Part VI | Chapter 4
A twist of her hips, the swish of a blade, too many grunts and too many screams and always the pleas.
The air pushed her hair back, cold and crisp inside her chest. Seiryu's chakra under her as he dipped and they fell, between clouds and sunrays, and underneath them a blanket of mountains, villages and trees.
The stale air was warm in her mouth as her chakra flowed freely, thoughtlessly, knowingly outside her pathways and the weight of the tachi merged with her own arms. And more screams and grunts and always pleas never finished before turning into blank eyes, more red written names, and always that one beacon that didn't belong there and still was inked into the paper.
And those warm splashes across her neck and collarbone, never on her face, her face was safe, her expression the darkness of lacquer, and her edges sharp and pointed as a shuriken.
The boiling water down her back and burning into her flesh, her nails scrapping at the tender harsh skin, and they didn't clean, but at least they hurt.
On cold nights, there was the soft white fur under her hands, like snowdrops, like the smoky feel of clouds and of childhood, and two wise eyes, sharp and unjudging, and yet they made the filth in her flesh flare and ache.
And Seiryu flew with her, above the clouds where the oxygen didn't quite soak into her lungs, and they flew around the earth in mere minutes, all the freedom in the world burst through those flights, until she was pinned down to the mask again.
The grunts and the screams, always the pleas, and the blood as Shuriken swiped her tachi down, the tachi, and this scream felt as ripping flesh in her muffled ears. The blade halted, out of luck or out of godly intervention, the edge of it hovering too mall millimetres away from big wide eyes.
The instant floated around them, the light flickering on the glazed pots, cups and bowls inside the shop. Her feet shifted and under her sole the dry shards of clay grated against the ground and clanked as they shattered even more.
"Get out! Leave us alone!" A child's scream, a terrible scream, before he was yanked back and behind her target's back.
A child with green eyes ran for the white masked man before her father held her in his arms, away from the suicidal thoughtless run. But Shuriken had none of the masked man's respect, she had none of his humanity still fevering behind his mask.
"I can't." Shuriken answered steadily. "He killed children like you, parents, friends, lovers. His life belongs to Bukigakure."
"Please…" The target shoved his forehead onto the floor, uncaring if the shards pierced his skin, his hands already soaked in blood and the dry brown of clay. "Let my son go."
"I have. He's the one that doesn't go away."
"And I'm not going!" The child yelled again, taking advantage of his father's bow. "He's a good person! He works hard and doesn't kill people like you said! His hands shape clay, they don't destroy it, like you—!"
The target tried to still those last words, tried to keep them hidden and unsaid in the boy's throat, as he pushed his hand into his mouth. It was useless, Gohama could see them written over the hatred and disgust in the lines of his face, so deep and carved for a child.
"Norio, go to your room!" Her target shook the child by his shoulders. "Go! Go, you reckless boy!" A strong hand on his back pushed him away and the boy stumbled until he fell at the back of the store. "Leave!"
The child left with one last look and one whispered, "Father." Before he disappeared, the memory of a lost little girl lingering where he had left.
"I needed the money, my woman was pregnant and sick, the syndicate… I needed the money… And I couldn't say no… I never killed anyone after that night."
Gohama didn't look down to the frantic wide eyes of the man. Hers were pinned to the piece he had been working on, to the golden lacquer holding the broken shards together, while others rested on the table, waiting to be mended as well.
They always begged, always made up excuses, weightless as they passed through Shuriken without searing their mark. This time they did, whether it was the honesty she could never be sure was real, or the memory of that girl and that father with green eyes.
"But you killed them then."
"Yes." He admitted, voice raw and quiet.
"How many?"
"Three. The woman had dark eyes, the man's were bright, brown I think, and the last one, the boy… I couldn't see his face, I covered it with a sheet. Sometimes I see him, in nightmares, in my son's face… Did you know them?"
No. Gohama hadn't known most of them and yet their names were etched into her heart and their blood was inked into her.
"You pay your debt with this." Gohama hissed as she pointed to the piece he had been mending with the kintsukuroi technique. "You pay it with your son. You pay it with bonds and beauty."
She fled only to fall back into the same place as before.
Gohama shook her fan to cool her warm skin, but the smothering humid heat of southern Water did little to soothe her overheating skin. There always seemed to be a layer of clouds above them that trapped the heat down as with thunderstorm weather, there was not thunder and now ease in the clouds.
Her eyes perused leisurely over the windows of various shops, while she made her way towards the teahouse down the street and by the garden. A week in that town, which was longer than what she stayed in most places, had let her learn of the spots that would please her the most. Gohama had money to spend and no life to live, which meant she would at least enjoy the best food and drinks she could, a small pleasure, almost irrelevant, in her numbed out state.
The curious title of a newspaper displayed on a kiosk made her stop in her path. It wasn't usual for Konoha to be the headline of a Water newspaper and she was interested in knowing in what trouble that village had fallen onto.
Her hear stopped as Gohama finally made sense of the words written in black ink and the photograph attached to it.
'Konoha devastated' and under it a crater spreading before the Hokage Mountain.
Her breathing stilled as she read over and over again. Once the meaning was branded into her awareness her breath left in a fast gasp. It wasn't possible. Konoha was Konoha and now she was staring at the photograph of a crater.
Whatever sadistic pleasure could stir from justice was smothered by the fear that plunged through the walls of her chest. Gohama could already feel the chakra in her core frenzying and so she dashed away from the town, onto the surrounding forest, where she would hurt nothing but the trees.
There were no tears as she stood with her head tilted back and eyes closed against the shadow of the lush canopy. Instead a rumble shuddered inside her lungs, growing with each breath she took, each terrible scenario her mind made up. She couldn't keep it down any longer, the bubbling left her throat in a rich mad laugh.
Gohama was laughing, laughs that rocked her entire torso and made the muscles of her stomach ache, laughs that rose up her chest as acid, gnawing at her insides. Her arms wrapped around her belly as she bent over.
It was amazing, astonishing, hilarious, so painfully cruel she felt nausea push at the back of her throat. They were no longer in her life and still her curse had slithered around them and crushed them with its deathly grip, or maybe they had been marked already, during those four years, four years were a long time for a curse to infect others, infect an entire village.
How tragic could someone get?
"Gohama…" Seiryu whispered softly in her mind. "Come inside the seal, please."
There was still a sense of obligation in her even through the heavy cutting emotions drowning her from inside out and so she yielded to his request. Seiryu had chosen to leave the seal as its infinite immaterial white.
Chuckles continued to shake her shoulders and she met Seiryu's light frown with a sneer. "Come on, lizard, don't you also think it's hilarious?"
There was almost disappointment in him. "Gohama, don't look at me like that. It will break you."
Her chuckles died out entirely. She turned her turned to the side, hair falling to cover her face from the weight of his ancient overwhelming gaze. "I won't break. I'm Shuriken now. They are nothing to me."
"Don't lie to yourself, kid! Stop this madness!" His deep voice thundered through her chest and Gohama let her nails bite into the skin of her arms. "I'm sick of seeing you completely destroy yourself. It's one thing to bring honour to Bukigakure and getting the earth rid of its scum, it's another to erase yourself in the meantime."
He took a small slow step towards her, voice soft again. "Don't be weak, Gohama, don't run away from the loss when it comes to you."
"Weak?" Gohama growled as she peeked at him through the curtain of her hair. "What the fuck do you know? What do you know about loss, Seiryu! You're just a mass of chakra!"
"What do I know about loss, Gohama?!"
Seiryu's chakra crushed against her in the most terrifying tsunami of chakra she had felt, very muscle in her body shook with it.
"I've had seven jinchuriki. Six people I shared my energy, my life, my essence with! I had to, not just watch, no, I had to feel all six of them die as I was pulled out of our sync. Not to speak of the Temporary Vessels. So don't you dare accuse me of not knowing what loss is!"
Gohama stumbled back in her feet. "Seiryu… I…" Her eyes prickled with tears as she saw the anguish winning over the rage in the deep sea of his eyes. "I'm sorry… I'm so sorry, Seiryu…"
"Come here, kiddo." He whispered softly and lowered the bridge of his nose, so she could lean herself on it. "I'm losing you too… Can't you see that, Gohama? I'm losing you and I don't know how to keep you here with us…"
"I'm sorry, Seiryu… I'm sorry." Gohama pressed her forehead against his chakra soaked skin.
"If they're dead," He started gently, trying to ease the words into her, but Gohama's eyes were already filled with images of blood soaked bodies and blank eyes, dark, milky, hazel, brown, grey and red. The muscles she had tried to hold tight inside her shuddered as the fear clamped her throat. "I'm here to take the loss with you, Gohama. We're in this together. Don't forget that. Biju and jinchuriki. We're in this together."
Gohama shook her head and whispered roughly through the lump in her throat. "It's not for long. I'll free you when this is over. I promise."
Shuriken fell onto her knees, breaths rasping inside her lungs, fast and too shallow, not enough to capture the air her aching muscles needed. Her fingers pulled at the chin of the mask and tugged it out of her face, hoping it would ease her laboured breathing, she needed all the air she could get.
"Fuck, that one was good." She hissed into the quiet warm air smothering her skin.
"She was good but not this good. You underestimated her, you always underestimate them. This time it actually had some impact."
"I won, who cares?" Gohama threw at Seiryu as her fingers searched for the slash somewhere in her belly.
"This time you did. I hope you're not trying to get yourself killed."
"Not now, I'm not. So fuck off, lizard." She breathed out with her touchable voice and winced as it made the pain at her stomach flash. At least she didn't need to search any longer for the wound between her blood soaked and tattered vest.
"You're always an unbearable brat after a fight. Go get that healed before you pass out." Seiryu grumbled and Gohama did go, but not without scowling even if he couldn't see it.
She stumbled through the town until she sneaked inside her inn room. Her hand brushed over her wound to gather wet fresh blood and pressed to the ground with a spike of chakra. "Yukine," She called as the smoke dissipated. "I need you to fetch the village medic for me."
Yukine was ready to make a comment when he smelled and saw her state but with one of her glares he snapped his jaw shut and left.
Gohama managed to pull her clothes away, crusted blood ripped out of her wounds and a litany of curses were groaned between clenched teeth. She dragged herself onto the bathtub, her hair falling over the porcelain edge. The showerhead gushed burning water over her skin as she tried to clean some of the blood and grime from her body.
When it was done, she just laid there, the cold porcelain heating with her own warmth until it was no longer uncomfortable and the murky water dried out. It was taking longer than she had expected for the medic to arrive and she was almost falling asleep, heavy eyelids flickering up and down. It was probably from the blood loss, seeing as she was in serious pain.
"You're naked."
Gohama creaked on eyelid open to find a boy only a couple of years younger than her. His hand had risen to cover his eyes and an embarrassed blush spread through his face and down her neck.
"You're a medic." She answered with a no-nonsense tone.
"An apprentice." He corrected her, his voice faltering slightly and his hand still protecting his eyes. "Sensei was taking care of another patient."
Gohama closed her eyes again and tilted her head back into place. "It's just a body, apprentice-kun, get over here and heal me."
She felt him approach her, muscles tensing even more at his proximity, a lingering effect of the long battle. The tub squeaked as his hands held onto the side of it and then he just kneeled there. Gohama didn't push him, even if the pain had yet to stop, it was clear she scared him from the way his civilian chakra flinched in his pathways and she didn't enjoy seeing fear in civilians' faces.
He expelled a long readying sigh before asking, "Is it okay if I…?"
"Do whatever you need to do."
Gohama felt his hesitant and cold hands against the irritated skin around her worst wound. Her muscles twitched and chakra flared at the foreign uncomfortable touch of another person. The boy pulled back, even as a civilian and this close, he would feel it.
"Will you have to kill me after I heal you?"
Gohama opened her eyes and tried to keep her expression between softness and levity. "Of course not. But if you tell anyone I'm here I'll kill you then." The kid visibly swallowed and the already pale shade of his face turned bluer. "I'm just kidding. I don't care. If they come after me it's their lives on the line. But if you thought there was a possibility that I'd kill you why did you even come here, apprentice-kun?"
"It was the first time I heard an animal talk. How could I say no to a talking wolf? That's the stuff of legends."
She let out an easy chuckle, which stabbed through her belly. The kid was funny even when he wasn't trying to be funny. "Well, I'll tell Yukine you were very impressed by him. Oh, and if someone says they'll kill you after you heal them, then refuse to do it. You'll be dead either way, might as well bring them with you."
"They could torture me, or blackmail me."
"I guess. Either way give them hell." The medic started cleaning the wound with the ruthless poke of a soaked gauze into her inflamed skin. "Ow, I said I wouldn't kill you." Gohama whined.
He answered with a playful devious twist of his expression. "You also said either way." Then the playful glint washed away until there was only concentration and gravity.
Gohama watched with a stilled breath in her lungs. For a flash, it was as if both Nikato and Kisamaru were kneeling by the tub, attending to her wound. The cheekiness and the gravity, the easiness in dealing with others and the quiet skill of his medic hands.
She knew they were alive. Everyone in Konoha had survived and the village had made certain that the information was spread through the shinobi lands, hoping they wouldn't see the momentary weakness as an advantage.
Gohama indulged in the tie her mind had made. She had tried to keep the memories of them locked and secret, never to rise to her skin where they might disturb her precarious balance. Instead, she discovered they helped keep her mind and emotions stable. The bittersweet stab of remembering better days with them came as a river tide, lapping at that last patch of herself that was drying out.
There was regret for how she had ripped them out of her life, hurt them, thrown them away like broken dolls, but when she actually thought back there was little Gohama would have done differently. She wouldn't have fought them, never. So stealing their chakra and pushing them away into a non-danger zone had seemed and still seemed the best alternative.
The same with Genma. She regretted not saying goodbye to him, not having one last night of drinking and meaningless one-sided flirting, the comforting weight of his arm around her shoulders as they talked nonsense, or didn't talk at all. And when his eyes were too heavy for him to keep them open, she could have shared with him how terrified she was and he wouldn't have answered, already asleep.
The regret was there but not a better path she could have chosen. She couldn't have gone back to Konoha after the revelation in that border between Fire and Hot Waters.
Three of her snowdrops, the memories of them were as an island, an anchor, from when she drifted, lost and drowning, on that smothering sea of numbness. They saved that small lingering and precious piece that she erased behind a mask, behind her blood soaked flesh.
"You remind me of someone, apprentice-kun." Gohama whispered softly. "Two someones actually."
"Good people I hope."
"The best…"
Gohama had never found anyone that reminded her of Hansuke.
There was something special about him, a unique feel only he exuded that she had never been able to make clear, and maybe it had been what had made her so infatuated with him. Other women felt it too, they were pulled towards him as she had been.
When they were together, Hansuke had shut down other women's advances but now she wondered if he had gone back to his habits before he had met her, the ones he had built after Yugao had broken his heart. A part of Gohama hoped he had, she hoped he had moved on from her, or at least could find comfort in a body to warm his bed.
Another part of her was burning in jealousy, something she had no right to feel. Yet it was there in her stomach as she thought of it, because that had been their bed, the bed where he had fucked her into the mattress and the bed where they had melted together until they didn't know when one started and the other ended.
Their bed where he had held her through nightmares and anguished nights, where she had kept vigil in restless nights, the moonlight spilling through the opened door and soothing the lines of his face, flickering on his scars as he breathed. She could have watched him sleep for years, awestruck and delighted in his beauty, in his peace.
Where they had fought too, Gohama trying to flee before he had grabbed her wrist and shoved her back on the bed, holding her shoulders down as he spilled what he wanted her to hear. Those speeches on their bed, dripping in anger and fear and hurt, always ended with him crying, his forehead falling onto her shoulder and Gohama brushing his hair.
Then he kissed up her throat and she kissed him back because he needed it, and he took off their clothes if they weren't already off and she held him as he sank into her. And Gohama cried silent fewer tears, when he had his face hidden in the crook of her neck, so he couldn't see it. Hansuke finished with a confession and a plea for her to stay and of course she did, they had been better together than they had been apart.
Their bed where she had almost killed him with Seiryu's chakra.
Their bed where he had whispered confessions into her skin, her mouth, her ear, where he had dreamt all the things he had dreamt for them. None of those could she return, none, and she had hated herself for it because, even if Hansuke always reassured her it was enough, Gohama could see the quiet desperate hope in his eyes every time he said 'I love you' and waited for her lips to shape the same words.
It was for the best that they had parted. Gohama hadn't seen a future with him, not because it was Hansuke, but because her future had already been marked away from him.
Why had he let the thrown out 'Marry me' escape during their pillow talk on that last mission? Gohama wouldn't have said yes, but what if she had?
What if they had never met Furuta Chin and had found themselves drinking sake, her in a white kimono, him in haori and hakama, and behind all the love in his beautiful eyes as they promised to share their lives there wouldn't have been a shadow of the dark sucking secret he had kept from her.
And that was what terrified her the most. Hansuke would have gone as far as he wanted for them to go, would have gone as far as holding her wrinkly thin hand in her deathbed, their children and grandchildren on the other side of the door, as he whispered his goodbye with one last confession of love and that invisible dark sucking secret still deep behind his eyes where she couldn't see it.
Gohama would have been happy maybe, if happiness was even in her possibility, would certainly have fallen in love with him, but that would have been meaningless, would have been tainted when it hadn't been built in truth and honesty.
Gohama knew all of that would have been out of love for her, everything Hansuke did was out of love. It was as he had said on their last mission 'Don't forget that I love you, Gohama' and she hadn't, her heartbreak wasn't because she had thought he didn't love her.
Hansuke didn't even seem to understand how painful and betraying that was to her. It wasn't him being there for her, it wasn't their holed relationship – which had done her so much good, so much good her heart was filled with gratitude and tenderness for it, even love – but it was that future, that future she had never dreamt of, that future that crept as a lie around her and around them.
Kakashi, at least, had chosen to disappear from her life and, no matter how it had hurt her, she understood now. Kakashi, at least, had told her there was something to unearth, even if in his duty to Konoha he couldn't tell her what. Even when he had reappeared, there had been no expectations, for a future, for a present, for nothing.
Why was Gohama even comparing them? They were different people, there was no reason for comparisons. Both were out of her life and would stay out of her life and there was no use thinking of them now.
Hansuke and Kakashi, two more of her snowdrops, but remembering them felt only bitter, not sweet, remembering them felt only like grief.
With Hansuke, even in her gratitude, there was still so much smothering heartache.
With Kakashi there was true regret and guilt. With Kakashi there was another better path she wished she had chosen. Gohama wished she would have just left on that night when the anguish had swallowed her whole, Gohama wished she had said her goodbye with one last kiss and one last half-mocking, half-serious what-if of a civilian life.
Maybe even with a poem whispered in his ear if there had been any courage left in her. Kakashi would have teased her for it, or maybe he would have asked for one more, as he had the last time they had parted, two years ago.
"If I passed by you on the street, could I pass as a civilian?" Gohama asked the medic.
"I think so."
In the lonely moments when she had only her memories for company, Gohama had realised all the good bittersweet ones had nothing to do with her being a ninja. Even in Buki, as a child, the shinobi all-consuming aspect of her life held nothing of her cherished memories.
Gohama was nothing without her chakra and most of her proudest moments were over how well she dominated it, how well she attuned it to a precise reliable force, but the gratification at mastering a skill was never present when she put it into action on missions. She had dreamt of being the perfect jinchuriki not because she liked it but because her village needed it.
All those episodes of bloodthirsty battles, frantic and electric, had ignited a vital fever into her only for it to vanish so easily after, leaving her hollow, meaningless, a cold icicle of self-loathing.
How had she never noticed it before? Maybe she had, but not with this piercing clarity. It felt as if she was being ripped from the tub, ripped from the world, from herself and thrown into a wasteland, deserted of meaning.
Gohama hated it, she hated being a ninja and she wouldn't stop, she could never stop. Gohama was a shinobi and without that she was nothing. Her love for Buki still ignited her and her duty still inflated meaning into her life.
This anguish was just an interlude, as so many other instants in her life had been, it would pass, and once it did all that would be left was the jinchuriki of the ten-tailed beast, Seiryu, the Head of the Kyura and Shuriken of Bukigakure and a path carved just for her, by her people and for her people.
Gohama peeked at the civilian medic through half-lidded eyes, her nape hurting from the sharp edge of the tub, but she was too tired and her muscles too aching for her to move. She watched him as he worked on sewing her flesh together, a quiet seriousness in his expression.
"What would you think of me?"
The medic choked a little, his eyes widened but his hands never lost themselves where they attended to her wound. A fierce blush bloomed on his face and it made him look even more like Nikato when he said something inappropriate that usually embarrassed only himself.
"Mm, that's sweet, apprentice-kun, but you're too young for me."
"I'm almost eighteen." He puffed out. "And it's not like that, kunoichi-san."
Gohama winced, it was worse than being treated as sama. "Gohama, please. What's your name, by the way?"
"Sanchiro."
"Well, Sanchiro," Gohama started as she relaxed back on the tub, eyes closed. "what would I be doing?"
"Probably going to the tea house with some girl friends."
"So you've seen me there. Good observation skills. What else?"
Sanchiro started a description of a normal civilian life, certainly a mirror of his own days. He stumbled through a few words, his mind working out more things to say. Gohama immersed completely in the scenario he created, her closed eyes a canvas where she painted the unreal images of herself, distracting her from the pain shooting with every movement of the needle.
It was a beautiful life, simple and full, from the meals beside friends, to the simple routine of waking up for work only to return home. It had none of the gore, none of the grief and the fear, none of the death. It was blissfully ignorant of the darker cruller shadows of humanity. It was the best of the best and Gohama was the lowest of the lowest.
Tears slipped out of the corners of her eyes before she could stop them.
Sanchiro's voice broke and his fingers stilled. "I didn't mean to—"
"It's okay, go on."
"Would you like to have a boyfriend or a fiancé?"
"Not really, but you can find me one either way." Gohama said as she offered him a watery smile.
And he continued, a complete romantic story falling from his imagination to his mouth, or maybe it had been copied out of a novel. When he finished, Gohama payed triple the expenses and he left.
She stood on the bathtub, her eyes pinned to her toes as they stepped on the murky red pool against the white. The nob twisted to the hottest the water could get and Gohama led herself under the scalding stream. Her nails bit into her flesh and she scrubbed her skin raw.
"Yo, Sakura."
Her wide eyes snapped up to his, edginess trembling through them and Kakashi was certain it wasn't only for his sudden appearance.
"Kakashi-sensei. They've already started the examination."
Kakashi nodded while giving her a smile. Was the body that gory that it would leave Sakura on edge? He pushed the door of the autopsy room open, Shizune was leaning over the metal table, back to the door, and Tsunade faced him, but didn't turn her eyes up to meet his.
"Heard you got yourself a present in the mail, Tsunade-sama. Secret admirer?"
"Brat. Of course you had to come snoop around. I swear you have a radar for everything concerning the Kyura brat."
Kakashi chose to ignore the jab as he made his way to the head of the table, his hands in his pockets. Now he understood why Sakura had chosen to stay on the other side of the door, the decapitated head had an uncanny resemblance to her friend, with the blue piercing eyes of the Yamanaka and blond hair.
"So thoughtful of her. Not only did she kill one of our most elusive missing-nin, she also returned Yamanaka Hiroe's body and all its secrets to Konoha." Kakashi commented with a mocking drawl of his voice.
Gohama seemed to find the situation just as mock worthy. On the woman's forehead, the words 'You're welcome' were carved into the skin with a blade.
"Where's the box?"
"If you keep asking questions, I'll throw your ass out. Let us do our job in peace, Hatake."
"The inscription on the forehead is post mortem," Shizune started helpfully, as her gloved finger hovered above the wound. "as is the decapitation. Probably so it was easier to send it to Konoha without losing its morbid effect. The detached body was sealed into a scroll, also found inside the box."
The scroll was laid out on another table, inked with Kyura fuinjustsu.
"The cause of death was obviously the brain injury, but destruction is more accurate." As Tsunade said it, she pulled away the flesh and bone cut out from the rest of the skull and showed off the empty insides.
"Let me guess, she forgot to put the brain back."
"Actually no. We took it out before, with that sensitive nose of yours you wouldn't have been able to stand in this room. Kyura fried her brain with lightning chakra, this burn marks on her temples were the point of entrance." Tsunade explained. "Yamanaka Hiroe's method was especially cruel. She hyper stimulated her victims' minds, frying their brains to death."
"Do you think this is usually how she kills them, Tsunade-sama, imitating their modus operandi?"
"No." Kakashi intervened, a frown creasing the skin between his eyebrows. "Gohama tears their hearts out, independent of how they killed Buki citizens. The only time she diverged from that was with me. Instead of a chakra-covered hand she formed a chidori. This one was personal."
Kakashi moved down the table, around Tsunade, so he could watch the characters chakra-seared into the flesh of the Yamanaka's torso. Seeing his interest, Tsunade explained, "They were written while Hiroe was alive, a way of torturing her. All Minake, one of the founding clans."
One name stood out from the others, the characters much larger and spanning over the entirety of the chest. Minake Haku.
"That was one of her best friends, her teammate…" Kakashi whispered as he watched the blistered skin shaped into the name he had seen carved in stone once, Gohama crouching beside him as she laid wildflowers on the grave, her eyes deep with sorrow. "He wanted to be Yukikage, his childhood was given to that dream and now he's dead."
His hand moved thoughtlessly towards the dead body's chest, his fingers wanting to touch the characters of the boy's name, wanting to touch a sign of Gohama's life and of her downfall, bring her here next to him, even if he couldn't stop her from breaking.
"How far gone are you, Gohama…" He whispered softly, the sound almost not passing past his lips.
A hand grabbed onto his wrist before he could reach the Yamanaka's corpse. He jolted a little and suddenly realised how stupid his impulse had been now that Tsunade had stopped it, he would contaminate the body.
Kakashi raised his head to find the Shizune looking at him with wide eyes and Tsunade with unusually soft ones. He blushed at the piercing attention locked on him, realising he had spoken every word out loud for them to hear.
His hand rose his nape, pulling out of Tsunade's hold, and he awkwardly stepped away from the autopsy table. "This was all I wanted to know." A hand seal later and he was gone from the room.
"These two brats can't catch a break." Tsunade grumbled as she leaned back on the table.
Her fingers twirled the stirring stick around the sake with a careless swirl of her wrist. Gohama pulled it out after a few minutes and saw that the end of it hadn't changed colour. Good, she didn't feel like getting poisoned tonight.
It was less likely now that Uchiha Sasuke had killed Danzo and Root had stopped chasing after her. Gohama regretted that she hadn't been the one to kill that despicable man, but she could see how a Uchiha deserved to deliver the final blow too.
The stick didn't work for all known poisons and toxins, but it was a broad safe-ish test Gohama always did with beverages in restaurants and bars. The food was more difficult to test, so she usually chose not to eat at all. Only when she was feeling particularly reckless and careless, her will to live toned down to a game of odds, did she break the rules.
There were days when her paranoia hit harder. Everyone's eyes seemed to be stuck to the back of her head and every whisper around sounded like her name. Those days made it unbearable for her to relax, her muscles tight like stretched strings, ready to snap at every rustle in the air and every change in chakra signatures. It was exhausting.
At least, this prostitution house never failed to offer a soothing night for her when she was lost on some no-man land in inner Land of Grass. Her business near there had been taken care of yesterday and Gohama had decided to stay for one more night, only to hear the koto and the languid sad voice of the old woman.
She would have preferred it without the drowned out moans and grunts coming from upstairs, or the whispers between patrons and the women in the common room where the old woman played.
Her choice of music was odd for the ambience of the establishment, perhaps in an attempt to mimic a geisha house, and Gohama was glad she had come upon it one drunken night a couple of months ago. Sometimes she would be left alone in the room, with her bottle of sake and the melancholic tremble of the strings.
This had been the only times she felt herself human in the last weeks – whatever feeling human meant, but in her mind it seemed the appropriate description for it. In all of the Kyura deathliness, they knew where the beauty of life breathed and they cherished it, a small white flower in blood soaked hands.
Gohama leaned her shoulder against the wall, her gaze falling back to watch the moon through the branches of a tree outside. The last patron on the room left with the prostitute, their chakra signatures moving upstairs. Gohama let her lids fall over her eyes as she brought the cup of sake to her lips, ears delighted at the koto.
The melody changed, the pace more indolent and the notes sadder, and Gohama relished in it. Images of recitals Mother had organised in their garden during late spring and summer printed into her eyelids, the flowers bloomed and the leaves a rich green around the players. There had been three years were she had played in them too, her fingers deft enough to actually sound good.
Her stomach had always churned nervously, even worse than before missions, at them, Mother and Father's gentle smiles doing little to ease the nerves. Gohama had always preferred to play alone, on the engawa of her home, especially when it rained, the earth smelling musty and the drops joining the rhythm of her plucks.
She hadn't played in eleven years. When she had shared with Kakashi she knew how to play the koto, his eye had shone with a silent request, but Gohama had shut it down hastily, afraid it would be too painful. A drop of regret plinked inside her, making her chest ripple, but she payed it little mind, especially because it confused her.
Now it was his face behind her eyelids, how he had looked when she had first seen him maskless, the red birch leaves against his silver hair, his eyes shy, then tender, then irresistible, that beauty spot at the corner of his mouth, that drop of blood falling from his sharingan.
Her eyes snapped open and she jerked on her seat, the sake spilling over her hands.
Fuck. That image always crept into her mind with a sudden flash.
The woman playing missed the string, the shrill misplaced note piercing harshly through Gohama's ears. Her wrinkly eyes narrowed on Gohama with venomous fire behind them.
"Sorry." The word tumbled out of her mouth without thought, the harsh stare cutting it open from her chest.
"Shinobi." The woman growled, she didn't stop her glaring and she also didn't continue playing. For minutes, they exchanged gazes, Gohama forcing herself from not squirming in her seat. She was one damn good shinobi why would she be intimidated by an old civilian with some weird resentment for her?
The contest only stopped when a group of rowdy costumers, ninja, Gohama noted from their chakra, stumbled through the room. The old woman's eyes widened and she jumped onto her feet and scurried out the room, upstairs.
Like a sudden wave, Gohama felt the killing intent of the shinobi spread until it struck that bloodthirsty impulse in her fingers, her muscles trembling from pent up energy ready to burst. Gohama hated how she had become a killing beast triggered with only the feel of shinobi chakra with a hint of violence in it.
Their laughs echoed through the wood between them, low and growled, followed by feminine screams. She rose from her spot and moved upstairs, lamenting the ruined quiet night while her hand already held her tanto, fingers twirling it expertly, familiarising themselves with the weight they had never forgotten.
A man had his filthy fingers twisted around a girl's hair and dragged her across the wooden floor as she screamed. Gohama didn't need to think before pushing her tanto deep into his heart from his back. The man gurgled and before he could slump forward onto the girl, she pushed him to the side.
In an instant, she was breaking though the room where other two laughed and growled, as they grabbed the women and dragged them under their filthy bodies. A rough hand raised to slap one of the girls but Gohama cut it across his wrist before he could lower it.
A shrill scream came from the large man and his companion shouted something that spread through the entire house before fleeing. In his frantic run, Gohama needed only to stretch her leg for him to stumble onto the ground. She slit his throat. She turned to watch the other man crumpled on himself, his leftover hand holding onto his wrist as he cried. Another soft tender flesh for her to slice through.
When she left that room, the other three had already run away from the prostitution house. She let them go, Gohama didn't feel like running after them now and she had their chakra signatures graved into her memory and could ask Yukine to take in the smells they had left behind on the women and floors.
The women scurried and jumped away from her as she took wide strides out of the top floor, needing to clean the blood off her. As she paced onto the last step, Gohama felt the same cutting glare on the back of her head.
"Shinobi." The old woman growled, her steps heavy as they thudded down the stairs.
Gohama turned around and walked back, forcing some space between the woman and her bloodied clothes. With a glance upwards, she could see the women peeking from the top of the stairs, one of them with blood on her neck and down her chest. Her gaze fell back to the old woman's unyielding loathing expression, the procuress and owner of the house Gohama could now assume with certainty.
"You made this mess." Her fingers were tight around the handle of a rusty old katana.
"No. I stopped the bigger mess. You knew who they were. It's not the first time they caused trouble and raped the women."
"Now they will come back and make things worse. Maybe even kill us."
"Not if I kill them first."
The old woman took another step forward. "We don't need your help, Shinobi."
"The thing is that you clearly do need it."
"Shinobi." She spat with hatred flaring her nostrils. "They always think themselves above us. They fight their wars and play their games and trample over us as if we are no more than passing rats, better dead than multiplying.
"We have no way of defending ourselves, no way of fighting for us and our people. No way. We die of hunger and deceases planted by your wars, we die from attacks of the rogue ninja you left here. And the exorbitant prices of your missions, meant only to support the rich fat lives of your people. You sowed our misery and left us alone to harvest it."
Gohama wavered at the unexpected speech that had rushed out the woman's twisted mouth. "I am offering a way of defending yourselves. Free of charge."
"I'll die before accepting your help, Shinobi." The old woman pointed the katana at her, posture wrong, and still her eyes burned with fire. "Leave now. You're not welcome here." Gohama continued unmoving and she took a step forward, swinging the katana from side to side. "Even if I cannot win, I'll still fight you away from my property."
Gohama nodded, knowing the stubborn glint in the old woman wouldn't be softened now. "Understandable." She turned around and threw a lazy wave over her shoulder. "If you need me, I'm staying in the only inn in this forsaken town."
Her hands entertained themselves with sharpening a kunai while Gohama lounged on the roof of the inn. The night was bitingly cold and wet, the moon bright in black ink sky. It was a beautiful sight and Gohama could have delighted her lonely heart on it, if not for her firing thoughts.
She had spent most of the day mulling over the old civilian woman's words. The first years of her life had thrived through wartime. When she had been old enough to understand the marks of the war, it had always been from the perspective of shinobi. Gohama had never questioned how civilians had fared through it, because she had assumed the ones who fought had been the only ones to suffer, like Father and Uncle. Kakashi…
The old woman's words rang too true for Gohama to dismiss them as resentment for rogue-nin turned into ignorance about the shinobi villages. The Land of Grass had been one of the main battlefields for the war between the great countries. One more thing to pile onto the vicious, deadly list of corruption in the shinobi villages. There was no hope, they should all just be obliterated into dust and nothing.
Gohama had never thought of civilian life as one of survival. Shinobi were the ones that knew death as a companion, shinobi were the one that fought for their lives everyday. But perhaps that was everyone.
She had seen it already, hadn't she? On her travels through most of the world, she had seen the poverty and the death, the tired hollow eyes, the rough working hands. Yet she had not seen it with real eyes, only in her memories could she paint the pictures, her eyes had always been a single passing glance, uncaring and indifferent.
Before the only civilian she had known were Nikato and his lovely heart-warming family. It had only frozen her idyllic image of civilian life as one free of the horrors of shinobi, the idyllic bubble where so many of her what-ifs took place. She remembered the civilian medic's narration of her supposed civilian life and there had been nothing but carefree and trivial struggles of a simple life.
But these women, these prostitutes, knew of survival. A painful shiver dragged down her spine as she remembered Dazai's mission, that prickling self-disgust spreading through her skin, as it had never stopped spreading. Gohama could not never endure a life as that and yet they did, because they needed it, their strength so different and larger than her own.
Gohama had been so incredibly naïve, because she had needed that naivety, she had craved the hopeful what-ifs where her life wouldn't have been tainted with darkness and red, where the self-loathing wouldn't have entrenched and made home of her marrow, and there would only been love in her and everything and everyone to love.
Her shining rose tinted eyes had seen that beautiful childhood shattered and then she had clamped herself on the civilian bubble. Because where else could she have turned?
The idea that there was no escaping the dark hollow void in her heart was too terrifying and yet it was real. Whatever life she had been offered at birth grief and death would always slither through it. The fault weren't her circumstances, the fault was hers and hers alone. Gohama was her own downfall and nothing could ever stop herself from falling, because merely existing meant she would fall.
So cruel, so fucking cruel.
"Shinobi-san!" A girl shouted for Gohama. She was young, too young to be a prostitute.
"Yes."
"Please come. Chisato-san says she won't take your help, but we need you. They're back. All of them. They'll kill us."
The sense of injustice that had always darkened her view of a ninja's way of life grew to encompass the civilian one as well. There was suffering and violence all around.
Her fingers were tight around her tachi, her nails biting into the skin of her palm. Her ribs heaved with deep breaths and with each one the nauseating sting of blood and flesh burned down her lungs.
There was blood everywhere, warm blood, soft blood, as it dripped down the blade, as it glided down the skin of her face, her hands, her neck and clothes. It was everywhere, imbibed into the wood of the floor and the shoji paper on the doors, on the dead bodies around her, so red, so incredibly red.
It was those minutes where Gohama walked through the razor's edge, a fine balance of her mending mind as her muscles were still tight from the fight and her thoughts were still growling for her to kill. One small sound and she could snap, chakra raging and wild. It had happened once and luckily she had destroyed nothing but the rundown shed she had been standing on.
There were people around her, a blur of chakra signatures, frantic but soft enough they couldn't sharpen the edge of her mind. Civilians.
"Shinobi…" A voice whispered behind her.
Gohama jerked at the sudden sound and the balance tilted onto the right side, the voice only helping in pulling her back into the tangible not blood-soaked world. She sheathed her sword, her fingers trembling now that the edge had been cut as a cord holding her tight.
"What do you need from us?" It was the old woman, smart enough to know this was a dangerous situation, perhaps even more than the thugs of before.
"A scalding bath."
Her knees fell gently onto the cold floor before the instrument and her hands soothed down her thighs, correcting the flap of the robe that had fallen to the side. Her clothes were soaked in blood and they had been attentive enough in offering her something to wear after her boiling bath.
Gohama glanced up from the koto to see the encouraging and excited faces of the women. Staying for a cup of sake on the house had been a clear mistake. They were nice and lively, even if she could feel there were still remains of fear as they talked. They had seen the bloody bodies and her blood covered clothes, self-preservation was an important thing. Unfortunately, they weren't scared enough of Gohama not to force her into playing the koto after pulling the information that she had learnt it as a child.
Her finger glided over the strings, their trembling sound letting her know of the tuning and helping her familiarise herself with the feel of them under her fingers. Gohama put on the fingerpicks and tested the plucking again. It was strange how she felt an impulse to keep playing, like a tingle deep in her hands that wanted to resurface. She tried an easy sequence of notes, her movements clumsy and shy, and it only made that tingle resurface, that acquired knowledge buzz to be put to use again.
It was similar to fighting with a weapon not used in a long time. The first trying movements were always cautious and too self-aware but soon the motor memory kicked in and there was less thinking about doing and more doing.
Gohama still missed a few notes and her rhythm was flawed, but it felt amazing to play, freeing. Her fingers fell easily into a distant tune that had now surged into the forefront of her mind. Once she hit a particular note, her voice followed as well, evoked by the recalled movements of her hands on the koto.
"Go round, come round, come round, O distant time." Her voice broke slightly as her throat tightened around itself and her eyes stung. "Come round, call back my heart. Come round, call back my heart. Teach me how to feel. If I hear that you pine for me, I will return to you."
The last note reverberated through the room and Gohama let her hands fell gently onto her legs, her heart hammering heavily against her chest, as if suddenly called back into life.
A sudden embarrassment rose up her chest in a blush, her eyes pinned onto the strings of the koto so they wouldn't meet the women before her. This had been unexpected, the emotion that had swelled with the simple song. Gohama had just started playing and the longing words had fallen from her lips freely, tasting of childhood and better days.
"That's it." She said quietly before standing and moving to her previous spot at the low table.
The women cheered her and threw comments at her and Gohama responded with a frail smile as her shivering fingers wrapped around the sake cup. She honestly just wanted to get out and leave for the inn, to be alone inside the covers of the futon.
This small piece of her past-self, her past naïve self that had found so much delight in the beauty and precision of playing the koto, the past self that had something to live for that wasn't a burden carried out of duty and loyalty, the past self that didn't have hollowness and hatred stuck to every inch of her skin.
These moments where she was torn from Shuriken's numbness and she could truly see and feel things were becoming fewer. Gohama wasn't sure if she was glad for them or hated them. They always brought that feeling of uncanniness, that feeling of misplacement and anguish.
Her eyes lifted from the clear sake swirling in her cup to the heavy prickling feel of the old woman's stare. She nodded and smiled gently before sent the girls to their rooms, who made Gohama promise she would return the next day.
"Thank you, Gohama, for your help. We wouldn't have survived without you." The old woman said softly and her hand reached for Gohama's arm, making her jerk slightly at the touch. "I hope you return to whoever you were singing for."
Gohama nodded and left, stopping only by the inn to grab her things, and flee from that forsaken town.
There was no returning, she had strayed from the path too far, she was gone, too far gone. Gohama was lost, completely irrevocably lost.
Through the mask she breathed in the scent of blood and burnt flesh as she pushed her hand through muscle and bone. Her fingers wrapped round the beating heart, Shuriken always let her hold be gentle and chakraless in those quiet moments were they tried to scream with a torn out lung, she let that moment of horror in their faces stretch, their eyes a frightening sight and their lines twisted into a beast like expression.
Around her palm, their hearts kept beating, slower, languid, warm and soft, a thundering throbbing ball that soothed up her arm. And once the moment was stretching until they were leaning over the threshold of death, Shuriken would crush, the mushy muscle squeezing through the gaps between her fingers, tingling her skin like a soft relieving caress.
If death comes, may it be in honour of the Arms. Your heart for slaughtering Bukigakure.
There were times when she even forgot the words, there were times where she even forgot their names. Her red ink brush marking only a number into the scroll.
They recognised the mask now, and Shuriken thrived in how they recoiled in fear at the sight of her, in how they begged, in how they excused themselves. They knew she would come but there was always the hope they could escape her rule over their deaths. Shuriken relished in watching the squash of their illusion.
Their faces were always the same, women, men, old people. They passed as a blur through her eyes, it no longer mattered who she was killing, all it mattered was that she killed them, as they had killed.
She knew she was no better than them, she was the same as them, but that didn't matter. She had been carved out of Kyura bone and flesh to be the same as them and now the purpose of her life was finally fulfilled.
Uncle Hideki would have been so fucking glad.
All she could see was red now and what wasn't red was colourless, a drab dull grey shade that had no weight to it, not pull. All she saw was the blood forever in her hands and the names forever in the scroll.
Shuriken's tachi pushed through another soft stomach, the sounds the same, the grunts and the screams, the blank death stare.
She turned around, as something bumped against her, and suddenly she was looking at two big terrified eyes, brown, they looked brown.
The child shook uncontrollably, his thin limbs drowned in his loose ragged clothes. Her sight much have truly been terrifying for him to look at her that way, as if she were a monster pulled out of a scary story into reality.
Gohama crouched beside him and tried to smile reassuringly. "I'm sorry there, little man, I didn't mean to bump you." She offered him her hand to help him stand up from the unpaved ground of the busy street. The people passed beside them carelessly, some throwing a few spat complaints.
The kid took it even if the fear and distrust didn't leave his face. He probably thought it was better to follow to her wishes, even if it meant he would end up hurt anyway, maybe if he did what she wanted, he would end up less hurt. His hand was tiny and bony, the wrist felt as if it would snap like a twig with just a bit of force.
"Are you hungry?" Gohama asked and he shook his head. "Well, I am, do you know where the best food is?"
His finger pointed to a ramen stand. It wasn't the healthiest but the fat and carbs would give him much needed substance. There really wasn't much Gohama could do besides offering them a meal. She stood and started walking, turning around to call after him. "Your friends can come too." She said as she look up to see their heads peeking from an alleyway.
Just as confused as before, the boy decided again it was best to follow the crazy kunoichi's commands, thinking that making her mad would be worse for him. Gohama never took the civilians fear and distrust as an offence, on the contrary, she admired their sense of preservation. Only a fool would not be terrified of her.
Gohama ordered as many meals as she could and called a few kids to help carry the load.
"Thank you, Kunoichi-san." A little girl, no older than four smiled bravely at her.
Gohama let her fingers glide down her dishevelled dirty hair, marvelling at the rich light colour of it. If felt as if it were the first time she was watching blond hair. "You're welcome."
"I want to be a kunoichi too." She made a show of punching and kicking the air. "Fight bad men that want to hurt us!"
Gohama crouched. "You're on the right path then and have the right spirit. A shinobi's job is all about protecting their important people and homes."
That seemed to warm the other children to her as they started to shout hectically their dreams of being ninja and kicking ass and being rich and making loads of money on missions. It was soon ruined when one of the village's officers started to shout out after the children for ruining the peace. They ran, probably used of being beaten by law enforcement.
It was always this order in some civilian villages. So much poverty, so much injustice. After her confrontation with the old woman of the prostitution house, Gohama had tried to help the civilians that she could, knowing it was only an isolated action that wouldn't fix anything.
Maybe it was selfish, for her own need of trying to balance the scale of her own morality. In the end, it was meaningless, the people would go back to their terrible lives and Gohama would find another missing-nin to kill.
It was a mask, a lie, a deceiving mechanism of pretend. Her bloodthirst was as monstrous as it had never been, and even if she felt hollow and overflowing in self-loathing after writing the names on the scroll, it would never erase the delight at feeling their blood, their pain, their heart shatter in her hands.
The only thing that kept her from falling fully into Shuriken's monstrosity was her memories of her team in Konoha and of her childhood in Buki. At least there, she had had someone to go back to after a mission, at least then there was still a snowdrop to cherish and protect. There was no one to ground her now, but Seiryu and Yukine when she summoned him, and these little moments of humanity with civilians.
Gohama felt like a ghost, like a shadow with no substance, a mere stain floating around the world with nothing to hold her to it. There was her duty, but Shuriken was the one holding the weapon and Gohama was left with nothing, no duty, no life, no self.
These small moments brought some substance to her being, these small moments where she felt herself be with all the things beside her. It always began with a start, as if she were waking up from a nightmare. Something yanked her back, like Seiryu's voice, the sound of a laugh, or the sight of the moon reflecting on a lake.
They never lasted long enough for something to hold her down before she floated again as a ghost, a demon with a mask, soon the mask inevitably ended glued back to her face. Then Gohama would be gone.
Pink petals fell around them, the sweet perfume of Sakura blossoms, drowned under the smell of blood. Shuriken had known they were near her. She had known they would find her, she had seen Nikato's owls hovering the sky, and for some reason she hadn't tried to run away.
Her foot continued to rub and push on the spilling wound at the man's stomach and he grunted for her to stop. He had given her all the information she had wanted and his friends were already dead, their guts spilling into the grass and the fallen petals.
There was one missing. Kisamaru. His byakugan had always pierced through her, had always seen the deformed black void inside her. He knew it was useless to come, there was no returning, no bringing her back from the thin husk of Shuriken.
"Gohama, please, stop…"
She looked over her shoulder through the slit of the mask at Nikato. He was terrified, like the last time she had seen him on the day that had nailed the vanishing of Gohama.
"You want me to spare this filth?" Shuriken asked and bent at the waist to near the man's face. "Hmm, did you hear that, Filth-san? They think your life is worth sparing. Why don't you share with them what you shared so kindly with me?" The man mumbled a few pleas through the gurgle in his throat and Shuriken pushed the tip of her tachi into his shoulder. "Do it."
"We were sent to the civilian district. We rounded them inside a shrine and we burnt it to the ground."
"And the rest?"
"Before that we took the women."
"Say the word."
"We… we… rape—" Shuriken's fingers went through the hand signs for a torturing genjutsu and the man's words were cut by his screams and his struggles. Gohama wanted the word to be seared with pain in his mind.
"You're the scum of this earth. Going for the ones that can't defend themselves, you go against everything shinobi are meant to be. You're worse than scum." And Gohama wasn't any different. Shuriken lifted the man by the collar of his shirt, but before she pushed her fist through his chest, she let them see his mangled up face. "Still think he's worth sparing?"
"It's not his life we're worried about, Gohama." Hansuke explained steadily, unlike Nikato there was no fear in him, only harshness.
"I'm afraid Gohama isn't here right now. Just Shuriken." She answered light-heartedly as she held the half-dead man to her chest with an arm around his middle. This way they would have the perfect view to what she was now, the perfect view of the horror she brought with her hands. She pushed her chakra-covered fingers slowly through the flesh and bone above his heart, the stench of burnt flesh drowning the one of blood.
"Your heart for slaughtering Bukigakure." Her fingers clenched shut around his heart and she let the body fall to the ground.
Gohama's eyes glanced at them through the slits of her mask, waiting for a reaction, but they just stared, Nikato trembling with hands fisted at his sides, and Hansuke almost indifferent.
"Why are you looking at me like that? He was lucky. Most times when they admit to raping people I cut their dicks off or impale them, depending on their preferences."
Hansuke took a step towards her, that foolish man. "Take off your mask, Gohama."
"Trust me, me having the mask on is considerate, you don't want to see me without it."
"Take it off." He growled and it was somewhat reminiscent of some of the fights they had had, when her stubbornness clashed with his unyieldingness.
Her fingers curled around the cold smooth lacquer and she pulled it away from her face, her arm falling limp to her side, and she let her eyes pierce through Hansuke's.
"It's almost cruel… how beautiful you are even with all that coldness and that sharpness. You're like ice now, Gohama."
The corner of her lip twisted into a sneer. "How fucking poetic, Hansuke. Still won't get me back into your bed."
"I don't want you in my bed."
"Ah, so you've learnt now. You've learnt that making sweet love won't actually fix anything about me."
"Maybe pounding into you against that tree will be more efficient."
All she showed of her surprise, after attuning the control of her emotions and reactions, was a slow raise of her eyebrow. That had not been the comeback she had expected from him, not when she had jabbed at his foolish romantic idealism and especially not when Nikato was standing beside him.
Her eyes narrowed at him, a self-satisfied glint swimming in his hazel eyes, they were hazel, she could actually see their colour. Had she broken him to the point he was all realism and bluntness?
Apparently, the comment spurred Nikato's recklessness too, as he leaned towards her, his kind dark eyes pained in his pleading. "Come back with us, Gohama."
"It's too late for that. In Konoha I'm dead. Kisamaru is the only one sensible enough to understand that."
"No. This will kill you, it is killing you. Give it up, Gohama."
"That's part of the point."
Hansuke started towards her with strong resolute steps that seemed to mimic the thundering of her heart against her ribs. His hands rose to her face, foolish recklessness action, and Gohama panicked in the small instant as he raised his hands to touch her. She was on the razor's edge again, and she didn't know whether the tension in her muscles would snap violently or simply wash away.
Her eyes closed and she flinched when Gohama felt the warm weight of his palm and fingers on her face. Maybe it was the familiarity of Hansuke's touch or the odd flutter that stirred in her stomach from it, but there was no defensive violent overreaction. Only a hint of anger, because Hansuke was a fool who probably didn't even realise the danger he had put himself in, when even civilians did.
Gohama opened her eyes as she felt the rough scrape of fabric against her jaw and realised Hansuke was using the hem of his sleeve to brush away the blood she had spread on her skin when taking off the mask. She almost whimpered, he was cleaning the blood off her, and it would be perfect if only he would be rougher and scrub her skin raw.
When he stopped and finally met her eyes, the harshness of before had melted away into a desperate warmth. There he was, foolish Hansuke, and she didn't know if she hated it or was glad for it.
"Gohama, you need to come back. Come back to us."
There was a small spot of craving simmering in her chest, but Gohama didn't let it grow. She knew the reality of her life now and she recognised clearly the madness in the voice that whispered that maybe Hansuke could also belong to it.
"And you need to let me go." She answered steadily, her eyes fixed into his and trying to brand her words into his stubborn heart. "This time even you know there's no coming back, Hansuke."
"Gohama." Her name was a rough breath in his voice, whispered with all the despair in the world as his fingers tightened around her jaw. He knew it was true.
Her expression softened and she would have touched him if her hands weren't soaked in blood. "Let me go. I'm gone, Hansuke. Let me go."
"Then don't come back. I'll come with you. Let me come with you, Gohama."
"What?"
"You don't have to come back with us. I'll stay with you and we'll go wherever you want us to. I'll be with you for the rest of our lives."
"You would leave Konoha for me?" Even after her whispered words fell into silence her mouth continued parted in disbelief.
Hansuke smiled, a charming content smile, thumb brushing over her cheek. "I would and I will."
There was so much certainty in his words, she knew he had decided it before finding her. It wasn't just an impulsive promise, he had actually thought it through. Her teeth clenched shut and her lip curled over her teeth.
"Don't touch me." Gohama growled, quiet and lethal.
"Wha—"
"Don't fucking touch me." Her bloodied hands pushed onto his vest and shoved him away harshly, making Hansuke stumble a few steps back. "You would defect your village? The village that was devastated, literally reduced to a crater? The village that is Akatsuki's main target? That's worse than your typical foolishness, that's betrayal. And you had the audacity to actually smile as you spit on your loyalty to your village!"
"You're also one of Akatsuki's main targets. You're also a crater, reduced to no more than a hollow shell of what you truly are!"
"No, Hansuke. This is me. I told you Gohama was gone! This!" Her fingers yanked the mask secured at her hip and settled it back onto its rightful place on her face. "This is me! You would betray your village for this?"
"I'm also betraying you. I can't abandon you when you clearly need me, Gohama. That is betraying you."
"No, Hansuke, no, no! No! You betray me when you renounce the duty and loyalty to your village. Can't you fucking see that? You betray me and all that is dear to me."
"Go—"
Before he could finish saying her name, she lunged towards him with her new jinchuriki speed, too fast for even him to follow it now. He fell to the soft grass with a thud as Gohama straddled him with her knee on his chest and her hand around his throat.
"You're no match for me now. You better get the fuck out of here, before you really piss me off." Gohama growled as her masked face hovered right above his face. "You have no place in my life, so let me fucking go."
The translated verses of the song are taken from "Song of the Heavenly Maiden", by Joe Hisaishi.
Thank you all for reading and a special thank you for the ones that reviewed. I always love reading them. As always, stay safe.