A guest reviewer asked if this fiction was going to have [Kakashi, OC]. I cannot answer them privately, so here it is, Fatima. These next chapters are all about Kakashi and Gohama's relationship.
Thank you for reading and please review!
Part V | Chapter 4
The stone steps covered in lichen, moss and old leaves sloped down the mountainside, cedar branches hanging over them, shadowing the long walk down. From the green, she could see a glimpse of red from the tori gate and farther away the indigo shine of the Kyura compound rooftops.
Gohama breathed in the fresh damp smell of the forest before turning around to walk through the path of the shrine. She followed the ceremonial cleansing at the fountain at the side, as she had always done when a child.
The kami was certainly no longer housed there. The shrines were meant to protect the kami, but for eleven years there had been no one to protect it. It suffered from the stillness of death, it suffered from the abandonment of life just as the rest of Bukigakure. The emptiness had even nested into the sacred. No kami would dwell in an empty, dead land.
Still, it had never mattered to her whether there was a kami to receive her worshiping and her offerings. Gohama wasn't even sure whether she believed gods existed or not. She followed the rituals more out of tradition than belief and somehow the gesture were as full of purpose as they always had been.
The house for prayers and where the Kyura had met for religious ceremonies or clan rituals had a thick layer of dirt and dust covering the wood floor, the lanterns and the pillars. Yet it remained, unchanged and standing, the same as the days where she had come there with her family, her dozens of cousins and uncles to pray and follow the clan life, the life of the pack.
The most beautiful part of the shrine was the mural painted onto the ceiling. Her neck cracked back to stare onto the colourful and graceful lines, full in history and art. The same wonder as when she had been a child, staring into the century old life of her clan, filled her now. They were the stories told at bedtime, festivals and ceremonies. They were the heroes and flawed people that had come before her, that lived through her, or at least should. She didn't feel them inside of her, she didn't feel any of their power, spirit and courage, she didn't feel that what had made them Kyura was settled in her spirit.
Her eyes skimmed through the tales. The legend of the founding Sister, the falling out and animosity with her brother, founder of the Hyuga. The settlement in the land where Gohama now stood. The war and the death, the familial bonds and the victory.
Her heart jolted as she pinned her gaze on a familiar clan crest. How hadn't she noticed it as a child? "Uchiha…" She whispered.
"Yes, the—"
"What the fuck!" Gohama yelped, her tachi already summoned in her hand, her knees bent and combat ready.
Her head spun from side to side, her chakra sense expanding and ears ready for the slightest of sounds. But she saw nothing, and felt nothing beside the chakra and sounds of the forest animals. Oh no, she was going crazy. It was finally happening, she was hearing voices.
"It's just me kiddo," It echoed in rumbling tones inside her head. "Seiryu. No need to start slashing around with your sword."
Her heart still didn't stop thumping against her ribs. The sensation completely foreign and bizarre, as the voice both resonated inside her mind, and sounded as if she had actually heard it. "You can talk to me…?"
He chuckled and even that reverberated weirdly through her, as if coming from everywhere around her and nowhere at all. "Scared the life out of you, didn't I?" Another loud, amused chuckle. "Bet you thought I was a ghost."
That would have been a kinder assumption. Gohama had thought she was finally going mad. "Is this like telepathy?"
"Something like that, yeah. We're bond together, our chakra connected with each other, which means our minds and senses are too in a way."
"That's incredibly invasive." She mumbled, her mind going through all the embarrassing and intimate things she had done in her life. Every time he had been watching her, maybe even feeling what she had been feeling. The uneasiness was giving place to dread… There were so many things…
"Calm down, kiddo."
"Stop calling me kiddo, you old lizard!" Gohama growled.
He snickered a little, but his deep voice was gentler when he explained, "I don't actually live through you. And definitely don't spend every time watching what you're doing. I've been inside a lot of jinchuriki, I know when to block that connection or not. I don't have any interest in the type of things you're thinking…"
Hearing that suggestive tone from the deep voice of a century old dragon locked inside of her made a shiver shake thorough her body. "But you know what I'm thinking!"
"Out of experience, not because I read your mind. We are talking inside our heads, but because I chose to talk, it has to be a conscious effort."
Gohama wobbled until she sat on a step and buried her face on her hands, fingers rubbing circles on her temples. It was an incredibly useful resource, but it left that feeling of nakedness shivering through her skin. All her life, she had had a biju spying on things, all her life she— The realisation hit her then and she snapped her eyes open.
"You can talk to me and during twenty years, during all the jinchuriki shit I didn't know about or how to control, you chose to keep fucking silent!"
"You don't actually have to talk out loud, you can—"
"Shut the fuck up, Seiryu! And answer me!"
"I can't really answer if I'm to shu—" Gohama growled, visceral and burning. "Okay, okay. I'll explain. I couldn't talk to you then. It was the resealing that allowed that. Usually jinchuriki learn how to communicate with me sooner, they are the ones that open the telepathic connection. This time I had to be the one to force it when the seal was at its weakest and you entered it. The fuinjutsu that binds biju and jinchuriki is very complicated and nuanced… The Seal Scroll you left with that Konoha nin would have explained that…"
"Fuck…"Gohama whispered as her forehead fell onto her knee. Leaving one of the Scrolls with Kakashi had clearly been an example of her lack of judgement.
"Fret all you want, Gohama, but there's little use for that now…"
"Why didn't to talk me out of it then?"
"Didn't think it would be the right moment for explaining… this." She could see the gesture of his clawed paw through his tone. "You were technically running away… Also I really wanted to see how you'd react." He chuckled. "It was worth it."
"A little jumpscare worth a secret Kyura Scroll?"
"What does the theory of our seal matter when I know about the practical things? We can communicate now, it'll make learning easier for you. Now try it." There was an almost childish excitement seeping through his last sentence.
What mattered was the intent, right? There had to be a conscious effort, as Seiryu had said. Gohama concentrated on thinking the words inside her mind, as if she wanted someone to hear them. Almost as if she were praying.
"Can you hear me?"
"Loud and clear, kiddo."
This time the condescending nickname didn't bother Gohama. She smiled, relieved that she wouldn't have to spend her life talking out loud as if to no one. She may have been going crazy after everything that had happened in the past days, but at least she didn't have to act like it.
"Aren't you going to ask me about the Uchiha now?"
"A lesson in history makes you that excited, Seiryu?"
"I've always found your human way of dealing with each other fascinating, like petty little animals roaring and all that leaves them is a falsetto. You find the most absurd reasons to fight about. It's all very entertaining."
"It's not entertaining, maybe it is for you when you watch us through godlike eyes, it's terrifying how cruel we are to each other. There are so many possibilities for chakra and we use it first as a weapon for killing. You're another proof of that, Seiryu. We harnessed Kuraokami-sama himself, we locked him and imprisoned him, just so we could kill."
"You think I'm Kuraokami?"
"People probably based the god on you. The dragon god of rain and snow." Gohama was inside the shrine meant to house and protect Kuraokami. This had been a sacred place safeguarded by her clan, but throughout all of the Land of Snow people worshiped the kami believed to habit their lands. "What person wouldn't come across you and think you're a god?"
"You flatter me, kiddo."
Gohama groaned. "And I really shouldn't have. The only thing bigger than your chakra is your ego."
He laughed again, his ancient deep rumbles seemed to tremble through her guts and it stirred a bubbly giggle in her throat. It quieted down quickly as she shook her head.
"I could never understand why the kami, the universe, anything..., would allow something like the massacre. It made me angry about all this, all this care we Buki always had for the gods of our land." Her hand gestured around the shrine. "But now I understand... They didn't stand by… I had Kuraokami-sama locked inside of me and made him leave his people. You were always a god to Bukigakure, our god, and I took you from them when they needed you."
"No, Gohama. You guarded me, you kept me with them, through you. Like a living shrine."
"Living shrine. That's ridiculous..." She chuckled, dry and disbelieving. "So you do see yourself as a god, hmm, Seiryu-sama?"
"Well, kiddo, I'm exceptionally majestic, powerful, magnificent and altogether awe-inspiring. Of course, I'm a god. And we'd both love to talk more about me, but Uchiha?"
"Uchiha."
"You've studied this haven't you? The period before the Hidden Villages where ninja clans were in constant battle against each other. They also made alliances and the Kyura and Uchiha made an alliance through marriage. This promised mutual assistance with their wars in case they called for help."
"Well, it explains why everyone associated Uchiha with Kyura in Konoha. Even with all the animosity, we're much closer to the Hyuga."
"Senju and Uchiha made peace and created the Leaf, followed by all the other Hidden Villages, including Buki, with the Minake, Ashikaga and Kyura clans united. For years the alliance remained but with no actual practical effects, besides driving the friendship between Konoha and Buki."
"Why did they attack us then?"
"Self-defence. The Hatake was right when he said the Arms were preparing a war. The Land of Snow has always had a weak Daimyo influence, in comparison with the now Five Great Nations, but back then we still benefited from being one of the Great Nations. After the—"
"Yeah, I remember, Third Shinobi War. We were excluded from the council of the Great Nations. Let me guess, people weren't happy about that?"
"It lowered our influence and demand for missions, which means less money coming into the village. We couldn't fight the Great Nations alone, so the alliance with the Uchiha would finally be extremely useful. Negotiations with them began, as they were planning a coup d'état inside Leaf. When your grandfather died and you became a jinchuriki, I lost access to the Village Council, but I have a faint idea of what happened. Bukigakure would assist the Uchiha revolt and, in return, once they achieved control of the Leaf, they would give us our rightful place at the council. The rest you know…"
"Uncle… He knew about the agreement and snitched it to Konoha…"
"The Arms weren't supposed to be destroyed. That was Akatsuki. He wanted to stop another war, Buki had just gotten out of one. It was madness, Gohama. They would have used us as killi—"
"I don't care. Fucking Konoha... They're a bunch of hypocrites, talking about the Will of Fire as if that justifies everything they've done, everything they've asked their shinobi to do…"
"It's not just Konoha, Gohama, you know that..."
"It's different, Seiryu, don't you see it? Konoha knew of the Uchiha plans for a coup d'état. It's too much of a coincidence for the clan to have been destroyed three years after their attack on Buki. I'm pretty sure the Uchiha massacre was an inside job. The Leaf chose to kill one of their clans, one of the founding clans. That's disgusting, that's genocide. Our village would never fall that low…"
"You're probably right about that one… I've seen a lot of things, but somehow the story of one of the sharingan going berserk and killing everyone always sat weirdly with me."
"Uchiha Itachi. He made the same choice as Uncle…"
It made her sick, but the association was made in her mind and it was true. Itachi at least had chosen to taint his own hands at his village's command, Uncle had betrayed his village to the enemy, had let the enemy do the dirty, disgusting work. Yet, there was no longer anger and betrayal in her for Uncle. Only drowning grief and love.
Gohama deflected against her knees, hands buried in her hair. Her chest tightened just from thinking of his choice, of his pure kind heart and desperate actions. Of how Konoha had preyed on them to use him. So she stopped thinking of it. If she didn't think, she wasn't aware of it. If she wasn't aware of it, it wouldn't hurt.
"I'm so tired…"
"Hey, kiddo… Come inside the seal, rest a little, brood a little, listen to my ancient wisdom."
It wasn't so bad. The invasion of privacy still made her cringe, but at least she wasn't completely alone anymore, at least she had someone to guide her through the training, someone that shared the burden of being bonded into another creature. She wished Seiryu had been there sooner.
"Well, lizar—" Gohama's head snapped up as she felt the protective seal around half of the village break. The invading familiar chakra crackled and stung against her senses. She was ready to punch a hole in the ground at the feel of it."Kakashi."
He was casually reading on top of her childhood home's roof. She appeared on top of the wall of the backyard, a kunai already flying right pass Kakashi's hear, as he tilted his head to the side. The roof tile behind him clanked as it shattered.
"What the fuck are you doing here?"
His droopy eye peaked from above Icha Icha. "Yo. Fancy seeing you here, Gohama." He gave her both his brand eye-crease smile and two-finger wave.
The next kunai imbedded a centimetre below his balls. "Did you come looking for some old ruins, some fond memories?"
"Maa, you see, there was this—"
"Just fuck off, Hatake, I'm in no mood for your little games."
He snapped his book shut. "You have some things that belong with me."
She jumped, her tanto pressing onto his kunai, as he blocked her attack. "I'm the Kyura jinchuriki and Head of Clan. The Scrolls belong to me." The title sounded foreign in her tongue, but it was the truth. She was the last Kyura, the only lonely one, and so the title fell to her.
"Tsukate left them to me. They are mine to keep and save."
With a growl, Gohama pushed harsher with her tanto against his blade, the shrike of sliding metal ringing in her ears. She jumped back onto the backyard, the ground flattened and cleaned after her day of preparations for training. Her hand reached for her back pouch and she pulled out the scrolls to show them to Kakashi.
"Come and get them."
"I didn't come here to fight, Gohama."
"Come and get them." Every of her syllables pronounced with deadly venom.
She no longer cared if she could win against the Copy nin in a fight. The blood boiling through her veins, finally boiling after nothing but flat continuous flow, called for a fight. Kakashi had managed to bring her energy circling back through her soul. Fingers twitching at her sides for the need of punching something. Her heart pumping, fast and eager, to let the flow of adrenaline circle through all of her.
This was being a kunoichi. Not the cold, numb wash of her body. But the eagerness, the readiness, the sharpness where all of her senses flashed, and fired and prepared to fight.
Gohama reminded herself not to look into his eyes, whether it be his sharingan or his dark droopy one, she wouldn't be able to fight them.
"You could only win with the tailed beast power. I've studied the Seal Scroll, I can suppress its chakra."
"Shut up and fight me."
"You knew this Scroll contained the secret to overpower your beast mode and yet you left it with me… Why?"
Kakashi already knew the answer to his own question, the intention behind his tone making it clear to her. The sharingan genjutsu he had cast on her had spelled every single letter of what she kept down and hidden. He wanted to trap her, to irk her maybe, but she wouldn't give him a truthful answer. He wasn't expecting it either.
"I like a good challenge."
"Hmm." He started with a feigned interest and nod. Every gesture meant to irk her, to rile her up and blind her in a fight. "But you're the Head of the Kyura, the jinchuriki, shouldn't you have taken what is your duty to keep?"
"Since when do you care about my duty? My duty is also to kill you, are you going to throw yourself at my chakra fist?"
"You had a chance to kill me and you didn't."
"You allowed me to kill you. I don't won't to be allowed. My parents didn't allow you to kill them." The eye that had be pinned on her turned away. "They wouldn't…" He didn't try to reassure the uncertainty that shook in her voice. "Kakashi."
Her call made him look back at her, but by then he already had his blank mask covering what the black one and hitai-ate didn't reach. "I'm not the one that is scared of the jubi's power. It's you, Gohama." A powerful, stabbing statement to make her ignore what he had let escape before. And it worked.
With a spring of her knees, she was lunging towards him on the roof, the tiles shattering under her feet. It didn't matter, she didn't even hear them shatter. Her mind focussed only on her tanto pressing against his kunai, as they pushed harder to counter the other's strength.
"I can't let you keep the scrolls." His voice was strained from pushing against her. "You're a liability."
"Thank you, Copy-nin, what a lovely compliment."
With a twist of her wrist, her blade slipped through his and she crouched to evade the swing of his kunai and kick his ankles. Before she could, Kakashi used the shushin no jutsu, flickering away to appear on the backyard. Gohama turned to look down at him.
"I'm willing to negotiate." He started. "I keep the scrolls and I'll grant you access to them."
A bitter chuckle rumbled out of her throat. "Just because a dead man left them to you doesn't mean you're entitled to them."
"I think it does, actually."
"Tsukate stopped being a Kyura when he…" Gohama couldn't finish the sentence. Again the same sad, compassionate resignation blew through her. "He had no right to give them to others."
"You buried him as a Kyura. You marked hi—"
"Shut the fuck up, Kakashi. Don't meddle in things that don't concern you."
"Tsukate was a Kyura until his last breath and still is one. You made sure of it."
"Shut up!" With a wide gesture of her arm, a wave of chakra pierced through the air towards him.
Before the cloud of dirt could settle where her chakra had stormed it, Gohama was already disappearing under it, her senses sharp for any inflection of Kakashi's chakra signature. She was blind in the dust and he had the sharingan. He evaded most of her attacks, but she never allowed him to force her onto defence.
She held herself in their taijutsu for long minutes, but blow by blow Kakashi started dominating the fight. Once she made a mistake that left her side completely open, he didn't lose time into kicking her across the backyard.
It was time for ninjutsu. Again they started the same dance, Gohama attacking with her chakra and Kakashi using mud walls and fire jutsu to defend himself. He used the same technique as before, evading her attacks until she made a mistake that left an opening for him to exploit. But mid-range was her comfort zone and his chakra reserves wouldn't last as long as hers.
After throwing a fireball her way, which Gohama easily deflected, Kakashi stopped, chest lowering and raising heavily as he recovered from the jutsu. "Gohama, we had our fun. Now give me the scrolls."
She laughed and leaned against the wall with crossed arms. "As I said before, come and get them."
"I will." He answered seriously, while his hand moved towards his hitai-ate.
All of Gohama's muscles tensed up, her back snapped straight and her heart thumped hard against her ribs. His eyelid still covered the sharingan and she forced her gaze onto his feet, her own spreading, knees bent, ready for restarting the battle, this time seriously. In her hand, appeared her summoned tachi, her chakra circling through the thin, sharp blade.
Kakashi's speed was admirable and Gohama would only have time to slash her tachi before he reached her, instead of evading the blow completely. Her grip firm on the handle and wrist ready to swing, she looked into Kakashi's furrowed brows and determined gaze. Only as she saw the magnetising terror of the sharingan did she remember to keep her eyes away from his own.
It was too late. Her gaze had already been locked by the spinning black tomoe in a background of red. Gohama would have screamed if her throat hadn't closed off and her chest hadn't halted with the air stuck inside. All of her body was trapped against the wall by that eye, her mind sucked in by the terrifying spin of black and red.
She hadn't even noticed there was a ball of lightning reaching for her chest, she hadn't even noticed there was a person running towards her. All she could see was the bloody eye overflowing with death and pain, the genjutsu scenery of red and black reflected on that iris, with Hansuke dead, Kisamaru and Nikato killed and green evil eyes.
A thousand birds shrieked on her ear and then the eye was gone and the sound of broken stone echoed somewhere beside her. Only then did Gohama's frozen body start shivering, with racking uncontrollable shakes, and only then did her heart thumped again, fast and piercing against her ribs. Her hands could no longer hold the handle of her tachi and it fell to the ground with a clank of metal she couldn't hear, above the ringing in her ear, above the echoed screams of dying people, people she had killed in front of a scenery of red and black.
"What the fuck, Gohama…" Kakashi exhaled beside her ear, the panic that had frozen her muscles trembled with the same cruelty in his voice.
She noticed him then, his arm still buried in the wall next to her head, his breath warm and raspy as he puffed against her ear. Gohama couldn't now how long they stayed still, but he finally moved, his flak jacket scrapping against her front and she pushed her back impossibly closer to the wall and away from him.
His head pulled back to look at her, a sliver of red escaping to grip her heart in a cold, crushing hand. She swallowed as her eyes clenched shut.
"It's covered." He told her softly, but she still couldn't move away from the wall or open her eyes, afraid that red scenery was back in front of her, those evil green eyes. "Move, the wall is going to crumble once I take my fist out of it." When she didn't answer, he laid a hand gently on her shoulder, and she couldn't stop the jolt. "Gohama…"
"I can't…"
"I'm going to hold you, okay?"
She gave him an almost imperceptible nod. Her muscles tensed into stone as his arm gently slid around her waist and pulled her against his chest. The soft handling so different from the cruel ice of the black and red eye he had. She felt the push of a jump on her stomach and the sound of crumbling stone and tile. Kakashi didn't release her when they landed.
"I'm taking the scrolls now." His hand reached for her back pouch and Gohama couldn't stop him. Her mind screamed for her legs to stop shaking and kick him away from her clan's property, but she couldn't move.
"Please…"
"You're a liability." Again that word and the cold hold on her heart tightened.
"Seiryu…?" Gohama called, maybe he could make his chakra race through her and blow the panic out of her muscles.
"It's okay, kiddo, we can make it without them. It'll even give them a false sense of security, of having the upper-hand."
Once the Secret Scrolls of the Kyura Jinchuriki were his, Kakashi pulled away from her. "I'm sorry I used that genjutsu on you, Gohama." He hesitated a little on his feet, before nodding. "Be safe."
When there was nothing holding her up, her knees faltered and she let herself fell to the ground. Only then did she feel the sharp burning pain spreading through her shoulder and neck. Gohama brought her still trembling hand against the wet wound. Blood.
It could have been her heart's blood, but that didn't matter now. What mattered was that she had failed. She watched his back pouch, the Secret Jinchuriki Scrolls inside of it, as he walked away, as he walked away with them, and there wasn't anything Gohama could do. Her knees were still shaky and her chakra erratic inside her pathways. She wouldn't win against Kakashi now and there was a deep rooted tiredness that didn't even allow her to try.
Weak. What kind of ninja froze when in battle? Because of an eye, a fucking eye.
Her head dropped and her hands fisted around clumps of soil and twigs. The soil of her home, the soil that had once been Mother's garden, the soil where Father had fought the man that had now defeated her. Gohama had lost in the most dishonourable of ways, frozen in fear and strength.
The Secret Scrolls of her clan stolen from her and she would just let them go, just as she had let her people go.
"Kakashi…" She called in a silent whisper against the ground, still he heard her, his chakra signature stopping. "Train me… here."
He turned towards her, but she couldn't look up. "Why would I train someone who threatened to destroy my village and kill me?"
"You would learn my fighting technique and weaknesses… You could train the sealing too."
"A low price for the high risk."
This time she tilted her hand back, shaking it so her short hair would get away from her eyes, but it was glued to her forehead. "And your sharingan… on me…"
"I don't want to be a part of your revenge agenda."
"It's not revenge. I'm not Uchiha Sasuke, I don't live for revenge."
That name made him pin a heavy stare onto her. "Burden, honour, duty… you can use as many excuses as you want but we both know in the end it's all about revenge. You're no better than Sasuke."
"Never thought I was." The Uchiha was incredibly more efficient than she was. "But I'm at least giving you a chance to keep an eye on… a liability, on an enemy of Konoha."
"All the more reason to leave then. It's treason to fraternise with enemies of Konoha."
"You promised uncle Tsukate…" Gohama winced as she said the words. It was low of her to use Uncle, but, despite everything, she knew Kakashi. She knew he would go beyond his duty to Konoha for his friends, or at least the people important to him. And the word promise had always tolled loudly in him. "If I train alone…"
He stood silently looking at her. "Okay. I accept."
The frail light passing through the glass sliding doors and resting right onto Kakashi's eyelids woke him up. Even without opening his eye, he already knew Gohama wouldn't be there. Her futon was still laid open by the opposite corner of the room, empty and unruffled.
He turned to lay on his back and absently watched the coffered ceiling. This was clearly the richest room in the manor, meant to receive formal guests or gatherings, with doors decorated to depict lake sceneries and black pines, with china and calligraphy art exposed on a wall. Gohama had probably chosen to settle herself there and only there because of it. The room was wide and cold, especially without the tatami floors, which hadn't ridden it of their musty smell, and even through all the ornate, delicate details, it was empty. Impersonal.
They had agreed to sleep on the same division for security reasons, but he was certain having him there hadn't made Gohama feel anything close to security. That was probably why she hadn't slept and had left even before dawn broke out.
It was the second day Kakashi was there in the Arms and already he felt like a complete failure. Why had he even come here? What could he of all people do here, do for her? She hated him, and if she didn't, it was because she was too buried in grief to even form any type fiery, intensive emotion such as hate.
Kakashi had expected sharp hostile eyes to always be pinned on him. He had been ready to respond to them with a blank bored stare back, maybe even a slight raise of his eyebrow with a challenging note. His eye creases would also have been good. Gohama always seemed to be irked by them. Irk was manageable, irk was familiar and irk was light.
Instead he got only a washed out green that brushed over everything around them and almost never settled on his own dark grey. Not even when she had told him clearly that her duty was to kill him and him being there wouldn't change it, did her eyes hold anything behind them.
It reminded him of that dreadful balcony in Kiku, where she would sit most of the day, drinking her whiskey and doing nothing but stare at some lost point of the metal city in front of them. Kakashi didn't want to be reminded of that mission, Kakashi didn't want to know that Gohama's eyes could pull off an even more detached, desolated gaze.
He deserved every little twist of pain at watching them. But, fuck, was it painful…
Kakashi had just come. He wasn't even sure why, he just had. And for some reason, Gohama actually allowed him to stay. For help in her training, but why him and not Hansuke? He had had to use a little of his manipulation tactics on her. He knew she wouldn't let him stay if he asked to, but if he took away the scrolls, if he took away something she needed, maybe she would make him stay.
He had known he would have had to fight her and win without hurting her too much, but he hadn't expected her to react so badly to the sharingan. He had underestimated how much he had fucked over her with that genjutsu.
A pinching pain made the heel of his palm rub against the sharingan. Even after a few days of using the mangenkyo, it was still tender and aching. There were days when he hated Obito's gift, with all the gilt that came with that, and today was one of those days. He truly just hated himself. He had been the one to use it on her. Another regret to stack on top of all the others.
Kakashi had seen Gohama twitchy and on edge, but he had never seen her freeze. She would have let herself be pierced with the raikiri, with his own hand. The memory of how close he had gotten to crushing through her bone and muscle and not the wall made all of him shake. It brought the image of scared brown eyes, wide dying eyes, and the feel of shattered bone and burnt flesh.
A shrill chuckle sounded around the empty room as Kakashi recognised all the symptoms. Only now was he going to freak out. Not when he had thought he wouldn't dodge in time, not when he had realised with overwhelming relief on a still terrified heart that he had pierced through stone, not when he had taken care of Gohama's cut and burnt shoulder, her skin seared with tendrils of lightning, - she had marvelled at them, Kakashi had wanted to scream. Only in the morning after was he freaking out.
He pulled himself up, his chest heaving up and down, trying to grasp any bit of air, but it never seemed to reach his lungs. The shaking was becoming debilitating too. If the world ended then, it wouldn't have surprised him, but, no matter how intensively he felt like it would, it never did.
His eyes were kept firmly shut, his hands away from anything they could taint. He knew there was no blood in them. He knew he wouldn't leave a trail of red on anything he touched. Still, he felt it. The warm, wet feel of it in his hands, the pungent smell of iron in his nose. He needed to clean it.
With a jerk, he ran through the house he knew the plans of. He knew where the kitchen was, because eleven years ago he had had to know of it for his mission. His hand reached for the tap, but no water came out. What a fucking idiot. Of course there would be no water in a massacred, destroyed village.
Kakashi leaned over the sink, his heart thundering around the room, against his heaving ribs. He didn't need water. The blood wasn't there and the water could never clean them, he could never clean himself. He needed to pull himself together, he needed to breath and he needed to clean the blood of his hands. He scrubbed them on each other and on his shirt, and now everything was red. No, nothing was red. It wasn't real.
Hadn't Gohama told him there was a river running beside the Kyura compound where he could bathe? He could clean his hands there.
Unseeing, Kakashi rushed through rooftops, tripping on himself, his chest tightening unbearably more, but he could see the running water now, maybe he wouldn't die before he reached it. His hands dipped into the freezing water and he rubbed at them. He knew it wasn't real, but he just needed the blood to disappear, so he rubbed his hands until they were red from abused flesh and not the blood of his best friend.
Now completely spent, Kakashi dropped onto his back against the grassy bank. He watched the clouds ahead glide through the sky. The light was different in Buki than in Konoha, it had an icy silver tint, even during the warm colours of sundown. Kakashi could only imagine how beautiful the village and mountains surrounding it would look in the winter, a fluffy white layer covering the green forest and the dark roofs.
He had only been there during the spring and summer. The first time as a bodyguard to the Sandaime, on a diplomatic meeting after he had returned to the position of Hokage, and where Kakashi had first seen Kyura Inaku. The second time as a shinobi to kill him and the third to bury him and his entire village.
Gohama had been there in all those times. The first as a fleeting image of a small child in a kimono being presented to the Sandaime. The second as a burning image of a daughter finding her mother's dead body and killer. The third as a ghostly image of a deceased girl he had marked and been marked with the red powder. She hadn't even been dead then.
Closing his eyes, he tried to quiet down his mind, exhausted and tattered. He couldn't even find the energy to distract himself with Icha Icha. Maybe he could try to fall asleep. Gohama and Kakashi would have the first training in the afternoon, which he was dreading with cold swirls of his stomach, but she would probably already expect him to be late.
Gohama hadn't come to training and she hadn't come for all of night and the next morning. Despite the fear circling in his veins, Kakashi decided not to send his pack in search for her. She probably only needed a time alone or maybe she had run away. The scrolls were still in his pouch, and he wasn't sure if that was reassuring or unnerving.
Again he woke up from fitful and light sleep with the first rays tinting his eyelids pink and an empty futon on the other side of the room. Maybe Gohama had left him there alone as a punishment. Alone in that abandoned home so ghosts that didn't exist would haunt him, and why they didn't exist was what haunted him, and memories he had run away from for eleven years to finally catch up to him.
Kakashi hadn't strayed away from that main room. This morning his eye spied the corridor that ran beside the engawa, as he sat there, book opened in one hand, ration bar in the other. Somehow the flow of wooden floors and ripped shoji doors scared him for all the devastation stuck into them, all the guilt. Still, the little itch of curiosity bothered him and made his gaze wander from the pages of his book to the corridor that would lead to other rooms of the house.
When it was afternoon, Gohama still hadn't showed up and his book lay finished over his face. Kakashi sighed from anticipated regret. He threaded through the floors on naked feet, light, steady, calculating, as if on a stealth mission, as if afraid of disrupting the quiet resting over the house.
The first rooms to the right where common sitting spaces, one with stray toys and a television. He didn't dare cross the threshold to walk inside. Another had just mouldy tatami floor and a kotatsu. Behind the last shoji door was an office. It still had brownish papers and scrolls over the low table and a bookshelf that covered every wall, except for the doors that led to the engawa. Kyura Misaka's office.
He took a hesitant step forward, his movements uncertain to enter the private space of a person he had killed. It felt as an intrusion into the already gone life he should never have meddled with. And still his feet moved across the ripped tatami, his eyes fixed on the dust covered spines of hundreds of books.
Kakashi tried not to disturb the dirt laying on the wood of the shelf and leather of the covers, letting only his one eye slide through the titles. There were knickknacks and picture frames in front of the books.
Immediately, his gaze was captured by a particular one. He would recognise Kyura Misaka's face anywhere, as his sharingan had been opened while he had fought her and while he had killed her. He blew across the glass and still it wasn't enough to take away the murkiness of abandonment from the frame. His thumb brushed over the dirt covering the faces on the photograph. First, he unveiled the profile of Kyura Misaka, her gaze soft as she looked down on the child at her lap, a small tender smile upturning her lips.
His fingers trembled, he set the photo back in its place, only to pick it up again. His thumb hovered above the face he knew was Gohama's. Kakashi wanted to see her, but he was scared, he didn't know why, but he was. With a gentle swipe, he cleared the dust away and behind it a toddler with chubby cheeks and green eyes stared back at him. Smiling, her head thrown back as her little hand reached for her mother's face. The most innocent and unguarded expression he had ever seen mark her face.
There wasn't a shadow of the woman she had become on the child's expression. There wasn't that bottomless tenacity that now lurked in her eyes and seemed to challenge anything that came her way. He had always been captivated by it and he wondered about all the happier what-ifs where Gohama wasn't... Gohama.
There was something so tragic about the photograph that made Kakashi's chest ache from more than guilt. He gave one last sad smile at it. With careful hands, he settled the frame above the clearer spot on the shelf, where it had remained untouched for eleven years, unseen. As everything else inside that house, that compound, that village.
If it was painful for him to be in this ghostly place how abysmal it must be for Gohama. He understood why she had disappeared, but it stirred coldly in his guts.
Just as Gohama neared her home, she could feel where Kakashi was standing. Her jaw clenched and expression hardened, as she sped through the rooftops.
Her decided steps halted as soon as she saw the inside of Mother's office again. A trembling hand held onto the opened shoji door, careful not to make the wood groan and paper rustle. This was not the moment to have an internal break down, as Kakashi stood a couple of meters away from her.
She needed to breathe, but was sure any attempt at bringing air into her lungs would come out in a shaky breath and he would hear it. He would hear what he probably already knew was rioting inside of her, every day she spent in Buki. It didn't matter that he knew, it just mattered that she not show it to him.
Gohama crossed her arms and leaned her shoulder against the door. "What are you doing here?" She winced at the little shake of her voice and hoped he hadn't noticed.
Kakashi was crouching in front of the bookshelf. The hand reaching for a book stopped mid-air as he turned to look at her over his shoulder. "Dusting."
"We're sleeping on a layer of dust and you chose to start being all domestic in here? Leave."
"Maa, Gohama, we wouldn't want all these books to get eaten by bugs and stained with dirt." He explained nonchalantly as he made a show of dusting off the cover of a book.
Her teeth clenched. "This is my house, my compound, my village, and you are to obey me as long as you are here. So get your filthy hands off that book and fucking leave."
With an annoying sigh, Kakashi stood up and moved towards the door, a hand inside his pocket, the other holding the book she had told him to leave. Before she could chastise him on it, he pushed it against her chest and her arms untangled from each other to hold it.
"Books shouldn't be left to wither like this." He said as he moved pass her and out of Mother's office.
Gohama looked down at her the cover, Myths and Folktales of the Land of Snow. Out of all books it had to be that one that he fucking left on her hands. The first book Mother had gifted her and the only thing, besides her goldfish Toshi, Gohama regretted leaving behind in Konoha.
It was as if Kakashi had known. Maybe he truly had. He had access to the seals of her apartment in Konoha and that was the lone book on her bookshelf, the lone almost anything in that place. Anyone would be drawn to that, especially an avid reader as Kakashi.
With gentle fingers, she brushed the dirt stuck to the leather cover. Hers was lined with plastic, the illustration of the kami Kuraokami-sama painted in traditional style. She remembered the times Mother had read it to her, voice soft and motherly, she remembered the first time Gohama herself had read it after learning how to.
The pages inside were stained with brown blotches from passing time and lack of care. The smell of must that permeated every surface of her home floating out of the paper as she turned the leaves. Kakashi had been right, the books were withering away with no one to open and read them. Her heart broke to admit it, her veins stinging from the feel of desolation. Mother would want her books to be read. Of this Gohama was sure.
She had spent the past day in the forest hoping to clear her mind and heart for training and this was the first thing she came back to. A gut-clenching reminder that Mother was dead and that Gohama hadn't followed what Mother had hoped for her.
'May its stories free your spirit and kindle your dreams.' Gohama felt there was nothing behind her skin to free and her heart was a barren soil as cold as Snow. She had tried the dreaming with Hansuke, as small little dream, and it had failed completely. From the beginning, she had known they had no future together and still she had let herself be fooled.
Duty was greater than dreams. Dreams were for children and people with no duty. Her duty was one greater than all her dreams could ever be, because it was real. Even through all the pain and loss, the betrayal and broken trust, she could reassure herself that her path was clear and good. In front of her was all she had ever wanted, truth and duty.
Even three years ago, after being kidnapped and tortured by Danzo's men, she had come to this same conclusion. Gohama could not give Mother what she had hoped for her, but there was someone that could, a jaded deadly shinobi that read books as they should be read. Mother would have liked her own killer.
The bitter sardonic cruelty of it made her want to laugh like a maniac and cry like a baby. Gohama settled for three long breaths and running away from the room without her eyes lingering on any of the picture frames.
"I'm usually the one that is fashionably late." Kakashi said right as she stepped onto the engawa, his attention stuck to his Icha Icha. Why did he have to be reading now?
"We agreed to train at four. I'm fifteen minutes earlier."
"More like twenty three hours and forty five minutes late."
"How sweet, you were counting. Did you actually miss me, Copy-nin? Or maybe you were scared of past ghosts coming back to haunt you." Gohama let out the last sentence with a biting tone, not even pretending to disguise the heavy significance it had in their situation.
"You haunt me enough for a lifetime, Gohama."
They both stilled as Kakashi said the words. It had been meant as a joke, but it fell seriously between them. She tried to force herself into saying a 'you deserve it'. In pass times, it would have left out as a teasing comment, now it would only hit with cruelty. Gohama should have mustered the hate, or at least the resentment, but she couldn't. How was she supposed to kill him, if she couldn't even let malice stir in her for him?
"Let's start the training."
In true Kakashi fashion, he followed her, not forcing the topic of her little disappearance. He didn't ask her where she had gone, why she had gone and what had made her come back, and to neither of the question did she have a definite clear answer. Gohama was thankful for his aloofness for once.
When she reached the middle of her backyard, she extended her hand to him. "Chakra scroll."
He didn't fight her on that, promptly fetching it from his back pouch and handing it to her. Cutting her fingertip on the edge of a kunai, Gohama let a drop of blood fall on the scroll. The seal opened and without hesitation she started reading through it.
The Chakra Scroll was the fundamental one when it came to learning how to control the tailed beast chakra. The Kyura had classified the different types of jinchuriki forms into three types. The first was called primary chakra cloak and allowed Seiryu's chakra to emanate from the jinchuriki's core and pathways, so that he could be controlled at the jinchuriki's will.
The secondary chakra cloak and detrimental to the jinchuriki usually originated involuntarily and therefore at the loss of the jinchuriki's control, the chakra itself was shaped at the image of the biju around the jinchuriki's frame. The material cloak was the most detrimental of all forms, where the chakra converted into a physical humanoid shape, causing the jinchuriki's skin to burn off and the loss of their lucidity due to the overwhelming energy of frenzied chakra.
Until today, Gohama had only been able to create the secondary and material cloak. Every jinchuriki's objective was to form a primary cloak with all of Seiryu's ten tails and power without the loss of their control or lucidity.
Her eyes focussed on the first step and she cursed to herself. Meditation.
During her seven years in a Buddhist monastery, Gohama hadn't been able to meditate once. Every time her body was still her mind had ran freely into every little train of thought it could muster, making her even more stressed than before. The scroll spoke of dethatching oneself from the environment and thoughts, but instead of focussing only on her breathing, the jinchuriki should focus also on their chakra flow and its connection with Seiryu's.
"It's simple enough." Kakashi commented with an eye-crease smile.
"For you maybe." She grumbled as she sat on the lotus position.
Her eyes closed and she breathed in deeply. An acute awareness of her own chakra flow was necessary for any Kyura with the bloodline limit, so it was not difficult for her to sense her connection with Seiryu's chakra, its presence latent in her core.
The difficult part was not letting any other thing get hold of her attention. How could people blank their minds? Gohama was intensely aware of every change in her environment, it was almost instinctive for a shinobi. It was similar to a constant background noise that let her focus on anything else, but was somehow always present. When something stood out of the ordinary, and anything out of the ordinary could be a threat, it jumped to the front of her awareness. This time what stood out for her was the prickling feeling of Kakashi's gaze on her.
"Stop staring at me."
"I have to keep an eye out for a cloak."
"It won't happen any time soon, so just read your book." She heard the sound of shuffling pages, which meant she wasn't detaching herself from her background. "I can't so this."
"Just relax and be patient."
That was exactly the problem. Relaxing and being patient.
Every time her mind wandered, she brought it back to her breathing and chakra. For an hour, Gohama fought with herself. When she was finally entering what she assumed was mindfulness, the snap of a closing book made her jolt.
"I'll kill you." She growled and Kakashi answered with an innocent expression.
Gohama stood up, brushing the dirt from her butt and wiggling her legs and arms to unstiffen her joints.
"Giving up, huh?"
"Shut up, Hatake. And let's spar, I want to train my taijutsu."
They spent the rest of the afternoon fighting each other and even if Kakashi dominated the fights most of the times, it actually felt like useful training, in contrast to her poor attempt at meditating. Seiryu and she had also practice the use of their telepathic communication to her advantage in battle. The old lizard was good, after years of bonds with jinchuriki and being forced into combat, he knew how to read their opponent and her own errors.
When it was too dark for Gohama to see comfortably, they stopped. Kakashi made a comment about having to catch up on his reading and spun around with wave. She knew it was the right moment to say what she had set herself on.
"Kakashi…" Gohama called and he turned back around with his disinterested expression.
Now was when she should have talked, but the words were stuck in her chest. Gohama could feel an embarrassed blush heating the skin of her cheeks. Her gaze focussed on the roof tile, somewhere beside his face. It flickered back to him, expecting to see amusement there at her awkward attempt at talking, but he only looked back at her, waiting and blank.
Her voice rushed out of her throat. "You can read them, if you want." She winced, it had definitely been too rushed. "Mother's books, that is…"
He continued to stand there staring at her and she shifted her gaze from the point beside his face, to him. His eyes were curved into his typical eye-creased smile. When she looked, he gave her a soft nod and turned around to walk towards the house. Kakashi had been merciful. He could have joked around her sudden change of heart, or at least her inability to say a few words.
Her infuriating pride was still shaking from dread, but it hadn't been so bad. Gohama didn't know if that was good or bad.