Part V | Chapter 8
"Wake up." Kakashi said groggily, his voice coming out as a growl, while he shook Gohama's shoulder, careful not to jolt her roughly. "Gohama, wake up. Gohama." His heart thundered in his chest at her lack of response.
He had woken up in the middle of the night, his body feeling as if he had been trampled by a tailed beast, but all wrapped up. His eye had snapped to the lump beside him, looking more like a rag doll than a human being, worry cold in his guts at the dark stain on her lower back.
"Shhh… lemme sleep."
"I need you to take off your shirt."
"…no mood for sex."
"Interesting news, not really relevant at the moment." When Gohama didn't answer, he continued with a more assertive tone. "You're bleeding."
With great effort, she managed to open a slit on her eyelid. "Where?" Kakashi grunted as, still laying down, he stretched to reach her lower back and lightly press his hand to it. "That's yours."
"Are you sure?" Gohama's response was to close back her eyelid. "Gohama…"
"If I was actually dying, Seiryu would have warned me by now. I think it's safe for me to sleep for a few more minutes."
"Or maybe you can let me clean it and then sleep for however long you want."
Gohama grumbled a litany of curses as she brushed the sleep off her eyes and pushed herself into a kneeling position. With a few winces, she took her haori off and, as she brought her hands to the lower hem of her shirt, Kakashi looked away towards the ceiling. In only her mesh and bindings, the injury covering the left side of the small of her back was clear, with angry jagged patches of raised flesh as a few drops of blood still seeped out of them.
"The blood is definitely yours. It's from Kisame's sword. It ripped your skin off."
"Oh, yeah. I remember that now." She tried to look down over her shoulder. "Is it stuck to my mesh shirt?"
"Yes, with a lot of lint and dirt." Again, she mumbled a series of curses under her breath. "Come here." He gave her a lazy wave. "I'll clean it."
Kakashi tried to get up on his own, but failed miserably, making Gohama chuckle in the process, an eyebrow raised up and her arms crossed. He wished he could wash that cheekiness off her face. It never left her as she crawled her way to him and leaned closer, her hands settling above his shoulders, as her hair fell around their faces. "Regretting not leaving me to sleep?"
"What man would regret this?"
Gohama smirked, cocky and dangerous, as she wrapped her freezing arms around his torso and pulled him upwards. Kakashi groaned when he felt his broken rib stab through his lung. He knew it hadn't truly pierced anything, but it certainly felt like it.
"I am starting to regret a little, yes."
"Good." Was Gohama's curt answer as she tapped his legs so he would spread them open, and sat on her heels between them.
Kakashi started by pulling the dirt and threads of shredded mesh out of the wound with tweezers. When a more difficult piece came, glued to dried blood, Gohama would tense, the muscles on her shoulders rippling below her skin, without showing any other sign of pain.
"Kisame?" He asked.
"Dead. I didn't fight Itachi, I let him go." She share quietly.
His hands stopped for a second before he continued. After feeling her killing intent, he hadn't expected her to be so lenient and he also would never expect Itachi to give up without a fight.
Sensing his incredibility, she explained, "Sasuke should be the one to kill him."
Her words made his heart jolt and hands falter again. He hadn't expected to hear Sasuke's name, a name he hadn't heard in so long, even when it had never stopped throbbing in the space meant for his regret, his guilt.
She still didn't explain why Itachi hadn't fought and he suspected Gohama wasn't interested on sharing that with him, and he didn't force her.
The first part of the cleaning was done and Kakashi tried to pull up her mesh shirt as carefully as he could. His knuckles brushed against freezing skin and he wasn't sure if that had been from sleeping on the floor or blood loss.
His hands kept steady at his sides, as his eyes followed the line of Gohama's spine, down to the pair of dimples resting just above the edge of her shorts. They lingered a moment on the curve of her hip and he wondered if he wrapped both hands around her waist if his fingers would touch, they definitely wouldn't, but he wanted to try either way. She didn't have the reminder of a single old wound on her back, not one small little scar.
"Are you done staring at my back?"
Kakashi would have blushed more, if not for the confusion taking over his mind. "You don't have scars." He had never noticed it before. Every time he had looked at a large strip of Gohama's uncovered skin, she had been wounded, leaving any possible scars hidden.
"Thanks for the insight." Her tone was biting.
"No one is that good."
"I know."
Kakashi frowned even more at her deflated voice. "It's Seiryu's chakra." Gohama nodded quietly. "And you want scars?"
"Everyone has scars."
Her comment days ago about being the monster in the jinchuriki matter jumped to his thoughts. "This doesn't make you any less of a person." She didn't answer. "It doesn't, Gohama."
"Just hurry up. I still want to go back to sleep."
Kakashi knew when not to push her, so he searched through the medic kit for the antiseptic, a needle and thread. Except for a few long exhales and little whimpers, she held on the same as before. Internally, Kakashi thanked the fact that he had been unconscious when Gohama worked on his ugly gash down his stomach.
"You chakra healed me?" He asked, trying to bring up conversation while pushing the needle into her flesh and pulling the thread. She nodded only. "How long did it take you?"
"One hour… but I didn't have enough chakra. Had to close the skin the old fashioned way."
"That bad, huh?"
"For a moment I thought you were dead." Her words held a quiet heavy tone and Kakashi could feel them vibrating through her back, as his fingers stopped what they were doing. Gohama caught herself from getting too serious, too vulnerable. "Just chakra exhaustion, though. But I did have to save your sorry ass again."
"When did I need saving the first time?" Kakashi went along. The comments before had already been enough for one night after a heavy fight.
"Against Kakuzu. You were almost burnt to death and I made this really cool entrance with my chakra."
"Hmm? Are you sure? I don't seem to remember that…" Kakashi remembered. It had been cool, it had been amazing. Her chakra roaring on all sides of him, her dark air fluttering in the air against the green of her Kyura haori. Tachi in hand, just as Kyura Inaku.
"You don't? Don't you remember being an asshole when I asked you were the other was?"
"Ah, yes... even then you had a habit of threatening to kill me."
His teasing fell flat between the two of them. Gohama had joked about that hours before, but for some reason, it had become too much of a sensitive topic now. Maybe the exhaustion helped with that, the masks behind humour cracking.
"I'm sorry, Gohama. I shouldn't have said that."
His hand rested on her hip in an attempt at an appeasing gesture. Goose bumps broke through her skin under his fingertips, and Kakashi soothed the pad of his thumb over them. Her skin was so soft under his rough callouses, so tender. He wanted to kiss it, to lick it as he followed the path of her spine with his lips and his tongue.
"Why would you need to apologise?" Her voice had that forced tilt of lightness. It made him pull his hand away from her, the lead of guilt settling in his chest. He should never imagine those things about Kyura Gohama. "Don't worry about my feelings, Hatake."
It took him another ten minutes in silence to finish sewing the rest of Gohama's raised patches of flesh. He wrapped clean gauze around her lower torso and again he couldn't stop himself from letting the back of his fingers graze and linger over her.
When he tied it all together, the white clean fabric almost the same colour as Gohama's back, he gently held both of her hips and pressed his masked lips to her shoulder, dragging a shiver from her. "But I do worry."
Gohama didn't punch him and she also didn't kick him away or mocked him, instead she said a quiet, almost silent, "Don't."
She was right. How had he even allowed himself to hold her as he did now? He had no right to touch her, no right to be anything to her. The broken rib and freshly sewed cut didn't stop him from jerking away from Gohama. Before he could do more than lean backwards, her hands grabbed his and coaxed them to stay where they held her.
She turned her head to him. Her profile perfectly drawn out for him, a quiet blush marking her cheek and nose. "Let me see your sharingan."
He leaned closer, but stopped himself before he could touch her back and rest his chin on her shoulder, maybe bury his nose on the curve of her neck. It was all his eyes could see, the line of Gohama from the tip of her hairline down to her arm.
She reached his face with her hand to cup its left side. Her chakra entered him, quiet and fresh, spreading across his pathways and soothing the ache thundering in the sharingan.
His eyes closed as he hummed in delight. "That's a nice trick…"
"I'm full of very nice tricks." He opened his grey eye to see the teasing smirk matching the tone in her voice. Those comments of hers were never good for his heartbeat. "It's like it has a mind of its own. How hasn't the Uchiha's chakra drained out?"
"Obito." Kakashi shared before he could even understand that it had happened. But it had, and despite an expected apprehension, he wasn't freaking out at the vulnerability he had fallen himself into. "His name was Obito."
This time also the sharingan opened, even if it hurt him. Obito would have loved to see the woman, besides Rin, that made Kakashi's walls crack. Definitely not as much as Kakashi loved seeing her, as the shade of her green eyes seemed to change as they mellowed.
"Was Obito as stubborn as his chakra?"
"Worse."
And Gohama smiled, soft and sweet and it made his heart swell. And it was in moments like this that Kakashi honoured Obito's gift with a sight of the future, of good and beauty.
"Ah, I'm sure he made your life a living hell."
Kakashi chuckled. "Every day. He was the one that called me Bakashi."
Her thumb brushed over his eyebrow and her voice softened. "I would have liked him a lot, then."
"Obito would have liked you too."
Her expression fell, and even if the tenderness was still there, it was overwhelmed with sadness. Her chakra receded from him and she let her hand fall away. He frowned and his mouth opened, but Gohama already knew the question he would ask. She explained curtly. "I'm really tired." And they both knew it wasn't just that.
"Whatever happens, Gohama, I won't regret staying here with you."
She turned her back to him, her eyes fixed on the decorated door in front of them. "Did you regret teaching Sasuke?"
"What does Sasuke have to do with us?"
"I know I remind you of him. And I'm sorry." She answered with lowered eyes.
"Don't make me laugh, Gohama. It hurts." He said seriously. "You don't remind me of Sasuke, at all. Yes, your circumstances are similar, but you're completely different people."
"It's the same. You're here helping me train and maybe you have hope that it will stop me or something but it won't."
"Gohama," Kakashi called steadily, clumsily dragging himself to her side. His hand brushed her hair away and held her face so he could see it. "I'm not here to stop you. I'm not here with some type of saviour complex that I'll get you to be happy and whole and forget all about what Konoha did and what I did. Most of the times I question how much I fuck you up with my own shit while I'm here."
"You don't." She started with a sheepish smirk and her eyes lifted to meet his. "You haven't fucked me once."
Kakashi rolled his own and didn't stop a small smile from curving his lips. "This is serious, woman." He couldn't stop himself from gliding down the back of his fingers over her cheek. "If you think I'm here as some attempt at redeeming what happened with Sasuke through you, I'm not. No matter how similar your lives have been you are completely different people to me. And I could tell you all about how revenge only brings pain and emptiness, like I did and will still do with him, but for you it's useless, because you already know that. Revenge isn't even what you want, it's what you think you should do, it's what you think you owe Buki.
"Sasuke is resentful and you're not resentful at all. Even when you should be..."
At his own words, he felt the urge to pull away from her, but didn't. It may be wrong of him, but Gohama needed this now.
"Sasuke does it for hate and you do it for love." Kakashi finished softly.
Her large eyes met his, something deep and trembling escaped from the endless green. They clouded and reddened, but before the water could build and spill, she turned away and moved to flee from the spot beside him.
His hand caught her shoulder carefully. "Where are you going?"
"To a place where we're not having this conversation."
"I'll shut up, then, and we'll go to sleep and next time maybe let the emotions of a tough battle wash off before getting into serious talks. Sounds good?"
"Yeah, sleep sounds amazing."
Kakashi scooted to the other side of the futon and Gohama stared at the blank space opened for her. Maybe it had been inappropriate to assume she would sleep next to him, but they were both exhausted and she still had to set her futon and maybe he really wanted her presence next to him that night.
Before he could begin to embarrass himself with a lousy excuse or justification, Gohama gave him one of her smirks. "First you try to get me undressed, then into your bed. Feeling naughty, hmm, Copy-nin?"
"Yes, I am. Now are you going to get in before I go under the covers again? I'm freezing."
She moved to lay down on the spot and sighed as she wiggled into the mattress beneath. Kakashi watched her with a small smile before laying down too. Without the previous shyness, Gohama pressed herself to his side and he jerked. "Fuck, you're freezing. How are you not dead?"
"Mm, your chakra's really warm."
"The lightning is not uncomfortable?"
"When you get worked up it prickles, but it's more like a shock that sends adrenaline through me, not pain. Most times it just tingles, like when someone brushes their fingers over your skin."
As a demonstration, her fingertips glided over a patch of uncovered skin on his chest in feather light circles. Instant goose bumps rose on his skin at the soft teasing sensation. Kakashi pouted behind his mask when she pulled away. If his chakra felt as good as Gohama's touch then she would be constantly flustered, which unfortunately she wasn't.
Flustered Gohama was a beautiful rare sight and she always managed to turn it onto himself. She was always ready to go one step farther than he could ever let himself. If she were any other woman with no history in common, he would have taken all the steps more than happy to jump right over the cliff with her. But she wasn't. And Gohama being Gohama was what made him so madly attracted to her.
"It's nice." She caught her words and blushed again and again Kakashi felt the impulse to lean in and press his lips to her skin. "But you stink."
"You're not much better."
Gohama pushed even closer to him, making a show of her words against his side. "Mm, well, I'm not getting out of here now."
"Good." He thought to himself and she opened her eyes to look at him, making him realise he had said it aloud. He really couldn't keep his mouth shut tonight.
Her fingers rested gently on his jaw and it made his blush burn hotter behind his mask. Her eyes shifted down to his mouth and he watched as her dark lashes flickered with the movement. Then her green forest eyes speckled with sadness, but what shone through was a bottomless intensity that made his heart stumble and his cock twitch.
"Remember that night on Dazai's mission?" She whisper and she must have leant closer because Kakashi could feel it fan against his mask.
Of course, he did. Kakashi had it saved with the sharingan's memory. The small curious and innocent glides of her fingertips over his skin and of his calloused fingertips over her skin meant to comfort her from the disgusting violent touch of that bastard. The first time Kakashi had felt his affectionate need burst through every wall he had built around himself.
"Hmm." He didn't trust himself to say anything more.
"I never thanked you for that. So thank you, Kakashi. I also never thanked you for being there on that mission. And I understand now… why you couldn't stay after… I forgive you."
"Gohama…" He breathed and closed his eyes. He didn't deserve her forgiveness. Those who left their friends behind were worse than scum and even if Gohama hadn't been a friend then – his confusion over what she was to him was not fresh –, she had already been a person he cared about. And Kakashi had left her to hurt and fight alone.
Her fingers moved to press over his lips and he wanted to kiss down her fingers and palm, her wrist and arm. "You don't have to force yourself to say anything, okay? Let's just sleep. Exhaustion is making us talk and I'm pretty sure we'll regret it in the morning."
Kakashi opened his eyes. "I won't… I like this. I like talking to you like this."
She smiled, but the speckles of sadness were still there. "Night, Copy-nin." Gohama shifted until her head was safely tucked against his side.
"Good night, Hama."
Kakashi let himself delight in the feel of Gohama's soft body pressed to his side. Alive. The relief of having her alive and safe was so warm and giddy it almost felt like joy.
His gaze fixed on the coffered ceiling above them, with two stains of dried blood on the other side of it. The guilt was still there, always looming over them. Even if she had asked him to stop it, he couldn't, especially not when everything around him reminded him of how he had failed her.
Hansuke should have been the one with her now and that was why she hadn't wanted him here.
Gohama was all about love.
She called it duty, but it was only the expression of her love for her people. To her an unfulfilled duty meant there was an unfulfilled love. She was afraid her love for Hansuke would clash with her love for Buki, would replace it and steal its space.
That fear was what had led her to accept Kakashi's stay in Buki. Gohama knew she would never love him and he would never replace anyone.
It hurt. It was selfish of him to hurt because of it, but he still did.
Gohama had spent the entire night awake as Kakashi snored quietly behind her. In the morning, she left before he woke up and went straight to her home's alcohol cabinet, taking away the cheapest looking bottle of sake. Her muscles ached with every little movements and her pathways burned from chakra abuse. She didn't care. She didn't care about the kick from the sake as it slid down her throat and how fast it made her drunk from being exhausted. Half of it and she was already drunk.
With unsteady steps, she climbed the stairs leading to the Yukikage Palace and then the wall, her chakra faltering and she almost let herself fall onto a ten metre drop. When she reached the top, Gohama plopped herself on the indigo roof and watched the devastated village under her. Her devastated Village. She couldn't let herself forget that, she couldn't let herself soften the grief.
And yet, the death below her was nothing but smoke and shadow, while Kakashi's death seemed realer this morning. The memory of yesterday's fear continued to sear through her stomach, quivering and cold and painful. Maybe it wasn't just the memory, maybe it was the knowing yesterday would come again. Memory and anticipation, they made things real now, painfully real.
How could Gohama ever bring herself to kill him now that she felt what his death meant? And why did that matter? She had promised her village and her Yukikage to bear any weight that came in her way. She promised herself the day of Uncle's death to take her burden as he had taken his. But Gohama was just Gohama and Uncle had been the strongest, kindest man she had met. Like Father, like Mother.
How could the genes branded into every cell of herself dissolve into nothing in her life? Gohama was a Kyura, Gohama was her parents child, blood of their blood, flesh of their flesh. But they had never dwelled in her, as they didn't dwell now. All she had was a rotten character to hold the magnificent power of the Kyura and Seiryu. Thin bones could never sustenance strong muscle, a sword could never amount to anything without its swordsman.
It was the moment when she would pierce a chidori through his chest that terrified her. Gohama would take the grief and the guilt without choice and without question. But the killing would be her own making, her own hand, mind and will commanding. Like a god. A god that felt and doubted and had weakness in every crevasse of her body and soul.
The only hope she could find in herself was Seiryu, because he was not herself. Once she learned how to summon him, his power would be free of her weakness and then they would rule, as every Kyura jinchuriki and Seiryu had meant to rule.
She couldn't forget she was meant to be the Shuriken of Bukigakure, she couldn't forget the man behind the white mask that had killed both her parents and that she had hated all her life. Gohama tried hating him now.
Somehow, Kakashi and the porcelain mask man had never merged into the same person in her mind. Gohama had tried to look into his masked face, his grey eye, even the sharingan, and see the man with the frantic, crackling chakra. The two images overlapped but they never merged into one. How could they when one was painted in terror and the other in…
In trust and something else… she didn't know what it was that he stirred inside of her.
How did he do it? How did he always fucking do it, just like during Dazai's mission? Was it because Gohama was vulnerable and desperate to hold onto anything, and he was the only one there, the only one to take the place she needed. Or simply because it was him? Because he was Kakashi…
She was fucked. Gohama was utterly fucked.
The firm lines of his bicep stood out as his arm was tucked under his head, his body spread through the wood of the engawa. Gohama crouched down behind him and slid a twig of grass through the skin of his arm. His muscles twitched under it and he frowned, swatting away nothing but air. She did the same and he swatted his own arm again. And then again.
His grey eye opened to glare at her. "You do know I'm perfectly aware that's you doing it."
"I know. But I still like to annoy you."
He closed his eye again. "And why is that?"
"Payback for all the times you annoy me."
"You wound me, Gohama."
Her hands propped her up on either side of his face and Gohama leaned down, her hair brushing the side of Kakashi's face. "You wound me back just as much, Kakashi."
"What did I do this time?"
"You drive me mad."
Kakashi's only answer was to hum.
"Are you better?" He nodded. "In pain?" He shook his head and that really didn't answer any of her questions considering it was Kakashi and he wouldn't admit to the toll his injuries were taking on him.
With closed lids, his light grey eyelashes, almost white, hovered above his skin, casting small shadows on the dark circles under his eyes. His scar carved a slit between the lashes and Gohama followed the mirroring gap that cut through his eyebrow, his skin. She didn't understand why his eyelashes looked so pretty, why they fascinated her and made it hard for her gaze to pull away. She was itching to lean down and press her lips to his eye, his cheek, his forehead, even to his mask covered lips.
It had to be the alcohol. It was still circling through her veins and making every little thing she saw or did seem more exciting.
Her hand pulled his bangs away from his face. She let her fingers bury in his hair and her thumb sooth the tip of the scar that ran over his closed eye. "Open it."
Kakashi had been hiding the sharingan from her since she froze at the sight of it, only letting her see it on that day where she had demanded it and yesterday during the battle.
Gohama wanted to see all of him. And that meant the sharingan, Obito's sharingan. The gift that held in it so much of Kakashi's history, so much of what made him who he was. A memento of his friend, of his death, of his life. She could understand why it had been so difficult to move on, every time he looked in the mirror the eye stared back at him. His own signature as a shinobi, his own identity, had been moulded around and through it.
His silver eyelashes fluttered and the sharingan, red and swirling, shone from behind them. It didn't send dread freezing through her this time. There was only a strange ache that throbbed in her heart, overwhelming and tender. It felt good and it felt bad, like nostalgia, like remembering something she had never really lived through before, but wanted to. She wanted to live through this so much and she wasn't even sure what this was, only that Kakashi was in it, with nothing that could slice between the two of them.
Why was the eye so beautiful and why did she feel like crying?
"Are you going to stare at me all day?" Kakashi asked in a soft low voice.
There was no glint of porcelain white. All her heart could see was Kakashi.
"Maybe." Gohama rolled to lay upside down beside him, her face in the same line as his. "Kakashi… do you think we could have been friends?"
"You shouldn't think about what ifs." Kakashi said seriously.
Gohama ignored his comment, her gaze intent on his profile, on the curve of his mask as it slid down his nose fell under his earlobe. "I think so. There was this little interval where we got along. It was natural for me. I never had to force it. Did you force it? Because of Uncle, because of…"
"No. I didn't even try, which was a mistake. I should have tried to get away."
"Why?"
"Gohama, you know why. Yes, we got along well, but when we didn't it was because of reasons we can't ignore."
She swallowed, trying to ease the burning lump on her throat, trying to make her voice not sound pitifully broken as she spoke. "You should leave, Kakashi. Go back to Konoha."
His head dropped to the side, so he could look at her. "I haven't finished my end of the deal."
"The deal is off, I don't care. Just leave."
"I don't want to." His eyes were so soft they made the knot tighten inside her throat.
"You're crazy."
Through the fabric of his mask, she could see his lips curve in a small smile. "I never pretended not to be." His tone was light, trying to ease the strain of their conversation.
Gohama chuckled and her hand reached for his hair, fingers brushing through the thick silver stands. "We can pretend. Just for a little while. We can pretend."
"Hmm, what will we pretend?"
"We'll pretend that it's our day off work and we left the house because the air is warm but the sun is cold enough that we won't overheat. You sigh because you're tired of the long hours picking up rice from the fields, too tired even to read. You brought your book but it's closed and laying on your chest. When you open it, it's to rest it against your face and cover your eyes from the light."
When she finished Kakashi just stared back at her, his gaze made the throbbing in her heart swell, and it hurt and burst and sang. Then, he turned his head to look up at the sky. When he started talking, his voice low and soft, painfully soft, everything in her stilled.
"There's bento you prepared for us, and I pretend it's the best food I've ever had just so I can see you smile. We both know I'm the better cook," Gohama swatted the back of his head lightly and she could see wrinkle of his satisfied smirk on his mask. "but you still go along with it. We end up falling asleep and it's okay, because we don't have anyone after us and nothing to worry about. And when you wake up, I smile down at you and you smile back and there is no mask between us, because I never had to wear one."
"And when I look at you, there are two grey eyes behind light eyelashes and there's no scar. The only scar you have is on your forearm, from a farming accident. That was the only moment I was scared for your life and you weren't even that hurt."
"And you have scars. Just two of them. One under your chin from when you fell as a child and another in your left middle finger from cutting yourself with a plier while pruning some bushes. It wasn't a deep cut, but you took care of it at home and the skin healed poorly like with any other person. Sometimes I let my thumb sooth over it, but just that, I avoid touching you with my rough, calloused hands from using the reaper."
"I lean towards you, my hand resting against your tanned cheek from all those hours working under the sun. It makes your lips chapped, but that never matters to me, just as I always love your calloused hands on me."
Kakashi let silence settle between them before sharing hesitantly. "We sound a lot like more than friends."
"If our lives were this way, we wouldn't be just friends."
Gohama surprised herself with her own words, spoken with such certainty. Certainty that what ruined things between them was the life they had been forced into, certainty that, whatever this attraction to Kakashi was, it ran deeply inside of her. But what did that even mean? It was like this for everything, things were the way they were everywhere because of what had come before them. Why would Gohama and Kakashi be different? Why would another life allow things for them to be different?
He turned to watch her. "And Hansuke?"
"If my life was like that, Hansuke would never have fallen in love with me." And her certainty from before didn't waver. Their relationship had always been about making her happy, healing her brokenness, not love, not sharing a life. If she weren't broken, Hansuke wouldn't have felt his kind, giving love for her that translated into romantic love.
"Would you have fallen in love with him?"
"Maybe a crush." How could she not be attracted to those beautiful eyes and kind open smile? "He's always been an eligible bachelor, but I'm too proud to fall in love with someone who doesn't want me."
"What would you love, then?"
"Everything. I wouldn't have to choose. I'd love everything. And you."
"I'd love very few things, but, when I did, it would be open and full, no guilt and fear."
Gohama looked down from his beautiful eyes to the raise of his lips, wondering what their shape was, colour and feel. "If I told you to kiss me, would you kiss me?"
His chakra fluttered against her skin and it made goose bumps rise all over her body. His eyes flickered up to her lips, but quickly turned back up to meet her own. Kakashi stayed silent for a long time before answering, his voice as collected as always. "No."
She smiled. He wanted to, she just didn't understand why he was ruling himself. Probably out of guilt, it was always guilt that soured things between the two of them. Still, rejection was rejection and Gohama could be cruel when her pride was hurt. It was always pride that soured things between the two of them.
"Kiss me, Kakashi." He moved to stand up and Gohama draped her arm over his chest. "It doesn't have to be on the lips. What-if friends can kiss on the cheek."
He continued propped on an elbow from trying to stand up and looked down on her with half-lidded eyes that made her stomach twirl. It didn't compare to the riots inside her when he leaned in on her, his manly scent pressing into her nose, his chakra stroking all of her flesh. His lips met the blushing skin of her cheek, masked lips, and still she could feel his warmth under the fabric.
Gohama wrapped her hand around his nape when he started pulling back and opened her eyes to look at his. "Tell me it'll be alright."
He was also blushing, she could see red tint above his mask. "It'll be alright."
She stroked her thumb against the line of his jaw before letting her hand fall away. Instead of rising, Kakashi lay down again, opening one of Mother's books and going back to reading. Gohama scooted closer so she could press her forehead against his bicep.
"Read to me."
The white snow under Gohama blended with her pale skin. Kakashi settled next to her, elbow resting beside her fanning dark hair, and she smiled. His fingers glided across her cold reddened nose and down the curve of her cheek. Her hand rested above his, pressing it more fully to her skin, and she opened her eyes to his grey ones, their green the same as the kimono she was wearing.
"Kiss me." Gohama demanded, but he didn't lean into her. "Kiss me, Kakashi."
The words hit him with a wave of longing and dread. Why was there dread when he had kissed her so many times before and not once had his heart trembled from it? He couldn't move, muscles locked below feverish flesh. It was Gohama to pull him out of it with a rough tug to the collar of his haori.
Their noses met and he could feel her warm breath brushing his lips and skin. The desire for her that he knew so well stirred through him at the softness of her breasts under his chest, the feminine scent of her hair and skin, the burning feel of her body pressed to his. And yet, that unknown dread, that unknown guilt that somehow seemed so familiar now, like recalling a childhood smell or the sudden memory of a dream.
"Kiss me." She ordered. "Kiss me, Kakashi."
All it took was a needy nuzzle of her nose on his cheek for him to forget all that. With a desperate wildness, as if it were the first time he was kissing her, Kakashi crashed his lips to hers. She responded with the same fervent need, her softness moving in rhythm with his firmness, mirroring his own frenzied desire to have more, to taste more of what he had never had before.
Their hands were all over themselves, savouring what their mouths couldn't. He pressed his hard, burning desire in her wet, burning one. He pushed her green kimono away from her body, her moans and gasps urging him to taste every piece of her. His tongue slid across the column of her neck, the valley of her breasts, the skin of her stomach.
Gohama smelled of iron, tasted of iron, wet warm iron.
Kakashi pulled himself up slightly and froze and yet there was no surprise. It was red and it was blood. Red blood stained every place he had touched, her pale skin a smudge of prints and drags and so much red. His heart pumped fast, no longer out of desire, but fear.
His eyes lifted to her face and all he could see were her Kyura green eyes peeking through red blood. Without thought, he startled away with a jump, crawling on his back.
With a small hum, Gohama finally realised she was covered in blood and smiled, a kind reassuring smile. "It's not mine." She explained while she pointed to him. "It's coming from your hands."
He stopped to examine them and it was true, his hands were soaked in red.
"Kyura blood." She commented casually. "But it's not mine. Not yet."
She held his larger hand with her smaller one and laid it against her chest. He could feel her steady heartbeat below the softness of her breast. His fingers shone with blue lightning and he watched as they sank into melting flesh, screeching echoing above the loud thundering in his ears. Kakashi tried to jerk his arm away, but his hand was already piercing through her chest, gripping him, forcing him to push deeper into her bone and muscle.
"Kill me." She whispered, raspy and wet, her lips brushing his ear. "Yukikage-slayer, Friend-killer Kakashi."
The black strands wavering before his scared eyes lightened into warm brown. Kakashi cracked his neck back and looked at her face. She was Rin.
"Kakashi…" Rin's young voice called as he watched blue light flashing through the bottomless blank stare of her wide brown eyes.
His hand dangled on the other side of her ripped frame.
"Kakashi. Wake up. Kakashi!"
Kakashi gasped as he startled awake, two mismatched wide eyes staring at her own. Her hand continued to smooth over his damp hair, waiting until his fast pants calmed down and his heartbeat slowed inside his chest. But, no matter how gently she stroked his hair and whispered empty words of comfort, Kakashi's breathing only turned more shallow and his eyes swam with deeper, unnerving panic.
"Oh, fuck, it's happening." He breathed out as his fingers clamped onto the fabric above his heart.
"What is happening, Kakashi?" Her hand rested above his, and again instead of reassuring him, it made him jerk away.
He stumbled while crawling backwards, his breathing ragged and his chakra shuddered through the air around the room in frantic shots that prickled her senses. Gohama tried to approach him gently, hands clear for him to see, stance unthreatening, but he didn't raise his eyes, wide and horrified, as they stared at his shaking hands.
Suddenly, Kakashi stood up and ran out the door. She stared at the space from where he had disappeared, unmoving from her kneeling position, as she felt herself be overwhelmed by the chaos of emotions swirling through her. Worse was the helplessness. She had never seen Kakashi's face marked with so much emotion, so much panic and despair. The memory of it made her eyes and throat burn.
Should she go to him? Would he want her there?
Gohama stood up and was following his chakra signature before letting her overthinking take over. If he didn't want her near him, she would leave, but she couldn't just abandon Kakashi when he was having a panic attack.
The night was cold and dark from the new moon, and it shouldn't have surprised Gohama that even through the darkness Kakashi had found his way through the treacherous ruins of the Kyura compound.
She found him at the bank of the river, back hunched over the water, his frantic breathing mixed with the sounds of splashing water. Gohama let out her chakra, softly and freely, hoping he would sense her and not freak out. With small cautious steps, she neared him. He didn't jerk away and also didn't react when she lowered herself to her knees beside him, careful not to touch him.
The burning lump that didn't want to leave her chest that day tightened as she realised Kakashi was anxiously rubbing at his hands. It was why he had come to the river, to wash them.
"It's blood…" He whispered brokenly under his breath and Gohama wasn't sure if he had spoken to her or himself.
Her fingers clenched around the fabric above her thighs. What could she do? Tell him to breathe? That was usually what Uncle and Hansuke had done with her, but more than the words, it was their calming presence that grounded and eased her. Gohama wasn't a calming person, she was a lost mess of broken pieces… If she couldn't pick up her own shards how could she help Kakashi?
"I know it's not there, but I just want it to get off…"
"Here." Gohama whispered gently as her hands dipped into the chilling water. She waited for any sign resistance from him, and when he showed none, she wrapped his larger hands with her own. "Let me help clean them."
She rubbed his hands with tender brushes, careful not the hurt the abused flesh even more than it already was. Green chakra seeped from her pathways and glowed under the water, making the ripples of their movements shine. Gohama had learned a healing jutsu from Mother meant to keep her hands smooth and callouses free, it also worked for small skin abrasions.
They continued their cleaning until Kakashi's shakes had eased into small tremors, his breathing fast and shallow, but not breathless, and his chakra not oozing that erratic flow of lightning that had woken her up.
From time to time, it still trembled and a light sob sounded, but he pulled their hands up from the water, turning them to scrutinise their colour. Using her haori, she dried them with gentle dabs.
"You don't want to touch my hands." Kakashi whispered as he tried to pull them away from her.
Gohama held steadily, continuing to dab at them, then embracing them between her own in an attempt to warm the freezing and trembling fingers. A man's hand. Kakashi's hand. They were beautiful, with skill and strength packed into them, but also gentleness. Gohama traced his knuckles and scars, her fingers lingering on the wide burned pressure points from using the chidori, the callouses typical of a ninja from holding weapons.
"Gohama…"
She smiled at him and settled his hand against her chest. "I'm here."
His forehead fell onto her shoulder and one of her hands reached up to thread softly through his hair. "Is this okay?"
Kakashi nodded as a response, not lifting his head, his brow brushing on her skin. She continued to sooth down his wild hair until the tremors in his muscles eased and his chakra flow settled back. He pulled back then, his tired eyes still struck with a deep sorrow that pierced through her, but no longer the panic from before.
Gohama kneeled between his legs, her hands resting on his knees, as she tried to be as reassuring as she could. "You can talk to me, if you want to… I remember you saying once that you're not good with advice but you can listen. It's the same with me."
"You'll hate me."
"You're weirdly un-hateable to me, Kakashi." Gohama said with a small playful smile and the words were so foolishly, cruelly and thankfully true. "So try me."
His eyes, searched for a lie or maybe even loathing in her own, tomoe spinning through the red iris, and she let him see everything he wanted to, open and true and vulnerable. It didn't unease her, Kakashi's sharingan no longer put her on edge, and she wanted him to see her for herself, she wanted him to know her. Even if her fear of vulnerability and rejection continued to loom, her want ruled deeper and stronger.
"I killed my best friend."
"Obito…?"
"No. Rin… my other teammate…"
And Kakashi told her everything, his eyes only rarely meeting her own, as he evaded them to look down or at the side. He even told her of his first mission as a jonin, the mission where Obito had died, giving his life for Kakashi and his sharingan as a promotion gift, how he had promised his dying teammate to take care of Rin.
Kakashi shared the cruel painful details, each new word stabbing deeper into her heart, tightening harder against the walls of her throat. The smothering compassion continued to swell, her seams stretching until her chest clamped up and she couldn't breathe. The tears were fighting to spill, her throat burning from them, but she wanted to be steady for him, she wanted to be safe and hold the trust he was resting on her in firm strong hands.
His teammate, Rin, had killed herself for Konoha with his chidori. Poor girl… and yet so cruel in her despair. How could he tell her that with his steady voice, marked with anguish and still so even? A tear spilled from her waterline as he shared, and she tried to keep silent and stop the others that fell as well.
When Kakashi finished, his head was cast low, eyes fixed on their intertwined hands, her thumb smoothing over his knuckles even if she knew it couldn't sooth him. Nothing could sooth from the grief and injustice of what he had lived through, of the sorrow and guilt Kakashi had carried in him for so long, always alone, always detached and always kind. Her admiration would never stop growing.
Gohama internally cursed as a tear fell from her chin and landed on their hands. Kakashi lifted his head, his eyes widening with what seemed surprise until they fell into the sorrow she had heard on his voice. "Hey… no… don't cry for me, Gohama." Kakashi whispered as one hand reached up to cup the back of her head.
"I'm sorry… I should be the one comforting you, not the other way around."
"You already have, and still are. Just don't cry, not because of me…"
His fingers brushed the tears from her cheeks, and she let out a choked sigh at his gentle touch, her heart swelling and clenching all at once. It was her weakness, and she thought she would never want anything more than for Kakashi to hold her, tenderly, kindly, as if she was precious to him, as if nothing mattered but them… Her hand held onto his and pressed it more fully against her cheek, trying to seal the affection that overflowed through her.
"I can't help it. The floodgates opened last month and now I'm always crying…" She gave him a small sweet smile, with a hint of playfulness. "Even for you, Kakashi."
His fingers tightened around the hairs of her nape, his voice leaving in a broken whisper. "You should hate me."
"I know."
"Why don't you?"
"I don't know."
"Maybe you take after Tsukate." He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Or your father. You have his eyes too."
She smiled softly, even if she knew it was not true. "Thank you and thank you for telling me. I wish I could say or do something for you that would actually comfort or—"
"You can, just stay here with me for a while."
Gohama nodded, she hadn't even considered leaving for home without him. And she didn't want to, even if her eyes were heavy from crying and a sleepless night after a heavy fight, Gohama wanted to be with him. She truly did want to be with him in a vast frightening way. They sat side to side, his shoulder pressed to hers and her head resting on it.
The night was cold and quiet, harsh gusts of wind blowing from time to time, the water in front of them splashing with it, the leaves rustling and above them the spotted gleaming sky of her childhood home.
Gohama forced herself to stay away just so she could enjoy the beautiful overwhelming moment, when she was here and Kakashi was here and she felt everything was enough. Things were painful but beautiful, and she could feel their meaning oozing into her, she couldn't read it, but still it trembled through the marrow of her bones and the now lively beating of her heart. For the first time since discovering the truth of the massacre, something other than grief ruled through her being, something warm and giddy.
When her eyes opened with a start, she realised she had fallen asleep. Her cheek turned on his shoulder, so she could look at Kakashi, the starlight reflecting on his dark and red eyes.
"What are you thinking…" Gohama asked him in a quiet whisper not to disrupt the night.
"That the sky is incredible here." Kakashi answered with wide eyes staring up and a crease between his eyebrows.
"What more are than that?"
"That I shouldn't be the one here with you." He finally looked at her. "It should be Hansuke."
"Kakashi."
"Are you in love with him?" His eyes were unrelenting as they searched through hers, searched what she wasn't answering. It made her turn away from him, towards the shore of the river. "You are. You wouldn't hesitate if you weren't. You wouldn't have sent him away and let me stay here, if you weren't in love with him."
"I'm not." She cut it harshly, her voice trembling as she did. "You don't get it."
"What don't I get? I've seen you look at him."
"I was infatuated with him. I was infatuated with how he made me feel, with how he… loved me. No matter how much I wanted, it was never the same as being in love. Or maybe it was, I don't know... Hansuke's amazing, despite everything, he's still amazing. How could I not be in love with him? How…? When he was everything I needed in a man to love… maybe still is even after what I know. Everything I could ever want and ask for. Everything I don't deserve… but I could never fall in love with him…"
"Even if you're not in love, you still love Hansuke. And Kisamaru and Nikato. Maybe even Genma in small drunken doses."
"Love is about actions."
"You chose your village and family. I'm right when I say you're all about love, Gohama."
"Kakashi…" Gohama begged as her hand brushed through her face with a tired sigh. Why did those words of his ached so fucking much? "You really should leave for Konoha. Your team needs you."
"No."
"Kakashi."
"It's true. When they needed me I wasn't there for them and thank the gods they don't need me anymore."
Her eyes raised to watch him at the dejected self-loathing tone in his voice. Did Kakashi truly think so poorly of himself when it came to Team Seven? He probably did, considering it was Kakashi and his annoying tendency to blame himself for everything.
"You were there for Sasuke and—"
"And where is he now?"
"That was his own choice. It wasn't your fault, Kakashi. And the other two, you taught them about teamwork and how much they fight for Sasuke shows how ingrained that is in them…"
"I taught them teamwork, but I forgot everything else that a ninja needs to know."
Before she could speak again, Kakashi gave her one of his eye-crinkling smiles, the tone from before turning light.
"It's okay, Gohama, I can recognise my own failures. I'm just grateful they found great shishou to guide them and do for them what I couldn't. Sakura can make craters with her fists and heal people back to life. I still can't understand how I could overlook her potential like that... And Naruto… He'll change the world for better. When he becomes Hokage, he'll change Konoha for better. It's almost irrational how much I believe in Naruto." His eyes turned to the sky then, a dreamy tenderness softening the visible lines of his face. "He gives me hope…"
"Kakashi."
"Hmm?"
"You're a good man. You know that, right?"
Kakashi didn't answer, his face stuck with that droopy uncaring eye, that wasn't uncaring at all.
"It's true. Everyone admires you in Konoha not only because you're a good ninja, but because you're a good person. For Gai you're the epitome of a great man, and even Genma says nice things. I think Nikato may have a bit of a crush, and that's saying something considering he's straight. Hansuke's always been grateful for everything you did for him in and after ANBU. And Uncle too. Uncle really admired you."
During her little speech, Kakashi just stared back at her, the blank mask spreading through his expression. But Gohama wouldn't let him go so easily, not when he was a stubborn self-doubting man that needed some truth slapped into his face.
She smiled, letting her face express what her words said. "I admire you."
"Please don't, Gohama."
"And it's not something new."
Kakashi seemed frozen, his wide pupils jumping from spot to spot as he searched her face again. Fear. He was frozen and she was certain there was fear as he looked at her. His chakra was crackling against her senses, making her skin tingle. She had fucked up. She wanted to help him, she wanted to show him how she saw him, not frighten him. Gohama didn't want him to feel overwhelmed and she certainly didn't want him to regret talking to her, showing himself to her, broken and strong and true.
"I'm sorry, Kakashi, I didn't want to make you feel uncomfortable, especially not after… tonight." She pushed his shoulder so he would lay down. "Let me see your injury and then you're free from me."
Kakashi lifted his loose thick shirt slightly above the end of his ribs. The path of sliver hairs descending from his navel and disappearing under his waistband immediately pulled at her eyes. Reigning on her self-control, they shifted to the red angry mended skin crisscrossed by medical thread. Her fingertips pressed lightly to the flesh around the wound, her mind attentive to small flinches and the fluctuations of his chakra. It certainly hurt him.
"Sorry I couldn't do a better job."
"I still think it may be better than bleeding out."
"Opinions." Her hand hovered above the scar and she sent a mixture of her medical chakra to sooth the pain and Seiryu's chakra to accelerate the healing. "Does this feel better?"
"Mm.", was all Kakashi answered in a relaxed tone.
Her other hand lifted his shirt higher so she could see the bruise around his broken rib. The flesh was still a bit tattered, but looked good enough considering the circumstances. She didn't miss Kakashi's shiver as her fingers brushed feather lightly over it out of her own selfish need. His reaction was dangerous, it made her lightheaded and it made her careless.
They had been surprised with how quickly Kakashi had recovered from the Tsukuyomi. Itachi had said his spirit had started to mend immediately, but Gohama was sure he had also been lenient when forging the unbreakable genjutsu. Kakashi didn't seem to want to think about it or discuss it, so it left the questions lingering in her mind.
What was better than medical chakra to heal the spirit and how was that active without them sensing it? Could it be Seiryu's chakra? The lizard had laughed with a condescending tone in his rumbles when she had asked him about it and joked about humans and their blindness. Just to infuriate her he had chosen not to enlighten her, so now she was sulking. Seiryu had joked about that too.
She pulled the shirt back down, the back of her knuckles gliding through his skin on purpose. She left the hem at his navel's height with the excuse that she was still working on the cut at his side and needed to watch the progress. Her gaze was once again pinned to the tantalising line of hairs.
Once the process was finished, she looked up to Kakashi's face noting, with a slight blush of shame, that he seemed to have fallen asleep. Gohama felt like a creepy pervert, gawking while he trusted her enough to relax when her chakra was intruding into his own body.
She covered him back and moved to stand up and leave. A small touch on her hand stopped her. "Lay down." Kakashi whispered steadily.
It came more as an order than a request, but it didn't faze her, not when she wanted to stay. He coaxed her to rest her head on his extended arm, and she did, leaving a sliver of distance between them as she was turned on her side, a perfect view to his masked profile.
"Sleep." He told her. "I know you didn't sleep last night."
Kakashi let his head fall to the side so he could watch Gohama as she slept. His eyes were pulled immediately to her parted lips taking in and letting out deep quiet breaths. They followed the line of her nose to her closed lids, her lashes hovering above the dark circles under her eyes. His fingers floated above the skin of her cheek, but he stopped himself from touching her, not wanting Gohama to wake up.
Gohama's expression had always changed when she was sleeping, the sharpness around her eyes softened and the lines of her face eased into an unguarded almost innocent expression. Just watching her unguarded and vulnerable while her cheek rested on his arm made Kakashi's heart swell with that affectionate need he couldn't control, and an overflowing care that was both tender and burning. Gohama thrilled and soothed his dried heart.
Love.
That was the name he had searched for and it had already been carved into himself in a language he couldn't read before, just feel that it was there. How hadn't he realised it before? It explained everything she was to him and it was so clear now in Gohama's peaceful tired face as she slept. The name was drawn into the lines of her face and the aching flesh of his heart, he could finally read it, he could finally say it.
Love.
The word had sung in his chest the moment Gohama had told him she admired him. As a ray of lightning that illuminated the night for an instant, Kakashi had startled at the sudden light, blinding and terrifying. When he had finally read it in the lines of her beautiful face, he had frozen, his heartbeat thundering through his ears.
Love was terrifying to him. Kakashi had none of Hansuke's kind simplicity, Gai's giving expressive nature and Gohama's fierce devotion. He didn't know how to love wholeheartedly, much less this new type of love that burst with passion and unfolded with gentleness. He would take on the entire world for her, but that meant nothing in reality. All his loved ones were doomed to die, how could he mark that fate to her? Love was loss and pain.
Still, he loved her. He truly did, he truly had. For years, he just had never let himself open to what was so carefully and deeply carved into himself. Since that night on Dazai's mission, when Gohama had shown her vulnerability to him, and he had seen her, truly seen her for the first time. How could he not have fallen in love with her then? How could he not love her now?
It was selfish of him to ignore his fault and his failure, his undeserving love for Gohama. But for just this few moments under Buki's night sky, he would allow himself to be selfish.
"I love her." He whispered quietly to Bukigakure's starry sky and what had been yearning in him for so long was finally made real.
It was his and the sky's secret. Gohama had no need for the love of her parents' killer.