Sorry I took longer than usual to upload, but it's the end of the semester. Also this chapter was a hard one to write and pretty long (the longest yet), but I wanted to keep everything in one chapter. I'm keeping the War Arc as faithful to canon as I can, while making it last a few more days and with actual organised campsites where the shinobi can eat, rest and sleep.
Lovely guest reader that asked me to keep writing, I'm glad you want to read more!
As always, thank you for reading and stay safe!
Part VII | Chapter 3
"I brought an addition to our forces." Gohama could hear the excited, almost self-satisfied tilt of Hansuke's tone.
His hand darted out to push the canvas flap of the tent away so Gohama could enter. Hansuke had been the one to ask her to do the dramatic entrance, with him coming first and then her. As they walked back to the campsite, his giddy energy had reminded her of the kids from the Kuma village when they had led her by the hand to show her something they were proud of.
Gohama's stomach had restarted its cold nauseating churns. The only reason she hadn't wobbled in her weak knees or hyperventilated with nervousness was because of Hansuke's reassuring presence, as it had always been, and his unfounded promises of how things would work out all right.
With one last steeling breath, Gohama summoned all those years of being the Kyura heiress, her lessons with Keiko-san and Mother. Mother with her face moulded out of porcelain, her eyes soft and intent, her hands always steady with long elegant fingers, and each step taken with the naturalness of a doe on the forest ground.
Gohama entered and stood with her spine straight but not strained, face impassive as she stared ahead at no one in particular, her hands free and clear at her stomach, fingers itching with the need to scrape her nails on the leather scales of her vest.
The five commanders and Nara Shikamaru stood around a wooden table, a map and pieces scattered over it, heads turned to watch her. Their gazes prickled through her skin and she fought down the shiver of unease and the need to stutter in her feet.
More than the staring, what made the nausea rise was the electric waves of chakra radiating through the room and piercing into her senses. Even as Gohama tried to pin her awareness on anything else, it would inevitably catch every small inflection of Kakashi's flow.
The air trembled but Gohama chose not to move. In an instant, Kakashi had a kunai to her throat and a firm grip on her hair, restraining her head back and exposing her neck to his weapon.
Her eyes remained low, fixed on his own neck, and she could see the raise of his throat as he gulped, the tendons straining with tension. Gohama didn't need to be a sensor to feel the menacing killing-intent bursting through his chakra.
Gohama raised her eyes to his against every instinct in her that begged to hide from his glare. Still, she opened herself to the power of the sharingan and stared right into the red and black tomoe, Kakashi's quiet yet deathly rage materialised in the shape of the eye.
It was still there, the drop of blood forever branded into the side of his nose, red and crusted. That image endured, imprinted in the vivid blank colours of death onto the back of her eyelids and into her spirit. The gesture forever marked into her flesh, as her fingers trembled around the ghost of her tanto and the feel of Kakashi's heartbeat on her knuckles.
Her hand rose to her shoulder, holding on to the feverish skin, palm pressing down onto the ragged scar, trying to mark it there and not the silk feel of the handle of her tanto.
The guilt of now, the regret, was an open wound that showed her she could come back from the crime, not redeem it, but at least see it, feel it in all its wrong. Gohama had changed that night, died and remained dying for all those other months, but the scar, the scar that she could feel under her palm, meant she had come back from that death.
Gohama had come back. She had come back and now she could see Kakashi in front of her, after so long, after she had thought she would never see him again, the flesh and bone sight of him.
"What kind of fucked up joke is this, Giranai?" Kakashi growled, but his eyes never left hers.
"It's not a joke, Kakashi, that's Kyura Gohama. She's alive."
Instead of placating him, the words only spurred the fury bursting behind his steady pose. His hand tugged her hair back and bit into her scalp, until she couldn't stop the small wince at the painful strain on her neck. The edge of the kunai pressed onto her skin, hard enough for a drop of blood to trickle down her neck.
"Zetsu clones imitate chakra." This time he finally looked at Hansuke. "Are you that much of a fool?"
Gohama had to agree with Kakashi, Hansuke's idea had been extremely flawed. Of course Kakashi wouldn't believe that she was alive, he had been the one to see the pool of her blood, to search for her body with his pack. And now she was forcing him to suffer even more, his muscles shivering imperceptibly, trying to hold in everything that needed to rush out.
"It really is me." She replied, and her voice was pathetically small. His eyes snapped back to her, the rage twisting into disgust, loathing, and she was tempted to shrink into herself. "I can explain how I survived."
"No. Anyone could come up with a story. You have to prove that you truly are Kyura Gohama."
Gohama's mind jumped through every information she had on Kakashi, anything he had told her when they were together in Buki, or what they had done. Anything only the two of them could have known, but that seemed unfair, they weren't alone in the tent, and she didn't want to betray any more of the trust Kakashi had put on her during that month, even if it was already ruined and crumbled at their feet.
Her hand raised carefully, visibly. He could take her gesture as a try on an attack, yet she decided to risk it. Kakashi narrowed his eyes, moving the blade on her throat, reminding her that it was still there, but allowed it.
Her finger gently poked the mask under the left corner of his mouth, where she knew he had his beauty spot, or his mole as she had called it just to tease him. Even if he didn't remember how charmed Gohama had been by it, knowing it existed was already reliable proof.
Her hand fell back down. The lightning rage prickling her skin washed away from his chakra. The burning glare of both his red and his grey eyes fell, but his gaze never left her face, pupils jumping from her eyes to her mouth, her jaw, her cheeks, brow, every line and shape of her face in a frantic flickering. The rest of him remained completely still, his tight hold and kunai preventing her from moving too.
Gohama didn't know what she could have expected from him. Mostly resentment, maybe even hate, hidden behind his mask, behind his aloof slumped shoulders, but looming through the tenseness of his muscles, the piercing hold of his stare.
Her heart had not been ready for the quiet, yet desperate, sorrow in his eyes. Finally having him acknowledge her as the real Gohama made her guilt snake up her chest onto he cheeks, the colour bleeding out of her face until she felt sick.
His fingers loosened on her hair and he stepped back, the blade leaving with him, his gaze on her neck. "Hansuke, call a medic here."
Gohama brought her fingers to the shallow cut on her skin and saw only a dab of red. "It's all right, Seiryu's chakra can heal it in minutes."
"How was that proof?" One of the captains asked, Gohama uncaring over who it had been, not when Kakashi was still looking at her with that gut-wrenching sorrow.
"I trust Kakashi-sensei's judgement." Shikamaru commented and the other captains voiced their agreement with a few hums and grunts.
Kakashi turned his back to her and walked onto the other side of the table. His fist was closed tight and he pressed it onto the wood, leaning casually except not for the strain in his shoulder he couldn't quite rid himself of.
Gohama forced her eyes to pull away from him and roamed through the other men. An awkward silence settled around the tent as they looked back at each other and Gohama wasn't certain if she should be the one taking the initiative or the captains.
The only one she had met personally was Gaara, even if five years ago and with a sour acquaintance, after he had tried to recruit her to join Sand persistently.
She recognised the Cloud one, he had a hefty bounty in the rogue Bingo Book. His one exposed eye, with a mastered sharp droopiness, similar to Kakashi's, bore into her own.
The Iwa captain she didn't recognise, his strength waved steady and unmovable from his heavy muscles and stout chakra of earth release.
The last one was wearing samurai garbs, his deep wrinkles spoke of a skin burdened with years of life and experience. He seemed the most welcoming to her, a complacent expression soothing his face.
"Tsunade-sama asks 'Couldn't the brat just have stayed dead this time?'" Shikamaru drawled out in his typical tone and Gohama was thankful someone had finally breached the silence.
She couldn't force down the small smile that upturned her lips. "She isn't going to get rid of me so easily." But then she narrowed her eyes at him. "News travel fast."
"I'm connected to headquarters through Yamanaka jutsu."
The clan's name made her tense, the image of Yamanaka Hiroe under her as she carved Haku's name into her chest flashed behind her eyes. She had been one of the few that Gohama had never regretted killing. Even now her chest clenched in disgust, a loathing kind of horror at the pure sadism, evil even, of Hiroe. If she had to, Gohama would kill her all over again.
And then there was still that lingering speckle of resentment for Tsunade and the Yamanaka jutsu. She had been right to suspect her, considering Gohama was in fact the ten-tails jinchuriki, but not in ordering Inoichi to steal her memories during the Chunin Exams, right after she had arrived to Konoha.
"My experiences with Yamanaka were never pleasant, but they do have useful jutsu."
Gaara took a step forward, his hand extended to hers, and she accepted it without hesitation. His usual stony expression showed a small and shy twist of his eyes, the beginnings of a smile.
"I hope my insistence from many years ago hasn't soured our rapport."
She shook his hand firmly and smiled, a part of her had wondered how her life would have turned out if she had accepted becoming Suna. "Of course not, Kazakage-sama, not when I was the insufferable arrogant brat. It's an honour to fight alongside the Gaara of the desert, the only ex-jinchuriki."
His clear eyes, with almost of blind-like paleness, regarded her with a warmer tilt, the complicity of two jinchuriki connecting them. He turned to the others with an extended hand. "Darui, Kitsuchi and Mifune, this is Kyura Gohama, the ten tails jinchuriki."
Mifune took a step forward and bowed. "It's an honour to fight alongside the Kyura heiress." The Samurai had had an alliance with Bukigakure, due to an old trade relation for weapons of the Arms' Ashikaga clan.
Gohama nodded her head. "I am pleased to continue the old alliance between Samurai and Buki."
Then Kitsuchi stood forward too, with an open friendly smile, and grasped her hand in his titanic one. "Good to have Snow join the Shinobi Alliance." Then he smiled and pointed at his own hitai-ate. "We need to find one of ours for you too."
Her eyes roamed the ninja inside the tent. Everyone wore a hitai-ate with the character for shinobi written on them. Gohama had never expected to see a day when all five nations and samurai would join forces and fight together as one.
"How can we be sure of your loyalty, Kyura? You never proved to have any interest except for your own Village." Darui, the one from Kumo, asked.
"Then I suppose I'm no different from Kumo."
"Our own kage leads this alliance. We follow the interests of every shinobi."
"As I do, no different from Kumo."
Mifune snorted. "Enough of this, Darui. Kyura-sama" Gohama winced at the honorific. "would not have come if she was unwilling to fight with us. There's no need for more petty discussions. Which division should Kyura Gohama join?"
"No." It was Kakashi's voice, making a pang blaze through her chest. "She's a jinchuriki. The other two are away from the battlefield, she should be too. We can't afford to lose the ten-tails. Kyura Gohama is a liability."
Her pride had never answered well to being a liability, when she had always been meant to be the opposite of it, but this time it wasn't offence, it was hurt that ached in her.
"You know that's not true, Hatake Kakashi." Her eyes never strayed from the safe spot of the map resting on the table, as she spoke impassively. "You know that if the Kyura seal is broken both jinchuriki and beast die. I won't let Akatsuki get Seiryu, whatever that takes."
"Gohama…" Hansuke whispered behind her. He knew the meaning of her words, what she was ready to give up.
"My division." Darui spoke up. "Mid-range seems the most appropriate for the Kyura bloodline limit." He turned to her. "I apologise for what I said before, Gohama-san. I needed to be sure—"
"I understand. And just Gohama is fine. For everyone. But I prefer to fight in the close-range division." That was where Hansuke and Kisamaru were, at least she could make sure two of her snowdrops were safe.
"I am more than glad to have you with us." Kitsuchi said.
"No." Shikamaru interrupted with a dragged tone. "You have your sword and your Kyura chakra, that gives you a range of fighting from short to mid, with the jubi it can reach long. You're one of the most versatile kunoichi. The Third Division fits you better. Kakashi-sensei?"
"Mm. Sure." Kakashi drawled out as he shifted on his feet, now both his hands hidden inside his pockets. His gaze was stuck to the table and he had his usual slouch, but everything about his posture screamed tension, unease, his chest was either motionless or heaving too fast, his chakra trembling inside his core where he tried to keep it checked as she had taught him in Buki.
Her nails bit into the silk cording of her vest. Kakashi didn't want her in his division, her presence made him restless, and of course it would, she had tried to kill him. Was she the only one that could see that? Were they going to shove someone he didn't trust as his subordinate?
"We know that you and Kakashi-san fought Uchiha Madara." Mifune intervened before Gohama could say anything about her instatement.
"He's not Uchiha Madara."
"What do you mean he's not. How can you be so sure?"
Her eyes turned to Darui as he questioned her. "Because that would make him more than a hundred years old and fighting as if he were less than thirty. No one managed to find the key to immortality and even if Madara had, why would he wear a mask after introducing himself? If Madara was actually Madara, he would want people to see him as Madara, not some ridiculous mask."
"Maybe the body is a host." Shikamaru commented, certainly remembering Orochimaru's methods.
"Or maybe the sharingan is a guest." Gohama added with a speculative tone when in reality she was certain of that. "We know it's possible. We've seen it in Danzo, in… Hatake Kakashi, he could have stolen the eye."
"He wouldn't possibly be able to use it all the time, as he does. He relies on the mangekyo for every battle. It would drain his chakra in minutes if it wasn't his." Kakashi relayed, basing himself on his own experience.
Gohama's eyes lowered, her stomach mercilessly rioting against herself. Not only had she sprang on him, suddenly alive and breathing, and now… all while he was stuck inside the edges of his captain role. Kakashi was a master at being the image of aloof impassiveness, but that didn't mean she wanted him to endure keeping everything in.
"There's something else… Gohama." Kakashi urged, his voice more forceful, an undertone of dread wavering through it.
Nausea burned up her chest, making it hard to breathe. Gohama pressed her hand harder to her vest, as if that could ever calm the motions inside of her. She knew she needed to share this information, as Hansuke had said before, this was war, there was no space for worrying over feelings, over being sensitive to others.
Her fingers flexed and she breathed in deeply, before raising her eyes to his. Kakashi deserved to have her meet his gaze. "The mangekyo was the same as yours."
His eye widened slightly, but that was the only thing he let out. "That's impossible, that's…"
"Are you sure, Gohama?" Shikamaru asked.
"No, but—"
"Then don't stir what doesn't concern you."
"It does concern her, it concerns us, Kakashi-san." Darui intervened. "Now please, Gohama, if you could relate what happened."
"We were fighting with close-range taijutsu, my attempt to destroy the eyes. I caught sight of the mangekyo and I recognised it as having the same shape as Hatake Kakashi's. I commented on it, but there was no opportunity for elaboration, because he slashed the side of my throat. A rather lethal blow that almost killed me from blood loss."
Gohama had to force herself not to bring her hand to her scar. "This is why I'm not sure. My mind could have jumbled and altered my memories. This is what I remembered seeing, doesn't mean it's true."
"Why would you see Kakashi-san's sharingan if it wasn't there?"
"In moments of stress the mind can delude itself into a feeling of safety. Hatake Kakashi's sharingan is the only sharingan I trust unconditionally."
But Gohama knew that wasn't what had happened. She had seen it before taking the deadly stab, more, it had been the reason for it, a moment of unbalance that had brought her guard down.
Maybe the doubt could appease Kakashi. She couldn't imagine the anguish of having a delusional psychopath steal his friend's sharingan out of his corpse, using it for his own twisted ends, while Kakashi had the twin on his own eye-socket.
Gohama stole a quick glance at him, looking down once again, his single eye perfectly appeased, not one crease marking the skin between his eyebrows.
He could fool everyone in the tent, but they didn't know his chakra flow as Gohama, after sleeping beside him for a month, after teaching him how to suppress it perfectly, after using it as a grounding anchor when waking up from nightmares, she was attuned to every flicker of it. Inside, he was all turmoil and slippery control.
"How did you escape the battle, then? And why didn't he take the ten-tails?" Gaara asked her, thankfully shifting the spotlight away from Obito's sharingan.
"He defeated me, but he knew I wouldn't let him take me alive. And even if I did, he wouldn't have been able to steal Seiryu. As I said, the Kyura jinchuriki seal is made to kill both the vessel and the biju when broken. Unfortunately, he stole our Secret Jinchuriki Scrolls, probably to study a way of stealing Seiryu without destroying him and waiting for him to respawn."
"But if he let you get away, he was compromising the possibility of ever getting you again." Mifune commented. "I have to say, Kyura Gohama, you sure know how to disappear without a trace. It's the second time you've played that trick."
"If we died, Seiryu would respawn later, free for the taking. And if I survived, he knew how to draw me out of my hiding spot, the same way he is drawing Uzumaki Naruto out of his. I'd always return to fight in the war.
"He also relayed to me what his purpose for the biju is. He wants to make a happy, perfect world. He tried to make me surrender Seiryu with it."
Hansuke snorted behind them. "Buying Kyura Gohama with happiness is a failed business."
Gohama threw him a pointed look over her shoulder but her eyes quickly softened. It was good that he could already joke about it, even if there was a hint of bitterness in it.
"In a way, his heart is in the right place, it's just his mind that is completely shattered. The way he went about bringing happiness is everything but happy."
"How do the biju make a perfect world?" Darui asked.
Gohama had already pondered over it, trying to put together the pieces and better understand their opponent. "Uchiha Itachi told me that there were eyes powerful enough to put the entire world under an illusion."
"What?"
"I also didn't understand what it meant. Why would Akatsuki want to lay a genjutsu on everyone? The first thought is control, but what's the fun in controlling everyone? If you control everyone there's no reason to actually control them, there's no one and nothing left to fight. It's just… boring."
"This is a deranged psychopath we're speaking of, fun or boredom don't seem his priority." Kitsuchi commented.
"I believe he needs the biju to power up a genjutsu, a genjutsu strong enough to reach everyone and change the world as he pleases."
"So as long as he doesn't get them, he won't win."
"What we can take from this is that you should have stayed dead, Gohama." Shikamaru put in.
"Did anyone see you coming? It would be better if you went into hiding again." Darui added.
"No. I'm not running away, this is also my fight to fight and I want to fight just as much as all of you. There's no need to worry, I'll kill myself before he gets Seiryu."
"Gohama—"
Her chest pinched at the sound of Hansuke's voice, but she didn't let it show through her harsh tone. "This is not something I'll compromise on."
"That won't be necessary. Suicide isn't an option in this war, that isn't what this alliance is about. We're also fighting to protect the jinchuriki's lives." Gaara said firmly.
"You shouldn't. I know what the price of protecting a jinchuriki is. And this time it's even higher."
Her words settled heavily between the commanders, their gazes lowered, grave and thoughtful as they remembered the tragedy of Buki's end and Konoha's assault. It filled her stomach with dread to think this time the stakes were higher, it wasn't just a village at risk, but the entire world, from civilians to shinobi, Earth to Water, children to old people.
Every single human life and Gohama was nothing but a grain of sand in a desert, a snowflake in a mountain, a drop of water in an ocean, inconsequential and yet the future dangled from her life. She shoved the thought away, lingering on the weight of it would paralyse her, would bring back that childish need of making others pleased and that had grown into a devastating monster after the massacre.
"We're not forsaking our values." Gaara declared, unyielding, a fire burning in his clear blue eyes. "I'll order you not to kill yourself if I have to."
"Unfortunately Kyura Gohama and authority don't go hand-in-hand."
The sudden sound of Kakashi's voice made her heart jerk in her chest. And she tried to breathe through the waves it set inside her when his tone had none of the barely-there strain of before, when it reminded her of the times when they would banter with each other.
"As the captain of the Third Division, I'll make sure she won't do anything reckless."
That seemed to appease Gaara, who nodded his gratitude. "This new information doesn't add to what we had already strategized in this meeting. Taicho, return to your respective divisions. This is as long as they should go without you there." Gaara commanded to the shinobi around the table before turning to her. "Gohama, welcome to the Shinobi Alliance."
"It's an honour to be here and fight beside all of you."
As soon as the words left her mouth, she felt Hansuke's fingers clasp around her arm and drag her outside the tent. His hold didn't loosen when he stopped and pinned her with a glare.
"Gohama."
"I'm sorry, Hansuke. I'm sorry you had to hear it like that."
"You shouldn't have come back. If it's so you can die again, then you shouldn't have come back. It was better to think you were dead when you were actually alive." Each syllable was spoke as if spat at her and she agreed with every single one of them. "Why?"
"I want to fight, to protect—"
"Protect?" Hansuke cut it harshly, his anger thundering through the word. "You would have protected everyone better if you stayed hidden."
"I couldn't run away again."
"Of course… every single thing and every single time, it always comes down to the massacre."
"And that surprises you?"
"It really shouldn't, not anymore at least. You are right, Gohama, we value different things. I, for one, value your life, which apparently you'll never be able to do. If you do it, I'll never forgive you, never. This is something I can't accept."
Hansuke turned on his feet and strode away from her. Gohama watched as his back disappeared through the tents of the campsite until she couldn't sense his chakra.
Nothing. Nothing. She couldn't get one thing right when it came to the people she cared about. She had already shattered his heart, let it crumble inside her cruel fist that night and now she continued to rub the shards in her hand until they were no more than dust.
Her fingers rubbed her temples, trying to appease the headache settling there, before moving to her eyes and fighting back the sting of tears. A weariness that hadn't crusted in her bones for so long made everything in her ache. Gohama wanted to slump beside a campfire and sleep for all of eternity, like dying. She wanted to die.
Her eyes snapped open at the intrusive thought she hadn't let poison her mind in months. Because she didn't want to die, for fucking once in her life, Gohama didn't want to die, but that didn't mean she wouldn't kill herself if the circumstances asked for it. Even if she had tried to run away from it, at her core Gohama was a shinobi, ready to sacrifice her life for her people.
Fuck. She needed to pull herself together, she couldn't crumble, she wouldn't crumble. With a steeling series of breaths, she dragged herself away from there.
"Where are you going?"
Gohama jolted at Kakashi's voice and looked over her shoulder at him. What was happening with her, she couldn't even sense another person behind her, and it wasn't just another person. It was Kakashi.
That realisation seemed to spark every inch of awareness in her body, so that even a single shift on his feet made goose bumps rise in her arms and back.
"Um… Am I not supposed to go?"
"Our division's campsite is west of here. We're going to teleport there."
"So…" Gohama drawled out as she glanced at the spot where she had last seen Hansuke's back.
Her protective instinct was screaming at her to stay there with Hansuke, in the same campsite she knew Kisamaru and Nikato were. After four years in her team, the instinct that told her she belonged by their sides, watching their backs, had rooted deep and she knew it would never leave her.
Still, Gohama would learn to shut it down. That wasn't her place anymore, it wasn't her right to protect them. She had forsaken that when she had chosen to abandon them, to throw Kisamaru and Nikato onto the side with her chakra, and had spat at them when they asked her to come back to Konoha, come back to them.
Her feet wavered as she followed Kakashi, but she easily corrected them. Her eyes pinned to his familiar back, the messy strands of his hair and knot of his hitai-ate, the broadness of his shoulders, terrible posture as always, dragged nonchalant walk, as if he wasn't a captain in a war, the war.
It was so achingly Kakashi, Gohama felt her eyes prickle once again. She didn't even know why she felt like crying, maybe it was the exhaustion, maybe it was knowing how much she had hurt him, failed him, maybe it was that anguish that had stuck itself once again to her heart and asked that it be drained out through tears.
Gohama felt only the chakra for a few instants before two hands turned her around and she was shoved into Hansuke's chest.
"Be careful and be safe." He said against the top of her head and her lips turned into a smile, relief flooding through her chest.
"I will." Gohama whispered and her arms wrapped impossibly tight around his waist. "I'm sorry I couldn't be better for you, Hansuke."
She felt him shake his head, an affectionate exasperation in his tone. "Just try not to die."
"I will. And you too, I won't be there to look out for you." Gohama lifted her head to look at him. "Can you tell them for me, please?"
"Of course. I'll do it right away." Hansuke smiled gently at her, easily understanding that she was asking him to tell Kisamaru and Nikato that she was alive.
"Thank you, Hansuke, for everything."
Gohama didn't miss the glance Hansuke gave Kakashi before bending his neck to press a kiss to her head. "Be safe."
"Be safe."
With the last parting smile, they turned their backs on each other and Gohama kept her mind from falling into the terrifying thought that this could be the last time she would see him. She swallowed the lump burning in her throat and walked towards Kakashi, who seemed very interested in the small pebble he was pressing down onto the dirt with his sole.
"You can stay here, you fit into any division."
"No. I'm more useful in yours. Unless you don't actually want me—"
"Why would I not want you?" Kakashi asked with that casualness of his before he started walking again.
Gohama could write an entire list of reasons, a list he could definitely write himself, but he was choosing to ignore what had happened between them. She would follow his lead, whatever made him the most comfortable.
With the Kuma, she had never let her thoughts wander through the expectations of how their reunion would be like. A treacherous foolish part of her would fall on illusions, too painful in their sweet unreality, the most self-deprecating would fall into the worst scenarios and that could only feed into her cowardice.
Gohama had blocked any expectation, good, bad, neutral, and now that it was here, she had no idea on how to act. Her hands were cold and damp as they tightened around her crossed arms, and every step she took was stiff and unsteady under her.
"How did you come back from the dead?" He asked casually and, even if he was facing away from her, she could hear that fake eye-crinkled smile, the one that was always too cheerful and with none of the warmth.
"I never actually died." Her voice was meek as she explained, and immediately winced at her stupid answer.
She had expected a sarcastic or mocking comment to follow, because who wouldn't answer such a stupidly obvious statement that away.
"We searched for you for three days, everywhere, we combed through that entire forest, that entire stream. The snow… There was so much blood…"
It was that sorrow again, the one she had seen in his eyes before and that was just as palpable through his voice. Her mind could paint images with that sorrow, of Kakashi's quiet and bottomless grief, but with her death there had been no cenotaph to visit, no grave, no funeral, nothing for him to work through the mourning, slumped shoulders and cast down eyes.
Gohama had wondered over it every day under the sky of Northern Snow. Had he visited the memorial stone all the same? Had he taken walks at night? Sat on the Hokage Mountain? Closed himself in his apartment? Gotten drunk ? Cried…?
Gohama had never seen Kakashi cry and there was always a foggy sense of unreality as she tried to imagine him with bloodshot eyes and wet cheeks, as she tried to imagine that he would ever cry for her.
Her fingers closed around the edge of her vest above her chest, trying to contain the tightness in her heart and lungs. What right did she have to them? None. She had been the one to pretend she was dead knowing they would grieve her, knowing he would grieve her.
"There's a tribe in Northern Snow, the Kuma. Their hunters found and saved me."
"My pack would have caught a human's scent. There was nothing. You were gone."
"They use bear fur and scent to hide themselves."
Kakashi stopped this time but he didn't turn to face her, and Gohama was selfishly glad for it. "It was so easy to believe you were dead…"
Her arms wrapped around herself and she forced the words through the lump in her throat. "I'm sorry…" She didn't know why she said it, Gohama may have been sorry, but she didn't regret it, even after seeing the aftermath of her decision in him and Hansuke, there was no remorse, only that guilt, searing and drowning, churning with disgust.
Kakashi shifted to face her. "That was the most cruel thing you ever did to me." All the anger and resentment she expected from his words was missing, there was only that sorrow.
Cruelty seemed only the first layer of her. If anyone would peal it, under it would much uglier and vicious layers. Her fingers searched for her scar and she held onto, the guilt igniting that self-loathing, pungent and vicious, until she felt everything would crumble and all those months would have meant nothing, could mean nothing when they had come at this cost.
What right did she have to healing when they had to pay with the gaping wound of loss? What right did she have to relief when they had to pay with heavy drowning grief?
None. Gohama had no right and yet she had stolen it for herself, prided herself in it, relished in it.
Kakashi raised his hand and she flinched at it.
"I need to touch you to bring us both there." He explained, no emotion behind his voice, but he looked even more miserable now. She could only look down, her hair falling to cover her face, her eyes finding the marks of a teleportational seal seared into the ground.
Of course, that had been why he had stopped.
It was cruelly ironic that the thing to bring them apart before was also the one forcing them together. Was Kakashi also thinking of it as he let the silence stretch and settled between them?
"Hold onto my arm."
Gohama hid her words of disbelief in her mouth, it would have been stupid again. If Kakashi was asking her to touch him, it was because he was sure she had to touch him. She took a step closer, until they were both standing on the seal. She had the impulse of scrapping her hand clean under boiling water, but instead wiped it on the side of her pants and forced it onto his bicep, letting only the tips of her fingers make contact.
After a spike of Kakashi's chakra, the uncomfortable tug of the jutsu ached through her limbs and then she was standing on another campsite, this one deep in the forest without the salty air swaying from the sea.
Immediately, she pulled her hand from him and took a step back. Her neck bent in a small bow. "Thank you for accepting me into your division, Taicho. I am honoured to fight under your command."
Then she twirled around in her feet and strode away from him, the straight strain of her knees the only thing that stopped her from running.
"You're seriously going to leave the poor man without saying anything." Seiryu commented.
"What am I supposed to say? Sorry about almost killing you after sleeping with you. Also sorry about that time when I left you alone while I ran away with the man that wanted to kill me and pretended that I was dead for months, even when I know how traumatised you are about all the people that died and you couldn't save. Hmm?"
"You spent hours talking to Hansuke."
"It's different."
"Why?"
"Because it's Kakashi."
"Exactly, your tongue should be running right now. Didn't you learn anything while dead?"
"Seiryu, please. I'm really tired, I can't even think right now, so please… Please…"
Gohama breathed in the fresh scent of dew that speckled the oaks in the Land of Hot Waters, so different from the cool air of Snow, imbedded in pines and spruces. Her eyes opened to see the rose light of dawn spreading above the canopy around the campsite.
Obaa-chan always said that the morning light made everything seem brighter as they watched the sun spill over the mountains and the clouds. It wasn't as beautiful here, but the light worked all the same. Today things didn't feel as dire as they had last night while trying to fall asleep on some tree branch overlooking the campsite, eyes heavy with exhaustion and tears.
The air around her and Kakashi was still suffocating in its awkwardness as she followed him out of the campsite for their scout post. But there was no longer that aching sorrow in him that dug at her regret with sharp clawing fingers. The dangerous self-loathing over how she had failed him and Hansuke had washed away into a quiet throbbing guilt.
Yesterday her balance had seemed compromised, the anguish so searing Gohama had thought she was falling back to the shattered ruin before the Kuma. The first day and first contact had been just as pulling out a kunai to begin suturing the wound.
Still, the light of dawn rose from east, leading to Campsite B, and yet it couldn't brighten the dread weighing her heart down, the worry and fear for Nikato, Kisamaru and Hansuke, now that she wouldn't fight beside them, now that she wouldn't watch their backs. Every time her eyes were pulled to where she knew they were and every time she couldn't see them.
Kakashi's profile fell into her line of sight as he slowed his walk to fall into step with her. Her heartbeat involuntarily reacting at the familiar line of his profile cut out of the warm light, which gleaming in his hair and eyelashes. Gohama tore her eyes away to stare in front of them and not at him, her cheeks heating up with a blush. She had preferred when she had been following his back, Gohama would follow his back anywhere he needed her to.
"This is for you. I didn't get the change to give it yesterday."
Her hand extended to meet his and take the hitai-ate he was giving her. His fingers brushed against hers, a small instant-long touch, and still her skin was achingly aware of it, the whispering feel not fading into the cold morning air and the feel of the carved metal as even as her thumb studied it.
"This is great…" She whispered while looking down at the plate.
"It is."
Gohama decided to tie it around her forehead instead of her waist or arm as she had done before. With the fabric of her glove, she wiped the metal of her armguard so the clean surface could reflect better. She tried to see herself in the silver tint but the curve distorted her image.
Kakashi's hand broke through her field of vision, a pocket mirror dangling between two of his fingers. A blush broke through her cheeks again at being caught trying to stare at her own reflection. Gohama still accepted it, careful so her fingers wouldn't touch his.
"I haven't worn a hitai-ate on my forehead since I was a kid. I wanted to see how it looked like." She felt the need to explain, her voice too meek to feel her own.
Gohama watched her reflection through the clear surface of the shinobi issued mirror, one she had never had the need to carry because of her chakra sensing abilities, the carved metal plate settling proudly on her forehead.
Her gaze roamed through the waking campsite, the hitai-ate worn proudly as well by other shinobi, dissipating the difference in their villages' uniforms. Her comrades. They were all fighting in the same team and for the same reason, thousands of them, now spread through the Lands of Frost and Hot Waters and raised through the corners of the shinobi world. This hitai-ate connected them, the same will shone through the carving on the silver light.
Her throat tightened with emotion at it, her eyes lowering once again to watch her reflection. More than see it, she could feel it, the will that bonded them all, what it meant to be a shinobi no longer brewing conflict, no longer stirring the worst of humanity, but instead it bloomed into a wonderful impossible thing. Not so impossible now that she could feel it in herself too, she was a part of it.
How long had it been since she had had her shinobi will shared with others? In her years with Konoha, her devotion had never extended past her team, had never washed away from Buki's into Konoha. There had been times where she had felt the warmth of home, tried to fight it, but that had never been over the village, but the few people that lived in it and for it.
But today was different, today her devotion bloomed for the Alliance and there was no guilt in her, only a sense of wonder and belonging, a sense of rightness. Gohama had returned to protect a hazy immaterial outline of the future, but now she could see its shape clear and sharp in the lines of metal on her forehead, on all their foreheads and in their hearts.
It was impossible and yet it was real. Gohama could feel the prickling of tears at the back of her eyes, but they were good tears, wonderful tears, and if she were alone she would gladly let them fall.
"It suits you."
"Thank you." Gohama answered as she gave him back his mirror. "It's nice… to share the same hitai-ate with others."
Her eyes found the hitai-ate on Kakashi's own forehead and it made the emotion flare even more, because she was sharing it with him. Her face turned away, trying to tone down the overwhelming wave that simmered the longing she had been actively pushing down.
One thing was to feel this for the token Kakashi that had haunted her since Buki, another was for the real man, flesh and bone, with real wounds, his and not her own reflection of them, of everything she had ever done to him.
Once they were outside the safe barrier of the campsite, they broke into a run. The air around them was still painfully awkward, even as they entertained themselves with running.
While they changed posts, one of the shinobi stared a little too hard at her Buki standard uniform, which stood out against the five others belonging to the villages. It made the uncomfortable prickle with the known shape of foreign, outsider, sink some of the sense of belonging of before.
The monastery, Konoha, the Kuma, even in the ruins of Bukigakure, it had never vanished, and it had been naïve to think and feel it would from just a metal plate tight against her forehead.
Gohama settled on a tree branch under Kakashi, where he could see her, but she couldn't see him, her sensorial skill could compensate for any lack of view. It was still hard work on her mind not to let his presence overwhelm her, every little flicker of his chakra a flood to her awareness.
Blank paper tags stacked in front of her, her fingers twirled a brush and she set herself to tracing the fuinjutsu with dark ink and infusing her chakra into it. The chakra domes would be large enough to fit two to three people and could be useful to protect medics and the wounded as they healed right on the field.
Gohama tried to keep her mind pleasantly blank and away from any worry. Still, her eyes constantly drifted east for Campsite B even if she could see nothing but leaves and branches. There was always the strained weight of worry for her team in her stomach, even when she didn't think of them. It mixed with the fear of the actual battlefield, fear of how hard it could hit at all of her pieces and shatter her with them.
An unthreatening flicker in the air trembled above her and Gohama shot her hand out to grab the thing Kakashi had wordlessly thrown at her. Her fingers opened to find a miso-flavour protein bar and her lips upturned in a small smile. It was sweet that Kakashi was worrying if she ate or not, even if it was born out of a taicho's remorse, seeing as he had called her before she could eat breakfast.
Unwrapping it and whispering her gratitude for the food, she bit into the crunchy bar.
It reminded her of those times in Buki when her appetite had been non-existent and she had used him as a clutch to force herself to eat. That care had disappeared as a missing-nin, in those last weeks, Gohama had become sickly thin, her bones sharp around her skin.
Kakashi had commented on it, saying he had been worried about her health and now she wondered, as her jaw munched on the food he had given her, if maybe the bar was about more than his taicho duties. Gohama was healthy now, she had gained much needed weight with the Kuma, her appetite flaring with a healing mind and heart-warming meals beside other people.
Once she finished she returned to her mindless work, senses sharp to anything that shifted around them. They didn't talk, what could they talk about that wouldn't sour the awkward but stable thing going on now?
The rustle of sheets from Kakashi's reading lulled her as it always had and Gohama found that even with the ache and bitterness his presence flared in her she didn't mind being beside him, she liked it, she loved it. There was a war inside herself to keep all these undeserved emotions dormant and away, but they imposed themselves, an irresistible wave that drowned and burned at the open wound of her guilt and of her care.
Gohama was thinking too much again, feeling too much, she just had to ignore it and—
In an instant, she was crouching in front of Kakashi, her fist shoved against the side of his head where a white Zetsu had emerged from the wood of the trunk.
"Found you, Kyura Gohama." The clone said with a happy eerie tilt to his voice.
Her hand around his neck seared with chakra and she tugged him away from the tree with a growl, his torso breaking in two. Gohama crushed him neck in her fist and tried to drag out the rest of his body, yet her fingers scrapped at nothing but solid wood.
Gohama pressed her pam against the bark, fingers denting into it, as she tried to ground herself from the sudden adrenaline burst. Her heart was thundering in her ears, strong and roaring, and her breathing rasped against her throat and past her lips.
The Zetsu had spawned right beside Kakashi's face, and her mind was flashing with every horrifying possibility, a white arm wrapped around his throat, a hand cracking his neck from behind, a fist pushing past his ribs.
A drop of blood falling down the side of his nose.
But none of them had happened, Gohama reminded herself. None of them had happened, Kakashi was there, alive and safe, and that was what mattered now. Her eyes opened, mind eased, to find Kakashi's face right in front of her, her knee between his legs and weight leaning on the arm right beside his head.
Her throat caught her breathing and the steady beat of her heart rushed out of her ribs. Gohama controlled the urge to jolt away and embarrass herself. With an apology ready in her lips, she pushed back against the tree, but could do no more than lean back before Kakashi's hand clasped around the top of her vest and held her, stilled as stone, in the same position.
With wide expecting eyes, Gohama searched for his intent in his own, only to find lowered lids with those white lashes. Kakashi was staring right into her chest and she felt as if he was burning her skin raw, baring every layer of her flesh.
"You have a scar." His voice was thick with meaning, and maybe he remembered how they had talked of scars in Buki, of her unmarred skin so different from what had been hidden under it, from what would later be tainted into it.
Did he remember the night after their fight with Itachi and Kisame? Did he remember how he had cleaned her wound, brushed his fingers on her skin and kissed her shoulder? Because she did, every little brush was still branded into her own flesh, with as much as intensity as the back of his fingers now, where they pressed between her vest and her chest.
Gohama felt he did as his fingers glided over the raised skin of her scar, almost searching, almost as if he were confirming that it was there. Her nails bit deeper into the bark.
His fingers brushed up her throat and Gohama shivered, her stomach twisting with his touch, his warmth, his chakra tingling all around her, his scent, the low whisper of his breathing. Everything in her ached for Kakashi and she was losing the helpless battle against everything that soared inside her for him.
The pads of his fingers pressed against her pulse point as he had done that last time. Did he also remember that as he repeated the gesture now? Was it even repeating for him? It felt different and the same to her.
"And a heartbeat." Kakashi whispered a few beats later. "And I'm still not sure that it's you, Gohama… that you're alive. I'm dreading the moment you'll vanish again or turn into one of Zetsu clones."
Whatever words she could say were stolen from her tongue.
"Tell me it's really you."
As she opened her mouth, Gohama realised her breath had been glued to her throat and there was no air to carry her voice out. "It's me." She answered in a pitiful gasp.
"I'm sorry about yesterday, the kunai and everything... I thought someone was using you and... Maybe I should have known." Kakashi's eye finally lifted to hers, a fleck of lightheartedness in it. "Kyura Gohama… the woman that keeps on dying."
She rasped a little choked out chuckle. Gohama had wondered about death's apparent revulsion with her, in her darkest moment taking it as a sign of a twisted destiny she had been trapped to. She never took it too seriously, she was still very much human in everything, weakness, endurance and pain, she was human in mortality too.
"Two times is not that many."
"I think it's two times more than most people do."
"The third's the charm as they say." A flash of pain passed through Kakashi's eye and Gohama regretted her careless joke right away, it was definitely too soon for that.
"Is it true?"
A flicker of dread froze in her stomach. How could she tell him as they stood a breath away from each other, so close his chakra was blending with her own in the air, that she truly planned to kill herself if the circumstances led her to it.
"Do you trust my sharingan unconditionally?"
Gohama was taken aback with the sudden swerve in their conversation, but the answer flowed easily from her heart to her mouth. "No. I trust the man that wields it."
Kakashi's gaze finally rose to meet hers, searching for the truth behind her words, or maybe for more, he looked for too long and for every frantic beat of her heart rushing in her ears she forced herself to look back.
"You didn't let me fight by your side."
"That wasn't about trust." She had trusted him to fight beside her against the masked bastard, but she hadn't trusted herself to keep him safe.
"Let me do it this time. It's my choice, just as it was then, it's my duty even. This is war and we're shinobi—"
"Being a shinobi isn't validation for anything."
"We're comrades. We share the same hitai-ate. We share the same fight." His fingers tightened around her vest, knuckles pressing into her chest. "Let me fight by your side, Gohama."
Kakashi knew what to say to her, he knew how much it meant to wear the same hitai-ate he did, to finally have the same goal, the same purpose of her cherished people. And maybe… Her eyes widened and heartbeat fastened in her chest. Maybe it was also meaningful to him. This wasn't a taicho asking to protect his jinchuriki subordinate, a shinobi asking to protect a liability in the war, this was Kakashi asking to protect her, and if he died…
One of the reasons she had return was to make certain they all stayed safe and now Kakashi was asking to risk his life to protect hers.
"If you'll let me have your back too."
His hand loosened where it held her in and he let his head fall back on the trunk, his cheek so close to her hand she could feel the warmth of his skin on her wrist.
"Thank you." Kakashi breathed out with a genuine smile on his eye.
A mad impulse to brush back his hair and caress the side of his face twitched in her fingers and Gohama was quick at standing up and taking a step back from him.
"I guess it's better to assume that Akatsuki knows I'm here now." She commented quickly, fingers curling and uncurling, while her gaze fixed on the trees around them. "I can only sense the clones when they leave the trees or the ground. There could be an army under us right now."
"Headquarters knows how to track those. They'd warn us. These ones are going for our chakra so they can make copies of us." Kakashi explained before warning the rest of the scouting doubles of possible Zetsu clones through the radio.
That didn't exactly reassure her. "We shouldn't stay the entire shift sitting here." Gohama commented and Kakashi raised an eyebrow at her commanding tone. "Taicho." She added awkwardly.
"With the radius of your sensorial field I don't think we need to move. I also think this Zetsu was a stray one searching for you. You were right when you said the masked man was expecting you to come here."
Kakashi turned around on the branch and tilted his head back to look at her with an eye-crinkled smile. "New position. Sit back to back."
Gohama settled on Kakashi's branch, her back to his. Her muscles jerked slightly as she felt his shoulders lean against hers for support, not expecting him to actually want to be touching her. She pinned a heavy stare on her tags while desperately trying to control the flutters of her stomach and her thoughts from falling into impossible things.
"Pleasant day." Kakashi commented with a light tilt to his voice.
Even through all the awkwardness and the shame at how aware she was of his shoulders on hers, there was no way she wasn't going to chuckle at his pathetic attempt. "Are we going to small talk our way through this?"
"I don't know what else to say."
Her brush stopped over the paper and Gohama could feel that heavy jagged crust cramp inside her chest. "Then don't say anything."
"There are a lot more things I want to say, I just don't know if I should say them."
Gohama would follow his lead, she reminded herself as her stomach clenched.
"Just don't let me be the reason you say or don't say them."
"Don't call me taicho." That hadn't been what she had expected him to start with, but she could knew this was probably as difficult for Kakashi as it was to her. "Or Hatake Kakashi. You started with that habit even before you… why?"
"It didn't feel right to call you by your name."
"You call everyone by just their names."
"I didn't fuck everyone and killed them after." Well fuck, that wasn't what she had wanted to say, not now, not in any situation.
"It may come as a surprise but you didn't actually kill me."
"I thought I did."
"I know. You've told me." Gohama felt his arm slide between their backs for his pouch and heard the swish of unrolling paper. "I also found your scroll." Kakashi said as he let it fall over her shoulder onto her lap, a strip of red-inked names.
The brightness of daylight deemed as she read through so many names, much more than she remembered, red and stark on the white paper, as she read through numbers, because she hadn't known all of their names, she should have known, but she hadn't. If Gohama had taken their lives she should at least have saved their names.
And most of all, that beacon that had always wrenched at her chest, Kakashi's name.
There was no bright rosy tint of dawn, no cleared fresher perspective, just a wave of red, a stain of it on that scroll and in her hands, in the creases of her skin, the deeps of her spirit. How had Gohama ever deluded herself that she could endure the wet warm weight of it as it crusted in her and live, live well, live as she wanted to live.
She had lost the right to a life so long ago. Since the massacre.
No. Not since the massacre, the massacre hadn't been her fault, Gohama desperately reminded herself, no matter how much it felt like it, the fault wasn't hers, only the guilt. She couldn't let her crimes as Shuriken taint everything she had ever done with the stain of blood and death.
"Why did you write your own name?"
"My life was Buki's."
"Your life isn't over. You can take your name from here."
The last name, under a river of red, and starting a river of white. That was what her death had meant, the end of that scroll of revenge and wrong, not a sliver of restored honour. But her death also meant Kakashi had saved the scroll, her death also meant he had chosen to carry it to war.
Gohama flexed her fingers, her jaw clenched tight, she could feel the warm wet feeling in her hands, slithering up her arms, filthy and permanent. Her thumb brushed over the edge of the paper and it left no trail of blood on the white. Gohama knew there wouldn't be one, but she still needed to make sure.
"My name is the last one I would take from it, it's the only one that truly belongs here." Her chest physically hurt now, her voice stumbling and she tried to breathe through the panging. "The first would be yours. I was almost tempted to do it when I found out you were alive. But crossing your name would be denying what I did. So here it is…"
Gohama let the tips of her fingers glide over the dry red ink, following the paths of the characters as she had done so many times before. "Hatake Kakashi…"
It stung even more to read it out loud, to read it to him. It was as if that stain of blood had dried in her throat, old and no less strong.
She hadn't let her thoughts wander through a possible confrontation with Kakashi, running away from anticipating fear and her cowardice, and now she felt everything burst mercilessly, her mind unprepared to handle the blow.
Gohama stood up on shaky knees, not looking down at Kakashi behind her. "I really think I should scout around, spread the surveillance area."
"Gohama… we need to clear things between us, if we're going to fight like we both know how to fight together. Besides, we're in doubles in case Zetsu try to steal our chakra signatures. It would be counterproductive to get separated."
Every impulse in her body was shouting at her to escape anyway, a sudden nausea rising in her stomach and burning through her chest. There was no chance to clear things, and even if there were she was terrified, too terrified to try.
"How can we ever recover from that, Kakashi…?"
"We can. I have."
"You didn't. If you have then you're crazy."
"Maybe I am." Gohama could hear the shrug in his voice.
She turned around, harsh eyes lowering to him. "Kakashi, this is not—" She stopped herself at the sound of anger in her voice. It was unfair to direct her own anguish turned anger at him, when he was the last person she was angry with. "this is serious, you can't just shrug it off. I tried to kill you."
Kakashi stood up too, her neck following the movement but her eyes never raising above his shoulders. "Did you, Gohama, did you actually try?"
"What? I had a tanto to your throat."
"You did… so why am I alive? You had me submitted and a tanto pressed to my throat, but you were always looking into the sharingan, knowing I can put you to sleep with it. And when I was unconscious and defenceless, you didn't finish the job.
"It was the most inefficient attempt at an assassination, a genin would have performed better, an academy student even. So, tell me, Kyura Gohama, the jinchuriki of the ten-tails, ex-Shuriken that filled a scroll with names, S-rank ninja names, in what world did you try to kill me?"
"I… I… I had a tanto to your throat."
"We've established that."
"Stop talking like that! You're not my kage asking for a mission report!" Gohama berated herself again. "Sorry, I didn't mean to shout, but that night, what I did to you… I need you to take this seriously and deeply, because this is serious. The most serious thing that ever happened in my life besides the massacre."
Once the words fell into silence Gohama finally realised their meaning. Her eyes widened and she saw her surprise mirrored in Kakashi's face. Nothing would ever be the bottomless abyss of the massacre in her spirit, yet the massacre had never shattered her mind into tiny pieces, made her fall into a delirium for days where she still didn't know what was real or not, what was nightmares or visions.
"I am taking this seriously, Gohama, it's why I want to understand." Kakashi explained in the softest voice and it actually made everything hurt deeper. "What happened?"
Her arms wrapped around herself, and shifted on her feet so she wasn't facing him. "It doesn't matter, it won't change anything."
"No, it won't, but I want to understand. It matters to me."
Her hands were starting to shake and she hid them on the crooks of her elbows. Gohama could feel the weight of Kakashi's gaze on her profile and it made her feel naked, it made her feel like every little flaw was laid bare for him to see.
"What triggered your episode?"
"Don't try to take the blame from me by calling it that."
"I'm not, but I know there was a trigger and I know when a shinobi is under an episode. What was the trigger?"
Her eyes clenched shut and nails bit into the flesh of her arms as she tried to keep her memories hidden in her. Talking meant remembering and Gohama had never let the memories of the night surge through, had never tried to feel in the wide shadowy blank between seeing the dried stains of her parents blood soaked into the floorboards and finding Kakashi under her, sharp blade on his neck.
She didn't need to know of the blank, whatever had made her try to kill Kakashi should stay down and untouched forever. Her regret and guilt had never needed any more fuel and sharpness to burn as fresh blisters and tear as a gaping wound.
Kakashi and that single drop of blood down his sharingan had entrenched deep enough, and often rose into her eyes with a visceral jolt rocking every inch of her. Gohama didn't need to understand what had led her there, she just needed to know that she had done it, she had done that to him.
"I think I saw when it… hit you… I only recognised it later, but I think I did."
Gohama tightened her arms around herself, trying to contain the shivers that were spreading into her back. Her chin curled onto her chest, but it didn't matter how little she made herself, she wouldn't disappear.
Kakashi deserved to know, but he would take it the wrong way and she didn't want that for him, she didn't want him to go back to that guilt, to that time when he was with her and he could only see himself as the shinobi that had killed her parents.
Kakashi was so much more than that, so many more wonderful and good things, but sometimes he could only see the thin cracks and not the beautiful strong pieces that also made him Kakashi.
And Gohama had never known how to show him, there was a moment in Buki where she thought she had, but, of course, in her slippery hands it had never lasted long, could never last long.
"Tell me, Gohama, please…" Kakashi whispered, gentle and pleading.
"Your chakra… It… it changed when you… finished." Gohama stumbled as she mindlessly watched the gentle breeze ruffle the leaves around them as if that could wash away the memories in her eyes.
Kakashi didn't answer, he let the silence stretch, let her breathe through the lead in her lungs because he wanted her to continue. Whatever she said didn't matter, whatever piece he was searching for to make sense of things wasn't with her, because there wasn't such piece, nothing of what she had done that night made sense. And still he waited for her to talk…
"It became the same as on that night and… brought my memories back. Even after discovering the truth, I could never associate you with… with the man of the white mask. I knew it was you, but I didn't feel it…"
"Until that moment." Kakashi finished himself, his tone harsh. "Of course you would hated me."
Gohama could hear the disgust in his voice and of course he had taken it the wrong way. Kakashi only needed the smallest inclination to shift whatever blame he could onto his own shoulders.
"It didn't make me hate you. It only made me—" Gohama stopped her words before sharing that the hate had always been only for herself, Kakashi would find a way to blame himself for that too. "And it was… my… emotions were going downhill in those last days… and I had thought it wouldn't get worse than… that afternoon. I was clearly very wrong."
"You were ill, Gohama. I took advantage of you."
She swirled on her feet to face him, but he wasn't looking at her. "What? No, no, Kakashi."
His gaze was stuck the ground, metres below them, as he talked. "You were vulnerable and I—"
"No. Kakashi, look at me, please, just look and listen."
He indulged her wish, only to meet her with a miserable expression, and with that guilt, that painful guilt that he had always carried because of her and for her.
"I may have been ill, but I was fully capable of consenting when I did, I was even the one that started it, that pushed you to it, you didn't take advantage of me."
"I saw you with the blade pointing to… and what did I think? What a great night to fuck her."
Whatever disgust had gnawed through his tone before didn't compare to the self-loathing of now, his face once again turned away from her. She wanted to rip it away from him, but Gohama didn't know how, she had never been good at reassuring people.
"I wanted it, Kakashi, before that night, and you did too, the emotions of what happened wasn't what made us want to give in. The timing was all wrong, but you didn't take advantage of my emotional state to fuck me. And it wasn't fucking, nothing about that was a fuck."
"That doesn't… I still hurt you with it, even if you wanted it or not, consented to it or not, I should have held back. I used the excuse that we were emotional the day before and when it was actual good judgement I forgot about it? Because of what? Because I was horny? Because—"
"Because you were scared, you wanted to feel that I was there, alive. Because it was our last night together in Buki."
Her fingers pressed tighter to his arm with her words and only then did she realise she had been touching him. She pulled away as quickly and stealthily as she could, hoping she hadn't made him uncomfortable.
"Think about it. If I'd never left the futon, if none of that had happened, would you think this way? If we'd just woken up next to each other in the morning and then gone our separate ways, would you feel this way right now?"
"But we didn't, Gohama. And because we didn't it made me understand how I failed you."
"Don't take away my own blame."
"I told you I'm not, Gohama, but I also know I had a part to play in it. I should have taken your mental state with more care, but I dismissed it, you seemed fine, so I dismissed it."
"I was fine." Gohama said firmly and Kakashi's reply was a firmer stare. "Not fine, but stable. And I wasn't helpful at all. What could you have done?"
"Not sleep with you." He answered fast with a deadpan look, before turning away until she could only see the edge of his cheek. "It wasn't just then. I was reckless, I saw how you were, but for some reason I didn't… We're taught about it as shinobi, I was in ANBU, it definitely wasn't the first it happened to someone I was near to. I have experience and for some reason I didn't act accordingly and put us both at risk. Don't take away from my blame, because it also exists."
"That's nothing. It's not comparable to what I did, nothing is comparable to it. It's one thing to kill someone you have no relation with, but someone you… care about, someone that trusted you, comforted you, cared for you… that's the lowest of lows, the scum—"
Kakashi met her gaze again, expression uncharacteristically stern. "You had the right to kill me."
"Kakashi." She answered just as sternly.
"I killed your parents."
"You did. And I've forgiven you for that. Even before that night I'd forgiven you. I never had the right to kill you, forgiveness or not, the right to take your life never belonged to me nor Bukigakure. Never. Don't even think that again."
"How can you forgive me? I killed your parents, Gohama!" His tone rose to an anguished rasp she had never heard tremor in his voice. And she knew she couldn't convince him it, because at the centre of his disbelief wasn't her but himself.
"I don't know how, but I know that I have. I truly have, just like I've forgiven Uncle. All the resentment in me was always only for me, anything else was projection. I'm not better than every single person that massacred my people, and I never pretended to be really, because it was never about that.
"It was what made it so bad, I didn't care if it was the good thing, I never pondered over it, I just cared that it was what I thought Buki asked of me, what I thought I was meant to do. My fate, Kakashi, there was a point when I actually believed in fucking destiny."
Worse than destiny, in her delusion, Gohama had believed she was some sort of reincarnation of Onee-sama, imprisoned to Onee-sama's life, to her choices and her faults, to her devotion for the Kyura.
"I'm no better than the bastard that calls himself Uchiha Madara."
"You can't compare it."
"But I can… and I'm worse. That night… I look back and it's unthinkable that I'd ever do something like that to you, but I still did it. My duty was never just to Buki and my parents, it was also to you and I trampled over it, I trampled over you like you were nothing but an obstacle to me, one checkpoint, a name I had to write on a scroll."
"It was between Buki, your family or me. You made a choice."
"I did, I made the worst possible choice."
"Gohama…" Kakashi whispered and there was so much misery in the way he said her name, it cut into her. "I have forgiven you."
"No, Kakashi, I don't need you to, what I did was unforgivable."
"Apparently it wasn't, because I really have forgiven you. Why can't you believe that?"
"The same reason you can't believe that I've forgiven you."
Kakashi deflated at that, a silence heavy in finality settled between them. They were in each other's positions, Kakashi now knew why she had asked him to let go of his guilt and Gohama finally knew why it had always been so difficult for him.
Standing on the same stone of a path led them only into an impasse. Where could they even go from here? Nowhere, they could and would go nowhere, and that was okay. Gohama hadn't returned with a selfish silly belief in a future where Kakashi was also there.
"Gohama, one more thing." Kakashi started and waited for her to confirm she wanted to continue the conversation. "You're seeing this as if you have in fact killed me, Gohama, but my chakra exhaustion wasn't even because of you."
"I broke through your genjutsu with Seiryu's chakra."
"And how many times did you ask me to let you free? This time you can't tell me you consented to being under a genjutsu. It was self-defence."
"You weren't hurting me, you were sharing your memory with me…"
"And you had the right not to see it. I took it too far."
"I took it too far."
"It was self-defence."
"Was it? Because they helped me, the memories you brought back. I'd forgotten about them… and the memory you shared with me… They helped and I…"
"I'm glad they did, it still doesn't mean it was the right course of action. Nothing of what I did—" A glare from her and his eye curved into a small smile as he corrected his words. "we did that night was the right course of action."
Kakashi turned eye down again, the lightness washing away from his face, only this time it wasn't out of guilt, but hesitation, maybe even shyness. He seemed absorbed in the movement of his sandal as it pressed down of the ridges of the bark, head and hands in his pockets.
"And I… I regret it, sleeping with you. It's doesn't mean I didn't… like it, because I did, so much…, it doesn't meant that it didn't feel right in the moment, but if I could go back I would change it." Kakashi raised his head slightly to watch her, worried about having hurt her feelings. It was sweet and very foolish.
"I regret it too, and it also doesn't mean it didn't feel right." Gohama shared with a reassuring tone, cocking her head to meet his eye better. "I think it's okay to regret something we enjoyed in the moment. You know, like drinking that one sweet glass of scotch over the limit and curse it the morning after."
Her comment made him perk up, a teasing glint that made her heart swell passing through his expression. "Did you just compare our disastrous choice of having sex with over drinking?"
"It fits." Gohama murmured sheepishly. "And I was thinking of really really great scotch, the one that with just a sip makes it worth being alive for."
After a few seconds of quiet, Kakashi finally asked, "When was the last time you drank scotch?"
Gohama rolled her eyes, she had just complimented him in bed and he was still mocking her analogy. "A long time, more than half a year. Probably. Those months of my life are still kind of a blur…"
"Guess I'll have to buy you a glass once this is over."
Kakashi said it with the typical casual tone that most would take as a polite invite to something that would never happen, but this was Kakashi and he didn't bother with those type of social cues. This was serious for him, for her. Kakashi wanted her in his life into the closed off group of people he went out to drinks with and the even more closed off group of people he payed drinks to, which Gohama was sure was no one.
"I don't think you do."
His awkward hand came to rest on her shoulder. "We can recover from this. I want us to." His fingers pressed gently to her and her treacherous heart fluttered. "You're here, Gohama, alive, and suddenly there are regrets that don't need to stay regrets."
Her own fingers clenched around the fabric of her pants as she tried to fight down whatever chaos of good and bad things were bursting in her chest.
"Was that too much?" Kakashi asked, his hand falling away from her and leaving its imprint behind.
"No, I just… I now know why you thought avoiding me for two years was the best choice…"
"Please don't avoid me for two years, Gohama, you're definitely much more reasonable than that." He commented with a cheerful tilt to his voice.
Gohama huffed softly. "I'm really not… but I'm trying to be."
"You look healthier. Healthier even than when you were in Konoha."
She turned to face him with a smile. "Thank you. I am healthier, in mind and body. Unfortunately, I can't say the same thing for you, you look tired."
"At least you're being honest."
"You should try to sleep, Hatake Kakashi, or just Kakashi. You need the rest. I'll keep watch." Gohama sat down and patted the spot behind her. "Back to back."
She untied the clasp of her vest so his nape could rest more comfortably on her shoulder. His messy hair tingled her cheek and neck, but Gohama didn't mind it, not when delight was jumping in her stomach at how easily he accepted it.
"Gohama." Kakashi called drowsily and she could feel the murmur of her name on her own skin, dragging a shiver through the top of her spine.
"Hmm?"
"I'm glad you're alive."
Her lips spread in a wide smile. "I'm glad I'm alive too."
The words were full in her mouth, sweet and airy. Words that only a few months ago her tongue, too heavy and broken, could never have shaped, but now it did so easily, so naturally, a string tying them to her spirit.
"Good." And Kakashi knew it too.
Gohama waited for Kakashi to fall asleep before summoning Yukine to make sure they wouldn't slack on scouting duty. He gave her an accentuated raise of his eyebrows, eyeing between her and the man leaning against her back, and she begged him with a look to ask questions later. Unlike Seiryu, he was never difficult with her and left.
"You okay, kiddo?"
"Not really."
"Why? It's a start."
"I'm not sure there should be a start."
"Just don't be an idiot like Kakashi and avoid him. You know first-hand how hurtful that is."
"You'll have to shut up now, Seiryu. I'm exhausted and need to focus on my surroundings."
"Fine, kiddo, but I'm not done being your voice of reason. I'm so nice that I'll even help you."
The rest of their shift passed as slowly as any surveillance duty did. Gohama continued to work on her chakra dome tags while Kakashi slept against her back.
A chakra signature flickered at the edge of her awareness and Gohama hissed a curse under her breath as she recognised it. The always energetic shinobi didn't take long to reach their tree.
"My eternal ri—!" Gai halted with a loud gasp before brushing his eyes with his fists. "Is this a ghost? Am I seeing a ghost, Kakashi?"
Gai jumped onto their branch and Gohama stood up, uncaring for the man leaning against her, seeing as he was definitely awake and had chosen to pretend to be sleeping. Gai's threw a pointed finger at her and a burning glare she had been prepared to receive. She had crushed his best friend's heart with her death.
"Or are you one of those clones meant to seduce my friend and kill him?"
"I'm afraid I'm all too real, Gai. Here to take our posts?"
Gai had threw himself at her and Gohama chose to take the blow of his attack. It took her a little too long to understand that he wasn't in fact trying to crush her ribs, but giving her a hug. With wide eyes, Gohama fell whole-heartedly into his painful crushing hold.
He pulled her back by the shoulders with a sob. "We thought you were dead! I'm so happy you've returned to us! Oh, the power of youth and lo—" Gai's words were cut off as he started bawling again.
It felt so nice and undeserving to be given such an overblown yet simple gesture of welcome, no contradicting emotions under it, no looming talks that would never be enough to resolve things.
Gai pulled her back into a hug, this time along with Kakashi, who was pressed against her back, his lightning hand on her hip and Gohama knew the feel of his touch wouldn't wash away for the rest of the day.