi is alive."
It cracked, the sharpness, but he hadn't had the time to see what burst behind it before Gohama knees gave out and her head fell, dark hair covering her face. Yukine walked the distance between them, his muzzle touching the back of her hand as it clutched to her pants, knuckles white.
The fingers loosened around the fabric and she threw herself at him, face pushing into his fur as her arms wrapped around him. "I'm sorry, Yukine, I just need a moment."
"However long you want, Hama-chan."
He was glad his Inaku wasn't there to see the loneliness and despair of his daughter as she cut herself into the shape of a shuriken, the role she had always been meant to be, the role Inaku and Misaka had never wanted for her.
A wolf with no pack was lost.
Everything was going to shit and everything was going to shit extremely fast.
Everything seemed to be crumbling around him and he didn't have enough hands to keep hold of the pieces. He wasn't enough, he had never been enough.
Kakashi could taste the ash of war in his tongue, dry and bloody.
Jiraiya. The name he knew only as printed characters in paper was carved into stone. Final and searing. Kakashi would never reconcile himself to this, no matter how many graves he visited, every new one was another fresh wound, deep and crippling, that would never not hurt. It had been a week and he still felt as if he was suffocating.
And, of course, because she was stuck to everywhere he went, she was there again, almost drowned in all the other crowns of flowers resting against the stone. She was there again, in the small bouquet of white frail flowers.
His gloveless fingers brushed gently through the petals as if that could ever replace the touch of her skin of when she had been right beside him.
"Snowdrops…" A voice said beside him, Hansuke's voice. "Do you think she—"
"No. There's only the scent of wolf." Kakashi said as he stood up.
"Wolf. So Gohama signed the summon bond. How did it get in without being detected?"
"Do you really think Gohama would spend four years in a place without learning every nook and cranny, every little fissure and flaw?"
"Fair." Hansuke commented and they both fell silent.
Kakashi wished he could leave now. He usually preferred to be alone in his mourning, but Hansuke had come here for something and how could he deny him that after every shitty thing he had done to him.
"Why would she leave snowdrops to Jiraiya? I know he helped her with fuinjutsu before she left, but snowdrops are the thing in Kyura culture."
Kakashi clenched his jaw. He had forgotten Gohama hadn't told her team, not even Hansuke, she had decided to leave Konoha even before discovering their involvement. Would it be cruel to tell him now or would it actually soothe some of his what-ifs?
"Gohama was leaving with Jiraiya. She was supposed to go with him to Amegakure."
The snowdrops were soaked in guilt because she hadn't been there.
"She was going to leave Konoha either way."
Kakashi left before he could see the hurt look of betrayal in Hansuke's face.
"Wait." Hansuke called, not turning around and Kakashi was glad for that. "My team's leaving on a mission. I came here to ask you if know of any places where Gohama might be."
"Amegakure?"
Kakashi didn't stay to feel his own fear in Hansuke.