Part VI | Chapter 5
Her foot slid under a bloodied torso and she pushed it away to see if there was another one beneath it. Shuriken straightened the brush on her fingers and wrote two more numbers on the scroll.
"Gohama, you don't have to write all of them." Seiryu spoke softly.
"Don't call me that." Her voice was harsh as she searched for a blank space of wood floor between the fallen corpses where she could put a foot on.
"I'll call you by your name. The name your parents gave you."
Her hand quickly marked a few more numbers on the scroll, as she answered, "I don't have parents. I don't have a past or a future. I have only my duty."
"Okay, kiddo, keep telling yourself that, one day you might actually believe it, Gohama." He had his bratty tone on and it prickled in her chest. "And when you do, I at least hope you to have the consideration of never using my chakra. I am the biju of a jinchuriki, a human being, not a lifeless, nameless, soulless weapon."
Her foot pushed one more body away, as she could see a bloodied arm slipping from under it and couldn't be sure it was just a cut off limb or if there was another dead person beneath. "Then fuck off, and take your chakra with you, I don't fucking ca—"
A harsh stab pierced through her chest and Gohama fell onto her back. Her nails bit into the laced scales of her vest trying to keep down the pain that seemed only to pulse deeper for every moment she looked at the young dead face in front of her.
Her hands pushed against the ground so she could straighten up, but the warm wet blood on the soft flesh of the bodies made them slippery. Every time she tried to raise herself her palms slipped over them and her arms gave out.
"No… no… no…" Gohama whispered as she finally crawled onto the side of the dead body, her hands pushing the man above him, so the boy would not be crushed.
His blank eyes looked up at the nothing beyond them, in the darkness she couldn't tell their colour, but they seemed green to her. The colour would have fitted him in life, would have shone against his pale skin and his dark hair.
"Gohama."
Her fingers pressed to his pulse point but there was nothing there. Her interlaced hands rested above his sternum and she pushed down, trying to flood his heart with the rhythm of life, her pathways giving him Seiryu's precious chakra, into his muscles, his brain, into his fading core of energy, into every cell that she could reach.
"Gohama, stop."
"Come on, kid, come on. I know you're there, I know you can come back." She hissed, her throat tightening around itself, wet and burning from the tears that rose there onto her eyes, but she never faltered in her compressions. "You can't be dead. You weren't supposed to die, so you can't be dead. Please. I'm sorry, but please come back. Please, Yukine, please… come back, Yukine, come back…"
"Gohama. He's dead."
"No. No." Her movements were frailer as the certainty of it, dark and searing, slithered around her heart, her voice breaking into whispers and her arms shuddering. "No… no…"
"He's dead, Gohama. Let him be dead."
"What is he doing here? He's just a kid… he's just a kid… he wasn't supposed to… no… no…"
Her fingers hovered over his pale skin of his face, the side of it tainted with red and murky blood, because of her, because she had killed him. He couldn't have been older than fourteen, his life hadn't belonged to Buki nor his name on the scroll. Yet, she had stolen it, a full life ready to be lived and she had stolen it, like they had stolen all of Bukigakure's lives.
"I'm so sorry… I'm so sorry…"
Gohama knew she wasn't better than any of them, but this…
Where was the honour? Where was the justice? This was indiscriminate slaughter. This was disgusting, this was evil.
And already from the pain that only grew in her chest, clenching around it, crushing it down with cold sharp fingers, Gohama knew she wouldn't come back from this.
Her eyes were pinned on the strips of stale light spilling from the blinds to land on the dark blue swirls of the seal seared into the skin of her forearm. The gleaming speckles of dust trembled through the beams but she could never see them once they rested above her marked flesh.
Her eyes were dry from being open for so long, her fingers were stiff from being slack, and her side sore from laying for days on that bed. But she was too tired to move, too tired to turn onto her other side, too tired for a little twitch of her fingers just to make sure they had not frozen in that position, and too tired to fight the pull the image of the jinchuriki seal had over her.
She had stared at it for hours as a child, her fingers gliding over the shape of the ten-tailed dragon and the small characters written around it. She had never found it strange, she even remembered a time where she had thought every kid had the drawing of a dragon branded into their skin.
There was a time when she hadn't understood just how much was cramped into the pretty curves of that mark. There was a time when she had seen in that mark all that she was.
An abyss spread between the one laying now on the bed and the several ones that were nothing but vague floating memories that felt as if she had never lived them. Like a sharingan implanted memory, like the memory of another that was nothing but passing images for one to watch.
Nothing connected this one and all the other ones in those memories. There was the dragon seared into that flesh, but now the seal felt like a drawing inked onto a piece of paper. Now that arm didn't feel her own, these thoughts didn't feel her own, those memories didn't feel her own. The name didn't feel her own.
Gohama. Gohama. Gohama.
It meant nothing but hollow sounds. There were memories of it, memories of soft voices and her answering to them, memories of screams and whispers, of pleas, of shouts, of moans, of laughs. If someone called for it, she wouldn't turn. Her ears would take in the syllables with the same obliviousness over the murmur of a busy street falling through a half-opened window.
Her life had never belonged to herself and her person had never belonged to herself. Not even her name belonged to herself.
She had been Shuriken.
The mask, lacquer dark with swirls of snowflakes like a storm on a Land of Snow winter night, was abandoned on the wooden floor, the blood left there to crust and darken.
The Shuriken, the symbol of the village's skill. Its own supreme weapon of defence and attack. The ruthless glorious weapon. The perfect weapon. It seemed only fitting that Buki was dead and she was bloody broken shards spread over the sheets of a bed.
There was no glue or hands that could mend the broken pieces into the sharp edged shape of Shuriken, not when she didn't recognise herself in the glazed mirror of those pieces, not when she couldn't find those shards.
But if even the mask didn't fit her then what was she?
She had never felt this hollowness. It reached more than her moods, more than her emotions and thoughts, it reached deep into everything that she was. There was nothing and she was nothing.
"I'm a failure." She breathed out into the empty room, her voice rough against her sore throat. "I tried to be the perfect weapon for Buki, I tried, but I can't."
"You're not a failure, Gohama, and none of my jinchuriki were ever perfect weapons. I've told you stories, you know of this, you're probably the least imbecile of them, and still you're so imbecile when it comes to other things..."
"Buki needed me to be perfect, they put their hopes on me and I failed them… and now they're dead."
"That's Buki's fault, the Kyura's fault. They were the ones that failed you, Gohama. No one has the right to ask for perfection from anyone. It doesn't exist."
"I don't think I can do it anymore…" Her fingers were limp and powerless, her weapon had slipped out of their weak hold and shattered beside herself. "I don't think I can bear any of this anymore…"
"Then don't do it, Gohama."
"I'll be a traitor."
"I'll be worthless."
"I'll be nothing."
"Being the Shuriken is being nothing, Gohama. That role, that duty, it's not for you and it's not you, kiddo."
"How can I abandon them…?"
"You are not abandoning them. There are other ways of honouring Buki and the Kyura. You don't owe them yourself. Your snowdrop, Gohama. Remember what your father said? You can let go of your weapon but never your snowdrop."
"I can't find it… I used to, even through all the killing, I used to, but now… I can't even find my weapon, much less my snowdrop… It's already lost. Gohama's gone, Seiryu. You keep saying her name and it means nothing. She isn't here… I can't find her back… I don't know who I am anymore, what I am… what I'll be tomorrow…"
She didn't feel real. Her fingers moved slightly at her command and she curled them into a fist, but her thoughts didn't seem connected to her motion, and they didn't feel real too.
"Kakashi…" The sound of his name felt like glue in her throat. "He pulled me back once. He can find Gohama."
"No, kiddo. Gohama is yours alone to find, not anyone else's."
'May its storied free your spirit and kindle your dreams.'
She understood now what Mother had meant when she wrote those words.
Her eyes opened to watch the wooden ceiling as her mind rebuilt one of her preferred what-if scenarios. She called them dreams, they were both images her mind made up, this time awake, and aspirations, this time unattainable.
She was a crumbled mess under the guilt and regret, under all the blood and deaths, but at least in her mind she could float. She could have everything through her imagination.
They were there alive and she could touch them. Her family, her clan, her friends, her village, even herself, they were there and she could touch them, love them. And not just them, she could love everyone and everything, from the living to the dead, from Konoha to Buki.
What were village boundaries when she could make them wash away in her dreams? What was a seal stuck to her arm when she could erase it, when she could free Seiryu and not lose him? What was death when she could give life and future to everyone in a single thought?
She lived through warm summer nights, the cicadas buzzing in Mother's lush garden, a cup of sake in her fingers, her head resting on Kakashi's shoulder, his lips ghosting over her hairline with no mask and no guilt around them. Nikato chatting their ears off, Kunimaru spilling perfectly timed comments that made everyone burst out laughing, Haku and Kisamaru talking quietly between themselves, Genma flirting with Isune and having his advances crushed, Hansuke sitting beside Yukine and, with his kind friendliness, helping him lose the shyness around his nee-chan's friends. Mother and Father peeking through the shoji door to wish them a goodnight and to tell her of a letter from Uncle Tsukate before leaving upstairs to sleep.
The world was at her hands, for her to mould and shape like a god. And there were so much good and beauty in the world if she could only shape it into form. In her dreams she could.
The bleakness she had always seen in the world was a fault of her own eyes, she was the one that gave and took the meaning out of things. The wasteland of her heart was hers alone to blame.
In all this perfect scenarios, she couldn't shape herself into something different than what she was now in that bed of that inn. In all those scenarios, she was still a shadow, dark, shapeless and untouched with hope. Even if she tried to shed her dreams of it, the desolation gnawed still.
The disillusion remained always, sometimes flaring even more, and the blame and the hollow.
In the end, it wasn't real. In the end, there was always that bitter taste in her mouth and that emptiness in her soul.
She closed her eyes and turned onto her side, Yukine's white fur brushed against her back, but he didn't stir where he was sleeping on the bed. Her eyes pinned to Shuriken's mask where it still sat abandoned on the floor, a token of everything she had cut off from herself, even herself she had cut off.
And for what, for who? She couldn't remember.
The mask was real. The seal on her forearm was real. The blood on her hands was real. The lives she had killed and the names on the scroll were real. The hole of the things she had left behind was real. Death was the most certain and most real of all.
"Seiryu…"
"Kiddo?"
At least, there were two people she did not have to cut off. And, even if she couldn't feel it, she knew her dried heart overflowed with gratitude.
"Is it selfish that I'm glad you're here with me?"
"Of course not, Gohama. I'm also glad I'm here with you and for you."
"I can free you now. Both of us, I can free us from myself."
"No, Gohama, not now. I'm still not finished telling you all the stories of your family and my jinchuriki."
"Where were we?"
"Hachiro, your great-great-great-grandfather was one smooth charming son of a—very reasonable woman, in fact. I still don't know who he got his personality from. He almost caused a war between Kyura and Minake over sleeping with the Head of Clan's wife. It all started…
Shuriken's mask looked back at her through two ominous blank slits. She had cleaned the crusted dry blood on the sink of the bathroom, her eyes glued to the water swirling down the drain and never lifting up to the mirror.
Her fingers trembled, not from the cold soaking into her hands, but with the anticipation of sliding the mask back into place on her face. It was just a mask, just a piece of lacquered decorated wood. All the meaning imbibed into it came from her, the mask meant nothing if she wanted it to mean nothing.
Yet she felt powerless under the ominous shine of the lacquer from the yellowed light of the lamps, she felt subjected to the shuriken carved onto its forehead, as if it were linked to the one in her heart. And it certainly was.
She couldn't strip it of the meaning Buki and herself had decorated onto it. She couldn't put it on again, not when its weight would soak down into her skin and drown her mouth with the blood it had always been meant to carry.
It was happening already and the mask was in her hands not her face. It had melted into her, into Gohama, no matter how much she had tried to keep it above the shell of Shuriken. And now she couldn't bear any of it anymore, she had been yanked back to the forefront and every kill was so painfully branded into her own hands.
Most of all she didn't want to bear it. She didn't want others to bear it, she didn't want to stop any more hearts from beating, seal any more names into the scroll and steal any more futures.
She wouldn't put the mask on for now, she wouldn't write any more names for now.
What if she failed them? What if she abandoned them? They were dead. The only one continuing the meaning of the mask was her and for what? For honour? For duty? Who the fuck cared? She did, but they didn't, they were dead and they couldn't care when they were dead.
She strapped Shuriken's mask onto her hip, ready for when the indifference and courage rose once more into her, ready for a moment when she wouldn't panic with just the memory of the cold smooth lacquer resting against her skin.
Where could she go from here? Without Shuriken, there was nothing.
Her fingers wrapped wound the sides of the sink as she breathed in deeply, her head hung low and eyes pinned to the wet surface of the white porcelain. Now she just had to look up, up to the mirror and up to her reflection.
It was just a reflection, her reflection, whatever it showed she needed to see it. She couldn't hide away from the weight of all the killing, of the bloodthirst that had glued itself into the green of her eyes, she couldn't hide away from how far she had lost Gohama.
Her stiff neck slowly straightened, her eyes watching the net of her mesh shirt against the skin of her chest, the dip between her collarbones, the strained tendons of her throat, her chin. Then, all at once, she snapped her eyes up to see them.
Her pupils were wide with the low light of the bathroom, the green dim and familiar. She tried to see deeper, past her eyes. People believed they were the mirror of the soul and so she searched for her soul in them.
There was nothing. They were just eyes, tired and surrounded with dark circles, but only eyes. Or was it that she couldn't see past them?
The same feeling of unreality shuddered in her chest, because it didn't seem real that she existed behind those eyes, inside that body. But she did, whatever she was now, whatever she had been before, was inside that body and yet it showed nothing of it. It held no big secret, not life-changing revelation, no terrifying monster.
Just as the mask, her body was nothing but cells of bone and flesh. She was the one that created whatever meaning she found in her eyes and shape of her face.
She had been staring at her reflection for too long, it was starting to feel as when people said a word too many times and it began to feel uncanny in their mouths and ears, meaningless. Like her name, her name still hadn't returned to herself.
Uncanniness was beginning to fill her chest, her heart beating harder with the anxiety from it, and she pulled herself back. This wasn't the time for this, not when she was better.
She tried to give herself a little smile, but it felt silly and forced, it felt like it wasn't herself smiling, so instead she fixed a few stray strands of hair and tried to bring some colour to her sunken yellowed cheeks with a few pinches.
With a steeling breath, she left for the bedroom, where Yukine waited for her with that analysing gaze of his.
"Are you okay, Gohama? You've been in there for some time." He asked with his soft voice.
"Just having an existential crisis, nothing too extreme." She answered dismissively while she packed her scrolls into her pouch and secured it to the small of her back.
"When aren't you?" Seiryu asked with all the amusement in the world.
Gohama scoffed and rolled her eyes. "Shut up, lizard."
"About what?"
"Do you have mirrors back home?" Yukine shook his head. "Have a look at the one in the bathroom, like a real look. Reflections are pretty weird. Anyway, I'm out for a drink."
Yukine jumped down from the bed and moved to catch up to her. "I was actually thinking it should be better for you to take a walk under the sun, get some colour on your cheeks, some fresh forest air."
"I've stuck myself to this room for weeks, I need something to get me going, like some thugs to arm-wrestle me so I can use my chakra."
"Or I can help you train. Plenty of chakra usage there."
"Sorry, Yukine, my mind is set I'm afraid. This way you can go home, I've kept you here long enough. Unfortunately you're stuck to me, Seiryu."
"Unfortunately indeed."
She rolled her eyes at Seiryu sigh of annoyance. She kneeled in front of Yukine and her fingers scratching the soft underside of his chin, before leaning into him to kiss the white fur at his forehead.
"Thank you for everything, my sweet Yukine." She stood up, her knees cracking with the movement. "And you too, my dear old lizard."
"Be careful, Gohama."
"Oh come on, it's me. What could go wrong in a bar?"
"Everything."
"Who's next?" She asked with a cocky tilt of her head and spread arms as the large man sitting before her rose.
The other patrons around them cheered her on with rough growled shouts and voices. A hat passed around them, notes and coins spilling through it. After her winning streak of around ten matches they didn't hesitate on betting on her. She wouldn't let them down, she was fairly confident very few people had the chakra control to win against her in the strength department.
With a flick of her hand, a glass of whiskey found its way into her hold and she swallowed it at once, savouring the burning bite of it. The glass thudded against the table and a gloved hand was presented for her to take.
She wrapped her fingers around it and didn't even bother with watching the man on the other side of her, as she demanded another glass. The referee's hand held onto theirs and with a low shout released them. Her opponent didn't waste a second before pushing against her hold.
She usually let them struggle for a few minutes, building the tension of the audience as they yelled their support for her. When they were gigantic smug men, she chose to finish the battle the moment the referee freed their hands.
Another glass was back in her hand and she brought the rim to her mouth, a smirk already twisting her lips, always the same smirk she threw at them, accompanied by sharp eyes, before her merciless shove.
Her eyes shifted from a careless point somewhere beside them to the man before her.
Kakashi.
Gohama jerked back, her chair giving out with the force of it and she fell onto the floor, her nape hitting the cold tile painfully. She stared up at the ceiling for a silent instant that seemed to stretch too long, her mind drowned under the thundering of her heart on her head and ears.
Her hand rose to her eyes, as she rolled to the side and tried to push herself up. It was time to get the fuck out of there.
Her blurred muddied mind tried to bring back the second-long image as she fled the bar into open air without glancing back at the man. It hadn't been Kakashi. The hair had been wrong, the face was uncovered and there had been some weird purple markings around his eyes.
The fresh air didn't help her balance her body and mind back into place. She was riding purely on instinct that, even through weak knees faltering with each step, told her to run. Yukine had been right, she should have gone for a walk, her fragile mental state hadn't been ready for those shots of whiskey.
"It's not real…" She repeated as a litany under her breath, without any success at soothing her. "It's not real. It's not real."
"Gohama, wait!" Fuck. That was definitely his voice.
She didn't wait and she didn't stop. Her legs wanted to start shaking again, but she controlled them with a steady flow of chakra that would jerk them into battle-ready deftness.
She was going crazy again, killing that boy had driven her mad with guilt as when she had thought she had killed Kakashi. And now she was seeing him, hearing him, because her subconscious had always had a cruel masochistic streak.
The alcohol had burnt out of her system with the rush of adrenaline and exercise. She mustered enough courage to peek over her shoulder, and fuck he was still there. The vision wasn't washing away and she had run long enough to be deep inside the woods surrounding the town.
A seed of doubt slithered into her mind while her mouth continued to shape the words 'It's not real'. Why would the real Kakashi come after her?
"You're a coward." Seiryu provided so very helpfully.
"No big news there, lizard."
"Are you going to keep running until you reach Sand? Real or not it doesn't seem like it's stopping anytime soon."
"Is he real?"
"I'm afraid I'm very busy at the moment, you'll have to find out for yourself, kiddo. Don't forget to tell me later."
"Seiryu, don't you dare! Seiryu! Seiryu! I won't summon you anymore! Seiryu!" A growl roared in her chest as anger boiled through her veins, but she could only let out a mumbled "Fucking mean old lizard…"
She was a coward and she didn't fucking care. Seiryu hadn't been there after she had killed Kakashi, he didn't know how horrifying those days had been. Not that it was his fault, she had been the one to block him out and she knew he would have stayed otherwise, just as he had stayed this time.
A curse spit past her lips and, without letting her mind catch up to her actions, her feet stopped. She crouched down, bit her thumb and pushed her hand into the ground with a spike of chakra, if Seiryu wasn't going to help her someone else would. She straightened up, her eyes fixed on the trees in front of her and her teeth clenched as she waited for Yukine to speak.
As the cloud cleared, Yukine's deep voice sounded in a greeting. "Hatake Kakashi."
Fuck. She preferred it if he was a vision.
Gohama hadn't readied herself for the guilt that crashed into her, like sharp needles stabbing into her lungs. She tried to breathe through the panic, this wasn't the time to let herself fall into a frantic mess.
It was a shame so piercing she felt her fingers twitch with the need to scrape her skin raw as when she showered, a shame so profound instead of a blushing, the blood deserted her cheeks, leaving her skin ghostly pale and cold. All of her felt like shuddering, but she kept it down, deep down under her muscles, and only her hands rebelled against her control.
Was this what Kakashi had felt every time he had looked at her with that guilty droopy eye? Since the beginning, four years ago, was this what he had had to endure from her presence? She could finally understand, truly understand, why he had disappeared from her life during those two years.
Her fingers found the soft fur of Yukine's head, something touchable and real under her hand to ground her. He pushed back against her palm, silently marking his presence beside her.
"Yukine." It was Kakashi's voice, his drawled low voice that her dreams and nightmares could never rid themselves of – and she had never wanted them to, not when she had thought it was the only moments she would hear it again, the only moments she had hoped she would hear it, because she had been terrified of what circumstances could ever bring them together again. Now that the circumstances weren't bad at all, she was still terrified.
Her eyes went wide, unseeing as they focussed beyond the trees in front of her. Then, she remembered her memory of his memory of the massacre, the one he had shared with her on that cursed night. Father had summoned Yukine once he had known the battle was lost and somehow Kakashi recognised him now, or perhaps he knew that if she chose to bond with a white wolf it would always be Yukine.
"Thank you for bringing Gohama safe to Tsukate."
Fuck.
"Thank you for allowing my Inaku to summon me." Yukine answered with his velvety voice, respect lacing through it and it reached deep into her, because Yukine's respect had always been hard to earn. "Kakashi."
Great, now they were bonding. And no matter how she wanted it to sound sarcastic in her mind, her heart defiantly told her that it was indeed great.
Why did she freak out with everything concerning Hatake Kakashi? Because she had tried to kill him, obviously, but not even meeting Hansuke and Nikato had unbalanced her so badly.
Remembering their encounter was making her flight instinct jerk in her chest, because it had ended with only heartbreak for them, a dark sucking disillusion clogged in her heart. Every cell of her body had been marked with the fatal certainty that she could never go back to same bonds with her team, the fatal certainty that her romantic relationship with Hansuke was unfixable, that there was no going back to what they had had, no rebuilding it into something new…
Could it even get worse with Kakashi? Gohama had tried to kill him, how could anything be worse than that?
Kakashi's chakra washing over her awareness already felt too overwhelming and she hadn't even seen his face yet. She didn't think she could without falling apart and she didn't even know why she would fall apart. From guilt, shame, longing…? Her emotions were a jumbled chaos and she couldn't even discern what she felt much less what it meant.
Yukine's head tilted back to look up at her and she met his gentle eyes with wide panicky ones. He didn't need to see her expression, when her frantic emotions were so tumultuous they leaked into their bond.
He asked the question silently, urging her into doing what had to be done, even seeming cruelly satisfied even with the forced situation. She was sure Seiryu was spying on them, but had thankfully decided to keep his big mouth shut.
Combing her unruly shaking fingers through Yukine's snowy fur, she offered him one look and he disappeared in a puff of smoke under her hand, her empty fingers hovering at her side opened to Kakashi's eyes. She quickly brought her hands against her stomach so he couldn't watch how her fingers trembled.
Kakashi had decided to stumble back into her path at the worst of times, when Shuriken's mask had been yanked from her face never to fit again and she had finally let herself shattered and crumble with the weight of all her actions.
If he hadn't sprang into her vision like a flash when she had least expected him, her guard down out of pure exhaustion, maybe she could have cramped herself behind a mask of unfeeling coldness, but even her precious perfected chakra was difficult to control as it quivered in her pathways.
Her fingers twitched for the mask at her waist, craving the safe cold feel of it against her face. This was Kakashi, he knew that if she put on the mask it was because she wanted to hide herself. All she needed was to carve one out of her flesh, unblemished unfeeling porcelain skin.
"Have you been tracking me? Is my head back on Konoha's menu?" She asked with an icy edge to her voice.
"There's little need to track you considering how poorly you're hiding. Everyone in the surrounding villages knows you're here, which is also how I know you're here. Are you trying to get yourself killed, Gohama?"
"How long have you been watching me?"
"Since you started wiping the floor with those thugs."
She breathed in deeply as a soothing wave of relief washed over her chest. He hadn't seen how low she had fallen, he hadn't seen how much of her self-destruction hurt with each shattered piece.
"What do you want?"
"To see you."
"You've seen me already."
"Gohama."
The way he said her name alone hit her like a punch. Her heart jolted against her ribs, responding to the sounds overflowing in meaning when they came from his voice, responding to Kakashi who was calling for it.
"Okay," She answered with indifference, as if there was not a deep sea of anguish to hide behind her gaze. She turned around to face him, her eyes closed so she wouldn't see his face and he wouldn't see her. "see me."
Her arms fell limp to her sides and her spine was taut as she waited for the prickling weight of his gaze to scrape through her skin. Kakashi took slow steady steps towards her and she didn't falter in her poise. She was the Head of the Kyura, she had been raised to hide behind poise, power and beauty.
With each step, her lungs strained harder against her ribs until she decided it was safer to hold her breath and release it between long intervals. Kakashi took one more step when she had thought he would stop, his chakra soaking into her flesh, tingling through her skin, making the one at the edge of her pathways shake.
The vulnerability was smothering her now, shivers trembling her raised hairs, but it wasn't unbearable as she had thought it would be. Maybe because she trusted him, she even trusted him to kill her, to bring her back to Konoha, anything really. Perhaps it was less about trust and more about surrender.
Gohama was his.
That vision of him from months ago, the vision she had been terrified had returned now, when it was actually the real blood and flesh man, had exposed it in the simplest and clearest of ways. She could still feel its possessive touch, almost violent, and so unlike Kakashi's, printed into her throat. She could still feel its weightless breath as he hissed 'You're mine, my killer, all mine'. And she was.
And she realised with guilt and dread that it overruled even Buki's grasp over her. If he tried to bring her to Konoha to pay for her crimes, she wouldn't resist. Her debt to him burned deeper in her heart than the debt to all of her dead massacred village. It was disgraceful of her as she trampled over her own duty.
It was almost electrifying the feel of her surrender to him as he stood a mere inch from her, it was almost inebriating the extent of his power over her and how oblivious he was to it.
A quiet touch whispered through the ends of her hair and her roots tingled from it. "Your hair is longer." Kakashi commented casually, as if the last time they had seen each other she hadn't almost killed him. "Not that you need it long, you've found something else to hide behind, but you can't hide how tired you look, Gohama, or how thin."
"Hatake Kakashi, you should know that a man commenting on a woman's weight is also never a good idea."
"What if the man is worried about the woman's health?"
"Said man doesn't have a reason to worry about the woman's health."
"Worry doesn't need reasons."
She felt the weight swing at her hip and heard the familiar sound of shifting lacquer on the silk-laced leather scales of her vest.
"The Shuriken." Kakashi whispered as he continued to touch the mask. "Tsukate talked to me of it before the massacre. He talked of his niece and of how her father didn't want to make a weapon out of her against Konoha. And I answered that it was her duty and she would love to be the Shuriken of Bukigakure."
He dropped the mask and it settled back heavily on the strap at her hip. "Tsukate answered that she wouldn't hate it but she would hate herself."
Her teeth pressed together almost painfully, the only point of release as she meticulously controlled any other movement of her body, from her chakra, to her feet and hands, but especially her face. It stabbed to hear of Uncle, more even than Father, the shame prickling deep in her stomach until she felt like throwing up.
"It's almost ridiculous how much I regret saying those words even if I didn't know you then. It feels like I sealed you to this fate."
"It wouldn't be a conversation with Hatake Kakashi if he didn't blame himself for some absurd thing at least once."
Kakashi let out a small chuckle and the sound rumbled through her chest, unravelling some of the smothering there. "Now you know I'm not a henge trap."
"Even real, I think you're still very much a trap."
The porcelain skin mask she had covered over herself was crumbling. It was so difficult to keep it up with them, Hansuke and Nikato, and now Kakashi, as if her heart reacted from muscle memory at their familiar presence.
"Open your eyes." Kakashi really was a trap, a very dangerous one for them both. "It's the last thing and if you want I'll leave, but to really see you I have to see your eyes too, Gohama."
It didn't matter if he saw them, she had seen them herself and how they held nothing. Her eyelids struggled as if heavy from sleep. She let her gaze fall on the fabric of his shirt tight against his collarbone, clearly marking the raise of the bones and the dip where they met.
A touch on her chin made her muscles jolt, a gasp tearing through her lips. Her hands clasped around his forearm and her startled gaze snapped up to his, the spike of her chakra buzzing between them. As the shock washed away, it left behind panic at the thought of how badly this could have gone.
With wide eyes she looked back at his relaxed one, her heartbeat still speeding in her chest and the sudden adrenaline still rushing through her veins. "Are you crazy?"
"Probably." Kakashi answered with a shrug, obviously very aware of the danger in his daring action. "Made you look, though."
"At the risk of your life." She hissed and her fingers pressed harder into his arm.
"Maa, you wound my ninja pride, Gohama."
Her chest heaved with heavy breaths as the tension in her muscles untied and her chakra calmed itself in her pathways. Then it was stolen all at once, her lungs frozen mid-inhale, when she realised she was looking at Kakashi.
And he looked was achingly familiar, with his silver hair and his mask, his hitai-ate over the sharingan and that small patch of uncovered face that sometimes could express so much of what he was feeling.
What did he see? A part of her wanted to linger in his own eye and find in it the mirror of what he was seeing, another part of her, the strongest most coward of her, was afraid of finding what she felt was stuck into her, the blood, the Shuriken, the nothing.
Her gaze jumped around his face, drinking in everything that she could that wasn't his eye. The shadow on the side of his nose where she could still see the ghost of that cursed drop of blood. The sliver of his scar branded onto his pale skin. The soft raise of his lips, the mask not hiding their shape.
Now that she knew what he looked like under his mask the fabric covered nothing, her gaze could draw the image of his uncovered face through it. It was a pity she was too coward to look him in the eye.
Kakashi was here, Kakashi was here, he was the same as she constantly remembered, as she constantly dreamt of him, more than anyone else, and she didn't know what that meant and why it should even mean anything.
Kakashi was here and he was alive.
The prickling tightness in her chest smothered her again, spreading to the back of her eyes, until she couldn't bear it any longer. Her eyes lowered back to his neck and this time Kakashi didn't force her to look up, but his finger was still under her chin and that small touch alone burned into her skin.
"Did you really just come to see me?" Gohama breathed out.
"When I learnt you were only a few kilometres away… I wasn't even thinking of approaching you, but then you were right there. Was it selfish?"
It all felt much more selfish of her than of him.
"What do you see?" The words left through her lips without her mind's command and cold churns of dread trembled in her stomach.
His other hand rose to her face, slowly and markedly, and he cupped her cheeks, his palms warm through the fabric of his gloves. Gohama had never thought she would feel his touch like this again, gentle and searing, as he tilted her head back to look up at him, making her throat burn with that annoying lump of emotion.
Kakashi saw her with that tenderness of his, his dark grey eye beautiful and bottomless, framed with those white lashes, as she remembered it of the quiet intense moments between them. It hurt and soothed, as it seeped and searched through all the masks she had ever set around herself. Where they even around her? Gohama didn't feel their cold safe veil, just that vulnerability that felt more freeing than smothering now.
"They said you were gone… You're not gone, Gohama."
There is was again, that jolt of her heart and its beats speeding up until they made her dizzy.
"Say my name, again…"
"Gohama."
Her eyes closed at the sound of it and a single rebel tear slid past the corner of her eye before she could stop it. Kakashi did, his thumb tingling through the skin of her cheek as it wiped the cooling wet track, and rested there, heavy and rough and lighting.
"Gohama." And this time he was so close, she could feel his warm breath on her lips, so much better than any scenario she made up in her mind because it was real, Kakashi was real.
It was too much, she was losing all restraint as Gohama felt herself melt between the gaps of his fingers. Her hands rose to hold both his wrists, her fingertips pressing onto the soft skin inside so she could feel his heart hammering steadily. She craved the feel of the lively beat of it, as if pulling away would make it stop. Gently she pulled his hands away from her face and he respected her request, letting them fall from her.
The skin of her cheeks still tingled from the memory of his touch, but worse was the emptiness of her hands, now that she could no longer feel his pulse. Her fingers pulled down the zipper of his flak jacket until she could rest her palm on his chest, right above his heart. And through the muscle she could feel the fast comforting beat of his heart, thundering up her fingers, hand and arm.
"I thought I'd killed you." Gohama whispered, her voice breaking, mostly air leaving her lips and not words. She couldn't even know if he had understood her, but Kakashi still let her palm rest above his ribs.
Why wasn't he moving to push her way, his arms slack at his sides while she had her deadly blood soaked hand right above his heart?
"How are you letting me do this?"
"Why wouldn't I?"
"You're scared. I can feel it in your heartbeat."
"It's not fear." Kakashi explained with a curt chuckle and his hand held onto her own above his skin. "I don't regret staying with you, Gohama."
Her fingers slithered from his hold to clench around the sides of his flak jacket, the thick material bunching under her grasp. "I do…"
The surrender of before was turning into something else at his tenderness, a quiet desperation that rose from deep inside her until it tingled at her skin. His presence was playing at the strings of her heart and there was something in her chest that trembled restlessly, fluttered as the wings of a bird stuck behind a cage.
Gohama could smell him from here, she could feel the heat of his body, and her own cold dry skin craved to press into him, to have all of him surround her, engulf her, until her small broken little person could feel only him, him, alive all around her.
Her eyes clenched shut and she was on the razor's edge, a different razor, almost as violent but with none of the slaughter, one that would only hurt him and not her if she were to fall into his chest as her shuddering muscles were begging her to do.
Kakashi had the worst timing and Gohama was so weak…
Her strengthless fingers released their desperate hold on his jacket. She soothed the fabric down and took two steps back from him.
"You're supposed to hate me. It would be easier for the both of us if you'd hate me." Her voice was even as she spoke and the porcelain mask made of flesh was slowly carved back onto her face with each soothing deep breath.
"I can say the same to you, Gohama."
She didn't wince as he said it, she didn't wince at the flash of his ghostly face and that red drop of blood on his cheek, of how her self-hatred had tainted his life as well, instead she took another step back. His hand moved forward and her gaze stuck to his collarbone snapped to the movement only to see it curl into a fist and retreat inside his pocket.
"I saw your snowdrops." He added quickly.
Of course Kakashi had, he had probably beat himself up for Jiraiya's death, visiting his new grave every day. She could see it in her mind's eye, his shoulders slouching as when he stood at the Memorial Stone, his gaze fixed on the carved name, muted and miserable. It made the regret of months ago surge through her with a searing bitterness.
"I should have been there, too. Maybe then Jiraiya wouldn't have died."
"Maybe." Kakashi said with a shrug. "Or maybe the two of you would have died, or he would have lived and you wouldn't. I'm glad you didn't go and I'm also glad you didn't go after."
This time she did wince, because she had decided to leave Akatsuki for last and maybe if she had gone after Pain Konoha wouldn't have been devastated and none of them would have gone through the horror of seeing their dear village attacked and destroyed. One more village Akatsuki trampled on with no regard for its people, for thousands of lives, all in exchange for one biju.
"No, Gohama," He bent his neck, trying to peek down and meet her eyes. "even when you're hiding I can see what you're thinking. No maybes and no what-ifs, what happened happened and we can only go from here, the real actual present."
His hand moved again and this time it didn't waver as it reached for the Shuriken mask, and she watched as his fingertip glided over the symbol of Bukigakure carved into its forehead.
"It helped me understand your pain a little better. What that night must have felt like for you, that month in the ruins of your home…"
"That's not a good thing. I don't want anyone to understand it, least of all you." Her voice was cruelly harsh and it made the shame freeze back into her.
"Naruto convinced Pain to bring the dead back to life. You know better than anyone that a village is much more than buildings and streets. There's no need for regrets, Gohama."
Her eyes widened slightly at his words and Gohama couldn't stop the small upturn on the corner of her mouth. "Honestly, coming from you, I don't know if that should worry or relieve me."
Kakashi smiled, his eye crinkling, and his mask shifting around his mouth, and she could see the smile he was giving her. "Definitely relieve."
"Uzumaki Naruto. Quite a smooth talker, isn't he?" Gohama commented with a lighter tilt to her voice, but her eyes were soft as they finally rose from his collarbone to his lone one. "I see why he gives you hope."
Gohama could never forget the tenderness and admiration softening his expression that cold night by Buki's river when he had shared so much of his burdens with her, his guilt and his pain.
The dreamy tender glimmer that had been achingly beautiful in him then also shone through his expression now, and her heart trembled at it. "Ah yes, that day definitely sealed the deal on my faith in Naruto, if it hadn't already been sealed before."
"How's… how's your pack?" Gohama asked hesitantly, not knowing if it was her place to ask after his ninken.
"They're good." The affection in his eye turned into a sheepish crinkled smile, as his hand rose to brush the back of his head. "Uhei was heartbroken for a bit, but he's back to being the hyperactive lovable ninken we all know."
She looked back down, her chest tightening at the thought of his ninken. Even in her civilian dreams, they were always there.
"I heard you were almost Hokage for a moment there."
"Maa, Konoha lucked out of that one."
Such a Kakashi thing to say, especially when he said it with that light mocking tone of his that held so much hidden honesty. It seemed he hadn't completely shed himself of his self-doubt, but at least he was hopeful when it came to Konoha's recover from Pain's assault. It still saddened her, if Konoha had Kakashi as its leader she could learn to trust it. Could he not see how—
Her stomach jerked as a chakra signature suddenly popped up from nowhere right behind them, hidden in the trees slightly to her left. Its presence was only a shy whisper on her awareness and yet it veiled nothing of the burning power, scorching from the fire nature that ruled above the others.
The Akatsuki's leader, finally he had come for Seiryu.
Her own chakra spiked for an instant before she pushed it down, already overflowing with the bloodthirst triggered by such powerful ninja. Her awareness was buzzing with edginess, every small flicker in her surroundings felt as a flood, and her fingers tingled with the desire to settle around the known handle of her tachi.
Fight, her honed weapon of a body shouted. Kill. Kill. Kill.
"Do you feel him?"
"Yes. I'm ready for a good fight, kiddo."
Her eyes took in the man standing before her, muscles and chakra flow unwavering so he wouldn't sense the dread slithering into her chest. "I'm not."
Kakashi really did have the worst timing.
"Well, Hatake Kakashi, I think it's time for us to go…" She made an awkward vague gesture to the space between them "…our separate ways." Gohama whispered, obliviously letting too much sentiment slip into her voice.
"Are you going to live this way forever?"
"Not forever. You'll win our bet." The words fell out of her mouth and, by the sudden tremble in his eye, Gohama knew he had felt the ominous meaning of her words. "Just… let go of me and don't tell them you saw me, your ninken and my team—ex-team. Please."
"Gohama."
It was as if he knew what her weakness was, but if there was one thing that remained from Gohama it was her burning wish to protect the things she cherished.
"You said you'd see me and leave when I wanted. I want you to leave now. It really is time for you to go, Hatake Kakashi."
Because this was Kakashi, instead of taking a step back and away from her, he moved into her until he could speak right next to her ear with only a slight dip of his head. His whispered breath ghosting over her hair pulled a shiver out of her spine. "Where are they?"
"Just go, please."
The Akatsuki's chakra signature disappeared with a swirl of the wind, only to reappear again in a closer position. So this was his materialising ability she had learnt through her intel gathering.
"Always perceptive, Hatake Kakashi." His deep voice sounded from behind her. How the fuck had he heard him?
Gohama turned around, her arm extending to the side and her feet shifting over the grass so Kakashi would stand behind the cover of her body. He tried to push past her, but her hand held onto his farthest arm with an unrelenting grip and forced him back to his place behind her.
Her gaze hardened into the icy cold of Shuriken, the bloodthirst burning through the cutting shape of them. The masked man was sitting on a tree branch in front of them, his mask not the orange one he was famous for, but white with three tomoe like the sharingan, two of them carved to serve as slits for his eyes.
"Am I interrupting?" The masked man mocked.
"Madara." Kakashi growled and the killing intent waving through his chakra slipped in his voice.
Her eyes snapped to him. "As in Uchiha Madara?" She hissed but Kakashi only met her gaze with a grim one before pinning it on the masked man.
Well, fuck.