Part V | Chapter 11
Kakashi slumped on top of her, his wild chakra receding from her, prickling her senses and his humid breaths evening as they fanned the crook of her neck. Her eyes were wide and unseeing as they fixed on the ceiling above her, lungs frozen, her heartbeat thundering in her ears was the only sound she could distinguish.
She didn't know how long Kakashi stayed on top of her catching his breath and coming down from his high. Her high had been ripped out of her the moment her memories flashed with the sharpness of reality and now there was only panic circling through her veins.
Gohama knew this was final. Gohama knew this would tear away at all her pieces again, the destruction already lapping at her edges.
Her eyes clenched shut as she felt his lips make a path up her neck and towards her mouth. Kakashi kissed her, the same tender touch of his lips on hers as the other times he had kissed her that night, but now she could only feel her thundering heart sinking low, shattering, stinging with guilt and regret.
Gohama pulled back enough to break the kiss, but not enough for Kakashi's vision to focus on her face. "Let's sleep…" She whispered, her voice shivering with panic, but he didn't sense it.
"Mm, it's been a long day." Kakashi answered and gave her own last gentle kiss.
He pulled himself out of her, making a shot of pleasure jerk through her oversensitive core, her own orgasm still lingering in her body. Gohama used the new free space to turn onto her side, her back to him. He followed her, his body curved around her, his strong arm, pale and scarred, wrapped around her waist, fingers splayed on her stomach.
He hummed behind her, his nose nuzzling her shoulder and neck, and Gohama swallowed. Her eyes prickled with the need to cry herself to exhaustion again, but Gohama couldn't let them fall until he was asleep. So she nestled her shaking hands against her chest, tucked her chin into them and waited, curled into herself, trying to hold her pieces together just a little longer, just a little longer until Kakashi was asleep.
His fingers brushed over the skin of her stomach, her muscles twitching at his feathery touch, and his lips didn't stop laying kisses to her shoulder. With each moment, his ministrations becoming drowsier, more languid, his chakra lulling and his breathing calming, until his movements stopped completely.
As he finally fell asleep behind her, Gohama's restraint broke. Her muscles were still tight, shoulders stiff, as the tears flowed freely down her cheeks. She had fucked up so bad and now could not take it back, could not take back the realisation that had pierced into her and had there been so deeply marked into.
Gohama had heard a smell could trigger forgotten memories of the past. For her it was chakra.
Kakashi's chakra. The white mask man chakra. Mother and Father's killer chakra.
She had wondered since first sensing his chakra – no, not first, secondly – how it would feel if the wildness flowed unrestrained. Now she knew. As he had peaked, he had let go completely, his chakra with him. Now she wished she had never known.
Little death. Hadn't Gohama heard it being called that before? Especially among shinobi, a small pun, painfully aware of itself, painfully aware that when they cheated death through sex, it was never cheated, it was still painfully present, stuck to them, glued to them even in the moment of euphoric release. A painfully aware token of how they only cheated themselves.
Little death. It seemed so fitting now, so mockingly, agonisingly fitting. Who had died? Gohama? Kakashi? Gohama's Kakashi? All that he had been to her moments before seemed to flee from the gaps between her fingers, the holes all around her heart.
Gohama just needed to pull herself together, even if she already knew there would be no pulling herself together. The emotional exhaustion of before, the emotional high of sleeping with Kakashi and now this… Gohama thought she would break, as a rock crackling from the rain and the change in temperatures, and never be able to mend herself again.
Her tears continued to fall through tired heavy eyes and her shoulders held stiffly so Kakashi wouldn't feel her cry. With the stealth of a ninja, Gohama turned in his arm and stared through hazy eyes at his peaceful sleeping face. She couldn't look at him without crying, his face made her break even more.
There was no hate. The hate that she had tried to stir in her during their first weeks in the Arms. She felt the memory of him as the white mask man and yet there was no hate for him, the man that had killed her parents.
All the hate crusted in her heart as self-loathing.
It was too much and Gohama rolled onto her back, Kakashi's hand still laying above her stomach, that same hand that had dealt the blow or the cut or the stab, that damned hand. Gohama watched the coffered ceiling, that familiar childhood ceiling, as the tears fell, cold and wet, onto her ears. Above that ceiling was the floor Mother had died over. Gohama hadn't had the courage to go there, Gohama had pretended it wasn't there, had never been there, looming above the both of them, the brown dry stain of Mother's blood imbibed into the wood.
Gohama was succumbing into her inner chaos hard and fast. Her lungs were already straining from shallow erratic breathing, her throat burned, tight and closed, as she held back the sobs from crying. She couldn't turn hysterical again, as she on that afternoon with Seiryu. Her guts were freezing over in dread, because she was already anticipating how much worse this would be. And Gohama was terrified of the anguish building and drowning inside her chest.
Why couldn't she pull herself together?
Gohama careful held onto Kakashi's wrist and took his hand away from her. Seeing as he continued to sleep, she felt it was safe to slip away from the futon. Quickly she put on whatever clothes she could find, fingers shivering around the fabric of the shirt as she tried to pull it over her head.
Gohama dragged herself through her childhood home until she stopped at the foot of the stairs. She watched the dark path up they made, her heart thundering inside her chest, her breath stuck in her throat. And then she was climbing, each frail step at a time, the wood cold under her feet, dusty and familiar, too familiar.
She halted once she reached the corridor of the top floor. Her shaking hand hovered above the shoji door that led onto the room where Mother had died. Gohama held onto the wooden frame, forcing deep breaths into her lungs, but her burning throat didn't let pass anything other than sobs. The wood whooshed as she dragged it to the side.
The night light shed a cool blue tilt into the room and even under the dust of abandonment Gohama could see the darker shade of the floor, two pools of blood soaked into the wood. Her foot stepped onto the cold dirt room, as she neared the marks. As she stared at it, Gohama could see Mother dead and bleeding with the clarity of reality.
Her knees gave out and with a thud she fell onto the floor, her hands dragging through the two stains, as the tears flowed endlessly through her eyes. Gohama hadn't known Father had also died there, on that floor of his home.
Gohama was used to the grief, she was used to the tearing and the piercing and the void, but, fuck, she felt as if it would finally bring her down completely, now that she couldn't bear it anymore, as if her heart would finally give out from the pain. But it never did, it never did. It continued to thunder, arrogant and tired and terrified.
Even the dotted red pattern of Mother's blood stained the wood where Kakashi had held his ninjato, blade soaked in Mother's blood, drops falling onto the floor. Gohama may have forgotten the feel of his chakra, but she had never forgotten that image of Mother's dead stare on a pool of her own blood and the quiet red drops of her blood falling from the sharp tip of the masked man's— Kakashi's blade.
There was another stain on the wall, which flowed down onto the floor. Someone had leaned on it. Kakashi. The height of it matched the scar she had seen earlier that night, the scar she had traced and learnt with her lips and fingers.
Gohama had fucked her parents' killer. And it hadn't been fucking at all.
Disgusting. Gohama was disgusting.
She followed the trail of blood as it led onto the broken wall, chips of broken wood springing out of the hole. Another stain of blood there. Someone had leaned on it, going either down or up, probably Kakashi as he ran away from her home, from the scene of the assassination, from the cooling dead bodies of her parents.
Gohama had fucked the man that had killed them right under the stains of blood where they had died.
And somehow it wasn't surprising. All the self-loathing, the self-disgust, the guilt, the shame, the failure, they were not new, they fit into her as a worn out par of sandals, everywhere she walked they walked with her.
A gust of wind lashed against her face, cold and cutting, as her unseeing eyes stared down at the backyard and the trembling grass. The wet trails of her tears prickled her cheeks from the cool hair that hit them. They had stopped flowing, it seemed, but sobs still racked her shoulder and jolted up her throat.
There were no more pieces left to crumble. The wind whistled and crashed against all of her and blew at nothing but a barren hole.
There was only nothingness and loss. Maybe there had only ever been that. The tiredness forever etched into her soul tugged at her once more, until she felt she would never move again from that spot over her backyard. But she had to move, the stains of blood begged her to move and how could she refuse them, when everything of her was made for them, even the barren planes of her soul.
Her life overflowed with death and it started with the lightning chakra oozing from under her feet.
Just the thought of it made fear freeze through all of her, and she didn't know if it was the fear of doing it or the fear of knowing that she would do it.
Onee-sama.
Didn't people say that history was cyclic, that it repeated itself, that it imitated itself? Gohama was stuck in time, since the beginning of her life she had been marked and stuck to this very instance in time and there was nowhere to run. She was stuck, she had tried to run before, yesterday, for the past month, her whole life and she was stuck, had always been stuck.
Onee-sama's life was marked into her through blood and name, but most of all through time. Who could run from time? No one. Not Gohama with her Kyura bloodline limit, her years of training and power building, Seiryu's chakra. So much power and so much powerlessness. She was stuck to the conditions of any other human, time and death, and it had been arrogant to think she could ever run from them.
Gohama had thought she knew of this, but there had always been a childish smugness, a foolish hope when thinking she could more than run from it, she could fight it. It had been so foolish of her, so foolish, and now it hurt, now it drowned and tore.
The life of Onee-sama circled through hers, mirrored hers, shaped hers, from the same blood and flesh, the same actions, the same time.
Gohama had seen everything by her fall. Somehow she still rose and that was because her destiny still lingered in her, yearning to be fulfilled, demanding to be lived.
It was okay. It didn't matter. For all of the fear it had plunged in her heart, the mangekyo genjutsu had truth in it, and it had been that truth what had scared her. There was no need for fear, after all, it was what it was and Gohama wouldn't stop it, should never had tried to stop it.
Gohama just needed to stop it with her weak self-pitying and pull herself together.
She couldn't let these chaotic biased emotions, that tasted of ash and anguish, cloud her now.
The last four years of her life were nothing but an interlude. Now it had come to an end, probably already had since that day in the border between Fire and Hot Waters, where the truth, clear and searing, had been branded into her, the final piece of her.
No one would make her forget.
For all her flaws, Onee-sama had understood her life was meant for her people, as Gohama's was meant for Bukigakure. And no one would make her forget that, not those in Konoha, not the one who was dead, not the one sleeping underneath her, and least of all, herself. Forgetting was treason, forgetting was stealing. Stealing her people of their lives and of their memories. Failing them.
The past four years, this very moment where all seemed to crumble inside her were an hitch in her life, a life that had always had a clear path carved out for her, made for her feet to walk on. Since the day she was born Gohama already had her fate cut out and it was okay, it was comforting to know she had a purpose, full and real and touchable.
The emotions of yesterday had clouded it and she had seen nothing in front of her, echoing the void that clung to her insides. Even if Gohama was nothing there was still a path for her to walk and that was good, that was great, she just had to walk it. Her purpose. She just had to walk it. Gohama had seen her own death mirrored back at her, as when watching an image ripple in a lake. It was not her death that carved her path, it was the death of the enemies of Bukigakure.
The death of the man sleeping under her.
Duty was pure and unemotional, duty was what it was. It was not hate or guilt or want she needed, it was nothing. She needed nothing, to feel nothing. To be nothing.
Her hand held onto the side of the building, her eyes crushed shut at the cutting gust of the wind, her short hair thrashing against her face. It came from north, deep and cold, from the glaciers at the edges of the Land of Snow, down the cold wastelands, over the northern mountains and forests, bringing the cold temperatures with it to Bukigakure.
None of those landscapes were as dry as her heart, as deep and empty an abyss as all of her being.
If only the wind could wash away herself, could make waste to the anguish and grief, dark and drowning in her heart, if only it could erode her shape, as it had done to the rocks on the beaches and the trees of the north.
Maybe it could. Maybe it would. Gohama closed her eyes, her lungs breathing in the icy air, it prickled down her throat, different from the burn of crying. It was refreshing and relieving and maybe that was what it felt like to stop being herself.
She let the howling drown down her ears and up her nostrils, through her bruised sensitive lips. She surrendered herself to it, its voracity ravaging through the abandoned village of Bukigakure and the abandoned waste that was her soul. She breathed it in, let it freeze through her lungs, begged it to freeze through all of her, under her skin, under and inside all those crevasses. She could never reach them when she scrapped the blood off her, when she submerged herself in burning water, but the wind could.
This was Northern Snow's wind, the wind that dwelt in the arctic glaciers and announced winter to all of the land, the wind that brought storms and snow and ice. It was cold and merciless, abysmal. It made animals die of hunger and children freeze under trees, curled into themselves, so helpless, a blue stony statue of frozen flesh on their way home. It was the wind that robbed mothers of their sons and daughters, robbed farmers of their crops and entire peoples of their food. It was the wind that made the Land of Snow a land of survival and death.
And so, she opened her eyes to the piercing gust and let them cut through the gentleness that had settled there, the softheartedness, until there was only fierceness. This was the wind that made the Snow people harsh, their hands unfeeling against cold and warmth, their feet toeless, their skin coated in callouses and their heart barren and cold as the ice they had been moulded into.
"Gohama."
This was the wind that ravaged through every creature that crossed its path, the wind that could lay waste to her crumbled pieces, that could erode them into nothing, that could wash the memory of herself.
Past, present, future. She surrendered them to the wind. She let her breath be one and exhaled onto the freezing raging gust, as her air left her lungs, her ruin left her soul into the open ruin of her village, into the careless, vicious hands of the wind. And, as impetuously as it had come, the wind left with her.
She was finally nothing. Her eyes cut through the prickling, green and evil, as they stared into the endless dark cover of the night. She wasn't terrified of it anymore, she wasn't terrified of her anymore.
She was nothing and that meant she could do everything.
"Gohama."
A hand pressed to her shoulder making her muscles jerk. Her fingers wrapped around the wrist and twisted it, her foot kicked the back of the knee hard, throwing the invader on the floor. Her chakra flowed through her pathways as she used it to lock the invader under her weight, her tanto hovering above his throat.
The man of the white mask.
"That's my bad…" He wheezed out, winded from the sudden attack, as his head slumped back against the ground, and still there was a hint of lightheartedness to him. His eye peaked at her through a half-closed lid and suddenly it was wide and intent. "Gohama? Hey, is everything okay? Gohama."
She leaned on her hand beside his head, pinning him with her eyes, the blade resting on the tender skin of his throat. "It was you. You killed them. The Yukikage, his wife. You killed them…"
His mouth opened, the hesitation, the uncertainty seeped through the small opening and closing movement of his lips, while his eyes were methodic, sharp as they searched through her face. Still, without his mask, he couldn't hide it, he wasn't trained to hide it. His mouth spoke the truth, he was lost, he was scared, he was submissive. Finally, after eleven years, she had the white mask man subdued under her weapon.
"Gohama… talk to me. What's going on?" There was a tone to his voice that made her skin cringe and her brow furrowed, her fingers trembled around the handle of her tanto.
"My duty." She said, evenly, firmly, imprinting the words into her actions. "It's what needs to be going on."
"You don't have to give anything you can't give, Gohama. To anyone. It doesn't make you worthless."
"It makes me a failure and a traitor. It makes me a thief."
"Gohama, just talk to me, please…"
"Fuck off."
"You need help, professional help."
"I need to kill you."
Her gaze shifted down to the metal glint of her weapon, the blade reflecting the cold glint of her green eyes. There was something missing in them, something she had seen before, around a scenery of red and grey, and she had had it, moments ago, but now it seemed to have dripped away from their shape. She needed it and maybe it was that missing that made her fingers tremble and falter, when they should be swiping over tender, open and yielding flesh.
Her fingers snapped to hold onto his jaw, denting onto the hard bone under them, pushing it up, extending his neck to her blade, guiding his eye in line with her own. Her grasp was harsh, her wrist pressing down on his throat to feel the speeding beat of his heart and the rasp of his constrained breathing. And still his steadiness didn't falter, his gentleness. She hated it, she hated it, she hated it, and she hated how it made her skin cringe.
She needed to see the vicious, bloodthirsty glint of his sharingan, the monstrous wild current of his chakra, the cold, blank reflections of his white mask.
"Show me that night." She growled, watching the lazy swirl of the sharingan. "Show me. I deserve to see it. Show me."
The tomoe spun around red blood as the eye pulled her mind in.
His sharingan pulsed as the five specialists casted a heavy cloudy genjutsu, the veiling mist spreading through the stilled air around them, through the quiet streets scattering before them and all the senses of any Kyura. They would not know of their presence.
Kitsune signalled for the squads to move out the hiding zone and follow onto the next step of the mission. His squad entered the home through the door the informant had advised as the safest. His memory relayed the smallest detail the plant of the building. Silently, they moved up the stairs, Kitsune leading the four-man squad, and even as silently, he slid open the shoji door.
His ninjato was already thrusting down the target's throat before the change in the air could be felt. Still the target moved, he had broken out of the genjutsu. The ninjato pierced his shoulder instead, and suddenly they were fighting.
The woman tackled him through the shoji door. Kitsune rolled out of her hold before she could do any damage. She fought with two tanto, her green eyes fierce and calm, as she defended his blows and dealt her own. The woman was not the target but he fought to kill, especially when he saw two of his teammates already down. His sharingan was pulled into the burst of chakra as the jutsu meant to disintegrate their bodies released with their final heartbeat.
In another second, his ninjato was piercing through the woman's heart. She fell onto the wooden floor as he pulled his blade out, the blood dripping from it onto his handle and his glove. Another burst of chakra and another dead teammate.
His sharingan fixed on his target, who was ready to move in on him, a savage rage and anguish bursting from his eyes and from his chakra. For the first moment that night, Kitsune's guts shuddered in fear, but he only let it ignite his reflexes and movements. They were reading themselves for battle when the voice of a child sounded to their right.
"Father…" She whispered, each sound wavering with panic.
Kakashi, no, Kitsune, he was Kitsune, didn't turn his eyes to the girl. He had seen her photograph, their family's photograph, and he knew that seeing her would mean seeing them as a family, as Tsukate's family.
"Gohama, it's okay. Go back to your room. I'll be right there in a moment."
He was Kitsune. He needed to take advantage of the target's distraction and kill him. Kistune's fingers tightened around the hilt of his ninjato, his knees flexing, his senses sharp, sharingan ready to capture any minute change.
"Mother!"
Fuck. Why wasn't he moving? It would not be the first time Kitsune killed parents in front of children.
"Mother!" The despairing cry held also a taint of hate, as it left almost growled, and the stupid reckless little girl sprang towards him.
"Don't." Only after the word lingered in the air, thick and erratic, did Kakashi realise it had been him saying it, but the girl didn't stop.
Fuck, stupid girl, stupid stupid girl. The sharingan read all the little details of her sloppy posture, the overflowing current of her chakra, the hate and grief in those childish and terrified green eyes.
Kistune's fingers trembled for a moment before he readied his hold on his ninjato, ready to slash or pierce whatever it had to slash or pierce. It would not be the first time he killed a child, it would not even be the first time he killed a child in front of their parents.
Kakashi let out a breathless gasp between the two masks, one fabric, the other porcelain, as the target grabbed the girl and halted her suicidal run.
"Go to your room, Gohama!"
The relief was short lived as a wave of killing intent ravaged through the room. Kistune pinned his sharingan to the target, ready for completing his mission objective, when he realised the monstrous chakra was bursting out of the child. Her eyes were two bottomless blue pools of anguish and hate intent only on him.
Kitsune's chakra frenzied in response to the devastating, engulfing, terrifying feel of the girl's chakra, as it crushed into his chest, as it made his lungs seize and his heartbeat speed. Cold sweat slid down the covered sides of his forehead and soaked onto his back. Kitsune tried to move his stiffened joints, but his muscles had frozen, the chakra holding a cold grasp on them, pestering through every cell in his body.
It wasn't fear. It was terror, as he hadn't felt it in years.
What the fuck was this fucking chakra?
As suddenly as it had appeared, the chakra vanished and with it the devouring grip over his reactions.
"Gohama. Listen to me, look at me." The Yukikage's fervent voice tried to bring the child out of her dazed fury, the attempt at being calm cracking through the wavers of his tone. Kitsune didn't let his eyes fall on the image. He knew he should attack the target now, as he was vulnerable, as he had a priority over the safety of his own life and yet…
A target, he was nothing but a target, nothing but his target, Kitsune's target, Kitsune's mission objective and purpose.
Tsukate should never had shown Kakashi that fucking photograph.
"Hama-chan…" Inaku whispered, his voice a well of sadness, despair and love. Fuck, why had Kitsune even discerned all those things as he spoke? What did it matter how his voice sounded? What mattered was the mission objective and his purpose of assassinating his target.
The call appeared to have worked, because the target was talking next, explaining. "Do you remember what we talked about, if this happened?"
"Yukine…?" The girl whispered, no more fury in her voice, just the wetness of tears and trembles of fear and blistering of grief. Fuck, it had happened again.
"I'll take care of him."
"No! I can't leave without him. Let me take him, Father. Please, I need to take him. I can take care of him, I promise."
"He's safer with me and you'll be safer alone."
"Please, Father, please. Let me take Yukine. I'll protect him."
"I promise he's safe with me. You have to go, now. Don't you ever stop running, Hama-chan, for nothing and no one."
"Father…" The girl whispered again.
Her clothes were stained with blotches of her father's blood, as he had held her against his injured shoulder. With one last look at her mother's dead body she was gone.
He was Kitsune. He was nothing more than Kitsune. He was a killer and he was a weapon. Kitsune was his name and the blankness of the mask was his face.
And still Obito's sharingan would never forget the girl's glare.
"Thank you for waiting." The target said and Kitsune felt like laughing, a bitter sadistic laugh that wanted to burn its way up his lungs, throat, mouth. He had just killed his fucking wife, and if that girl had neared him, he would have killed her too, there was nothing to be thankful for.
Kitsune kneeled before the fallen man, his hand soaked in blood, his own blood, grasping onto the target's collar.
Inaku brushed his fingers over a wound on his stomach and brought them to the ground with a small push of chakra. Kitsune shouldn't have let him do it, it was reckless and a liability, but somehow he knew there was no danger, somehow he knew the target wasn't fighting anymore.
With a cloud of smoke, a white wolf materialised beside them. A Kyura summon. "Ina—"
"Gohama." Inaku let out first.
"But—"
"You won't vanish. I put my chakra in her. Don't tell her anything." No. He was not fighting. Inaku already knew he would die, he had accepted it. His hand trembled as it reached the wolf's head, leaving speckles of blood on his white fur. "Thank you, Yukine. Now go. Gohama."
The wolf nuzzled Inaku's cheek and left, making the air beside them shake. With one hand, he pulled the porcelain mask off. Kakashi would kill him as Kakashi. He had promised Tsukate to give his brother the death he deserved and Kakashi would never again fail a promise to a friend.
"The Hatake boy… Sakumo would be proud, you killed a Yukikage… even if a failed one…" The name of his father hit him as a rasengan to the chest, a lump tightening around his throat, and he couldn't breathe.
Inaku's head fell back and he looked up at the sky, his rasped breathing the only sound between them, as Kakashi continued to hold his torso up by his collar. Kakashi didn't know how long they stayed there, Inaku watching the clear flickering sky above them and Kakashi watching the frail beat of his heart on his throat.
His head dropped back, soft eyes intent on Kakashi. "Lay me by my Misaka, my wife… and my son… spare him."
Kakashi let the sharingan hold onto the green shade of his eyes, even if having it open made its pulsing feet like stabs. Kakashi made certain those eyes was carved deep into his memory. The lump wouldn't ease and he still couldn't breathe as he stared into the Yukikage's gaze. Tsukate had been truthful, Inaku was a good man and Kakashi's duty was to kill him.
"I'm ready now…"
Kakashi let his prickling chakra rise onto his hand, as he had done hundreds of times, thousands of times, and already he could feel the guilt and regret making the flow tremble. The raikiri shook in his palm and against Inaku's striking greens eyes, kind eyes that saw through masks and darkened with the blue hues of lighting. Kakashi's ears roared above the shrieking of a thousand birds as his hand hovered between them, stilled, undecided, when the decision had never been his to make. It had been Konoha's.
Inaku's palm wrapped around his wrist as he led Kakashi's hand onto his chest. Once the smell of burnt flesh hit Kakashi's nose, he thrust his fist into ribs and muscle and flesh, fast and deep, hoping he would not suffer. His green eyes saw through all of Kakashi's masks even when they glazed with the blank stare of death.
Kakashi picked up Inaku with a grunt as his side burned from a wound. The man's warm guts spilled down his arms and front, and he rushed towards the manor. After jumping up to the first floor, he slumped against the hole they had made, as a stabbing pain raced up and down his spine. Falling to his knees, Inaku's dying body cradled into his chest, he dragged himself to the dead body of his wife.
And so Inaku rested beside Misaka.
Kakashi leaned heavily onto a wall a few meters away with a heavy painful sigh, but he couldn't hold his legs straight and his body collapsed onto the floor. He couldn't turn his eye away from the two slump bodies, now both dead, dead and killed by him. No, Kitsune had killed them. Kitsune. He was Kitsune.
A ringing shrill sound echoed through his head and it took him too many minutes to realise it was the cry of a small child. Yukine, his memory provided, as he had heard the girl that had run away say. Inaku should have let her take the child. His cry physically hurt Kakashi and he wondered if the child knew his parents were dead, killed by him, on the other side of the wall of his room.
Kakashi didn't know how long he stayed with that devastated manor, devastated by him, waiting for death to come, his arm cradling his burning side as blood spilled out of his wound. It shouldn't take long, his breathing was wet and it felt as if with every breath he took in only water. He was drowning in his own blood.
It shouldn't take long. Kakashi closed his eyes, the pain made him shake and whimper, and that animalistic fear swayed at the edges of his heart. Still he was ready. He had been ready since the moment his fist had pierced Rin's chest.
Kakashi let out a small smile as the drowsiness overwhelmed any pain, any instinctive fear. Everything felt as if he was floating, as if he was being pulled up from a cold river, up to the surface, to the trembling light speckling down the water.
It shouldn't take long now.
"Taicho! Taicho!"
It took him a long time to realise the distant feminine call was meant for him. He had forgotten he was Kitsune. He was Kitsune. His tired eye turned to the blur of white and purple in front of him. He couldn't fight it as fingers slipped past his mask and pushed into his mouth. "Blood pill and soldier pill. Chew, Taicho."
His mind was slow to understand the command and follow it. A quiet irritation set in his chest for having been disturbed by the girl. Something pulled his arm away from his torso and the stab of pain helped clear his mind from the stupor.
"We're going to move you to the meeting point, Taicho, but first you need to put on the mask."
The mask? The mask was up, he could feel the seam of the fabric against his nose and the smothering tightness over his mouth. When he felt something tug at his hand, he realised his porcelain mask wasn't on. He had taken it out to kill Inaku. He wasn't Kitsune. He was Kakashi and with a fast painful movement he put the blank mask on before all of his body started shaking.
"The raikiri? Taicho, why did you use the raikiri?" Hyo asked, he was also there.
Kakashi was glad the two kids had survived until now. Everyone had known this was a suicide mission, even the three dead teammates, whose bodies he couldn't even take back to Konoha, whose bodies had vanished without a mark to linger in the word, just as their memory. They were ANBU, their deaths would be silent as the lives they had sacrificed for Konoha.
"There's a kid." He could feel the panic quivering through Hyo's voice, the guilt. And he hadn't even been the one to kill his parents. Hyo spun around, taking steady steps towards the wailing.
"Hyo, stop." Kitsune ordered with a hiss. His mouth tasted of iron and his words gurgled in his throat.
"We can't leave a kid here. He'll die, Taicho."
"You take another step and you're disobeying my orders. Neko, help me up, we need to move out."
"We're not the only ones here." Behind his mask, Kitsune's eyes widened, his mind, sharpened from the adrenaline of the soldier pill, already running through any possible scenario they could face against others. The plants of the village, the best escape, the best cover and hiding spots. "The Village is under full attack. This is the Yukikage's child. We leave him here and he's dead."
"Our mission is done. We leave now. I'll pull you out the ranks if you so much as take a step towards that room, Hyo."
"Good." Hyo spoke with steady voice, seeping with defiance, and turned his back on them.
"Hansuke, stop." Neko pleaded beside him, her voice shaking. And Kitsune felt a wave of relief at her mediation. Hansuke would never do anything against Yugao's wishes. "We need to go. Taicho needs medical attention, we need medical attention. The child is not our problem, it's the village's problem."
Hyo's eyes, shadowed by the two slits, held onto hers, as his fingers curled and extended at his sides. And the dread was back full force. If Yugao couldn't stop Hansuke, nothing could.
"Please, Hansuke, please."
And then they were leaving and Kistune could no longer hear the piercing wails of the child, only the screams and crumbling of an entire village being devastated, it hurt his head even more. They stopped for a moment, so Hyo could better his hold on Kitsune. He turned around, forcing Kitsune to see what he did not fucking want to see. It was enough to hear it, it was enough to feel it slithering under his skin, only to become forever stuck there. And still he looked, his eye seeing what he had already felt through his own spirit, a village being slaughtered. And again he opened the sharingan.
"We're leaving an entire village alone for slaughter…" Kitsune could hear the tears on Hyo's, no, Hansuke's voice. "We're fucking disgusting."
Her fingers loosened around his jaw, her wrist slacking to the side, and the tanto she had been holding so ferociously, her weapon, fell with a deaf thud onto the wooden floor.
That had been a fucking mistake.
Fuck… Why did it hurt so much to breathe? Why did it feel as if there was poisonous smoke, heavy and burning, around her? She held herself still, impossibly still, her lungs frozen inside her ribs, and yet the muscles of her legs and her arms shivered under her skin.
She didn't even know what was churning inside of her, if they were her own motions, or the ones that lingered from the memories, the memories that had felt as she had lived them herself. She no longer knew where she ended and he started, she no longer knew where her shell raised itself, frail and crackling, around nothing but duty, nothing but the sharp edge of her weapon, keeping everything else out and away.
Even when she was the white mask man, he was not there.
"It's okay," Kakashi whispered, his voice soft and his fingers softer as they rose to her cheek, cradling it, in warmth and solidity, and that hand, that damned hand. "hate me."
Her eyes, which continued to surprise her with for being an endless fountain, stung as the tears hang over their edge. "Don't touch me." She breathed out, shaky and desperate, her voice glued to her throat. "Don't touch me, please…"
His hand fell away and she clenched her eyes shut, a terrible decision as she felt the treacherous water spill past them. If she had cried more times in her life, she would have known, but she hadn't, she hadn't and it felt as if she was crying a lifetime of tears in a single day.
She hated herself for it, she hated herself for everything.
She pushed the heels of her hands deep into her eyes and it was still so fucking difficult to breathe and she was still so fucking weak, so so fucking weak and tired, not even the sight of the man under her piercing his fist into her father's heart could stir her into action.
"I have to kill you… I have to, I…"
Her eyes snapped open, a sudden desperate idea flashing in her mind. She held onto his shoulders, shaking him, shoving him down against the hard floor, trying to stir some type of reaction out of him that wasn't that softness, that acceptance, that fucking nonchalance of Kakashi, as if she didn't have a tanto to his throat, as if he already knew she wouldn't kill him, as if he had always known of all that weakness locked around her.
"Fight me. Fight me, Kakashi." And still he continued to look up at her with those fucking eyes. "Kitsune. Fight me, Kistune, fight me. Why won't you fight me? Please… just fight me."
She continued to grasp painfully into his shoulders, as her head slumped down, her chin pressed to her chest. It was not enough to ground her, she felt as if she was crumbling, even when there was nothing left to crumble.
"Fighting you would be useless, Gohama, I can't overpower you. I won't do something I don't want to, especially when it's useless."
"What if I kill you? Won't you defend yourself? Or will you just go out like a coward?"
"If you do decide to kill me, I'm as good as dead."
There was a cruelness in his attitude, a cruelness much more searing than any resistance he could have given her. She picked up her tanto again. Her weapon. Her weapon. Her weapon.
"Oh fuck… fucking piece of shit…" Her eyes looked at the hand that held onto her blade and she shook it, hissed at it, as if that would will it to fulfill her duty. "come on, you pathetic useless piece of shit… come on… come on…"
"Gohama, please… enough, please. It's okay not to do it. They wouldn't want this for you, Gohama."
"You don't know that."
"I know and deep down you know it too, Gohama."
His fingers, feverish and burning, held onto her wrist, and with a tug asked silently for her to look at him. She did. She didn't know what else to do, so she looked up from the metal of the blade into his eyes.
"Hama-chan…" He called her so softly and it felt like a raikiri tearing through the tender muscle of her heart.
"No. No. No. Not that fucking name. I'm nothing, I'm no one. I'm nothing. I'm nothing. I'm nothing. I'm the shuriken."
The tomoe whirled, merging into one swirl of black, like a spinning shuriken.
Gohama could feel Uncle Hideki's mad buzzing chakra as he followed her through the mudded street. In her small legs, it was hard to take fast steps, the hem of her kimono heavy and dirtied with mud. Mother and Keiko-san would be so mad when they saw the pretty clothes ruined, but it didn't matter, Gohama just wanted to get out.
She didn't like that man. No matter how many palaces he had and wherever he had them, no matter how many times Uncle Hideki and Mother told her to be polite, no matter how many times they explained how important that was for the village and for the clan. She didn't like that man, she didn't like how he looked at her, how he smiled at her, and she didn't like how her skin shivered only to find that he was watching her from the other side of the room.
A painful hand grabbed onto her arm, spinning her around, and Gohama yelped at the pain that went up her shoulder.
Uncle Hideki's red face from anger lowered and he tugged her arm with his mad words. "You go back in there, Gohama, and you bow like the heiress you're supposed to be, and you smile like the heiress you're supposed to be."
Gohama struggled around, trying to free herself from Uncle's hold. "No."
"You brat." He yelled as he pulled at her arm again, the pain making her cry, her feet burring into the mud as he dragged her back. "The Daimyo wants you there, so you go back in there."
"No!" Gohama yelled back. Her fingers tried to pry Uncle's hand from her arm, but it was of no use. He was much stronger than she was. So, instead, she lowered herself, pretending to wriggle away, and grabbed a handful of mud.
She looked up from Uncle's floating chakra covered feet at his narrowed eyes. Gohama threw the mud at Uncle's Hideki perfect haori. He jumped away too late, his hand releasing her, and now his grey clothes were stained in brown.
Gohama didn't stay to look at his angry face and started running. But, of course, Uncle was too fast and he caught her again.
"You are a disgrace to the Kyura!" Her wide trembling eyes looked up at Uncle as he screamed those painful words at her. "You dishonour us and you shame us!"
Gohama could feel her eyes stinging from the tears she didn't want to let out, but it was too hard. Her bottom lip shook and she started crying, her arm rising to cover her face in her elbow. The hairs at the back of her head stood up and once her eyes snapped up to look at what had made her react, Uncle's hand was already striking down.
Before it could hit, Mother appeared, holding onto Uncle's wrist and forcing him to free Gohama. She didn't think before running again, but her legs didn't work as she had wanted and she stumbled on them, falling on her butt and into the muddy ground.
"Don't you ever raise your hand at my daughter again or I'll—" Mother stopped her words, but her low voice was the most scary Gohama had ever heard it and Uncle seemed to think so too. "I don't care if you're my brother, if you're in the council, I'll do it."
Gohama hid her face on her hands and continued to cry. She only raised it again when Uncle was gone and Mother's hand rested soft and warm on her head.
"Mother…" She whispered between sobs. She saw how Mother held up the hem of her kimono and with chakra didn't let the mud touch her feet. "The kimono… it's dirty, I ruined it. I'm sorry."
Mother smiled, that smile that always made Gohama feel warm and good, and kneeled before her, her legs sinking into the mud. "It's fine, Hama-chan. See? It's fine."
"But…"
Mother held her cheek and kissed her forehead. "It's even better like this. And this." With a mud soaked finger Mother spread a line crossing the bridge of her nose. "You can do it too. It's war paint, for any good kunoichi." Mother laughed a little as she saw her look up with confused eyes. "I also want war paint, Hama-chan. Can you do it for me?"
Gohama buried her tiny hand in the wet cold mud and drew three lines on Mother's cheek. The two continued to paint themselves with the mud, throwing some at each other, until Gohama's belly hurt from laughing and she felt her skin pull at the dried dirt.
Mother drew her into a tight hug and Gohama easily let her face press to her warm and safe chest, her body curling deep inside Mother's arms. She rocked her gently from side to side and kissed her forehead and cheeks.
"You're my sweet daughter, and I love you. No matter what happens, okay, Hama-chan, no matter what happens and what you do, I will always love you."
The roof tiles clanked under her feet as she landed on the roof.
"Nee-sha! Nee-sha!" Gohama heard Yukine's little scream as he called out for her from the garden. Her jaw clenched shut, hand tightened around the string of her bow, as prepared to jump over the walls of her home. "Nee-cha!"
As she was flexing her knees, Gohama turned to the side and jumped instead onto the fluffy grass of the garden. Her little brother came running towards her with clumsy steps and little pure childish giggles that bubbled up her chest. Yukine threw himself at her legs, his arms wrapping around them and Gohama's lips bloomed into a smile, the first true one for so long now.
(The image shook, blue chakra trembling through the colours of the scenery, trying to fight its way onto the cracks, the corners burning with the energy, but with a sudden spike of red, the chakra was gone.)
Gohama lowered herself to pick him up. "Sorry, Yukine, I haven't been around for a while…"
Yukine didn't seem to mind now that she was there, his big green eyes turning into two happy half-moons.
"Koroko, I can look after him, go rest."
Her former nanny smiled and lowered herself to press a kiss to her head. "Enjoy, Go-sama. That little boy can cheer anyone up at any time." Her heavy hand brushed down Gohama's head and her smile turned sadder.
The late spring afternoon was becoming colder, as the sun lowered. They played with his toys, some had been hers too, Yukine directing her on whatever he wanted her to do and Gohama following his lead. Koroko had been right, he had cheered her up, but it was not enough to wash away that doubt and hate, that terror that had festered in her since…
Just the thought of it made the image of her tanto soaked in blood and deep in the man's chest flash behind her eyes.
Gohama was brought back from her memories when Yukine's chakra flared. His little hand, which gripped some toy, seeped out chakra he had yet to learn to control. Her fingers pressed to the back of it and, sending some of her chakra into his pathways, she forced it to retreat before he burned the wooden bird.
"I wish you didn't have the bloodline limit, Yukine…" She whispered quietly under his cheerful squeals and words as he obliviously continued to play. "Is that selfish? Is it selfish that I also don't want you to grow up?"
.Gohama already knew what the future held for him. It was the same as her, he had only one year until he started training to become a shinobi, a tool for Bukigakure. But somehow she felt some hope, he was too good, he was not like her. His snowdrop would never be dirtied with the blood of his weapon. Not like Gohama. She was only seven and she already knew what it was to kill someone, she had already let the dark blood pester her.
"Will you still like me, Yukine, when I'm… when I'm…" A monster.
(Again the chakra pulsed through the image, not strong enough to dissolve it.)
Gohama's eyes prickled with unshed tears and she forced herself to keep them back. It was weak of her to cry, it was a betrayal to her weapon, to her duty to Bukigakure.
"I don't think you will… But it's okay… it won't change how much I love you. And how I'll protect you. Over the Village, Yukine, over the clan, even over my… my Yukikage… If I have to choose, I'll choose you."
Yukine lifted his head to look at her and, from behind her watering eyes, his cute face was a blur. He stood up, his hands reaching for her face, his fingers poked at the corners of her lips and tried to stretch them upwards. "Nee-chan. Smile."
Gohama chuckled, her heart bursting with affection. "I am smiling." And she did smile before bringing him into her tight hug and peppering his chubby cheeks, forehead and tummy with pecks. Yukine giggled and squealed happily as she also attacked him with tickles.
"Always training, aren't you, Hama-chan?"
Gohama's chakra seeped back inside her pathways as she looked up at Kunimaru, leaning his shoulder against the trunk of a cedar.
"The Chunin Exam is in three months." She reminded him, not that he needed any reminder. She and Haku had been missing their group meetings to train and hadn't seen Kunimaru or Isune in a month.
With the hem of her shirt, Gohama wiped the sweat off her forehead. Her hand caught a bottle of ice-cold tea Kunimaru had thrown at her. She cracked it open and smiled up at him. "Thanks."
A quiet blush tinted his cheeks pink as he smiled back before tilting his head down and jumping onto the clearing ground. "Couldn't have Kyura Gohama passing out from dehydration, now could we?" He took a few steps closer and held a plastic box up. "Or hunger. I brought sushi."
Gohama peeped and threw herself at him in a quick hug before stealing the box from his hands. "This is why you're my favourite." She dropped onto the ground and raised an eyebrow at him, noting his red face, when he didn't join her. "You better hurry or I'll eat all the food. I'm starving."
Kunimaru mumbled something under his breath, probably one of his many jokes, as he moved to sit beside her.
The afternoon sun was gentler on her skin, as Gohama sat back, her cheeks warming with the frail warmth of the air and the light. Kunimaru was laid back on the grass, a leg dangling over his bent knee, arms cushioning his head.
"Remember me, Gohama, when you're a legendary kunoichi always away kicking ass." He commented with a light-hearted tone, but it made her heart squeeze.
She gave him a sidelong glance over her shoulder and found his grey eyes smiling up at her. It made her gaze snap back to her front and lower to the movement of her fingers as she ripped out the grass in front of her.
"And you remember me like I am now with you, when I'm nothing but a killing machine for Buki." She told him in a quiet subdued voice.
(This time the chakra erupted from the centre, as a wave, the image rippling with blue. Her ears buzzed with the flow of the chakra, her flesh burned. The red fought back, it pulsed, one, two, three times, and her head thundered.
Let me out! She screamed through her mind, but it was nothing but a whisper. Let me the fuck out!)
Gohama felt him raise himself into a sitting position, his bubbly warm chakra oozing into her side. "You won't become this… this thing you think you will."
"I won't?" She answered with a dry bitter chuckle.
"You won't."
"You were never the naïve one out of all of us." Her eyes watched her hands, as her fingers clenched and unclenched, shivering just from the thought of it, above the green and brown soil. Kunimaru was still in the Academy, he didn't know what it felt like to have someone's life give up under his blade, what it felt like when each time he didn't feel as much as the one before.
"I'm not being naïve, Gohama. I know you. And even if you do… it doesn't matter to me."
Gohama looked at him, trying to drink in the reassurance and confidence in his warm grey eyes. She tried to give him a small frail smile as a sign of her gratitude.
"Because I like you…" Kunimaru added with a sheepish tone, very uncharacteristic of him. "Like, like you like you."
Gohama's eyes widened at the sudden confession and her heart fluttered inside her chest. Her cheeks burned with a bright blush and Kunimaru seemed to be suffering from the same condition, his expectant shy eyes glued to her own.
When she pulled out of her stunned state, Gohama answered as she could only answer, her eyes lowering from his own, with honesty. "I like you too, Kunimaru."
They didn't know what to do next, what they were even supposed to do. Their age finally showed through at their embarrassment. Gohama's heart still hadn't calmed itself and from the feel of Kunimaru's chakra he was having the same problem as her again. She took the initiative as she wiped her clammy hand on her pants. Her petite unsure fingers searched for his and held onto them, his palm was also clammy but she didn't mind it.
Kunimaru squeezed her hand and smiled, a wide cute smile that made her smile back. "To me you'll always be much more than a tool for Buki or your clan."
(The blue energy shattered the sight of Kunimaru's smiling face and the scenery dissolved into blue piercing light. Behind it there was only a crimson infinite blackness and Gohama tried to fight through it again, tried to rip her mind out of the genjutsu.
Let me out. Please, just let me out.
But the blackness swirled and changed and shifted until new colours rose from it, sharp and real.)
"Gohama."
Gohama stopped and turned back to look at Father, his face always grave and tired when he sat behind the Yukikage's desk. "Yukikage-sama."
The door of the office clicked closed. Father didn't speak and all they could hear was the steps of her team fading away as they walked down the corridor outside.
Father smiled, that smile, both sad and loving, that always made her heart ache. Mother had always been better at hiding the sadness from her smiles, with her beauty and propriety.
"Your snowdrop, Hama-chan. Hold it tight and safe. If you do this, whatever path you take, I know you will do great things, even when they are small."
This was her Father speaking, not her Yukikage. "Father, you're always really enigmatic when you give me advice." Gohama answered lightly.
Her chest bubbled in giddiness as it tore a hearty true laugh from Father. "You're right there, Hama-chan, but there's a purpose for that."
"To look wise and cool?"
"Also. But especially because I want you to discern and chose for yourself. I know," Father started as he watched her hardened stare. "it may seem as if your path is already carved for you, Gohama, but you always have a choice, and even if you can't choose where to walk, you can chose how to walk it."
(Her head felt as if it was splitting in two and still she continued to push her chakra, continued to make it burst from her, the clear blue energy buzzing all around her, submerging her senses, fighting back against the red blood pull of the mangekyo sharingan.
The image wavered, the crimson blackness flickering for a second.)
"Now, come here, Hama-chan." Gohama neared Father's seat, he held onto her face with another smile and brought her for her gentle kiss to the crown of her head. "Good work on this mission. I know you'll do great in the exams."
His fatherly care made Gohama throw herself in his arms, wanting more than just a peck, and Father easily held her back. "Thank you, Father. And for the enigmatic advice too, I love them."
Father's hand brushed down her head. "Ah, I'd missed these hugs."
"I'd missed them too." Gohama whispered into his embrace.
"Never forget that I'm Inaku first and only then the Yukikage and Head of Clan, and you will always be my beloved daughter, you will always be first and foremost Gohama."
And then there was the crimson blackness again. Gohama could feel it pulsing around her, the red power shrinking and fighting back.
"Fuck off, Hatake! Let me out! Let me the fuck out!" She screamed into the void, and her voice echoed endlessly.
Gohama let out another burst of her chakra and the chains on her mind cracked once more, before the red festered again between the cracks. Then, Gohama remembered, her mind, her body, her person no longer stuck to the life of her memories, clouding the true scope of her power. Seiryu. If his biju chakra had broken out of Itachi's mangekyo, Kakashi wouldn't sustain it, not even his stubbornness was a match to Seiryu's power, no one was a match to his power.
Gohama shook her head, a triumphant sneer twisting her mouth, as she fought another rising memory. "That's low. Robbing my memories again." She whispered into the void.
An image of Kakashi materialised in front of her, the muscles of his shoulders and his arms shaking lightly as he stepped closer. His sharingan was bleeding, the veins popping around the red iris, a red drop rolling down the side of his nose. He was already so weak, why didn't he let her out?
"I didn't see them. I just pulled them out. They're still yours, only yours, Gohama."
"Let me out, Kakashi." Gohama said evenly, keeping away any impression of begging from her voice. "You can't bear it much longer. You'll go blind, or worse..."
"You're not back yet, Gohama, and those who leave their precious people behind are worse than scum."
A bitter scoff ripped out of Gohama's throat. "This is me. This was what I was always meant to be. And you know it too, you saw it too, the first time you used the mangekyo on me. I'm nothing. Nothing but a sharp blade meant to kill."
Kakashi took another step towards her, a sliver of space between them, all of it imbibed in his tingling lightning chakra. "You're the one that doesn't see you, Gohama."
His pale scarred hands rose markedly to her face and she let them. She also let them cup her jaw, let them guide her to look straight into Kakashi. Gohama couldn't say no, couldn't pull back, not when he looked at her with those beautiful eyes behind white lashes, not when he held her with that tenderness of his.
"This memory is yours now, ours."
With another drowning pulse of red, she was immersed into one more memory. It was different. So entirely different, the motions swirling through her foreign and yet no less real.
Gohama's eyes were wide and frantic, their green sharp against the redness of tears. The despair in them reverberated right through his heart, burning and aching.
"Look at me! Look at me, Kakashi! Please, Kakashi, I need you to see me for who I am. I need you to see me..."
And he was looking and he did see. Couldn't Gohama see how much he saw her?
His hands reached out to hold her face, that affectionate need burning to him as it had never burned before, not even on that night of Dazai's mission when he had first seen Gohama, not even on this afternoon when they had been open with each other, true and vulnerable, no masks between them.
Her skin was deadly cold and his fear rang through him at the feel of it, at the feel of the image of her with a tanto in her heart. Kakashi pushed them all away, his affection bursting through him in calm, steady care, as he wiped the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs. His rough filthy thumbs on her pale cold cheeks.
It didn't matter because he was seeing her, Gohama, he was seeing her and she needed to see herself for who she was too in the reflection of his eyes, she needed to see herself as Kakashi saw her.
The brokenness, the fierceness, the devotion. The love.
Gohama had always been about love.
"I see you, Gohama." Kakashi answered softly, his calm, drawled timber steady because he saw her, the good and the bad, the violent and the soft, the full and the bare, and there was still so much more to see, so much more he wanted to learn and know.
And with just looking at her now, he knew that there would never be one piece of Gohama that Kakashi didn't lo—
Dark blue chakra roared around them, its majestic power washing through the image, bursting through the crimson blackness, shattering the painful grasp of the mangekyo on her mind, as it flowed, overpowering, ruthless and magnificent, through her pathways.
And then she was staring at the ceiling of her childhood home. The chakra receded into her core, locked again inside the jinchuriki seal. Her ribs heaved up and down, lungs burning, her head pulsed with pain at every speeding heartbeat as her mind familiarised itself back to freedom, back to living in her real present self. Gohama rolled her strengthless neck before straightening her back and looking down at Kakashi under her.
"Fuck." Gohama wheezed out as she lurched herself away from him. "Oh, no… oh fuck… please no…"
Bile rose to the back of her throat, prickling and bitter, and Gohama threw herself to the side, coughing and heaving, but the putridness didn't leave her.
Everything shook as she dragged herself to his side, forcing herself to watch the yellow stale shade of his skin, insipid and cold, his expression cut out of stone, lips pale and eyes blankly closed. She rested her fingertips gentle lightly on the skin of his cheek, his warmth washing away. Gohama forced herself to watch the stark red drops of blood flowing down the sharingan, tracing the side of his nose, as it tried to feed itself on the remains of Kakashi's chakra, tried to heal itself from the damage of the mangekyo.
It was useless. Obito's eye would soon wither, now that Kakashi was dead.
Kistune = Fox. Other fanfic writers usually choose dog, hound or wolf for Kakashi, which seems to fit his character better. I went with Kitsune because I read Kakashi's Story (it was terrible, there are many fan fictions that do more justice to the characters and universe. I do recommend Itachi's novel.) and his mask was a fox. If you google search Kitsune masks, they are similar to Kakashi's. Foxes also have religious significance in Japan, so maybe it adds meaning to the ANBU mask that I, as an unfortunately uneducated Portuguese woman, am not aware of. If anyone suspects anything, please let me know.
Hyo = Leopard. I went with leopard for Hansuke because I have always imagined him as such. He's supposed to be very graceful when he fights using kenjutsu, but also strong and any large feline represents that well. There's actually a moment in III, C2 where Gohama calls him a purring kitten and he says he's more of a leopard. She interpreted it as a male pride driven answer, which it's true, but Hansuke was also referencing his time in ANBU.
Neko = Cat. I chose cat for Yugao because that's what her mask looks like in the anime.
The formatting may be a bit confusing, apologies for that, but I prefer it this way. I like the idea that there's no transition between real life and the memories, Gohama is just thrown into them and abruptly starts living them, not as herself, but as the memory-self.
Also, I don't know how these chapters become so long. This one was supposed to be at most 8,000 words, but nope... And then when I reread them there's nothing that I can bring myself to cut out.
Anyway, I've ranted long enough... (while not acknowledging the end of the chapter...)
As always, thank you very much for reading! Please leave me a review!
Stay safe.