PART II | Chapter 7
The sun was already disappearing under the faraway line of mountains across from the Village. If he wanted to keep enjoying his book, he would have to either find another spot or use the sharingan. It was Gai's fault. He had just come from a short but ruthless mission, and after an entire day and night of sleeping and building up his chakra back, all he had wanted was to find a quiet spot and read his book. However, Gai had insisted on ruining his plans. He had spent most of the day avoiding that green leotard. He could have accepted a challenge and go on with his day, but deep down there was the tiny apprehension that after the mission he wouldn't be able to win. So, jumping from rooftop to training grounds to trees had been his day. Since when had the green beast learnt all his secret spots? Only at the end of the day had he found peace and quiet at the top of Yondaime's spiky hair. Still, there was something prickling him at the bottom of his mind, which wouldn't let him relax fully. He wondered if he had forgotten to feed the dogs, or some very late report, maybe had stood up someone, but nothing.
The lack of light was straining his eye too much, so he closed his book with a snap and went home. Just as he was passing the Hokage Tower, Hansuke blocked his way.
"Nice to see you, Hansuke." he greeted with an eye crease.
Only then did he notice his worried look. "Where have you been, Kakashi? I've been looking for you for ages."
"We saw each other a few days ago, I doubt you've been looking for ages." he joked with his typical nonchalance.
"This is serious, Hatake. Gohama disappeared."
His guts jerked at his words. She wouldn't just disappear like that, she was probably just brooding somewhere. "She's probably at her house." he said would a dismissive wave while continuing on his path through the rooftop.
"No. She's good now. She never came to training today and didn't warn me. She always warns me when she's fine."
Kakashi halted on his steps. His apartment was to the left and Gohama's to the right. It was now time to decide if it was worth doing something about the prickling at the back of his guts now growing into a full out worry.
"How could someone do something to her without anyone noticing?"
"She was drunk last night when she went home. Alone." Hansuke pinched the bridge of his nose "I knew I should have walked with her. Fuck…"
"Maybe she's just sleeping off her hangover."
"I don't think she's in her apartment but I can't be sure."
They both parted to the right with a fast pace. One thing was certain, no one could have gotten to her in her apartment. The thing was locked down with Kyura fuinjutsu, it was almost safer than Konoha's prison. Kakashi laid his hand on her front door and sent a small impulse of chakra, praying she had changed the seal to recognise it. Dark letters and patterns appeared on the wood, typical of Snow's seal language he wasn't familiar with, and opened with a click. Both men sighed.
Before he could enter, Hansuke grasped his shoulder. "You know that if she's in there she'll kill us both." he warned.
He nodded and with that, Hansuke pushed the door forward slowly and hesitantly, the hinges squeaking with the motion. When no raging girl went stomping towards them, they finally entered. The entrance led directly into the living room, a sectional grey sofa and coffee table were the only furniture there. Kakashi continued forward, stealthily, almost afraid of breaking the silence and emptiness of the apartment. Only an intense scent of Gohama showed that she actually lived there. When he turned the corner, at the end of the room, was only a large dinner table and glass doors towards a balcony. In front of the couch was a fireplace and built-in bookshelf. Something Kakashi could only wish his apartment had, but it was empty. A part from the furniture, there was no other piece of decoration.
"This is…" Hansuke started.
"Impersonal."
Kakashi was ready to open what could be the bedroom door, when Hansuke said, "At least, there's one book." he held it in his hand and read the title "Myths and Folk Tales from the Land of Snow" he showed the cover to Kakashi, it was clearly a children's book with carefully drawn illustrations.
Hansuke brushed through the pages and stopped on the first one "My dear Hama-chan, happy birthday! I hope this is your first book of many others." Kakashi couldn't help but glance sadly at the empty bookcase "It's still a few years before you can read what I wrote, but until then (and, if you let me, after) I'll read this book to you, as my mother read it to me. May its stories free your spirit and kindle your dreams." Hansuke's voice dropped to a painfully soft and slow tone "You are the snowdrop of my life. With love, Mother."
Kakashi clenched his jaw and fists inside his pockets, turning sharply away from the reading man. "You shouldn't read that and it's obvious Gohama isn't here."
"We should still check her room."
Kakashi was quick to open the first door out of three. The same as the main room. Only a bed, a closet and a nightstand. It was clear Gohama hadn't come to Konoha looking for a home.
Hansuke peeked inside and gave a tired sigh. "Snowdrop… That's that flower they use in their funerals, isn't it? What does that mean?"
"You should ask Gohama that."
Snowdrop was a small white flower that could flourish through the snow. It was an important symbol for the Land of Snow, but mostly the Kyura. Kakashi didn't know what it symbolized, something about balance and the pure side of a person. He couldn't be thinking about that now, nor the recurring words from Gohama's mother echoing in his mind, stabbing through him deeper and deeper.
He opened the last door, it was a storage room for weapons and laundry. If Gohama wasn't home and Hansuke hadn't found her, it was serious, she truly was missing. He reached for her used laundry basket.
"You pervert, Hatake. What are you doing?"
Kakashi took out a dirty shirt and threw it towards Hansuke, who had started glancing curiously towards her basket. He raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Wouldn't take Gohama as the lacy underwear type of girl."
Kakashi chuckled at him, when he saw he was actually blushing at his findings. "And I'm the pervert…" he mumbled while biting his finger.
With a quick set of hand seals and laying his hand on the floor, his pack appeared in a cloud of smoke. Hansuke gave him the shirt back promptly, which he waved in front of the eager snouts, already sniffing the air around them.
"It's been a long time since I've smelled him." Pakkun nodded towards Hansuke. "What are we doing in the Kyura girl's house?"
"How do you know it's her house?" the hazel eyed man asked.
"It stinks of her, obviously. Not so much of whiskey anymore, though."
Kakashi sent Pakkun a warning glare, he had already spilled too much.
"What? You've been here before?" he turned to the silver haired man "He's been here before?"
"No," Hansuke was ready to ask him again "I asked him to check if Gohama was here the first time she disappeared." he explained indifferently.
Yet he could still see from the corner of his eye Hansuke's knowing smile, the same he had given him when Kakashi went to check on her at his house. The one that said, "look who has a soft spot". It really did irk him. It wasn't a soft spot, he had promised Tsukate to look after his niece.
"Not that that's relevant now." he focused on the dogs and extended the shirt to them "Call me when you find the trail."
They waited for the signalling barks and howls on the building's rooftop. He almost prayed, it had been a long time since he had prayed. Probably when he was running towards the Valley of the End, towards his two fighting students. Now, he pleaded for her just to be sulking in her isolation somewhere. Then a bark came. Fuck. It was coming from the Village's gate. As Hansuke and Kakashi, started towards his ninken, the prayer was the same as in that day he had found Naruto laying by the water and Sasuke gone, let it not be too late.
When they got at the entrance of the Village all his ninken were already there. "The trail is half a day old. We can follow it easily, they don't seem to have used smell concealing jutsu." Pakkun told them "We sense six other scents."
"Pakkun, warn Tsunade. Uhei, lead the way, the rest can go home."
They ran at their highest speed through the wide street leaving the Village. How had they left without the guards stopping them, without noticing Gohama? They had to be Root, if dressed as ANBU, they could easily leave Konoha with no questions asked. Kakashi would have liked to stay behind to interrogate the guards standing post last night, but they had to be fast. Any second could be too late. Dread was seeping away through both of them, he was sure Uhei could smell it. His prayer kept ringing in his mind, like a desperate litany. Let it not be too late. Let it not be too late.
Warning: This scene has depictions of violence and torture
The new surface beneath her hands was cold and smooth. The sweat soaking through her palm and fingers made her desperate grip slide. The metal was becoming warm now. She preferred it cold, she preferred when it clashed against the temperature of her own body, when it thrust apart from her perception. Now, it was warm, mixing with the awareness of her own hands, disappearing from under her skin until she couldn't feel it anymore. She lifted her hands from the arms of the chair and waited, begging for it to cool down quickly. Then she pressed her back hard against the chair, she focussed on feeling the resistance of it, the pressure of the smooth surface, the sharp end of it biting into her shoulder blades. Her whole mind was captured by the sensation of having her back pushed into the metal chair. But soon, that was vanishing too.
The agonising stream oozing from the mockingly light fingers on her temples soaked into every cell of her body. No matter how much she forced herself to feel the cold grip of her hands on the chair arms, or the sharp edge of the chair's back on her shoulder, the pain screamed louder to her perceptions, thrust deeper into the nerves encircling her body. All her mind could grasp besides the pain was the despairing plea for it to end. It collapsed on to itself when every thought was "can't bare it much longer, let it stop, let it stop". But she always bore it.
A genjustu, she was being tortured with a fucking genjutsu. And she was hopeless, it was truly hopeless when a genjutsu won over her. There was nothing more evil than the chakra shackles pining her wrists and ankles. The shinobi torturing her was spiteful, but he had no power. All his domination over her was because of those cuffs condensing her chakra into a still lead ball in her core.
The pain stopped. And Gohama realised there was nothing more pleasing in the word than the bursting relief, so intense it felt almost like joy, of having pain stop. Humans were ruled by their bodies, she thought, as she felt the familiar sting of knees scraping on the ground and the bite of hair being pulled from her scalp. Her tattered knees scraped for, honestly she didn't know how many times it had been, something between two and one thousand times. They were scraped against the cold tiled floor, leaving a trail of blood behind, covering the dried one before it. Her hair served as a leash as the man dragged her from the centre towards the wall. It hurt, but it was real, physical pain, concentrating on her scalp and her knees. Nothing like the dreamlike one that attacked every particle of her body and burned, cut, crushed and ripped everywhere and nowhere. And every time it engulfed her she was nothing but the pain and her plea to make it stop. No past, no future, no dead people, no duty, just pain, pain, physical pain. Humans were ruled by their bodies.
The dragging stopped when, still pinned to the fallen chair, she leaned over a tank of freezing water. The hold on her hair loosened as the man let her look at her ragged reflexion on the murky surface. Then he pushed her face forward, only the tip of her nose touching the water, the touch brought with it fearful anticipation.
"Just one word. One simple word." the man reminded her, his breath grating her ear.
Gohama kept her vocal cords unmoving, as they had been since the moment the man stepped into the cell. The man was different from the other thugs. The thugs had beaten her up, kicked her ribs and punched her face, they had enjoyed it, they had laughed. Gohama had riled them up because they had let themselves be riled up, they had let themselves fall into blind rage. And then she had struck. Even stuck to her chair with no chakra, she managed to kill two of them. The beating had been more ruthless and raging after that, but she had been hopeful, because if she waited long enough more two would fall and then other two and until they would all have died.
But then the man had entered the cell. She had felt it right as his stony eyes locked with her own. There was no sadist pleasure, no eerie vibe, no lecherous anticipation. Nothing seeped out of him, only carefully neutral words when needed. "Are you the Kyura jinchuriki." "No". And then the pain had started. "Are you the Kyura jinchuriki." "Yes". And then the pain had returned. He didn't want an answer, he asked for it, but he didn't want it. He didn't want anything. His end was to break her, but he didn't want that. He was pure nothingness and it was enough to help her fissures from the pain crack.
The man pushed her head down onto the freezing water. Even her blood from the Land of Snow couldn't stop the jolting shock of it. The drowning served to wake her from the pain and make her crave life. Something about being drowned made the survival instinct flame through a person's body. It helped counter the despair for the pain to stop through any way, whatever way. Only when she was submerged, did Gohama let her voice scream away from her burning throat. The muffled sounds were almost inaudible over the bubbles of air rising up. It never helped her burning lungs and craving chest, but her spreading cracks halted for a second with the release. In that instant, she would remember all the reasons why she couldn't shatter. Duty.
After too many sips of sharp water slipped down her nose and throat, making her instinctive squirming duller, almost none existent, the man pulled her out again. She gasped and coughed and gaged, involuntary tears mixed with her vomited water onto the cold one of the tank. The wavy mirror was gradually drawing her reflexion as it stilled. Then, she was dragged back into the middle of the room, her knees scrapping again.
"Are you the Kyura jinchuriki?" the man asked while laying his fingertips, too smooth, too gentle for a ninja, on her temples.
"No." her voice was weak and rasped from the cold burns, pathetic.
The pain returned. Someone was whimpering, it sounded like a child, it was vulnerable and helpless. She hadn't heard such moving whimpering since the Arms, it strained her heart. Poor child. Why would the kid be whimpering? Gohama focussed on it, she focussed on the scraping of metal on tiled floor that accompanied it. If she had her power, she would stop the whimpering. Her clenched eyes could almost make out the image of the whimpering child. Children shouldn't whimper, they should laugh and shout and not hurt. Yes. If she had her power, she would stop children from hurting. Especially the one she was hearing now. Her familiar whimpers should never be heard.
Two new chakra signatures crept into her awareness. The whimpering stopped and Gohama dared open her eyes to a black lean shirt. The too soft fingers in her temples tilted her head up, methodical and cold eyes studying her. The pain didn't stop, but the same relief, as if it had stopped, crashed over her, so overwhelming the child whimpered one more time. Then, one of the enemy chakra signatures stationed somewhere in the compound faded away into void, then another one, and another. The pain immersed her still, but the growing closeness the two oh so familiar signatures urged her to endure and somehow it was bearable with them there. Hansuke's steadiness had never comforted her more than now, not even when he had stroked her hair. Kakashi's contained wildness had never made her feel more protected than now.
Only when the sounds of fighting oozed under the white door, did the two man inside realise they were going to fall. A nod of permission from the one leaning against the door, the medic one, and a tearing, truly unbearable pain, scorched every cell of her body. She didn't even feel her legs and arms being freed from the chair, nor the deafening scream, soaked in despair and panic, grinding through her throat. She was only pain.
Then it stopped, with no relief, only confusion. Gohama felt a faint coolness on her forehead and stomach. The shadow of pain still shivering through her body. When she opened her eyes, there was only white. A stream of red slid onto her field of vision. Was she having some weird dream? She turned her head to follow the stream, it lead to the forehead of the man. She wouldn't know he was dead if not for the kunai between his cold methodical eyes. She had been right, he had hands too smooth. He was no true shinobi.
The pull of her hair brought her head up from the cold floor, the sting of it bringing some clarity to her mind. She could see Hansuke and Kakashi standing in front of them, although slightly blurred. Still, she could feel the unsettling chakra leaking from them. Gohama had never sensed Hansuke so unruly and ruthless. She wondered why they weren't moving to get the fucking shackles away from her wrists and ankles. Then she finally felt the sharp edge of a blade pressed to her throat.
"He won't kill me." her voice cut through her throat, she could even taste the iron. When had she been hurt there?
A burning pain stabbed through her lower back, she muffled a groan. The medic nin released his hold on her hair, but before she could hit her head on the ground Hansuke caught her. Kakashi was fighting the guy, his chakra the same as when he was ANBU. She was turned around and laid carefully, her weight settled on her bound hands at her back. The worry, almost fear, in his hazel eyes merged with tenderness as they looked at each other. Hansuke let the back of his knuckles trace her cheek and jaw, so lightly, as if he was afraid to hurt her. A trapped sob smothered her ragged throat.
"Gohama…" was all he said and it was enough.
"The shackles…"
"I can't, I need the key."
His eyes lingered on hers, she wished he wouldn't turn away, but he had to. He assessed her wound, she could see his scowl at the blood dripping from it. The guy was a medic nin, he knew where to stab. Hansuke pulled a pill from his pouch and pushed it over the barrier of her cracked lips. It tasted like iron when she chewed it. His thumb brushed a gash at the corner of her lip closed with dry blood, made by one of the thugs when he had punched her. Then, he gave her an apologetic look before he covering her lower abdomen and back with burning antiseptic.
A bright and frantic blue light filled the room along the sound of chirping birds. The feel of electrifying chakra shoved into Gohama and she looked behind her in awe. Her skin broke with goose bumps at the mercilessness and power of Kakashi's ball of lightning chakra. It was the first time she was seeing his famous chidori, it was beautiful. She kept the feel of it well guarded in her mind, maybe she could learn it someday. Then, he flung his hand towards the man's chest, the smell of burning flesh joining the one of ozone. It was over in a second, the body slumped forward when he pulled his hand away from the chest hole. Only then did she realised a medic nin might have been of good use to her.
Kakashi went to them, he kneeled beside her and started fumbling through the chakra shackles. Gohama couldn't keep her eyes from his own, both of them. His usual nonchalant stance had given place to a stern, blank one, but there was a fiery darkness behind his eyes, a dangerous, predatory one. He turned to look at her. She could finally see his sharingan eye without the dimness of a mask. His scar bisected his lid, from his brow to his cheek, giving the eerie, ominous eye even more menace. The three tomoe spinning slowly around his pupil, sliding through crimson iris. It was both mesmerising and domineering. Only when he unlocked her wrist shackles did she break away from its pull. She closed her eyes and her back arched as a surge of energy flowed back through her pathways, relief and vigour spreading with it. A soft sigh escaped her lips. Her chakra, her Kyura chakra.
Right away, she moved her hands to her wound. Light green energy seeping onto the cut, she couldn't heal it, but could assess the damage. Dread crushed suddenly into her.
"There goes the plan of rebuilding my clan." she whispered with a cynically light tone.
The two men looked at each other.
"Do you have a teleportational scroll?" Hansuke asked
"No."
"Why didn't we bring one?" he hissed through clenched teeth.
"Hurry."
Hansuke turned back to patching her up, fighting the rage at Kakashi's casual answers. He was both gentle and forceful, the gauze had to be pressed tightly to her, as not to lose too much blood.
"The closest city has a hospital." he told them while wrapping cloth tightly around her.
"No. No civilian healing." Gohama said steadily.
"Death it is then. You'll bleed out in an hour."
Gohama sulked like a child and glared at Kakashi. "Why did you kill the medic nin?"
"Sorry. Next time I invite him for tea." he quipped with an eye crease. Before she could answer back, he added "Are you cold?"
"No." she really wasn't.
"You're shivering." he laid a warm hand in her forehead and collar "and you're freezing."
Gohama looked down at her hands and they, in fact, were shivering, her legs too and arms. Her hair was still wet from the drowning and she was only in her bindings and pants. Then, she focused her gaze on her chest and the tell-tale sign of cold was obvious through the white cloth, now slightly sheer from the water, covering it. Her previously freezing face and neck were know burning from a deep blush.
"You're a pervert." she mumbled as an attempt to shift her embarrassment to him.
"I swear that was not what made me notice…" he brushed the back of his neck, the skin above his mask reddening.
Hansuke took his sweater hastily and offered it to her. Even he was blushing. Trying to ignore the embarrassment that had made them forget about Gohama's serious condition, they helped her get into Hansuke's back and quickly ran into the trees surrounding the enemy compound.
The pain was not enough to dry Gohama's comfort at having Hansuke's heat and chakra soak into her front. The smell of him in the sweater she was wearing and the skin of his neck, where her nose was pressed against.
There was only the sound of muffled breathing and changing pages. She couldn't remember where she was and why she was there. Her eyes cracked open but, in front of her, was only a nightstand and window, the wall's paint was beige and split, the floor had carpet. She hated carpeted floor. Wherever she was with whomever she was, because there was someone behind her and she couldn't recognise that presence, Gohama knew it was safe. So, she focussed only on the rhythmic sound of paper brushing against paper.
It was lulling, despite the cruel grasp it had on her heart. She remembered Mother. There was always a sob caught inside her when she thought of Mother. She remembered her soothing voice and acting skills when she pretended to be the characters in the books she read to her. She remembered how Mother pinned her dark brown hair up, in the dark it was black, but not in the sun. Her bangs spilled through the side of her cheeks, the curls, she had had curly hair, sliding down from where they were pinned with carelessness. She remembered that in the sun there were locks that almost seemed copper. She remembered wishing she could have Mother's hair, she remembered wishing she could have Mother's naturalness. Mother had been the Head of Clan's wife, the Yukikage's wife. Father couldn't have done it without her. Gohama was much like Father. She loved being like him, but as heiress it was better to be like Mother, all poise and beauty and rule.
One more turning page and her eyes stung with wistfulness and grief. May its stories free your spirit and kindle your dreams. Why had Mother wished for that? Mother had known she couldn't be truly free, she couldn't dream. Just like Father, just like Mother after marrying him. Still, Gohama dreamed with Isune-chan, but they weren't real dreams, they were unreal and meant to be unreal. She remembered Mother's smile when she had told her the stories they made up together, the pictures Isune-chan painted as a childish way to make the unreal real. Maybe they had been real for a little while. Then, one day the dreams hadn't tasted of anything, one day Gohama couldn't feel them as real anymore. She never did mourn for them. She accepted it as a necessity for being what she was meant to be, the Kyura heiress, the protector of the Arms.
Now that she thought about it, she should have mourned. It had been much too soon for her made up world to fade. Even if it would someday anyway. Gohama had a keen sense for the reality of things. Only children could have free spirits and kindled dreams, because they weren't bound to the reality of things. Except when she had read or Mother had read to her. Maybe that's what it had meant. Gohama had never had the courage to ask for fear of Mother thinking she was dumb. At least when she had read, she didn't have to be bound to the reality of things. She was more than the Kyura heiress. She was the words marked in the pages of the book. Mother had wanted her to guard those childish dreams.
But Gohama didn't want that wild, naïve freedom of children. She wanted power and duty. She had been made for power. When Mother died so did her last thread of freedom, even if a fake, unreal, fleeting one. Gohama was duty and Gohama was failure. Gohama was weakness when she had been made for power. Dreams were for children and people with no purpose. She had a purpose, one larger than all her dreams could ever be, because it was real. The reality of things was cruel, but it was true. And Gohama had always wanted truth above all. Truth and duty.
One more brush of paper. She recognised the chakra signature beside her and with it the reality of things crashed once more into her shattered soul and body. (Not even memories were real) It was pungent and it was dirty and it was evil. It hurt with physical pain. She could still feel the shadow of too smooth fingers lightly pressed against her temples. She could still feel the shadow of burning, cutting, crushing, ripping pain in every cell of her body. She felt the cutting pain of a healing wound. Her heart decided it was supposed to leap away from her chest, to beat frantically against her rib cage. Her hands decided they were supposed to sweat and shake, even when she clutched the sheets with the same despair as she had clutched the metal arms of the chair. Her mind decided it was supposed to drown in terrifying fear for everything around her. From the splitting paint of the wall, to the stains of the carpeted floor, to the shadows of the window blinds and the shadows of her own figure cast by the lamp somewhere behind her. She was safe now, there was no reason to fear. The irrationality of it only made her more pathetic.
One more brush of paper. At least she didn't fear that. It comforted her because Mother had sounded like turning sheets and had smelled like newly print pages and stuffed old books from the attic. Mother had felt like snowy cold nights under her bed's heavy and warm blankets and the dim light of her nightstand lamp as she scrutinised the pictures on the book and tried to follow the letters Mother so perfectly read. Mother was poise and beauty and rule but she was also dreams. And that made her the perfect Head of Clan and Yukikage wife, because she wasn't just a wife, she wasn't just Mother, she wasn't just a Kyura, she was Misaka in everything she did.
"Can you read to me?"
"What?" Kakashi asked.
Hers was a simple question.
"Your book, can you read it out loud?"
"Ah..." she could feel him shifting in the bed and see his shadow brushing the nape of his neck "I don't know… It's not exactl—"
"I know it has porn, you can skip what makes you uncomfortable." he went still, probably pondering his options "My mother used to read to me." his silence made her feel even more vulnerable "And don't forget to do the voices." she added playfully.
Kakashi did read to her and did try his best to act every character differently. That was what she needed, even if it hurt her wound when she chuckled, it was comfortable and it was light. She enjoyed how offended and defensive he turned when she joked about the quality of the book. Suddenly, he transformed into a literary expert on erotic books with significant plot and characterisation. They weren't porn, Icha Icha was erotic literature and the best out there, at level with classics from around the nations. And there was a passionate glint to his drawled lazy voice when he argued with her.
Gohama thought how Mother would have loved to know there was a grown up, deadly shinobi who let stories free his spirit and kindle his dreams, even if it was only porn and only for small instants, even if his jaded mind didn't realise that. Mother would have liked Kakashi.