Hello there, my lovely readers! As you might have realised already, I will continue on the story for one last part, after all.

If anyone is curious or wondering, Gohama's 'death' scene was always meant to happen the way it did, even before I became interested in truly killing her off. She was in serious need of a shock.

I want to thank everyone who shared with me their feedback and encouraged me to keep writing this story.

As always, stay safe!

Part VII | Chapter 1

The arm around her waist lifted stealthily from her skin, but before he could pull away, her fingers braced around his wrist and she turned around in his loose hold with a sleepy hum. Her face pressed into his warm chest and she breathed in his familiar scent, calloused fingers trailing down her spine.

"The harvest is over, so don't you even try to get out of bed before dawn." She whispered into the skin of his collarbone, voice rough from sleep.

"There's a new harvest."

With the arm tight around his torso, she pinched his shoulder. "Stop it, you idiot, what even gets harvested at this time?"

"Lives." He answered seriously against the top of her head.

She craned her neck back to look up at him with an exasperated smile. "Kakashi, stop mess—" The words clamped around her throat as she saw his expression, the lines of his face smooth like he was wearing a mask, but there was an unsettling intensity in his eyes.

"Come back." He spoke with an eerily levelled voice, unfeeling almost. "It has begun, Gohama."

This time she let her palm press to his forehead, to both gauge his temperature – it was normal against her skin – and to make him feel her right beside him through her touch. She searched for the past days, which were nothing but fog in her memory, for any signs of exhaustion deep enough to cause delusion.

"You're not making any sense, Kakashi…" She breathed out through the lump in her throat as a frightening eeriness fixed inside her lungs.

"War."

Gohama's heart jerked and she snapped her eyes open to the canvas of her tent. Her hand rose to her face to rub the sleep and dream out of her skin. Once it pulled away she noticed the small tremble on her fingers, no longer from the sudden waking up, but that eeriness that remained even through the awake world.

Her dream farmer Kakashi was not a new sight, the edges of his character always blending from civilian to shinobi, but there was never this sense of displacement, not even when she saw him die in the middle of a battlefield he had no purpose being in, grief and horror, but not this eeriness. Gohama could feel it quivering still deep into her core, frightening and looming.

It wasn't so much her dreams invading reality, but reality slithering into her dreams.

"Seiryu." She called through their connection and his presence simmered back into it, full and welcomed.

"Kiddo?"

"Do you feel it?"

"I feel it too."

Her fingers curled against her chest and head fell heavily onto her pillow. The cold was beginning to descend into the forest of Northern Snow, flying down from the glaciers, but her shaking had little to do with it even inside her empty lonely tent.

Gohama watched as the light seeped through the woven gaps of the canvas. She tried to control her shallowing breaths and the hammering of her heart inside her chest, but the dread clamped heavily through her, heaviest than it had ever been in months.

With a steeling breath, she threw the heavy covers away from her body and dressed herself quickly. The day was still cold and the grass under her feet soaked in dew. Her hands rubbed against each other and she blew warm air into the pocket of her palms, as she walked down the path that led to the village.

Gohama had decided to sleep outside of it, as it was best to safeguard the Kuma from her night terrors and the times, thankfully almost non-existent now, when she woke up ready to slash her tachi through anything before her, her mind lost somewhere in the middle of a battle.

She entered one of the largest huts, placed at the entrance of the village, and sighed at the warmth that hit her cooled cheeks.

"Good morning, Hama." Aika greeted through a sleepy drawl, her eyes not lifting from the baby clothing she was mending by the fire.

"Morning. Did you stay here all night?" Gohama asked as she neared the fireplace, hands extending to take in the warmth of the flames.

Aika nodded with a loud yawn as the back of her hand rubbed at her eyes. "The hunters still aren't back and Kou said there was a bear with cubs rummaging through the east side of the forest."

"Mm." Gohama hummed, knowing the deeper reason of why she had decided to keep vigil in the healing hut. "Obaa-chan?"

"Left before dawn, for the mountain, I think."

"Go to bed and I'll go get Obaa-chan. I'm sure there won't be any healing needed in the meantime."

"I'll stay until you get here, then."

A fond smile graced Gohama's lips as she looked down at the crease between Aika's brows, which most people would think was of concentration over the sewing she was working on. She was always taken with worry when her husband left for hunting, especially if the group was even a few hours later than the usual.

"I can go check on them if you want me to." Gohama told her softly.

She had gone with the group once, after recovering from her wound, bow around her torso and blood fevering in excitement for some exercise. The first arrow she fired had hit a boar and its shrieks pierced right through Gohama as he died, blood soaking into his fur. It had brought her flashes of the begging they all did before she killed them and wrote their names in the scroll, and a ruthless panic attack.

Since then she had kept herself away from anything that required killing, even the few bugs that eventually crawled inside her tent. Somehow, the blood of the patients she helped heal had never bothered her.

"Thanks, but it's fine, Hama, just go get that wandering old hag."

"Okay, then. See you later, Aika."

There were already some people out and about, as she walked down the length of the village towards the path carved between the vegetation and up the mountain. She gave the people genuine smiles as they greeted her back, waved at the children as they evaded her in their plays, the gratitude in her heart bursting but today it also brought pain with it.

Once she was deep in the forest, the restlessness stirred once again, colder around her stomach. Her senses were sharp to the distant whispery movements of chakra, shinobi chakra, a great chaotic mass of it.

Gohama had never felt anything like it before and she was so far away still, she wondered how overwhelming it would feel once she drowned in the middle of it. Even the forest could feel it, the birds and rodents fidgety, which was probably why the hunters were taking longer.

Gohama decided to make her way through the ground instead of the tree branches, hoping the quiet peaceful walk through the forest could bring some ease into her nerves. She had known it would happened sooner or later, had tried to prepare herself for it, just hadn't expected such a violent shake to blow over all her patched up pieces.

Her chakra sense could already feel the heavy gentle one of Obaa-chan's now that she was reaching the summit, no less pacified. She broke through the edge of the trees and found her standing by the brink of the cliffs, hands clasped against her belly and chin in line with the endless horizon.

There was always something comforting about Obaa-chan's aura, something awe-inspiring, as she stood there, both a part of the forest and something that seemed to reach above it, beyond the blue of the sky. It didn't surprise Gohama that when she had first woken up from her injury, her shoulder searing in pain, she had thought she was dead.

Gohama eyes had flickered to stare at colourful fabric of a tent's ceiling and the stinging smell of smoke. Before the pain had hit, she had wondered if that was the afterlife. In her foggy mind the colours danced with beauty through the shadows of the flames, the quiet crackling of the fire lulling her mind.

Her head had tilted slightly to the side and that small movement had made a stab of pain wrap around her throat and crawl down her back. Gohama had bit out a groan, her glassy eyes from the pain settling on the old woman as she prepped wool. Her eyes focussed on the spinning motion of the white thread in dark wrinkled hands, letting the image relax her as she breathed in and out carefully.

It hadn't been the afterlife after all, just a medical tent in the Kuma tribe's village. The old woman hadn't been a spirit or ancestor sent to guide her onto the other side. If Obaa-chan had guided her to anything, it was the full beautiful possibilities of a life, her own life, not death.

She had learnt then she was indeed alive and it was why every cell in her body hurt. A group of hunters had found her at the shore of the stream half-dead and brought her back to the village, even knowing she was a shinobi. Obaa-chan had recognised her as the Kyura heiress right away.

The Kuma tribe had welcomed her into their home with the most moving simplicity and generosity. Obaa-chan had explained that Father, as the Godaime Yukikage, had sought to protect the settlements and lands of Northern Snow from criminals and businessmen looking into exploiting the earth. The Kuma had seen in Gohama a vessel of their gratitude, choosing to protect her, one of Father's cherished things, as Father had done with their own.

Her fingers brushed against the scar that branded the skin where her neck met her shoulder. Gohama always marvelled at it, which was why she steered Seiryu's chakra and its healing properties away from it, even when the annoying phantom pain sprung up on days of storm.

Her first and only scar, ragged skin the size of one of her fingers, the mark of her almost death, the mark of how she had come back alive, free, one more chance to live her own life and live it well.

When the days were harder, the guilt drowning and nightmares horrifying, she always let her fingers brush on the reminder of that day, of how simple and easy the will to live had ignited through her spirit, of how simple and easy the life she wanted to live had come to her. Death simplified things and when her mind twisted itself in painful knots, she always let that scar remind her of how simple life could be.

Unfortunately, this was one of those days where things felt like they could crumble if she let her hold slip for one single instant.

Her feet stopped at the edge of the cliff beside Obaa-chan, eyes drinking in the frail light of the morning as it shimmered over the clouds washing around the mountaintops. It was one of Gohama's favourite spots on the Kuma lands, where usually Obaa-chan and she ended up on their healing walks and talks.

"Do you feel it too, Obaa-chan?" Gohama asked as she studied the wrinkled sun tanned face of the tribe's elder healer, years of hardship and life marked into them.

"War."

Obaa-chan's eyes opened to watch the distant blue horizon drawn with the waves of mountains. She turned to face Gohama with a small smile, her dark attentive eyes finding all the answers she was searching for, or perhaps simply confirming them, in Gohama's own.

Her thin lips upturned in a small cheeky smile. "I believe there might be a goodbye feast to plan. It's about time you returned."

Gohama shook her head, a hand settling over her unsettled stomach as if it would ease its churns. "I don't think I'm ready."

"I don't think you will ever be ready, Gohama."

Gohama didn't hide her good-humoured pout at Obaa-chan's words and one wrinkly hand rested above her arm.

"You're waiting for the perfect time, a time when it won't be difficult, but it will always be difficult and it will never be perfect. All the healing you could have done here has been done."

"I never believed it was possible. I'm still surprised I got where I am." Gohama let out a little chuckle. "I'm not sure if I believe it even now. I could never have done it without you, Obaa-chan, and your wise listening and guidance."

"As your people say, a wolf without a pack is lost. I am glad we could be a pack for you in these months, but do not diminish the merit that is due to you and you alone." The shape of her dark eyes shifted into a mischievous almost childish glow. "And especially, do not let it go to waste once you are out there."

Gohama was terrified of it, that was once she returned all the work she had done healing and mending herself, learning herself, would shatter. Obaa-chan understood that too, her hand tightening around her arm. "I have faith that you won't, but you also have to have faith in it and work for it."

Their gazes moved back to the scenery, Gohama breathed in the cool thin air of the mountain, her heart shaking not only from fear, but longing. She would miss Snow, its cold fresh beauty, how the pale light reflected in the clouds and the dew, and its stretch of desolate silent land.

"We will miss you." Obaa-chan started. "I will, especially. That dragon chakra in your pathways is like nothing I have ever seen. Very useful for healing."

"You shouldn't feed into Seiryu's ego, Obaa-chan, he will grow even more insufferable." Gohama commented with a teasing tilt to her voice, knowing Seiryu would be listening.

"So kind, my dear jinchuriki."

"Kami-sama are allowed to be insufferable, especially when they help heal my people."

Gohama winced at the sudden loud rumble of laughs exploding through their connection. "You should take some notes from the old woman. She's clearly knows what she's talking about."

"And the dragon knows of shinobi war. Let him ease you through it."

"I will." Seiryu answered seriously.

Gohama swayed gently from side to side, little Misa-chan propped on her side, her tiny chubby hands pulling at Gohama's long braid. She had always enjoyed playing with Gohama's hair the most, probably because she was the only one that endured the weirdly strong tugs for a baby a little more than a year old. She would have made a fierce kunoichi with the right chakra.

With one last whip of her braid and a bubbly laugh, Misa-chan threw it against Gohama's cheek and palmed at her face with her hands. A chuckle rolled on Gohama's chest and Misa-chan, entirely too entertained in her little exploration, laughed too in between mumbled baby words. Her heart always melted at her laughs, sometimes it was almost painful, too endearing for Gohama to hold it in.

"I think I'll miss you the most, Misa-chan. Just don't tell your mother that." Gohama brought her closer into a hug, her nose pressed gently to Misa-chan's crown and she inhaled that soothing baby scent, sweet and sunshine, trying to brand it into her memory. "Mmm, why do you always smell so good? Seriously, it makes me jealous."

"It's so mothers don't mistreat or abandon their children. It's also why babies are so cute." Gohama turned around to watch Aika near them by the riverbank with a bright smile shining on her daughter. "Thanks for taking care of Misa while I put some sense into that man's head."

Gohama laughed at Aika's scowl as she growled the last words, but, at the same time her heart tightened, already anticipating the missing it would endure once she left the Kuma. Gohama had to remind herself that it was a good kind of pain, a pain that bloomed from care and affection.

Aika's bickering love with her husband had never failed to amuse and maybe even endear Gohama. Kento had arrived from hunting with a wound to his side, a clumsy unnecessary mistake from stumbling on a raised rock and having his side pierced with a fallen branch, it had been more comical than concerning.

Still Aika had dropped Misa-chan into her lap after Gohama had finished stitching him up, to scold him over his stupidity. Kento had thrown her a pleading look and Gohama had only offered him a parting wave before leaving the healing hut with a smile on her face and a cute baby against her side.

"Here, have your daughter back." Gohama said as Misa-chan stretched herself away from her arms in a dangerous attempt to reach her mother.

She used to be terrified of holding her, as if Misa's fragile little body would suddenly shatter in her hands. Aika had been ruthless one day, Misa crying her lungs out and her mother in a rush to follow a kid that had come asking for a healer. She had shoved her own daughter into Gohama's hands, not even caring if she would catch her, and left her home.

Aika had returned an hour later to Gohama cooing at Misa as she rode her leg, bouncing it up and down carefully. 'Now, it wasn't so bad, was it?', Aika had teased, but her eyes had quickly gentled, because she was always too good at seeing through others. 'I've seen you play with your knifes, and the men haven't stopped swooning over that one arrow you shot. I know that my daughter is safe in your hands.' Gohama had turned her head to the side, hair covering her face, but she hadn't fought against the silent tears falling down her cheeks, and Aika had started boiling water for dinner as if there wasn't a grown woman bawling her eyes out with her child in her lap.

Now, she watched with a delighted heavy heart the happy fond interaction between mother and daughter. It ached her with burning fingers of longing and she knew it wasn't only anticipation for her departure.

A curiosity had seeded in her at the overflowing protective love of a mother since arriving to the Kuma village, and it had bloomed into a full throbbing ache, because Gohama knew she would never know of it. The love Aika had for Misa was something her own battered, shattered and mended heart could never encompass, could never endure.

It was okay, Gohama was certain this was a passing whim at seeing her friend be a mother. She had never wished for children, never even considered it a possibility.

It was all around her in their small familiar village, the voices of children always drifting through the air, the sight of families looking out for each other, mothers cleaning their children's dirt-smudged faces, fathers teaching their sons how to shoot a spear, grandparents smiling through wrinkled eyes. And it wasn't just the parents, it was the uncles and the neighbours and the elders looking out for the children.

Buki had had it too, her own family a part of this love, but Gohama had been too young to understand the richness of it, only taking it as something natural, something that could never not be. In Konoha, she had remained in a shell of missions, her team, nights of drinking in Ippon, and her own self-pitying. The sight of children playing at the parks had felt like rough fingers poking at a blister. Their month-long punishment as instructors at the Academy in her first months in Konoha had only stirred her anguish over the cruelty of the shinobi world - raising children for death.

She now wondered where little Daiki was, the shy kid that had reminded her so much of Yukine, with his big green eyes looking up at her in admiration. Her heart had never cut the link it had made between him and her little brother, and in Konoha she had sought glimpses of him from time to time, just to make sure he was doing alright. The day she had seen from a far a hitai-ate shine on his forehead, Gohama had felt both a spark of pride and twinge of pain. Now her guts clenched at the sudden thought that maybe he was dead.

On the other side, Nikato's family had always been sorely heart-warming to her, a beacon of wholesomeness in their team's lives, for Gohama and Hansuke, both orphans, and Kisamaru, an only-child with a distant father and a lonely mother. It ached to remember, especially Chizue-san with her home always opened for any of them. And Gohama had spat on it, failed at the only thing she had asked in return, for Gohama to take care of her son.

In her quiet walks through the Kuma village, Gohama had realised with searing clarity that she had lived more years of her life without a family than with it. There had been Uncle, of course, filling more than any common person ever could, and later her team, but they had never quite been the same bonds.

Nothing in her life would ever be as all encompassing, as suffocating and searing as the bonds of family, like flowery vines in her childhood that with the massacre had withered into rough hard vines, each year tightening impossibly more around her. The grief of ripping herself away from her team, abandoning it, could never reach the dark bottomless hole that was left for her family and clan.

It had also been the loss of those bonds – that had never truly been lost, just cut until she was left with the weight of all of them and no one to share them with as they were meant for –, that duty, so basilar in her Kyura ideals, still so basilar in her now, which had twisted her into the shell of a monster, which had made her obsess over a hollow honour, hollow obligation to dead people, what had rotten her grief and her loss into an empty cruel evil duty that she should never have branded into herself.

And she knew it was because of more than that, she knew it was the trauma, the deep un-healing wounds of seeing that much death and so much violence and so much evil at such a young age, all cramped into an hour of her life – Gohama had made the math, how only sixty minutes in her life of eleven million had been so crucial, so destructive, so everlasting. In one night losing everything she had ever known, the guilt as if she had been the one to deal each and every death to her people. The touch of death as Obaa-chan called it, Gohama liked the name better than survivor's guilt.

An upbringing of indoctrination – and only a month ago had she had the courage to call it that, her tongue burning even now as she thought it, because the word tasted like a betrayal to Buki – of so many hands shaping her young form into what they needed her to be and then when those hands had vanished Gohama had replaced them with her own, because a wolf without a pack was lost and Gohama had never known of anything outside of them.

And if Bukigakure was still alive she would have embraced it, even now with all this burning clarity, if it meant it could protect her people's future, but Gohama had only used it to keep up the illusion of a past, dead and rotting in her hands.

No amount of trauma, indoctrination, mental instability could ever justify anything.

Gohama had failed her family, Father, Mother and Yukine, had used their names, dirtied them, deformed them into something they had never been, had used her love for them as a motivator for all the murders, for all the pain she had brought to her team, for killing Kakashi.

That would never stop flaring in her chest with a pang of self-loathing and drowning guilt, remorse. The thought that she could have killed Kakashi for her parents made bile rise to the back of her throat. Gohama wouldn't just have betrayed him, but her parents too. She was terrified that they could ever know of what she had become.

That cursed night in Buki would never stop haunting her. Nothing would never taint her as deeply, brand her as markedly, as that single red drop spilled from Kakashi's eye, not even all the layers others' blood stuck to the creases of her hands, so many coats of them, the feel of the squishy muscle of their hearts.

And she had killed so many people.

So many lives stolen because of her, most of them had been criminals, murderers, rapists, but what right had she of dealing their deaths? None. Gohama had had no right, not even the one Bukigakure had steeled in her through honour and duty, through the rules of a shinobi life.

Her hand rose to her neck, fingers brushing through the rough line of scarred skin, as a child steadying herself in the known shape of her mother's hand, after stumbling on her feet.

What was done was done and she would carry the guilt of it, a dark pit to join all the others, and she would redeem her actions through little small gestures, watching for a sick person through the night, helping an old man fix his roof, teaching children how to read, always knowing that there would never be anything, small or big, that could bring redemption. Gohama wasn't looking for it, she just wanted to do good, with no great plans and ambitions, no great mission.

That meaning greater than herself, than the Kyura and Bukigakure, the one she had found through the clarity of facing death, roared still in chest. But she could follow it through little things. It was so clear now, drawn into the life of the Kuma, the will to safeguard the future.

The life of this people centred on the future, it was veiled in the daily struggles, worries, and pleasures, but it was there. If she was careful enough she could see it shining through the simple wish of bringing a new life to the world, through the parents' fight to find food for their children, how they shared their knowledge through generations, expanded it with every new one, how the hunters and fishers conformed to the renewing order of the earth, even during the hardest months, in Aika as she cradled Misa-chan to her chest.

The shinobi villages had once guarded that in their childish naïve hands, as they burned with the desire to bring peace for the present and make it last through the future. It hadn't vanished completely, but had become deformed, had rotted into that selfish self-preservation that was blind to anything beyond itself. But it was there, it had been there in Buki, and she had seen it in Konoha.

And now it was in Gohama too. Even as she had known she would die, Gohama had fought against the masked man, not for revenge, not for her duty to her dead village and dead family, but for the future of the world.

The desire of parents to give a better life for their children was what moved the world forward. Yet, there were other ways of providing for the future, other ways of caring for the children without having some of her own. Maybe motherly love could bloom through other things, maybe she could make it bloom in her own heart.

Yet every time she wandered through wishful thoughts her hands twitched with memory of how the muscle of a heart felt crushed inside her fist and spilling through her fingers.

As her eyes started stinging, she everted them onto the white flow of the river. It was counter-productive to dwell in those matters, especially when the giant gnawing one of her departure and the war was waiting right over her shoulder.

She was fine, for the first time in so long, she was fine and she would continue to be fine. And it wasn't from covering the pain behind masks or made-up dreams in her mind. She had faced the gaping wound head on and with all the will and strength in her tired spirit fought to heal it.

It had felt like a weight had slid down herself, the relief that thrived from it still not waning after so many days. Not even the pain of leaving the Kuma was enough to stir in her the dark sucking anguish of before.

Gohama had made an effort to appreciate, truly appreciate, the small things. A cup of tea warming her hands and stomach as the cold wind blew through her hair, closing a particularly difficult wound, caring for a ill person with gentle hands and full attention, learning how to sew with Aika while she spilled all the gossip brewing in her tongue, listening to old stories of the Kuma and their pride over the hardship and survival in a cold overwhelming land, their land, walks through the mountain as she watched pale light shining down the leaves onto the earth, catching a marten slither through the branches of a tree, the hum and noise of night and feasts, the laughs of children as they played around, free and careless.

And when before they would have passed through her without leaving anything of them behind, now they hummed inside her, a warm quiet bubbling of contentment that made the words 'This is good' drift in her mind.

There was still a hollow in her chest that had never quieted itself, never filled, and Gohama had accepted that it never would. It was okay, for the first time in her entire life that hollow was okay, because it didn't wrench, it didn't drain, it just throbbed gently through her, its presence muted and forgettable.

"Would you go back if there wasn't a war?" Aika asked beside her.

Gohama watched her from the corner of her eye, but she was looking down at her daughter, giving her the space to deal with the emotions trembling in her chest. So the village already knew of the new shinobi war brewing.

"Probably not."

"Ah." Aika answered with that sassiness of hers.

Gohama only huffed at that and shook her head. "I'm a coward, I know."

"Without Obaa-chan and me, who's going to be there to put some sense into that busy head?" Aika commented with feigned exasperation as she poked Gohama's temple. "Or just hear your drunken speeches over Kakashi's mole."

Gohama rolled her eyes, fighting the amused smile growing on her lips. "Beauty spot." She corrected while moving to cover Misa's ears. "And it's just so sexy."

"Or shake you silly if you fall back into Hansuke's arms."

And just with that comment the amusing light-heartedness drained from her chest. "I won't. I've told you, the decision is long made and I already mourned our relationship. And he probably won't even want me in his arms."

"It's always different when the talk actually happens."

Aika's hand rested on her arm, a silent request for Gohama to meet her gaze. "Just don't forget what you told me, going back together will only hurt you two. Even if he convinces you it won't, it will, Hama. Kento and I may disagree in the small things, but when it comes to the big stuff we're on the same page. And we also love each other the same. You probably could fall in love with Hansuke, but that doesn't change the fact that you haven't, that now your heart belongs to someone else."

Gohama didn't know how it was possible to look so encouraging and sad at the same time, but Aika did, her dark eyes mellow and pinned to Gohama's own until she couldn't endure them anymore, the dread spreading, and had to turn away.

Her calloused fingers brushed on her arm gently, motherly almost. "That's something Hansuke deserves to know."

"It doesn't matter."

"It does, Gohama. Whether you do something about Kakashi or not, it does matter."

Everything seemed so much simpler as she looked into those four years of her life in Konoha, out and away from them. But now she was nearing them, would have to face them and everyone, and it terrified her. Gohama could already feel the patterns she had spent the past months fighting slithering inside her again, gaining rule over her decisions and her mind.

"I'm going to ruin everything."

Gohama had sensed the hand snapping to reach her chin and tug her face to meet two dark feisty eyes but didn't resist it. "Hey, no, none of that, Hama!" Aika scolded as she would her own child, scolding had always been her way of showing the worry for the ones she cared about.

Gohama's pride would have flared before, but now she had learnt to quiet it and accept that she had seriously needed some good scolds, still needed them… The same pang of longing hit her chest and she fought to breathe through the tightness in her throat.

Aika's scowl eased into a self-satisfied smile. "And when you think you'll screw up just imagine my voice of reason in your head." She commented with a condescending pat Gohama's cheek before dropping her hand from her face.

"That'll give me headaches." Gohama bantered back and received a punch to her arm in return. Her hand rose to rub the wounded muscle that didn't actually hurt and expelled an indignant "Ow."

"You're getting weak, Kyura, if that hurt."

She slanted her head to the side with a pout. "Bigger ow."

"You know I'll miss you, don't you?"

"I do. I'll miss you too. And sweet Mimi-chan." Gohama said with a small smile as the back of her fingers glided down Misa's soft cheek.

"Promise me you'll visit us."

Her teeth clenched and she couldn't help but drop her eyes slightly. War was war, Gohama could be walking into death once again. This time she wanted to live, but that will to protect the world sang louder, to protect these two that had taken a piece of her heart, this people that welcomed her so kindly, the cherished ones she had left behind… The sacrifice of her life was a small price for all of that.

"I can't promise something I don't know I'll keep."

"Don't die, please…" Aika whispered, her voice breaking at the end.

"I'll try." Gohama said firmly, honestly, because it was the truth. All that steadiness wavered as she saw Aika's eyes reddening and tears vacillating in her waterline. "Hey, don't cry, Aika."

"You don't have the right to tell me not to cry, Hama. So suck it. You just don't want to cry too. Come here."

Aika was extremely sneaky and fast for a civilian, and she pulled Gohama into a hug before she could slide away. Gohama rested her chin on her shoulder and her arm wrapped around her back, careful not to smother the side where Misa-chan sat. Her eyes closed and she allowed herself to fall into the affection, as Aika's hand cradled the back of her head, so motherly even if they were almost the same age. After so many years of surrounding herself with men, she finally understood how comforting the simple complicity betweeen women could be, from the petty and trivial to the most vulnerable and deep.

"Thank you for everything, Aika." Gohama whispered, the prickling of tears harsh in her throat, and she squeezed her harder.

"When you can, please visit." Her fingers pressed into her scalp, marking her words. "I'm serious, Hama. You know how I desperately want to know all the gossip."

"I will."