Warning: This chapter discusses the matter of suicide.

Part VII | Chapter 5

Gohama looked down at her metal tray as she slithered through the other hungry shinobi for that one empty table. Each step pulsed at her heart, her mind too aware of her movements, too aware of every single glance that happened to pass by her.

She could have blamed it on the lingering paranoia from being a missing-nin for a year, Konoha and Akatsuki out for her head, but she knew it was that reasonless shame that invented the prickling of stares on her skin and the whispers spelling out her name.

Kiyohime, she had heard a group of kunoichi call her that once. The woman of folk tales that turned herself into a dragon or snake and killed to revenge an unrequited love. Gohama didn't mind the clever association, she could in fact turn herself into a dragon and had once tried to kill a man she loved, even if perhaps she hadn't been in love then. Gohama wasn't even above tying herself to mythical women, she had seen Onee-sama's life as her own.

It was actually fascinating how the rumours had defined her so fittingly with little knowledge of what had truly happened. Maybe it was written in her face, in how she walked to reach the empty table, how she couldn't raise her eyes from her food as she ate. Gohama had never expected her shame to spread to social self-consciousness.

The Kuma hadn't known much of her life and had only cared for how she was with them. Here she felt as if all her crimes were stuck to her skin, bared for everyone to see as they laid eyes on her. Here she had never made a simple attempt at fitting in, of talking with her comrades over something other than what was strictly duty.

Seiryu was right, she didn't really care about them, not as Kakashi did, knowing their names and their skills, seeing them as individuals and not just a mass of comrades. Seiryu had accused her of caring only about herself and how much guilt she could skirt away from her shoulders, roaring that her self-sacrificing streak was meant only for her own damn ego.

Gohama had never seen Seiryu as enraged as when she had met him inside the seal on the evening after the battle. Things hadn't resolved themselves, they had fought as they had never fought, he had been too deeply wounded from her abandonment for them to build a sliver of reconciliation.

She had apologised for losing control of her mind at the end of the battle and letting herself engulf with delusion, for not listening to him as he tried to pull her out of it. Gohama understood the gravity of what had happened, Seiryu wasn't the only one terrified of how easily she had broken down.

But Gohama had come back from that and today's battle had showed that she wouldn't fall into it again. The sudden unknown shock of the battlefield had shattered her but now she could brace herself for it.

Seiryu didn't seem convinced, there was still only silence from his side, emptiness. She wasn't using his biju chakra because he had demanded that of her and she had respected it, even after insulting him for being a selfish bastard in the middle of a war when lives were on the line.

If they weren't in this together, she couldn't use his chakra, Seiryu had roared, he was her biju and Gohama was his jinchuriki, so she had to act like one.

Gohama had asked him what he wanted of her and he had told her that even if the war was lost she couldn't kill herself.

That was the one thing she couldn't compromise on.

Hansuke had been hurt at her decision to kill herself too, but in his simple way he hadn't let them leave to possibly die with bad feelings between them. Kakashi had never mentioned it past his promise to Gaara of keeping her from doing anything stupid.

How could Gohama not do it?

Hansuke had thrown at her that everything always came down to the massacre. What did it matter if it was true? Good things could come from that, not just brokenness and delusion. Gohama couldn't pretend that all of her hadn't been shaped by it, but being aware was what allowed her to see which branches were healthy and which should be cut off or attended to.

Gohama would fight for her life and the world with a fire she had never held before, but she also had never been an optimist. She had lost against the masked bastard and then he hadn't been able to resurrect people. Who knew who he would choose to bring back and rule over? Perhaps Madara himself, maybe even legendary shinobi of old, of myths that spoke of gods from the moon. Hadn't he called his plan Tsuki no Me?

This one branch, healthy or rotten, could never be cut. Maybe it was selfish, maybe it was out of her own guilty need of paying her debt to the world, but in the end if it gave time to the Alliance, if it helped keep the world safe for a few more days, maybe even years, wasn't that good?

How could she not do it? Her life wasn't worth thousands, it wasn't worth the world. It might not have been her fault, but Buki's thousands of lives were forever etched onto her own. This time, she could break the tie, this time she could stop them from losing a war.

It would be so simple, a single swing of her tanto, and somehow it felt more difficult than any jutsu she had ever made.

Wasn't it also selfish of them to want to preserve her life above thousands of others?

Her stomach already felt full with lead and Gohama hadn't even finished her soup. One thing the Alliance couldn't afford was a malnourished jinchuriki, weak and vulnerable for Akatsuki, so she forced herself to eat.

It would have been easier with someone to eat with, to take her mind off things with simple talk, to follow their gesture of raising their chopsticks to their mouth. It was her own fault that Gohama was eating alone, not once had she made an attempt at fitting in. Her shame cringed her skin every time they looked at her and even when they didn't, and Gohama knew it stemmed only from inside her.

It was a weird thing that she could give her life for any of the comrades around her, but had never dignified them with a bit of small talk or even with asking their names. Gohama had always been terrible at being sociable and with her newfound shyness, rooted in her shame, things had never been direr.

She had wondered if Hansuke, with his friendly outgoing way, would have even looked at her hadn't Gohama been in his team, even when they were together Gohama had wondered that. The same for Nikato. There had always been an affinity and understanding with Kisamaru, but him being a Hyuga meant they would never have been friends without being teammates.

Genma was a treasured surprise. And Kakashi…

Kakashi, who was looking at her right now from the other side of the mess tent, she could feel the familiar weight of his eye on the side of her face, bringing a different kind of tingling to her skin. Gohama wasn't sure what had made them close. Uncle had been the main push, forcing them to interact in the beginning, but there had always been a part of her that was pulled into him for herself.

Perhaps because he was Hatake Kakashi of the Sharingan, perhaps because he wore that mask and Gohama wasn't above the cliché of wanting to learn what hid underneath the porn, the slouch and the cheerful eye-crinkle, perhaps because every flicker of his vulnerability hadn't faded the mystery and only made her fascination swell.

Her eyes lifted to find him staring at his metal tray, her mind still hadn't shed itself from the shadow of knowing that Kakashi had been dead. The fear sometimes caught her off guard when she suddenly recalled it, with a jerk of her heartbeat that made a shiver crawl down her spine.

Gohama wanted to have dinner in front of him, her leg unknowingly swaying from side to side so her knee could brush his own, her thigh pressing to his outstretched legs. Maybe he would lift his eyes to her with a dare, fully aware of what she was doing and responding with more. Maybe she would catch small glimpses of his face, maybe it would be easier to force herself to eat, as in Buki.

There were already bad enough rumours and sitting to eat with him would only stir them more. Gohama was a sore spot in the soldiers' respect for Kakashi. They wondered what had ever led a man like him to follow woman like her after she had defected Konoha. Gohama had never stopped wondering that too.

The guilt. Everything seemed to grow from his guilt.

But in Buki the guilty eyes of when he looked at her had softened into tender ones. His guilt had bloomed into something deeper, solid, unrelenting, something that maybe had even branched out of his guilt and could thrive without it.

Kakashi had let himself be so vulnerable there, they both had been, not just in talks where they had shared themselves, but in letting her presence stretch around his routine, around the trivial, but rooted things of his day to day life, letting her see all those tiny private ways that were only his own.

Gohama had ruined it, crushed it with her hands, spit on it. She would never regret anything more than leaving the futon on that night, than letting her mind eat itself alive. It would have been so simple to show him how much she had been crumbling and maybe he would have helped her pull herself together. If only Gohama hadn't caged her crying on her shoulders and on her chest, if only she hadn't fled from him. She promised herself not to let that happen again.

But somehow, out of some mad perseverance, Kakashi still looked at her with his tenderness.

Would they have become whatever they were now if things had been different? If Kakashi had never been ordered to assassinate Father and if Uncle had never told her that he trusted him? Gohama had asked him the same question with different particulars in Buki, and he had told her not to think of what-ifs.

Her unspoken answer was still the same today, Gohama felt that she would have fallen in love with him in every possible what-if scenario.

Daiki's letter weighted on her chest, pressed as a hot iron into her skin, saved between her vest and shirt. And still, through all the anguish and the dread, a flutter between nervousness and excitement churned in her stomach with each new step that took her closer to the command tent.

Gohama hadn't been alone with Kakashi since their moment after her first war battle. He was always working, either stuck strategizing inside the tent, or running across each corner of their campsite, taking note of his soldiers and equipment, travelling to meet with the other taicho of the Alliance.

The only times she had seen him sitting idly was during dinner at the mess tent and the occasional sight of his foot dangling from a tree branch. Gohama had never had the courage to interrupt his scarce precious moments of respite. Today was the first time and only because it was meant for her taicho and not whatever they were beyond the Third Division.

With a calming breath and a small pep talk on how she was being ridiculous, Gohama pushed the flap of the tent to the side. Kakashi was sitting on a folding chair, his feet propped up on the table as he browsed through a stack of papers.

"Kakashi-taicho."

"I don't like it when you call me that." He drawled out with no annoyance in his voice, his eyes not rising from the papers.

Gohama decided that was enough permission to enter the tent and moved to stand beside where his feet rested on the table. "It's just so you know to who I'm asking things."

Kakashi let the papers fall on his thighs as he leaned back on the chair, arms crossed and half-lidded eye gleaming in amusement. "What are these things you want to ask of your taicho?"

"Permission to go to campsite B to deliver a letter to the mother of a dead shinobi."

His gaze moved down to the papers, as he shifted aimlessly through them. "Yamamoto Daiki?"

"His mother is a chunin in Darui's division."

"Shouldn't I go too?"

Only Kakashi to think it was his duty to give condolences to the families of his dead soldiers in the middle of a war. "You are already doing more than enough, Kakashi."

"Are you going to fly there with Seiryu?" There was an edge to his question other than concern for the safety of her travel.

Gohama hadn't used Seiryu's chakra during the battle and when she didn't answer immediately, Kakashi stood up, his eyes lowered to the seal hidden under her armguard. "Did something happen? I can look over the seal, I remember most of the fuinjutsu on the scroll."

Gohama instinctively crossed her arms as he towered over her. "It's not the seal."

"If you can't access Seiryu's chakra, you should tell me, Gohama, I need to have a sense of my division's powers." His voice softened as he added, "You can also tell me if it's something else."

"We're not talking. Seiryu…"

The rest of the words died in her mouth. Gohama didn't want to stir the subject that Kakashi had decided to keep quiet and still, she didn't want another person begging her not to do it, resenting her for even considering the possibility.

Especially Kakashi. Gohama was afraid he would see in her his father, whose suicide had crushed him so deeply, even if this had nothing to do with her old suicidal thoughts. Or worse, Rin… who he had never blamed, stacking all the guilt only on himself.

Gohama wanted to protect the small precarious balance they had now. They were still uncertain on how to be with each other, especially around other people, but it was more than she ever thought she would get before coming there, and now that she had it, Gohama didn't want to give it up.

Her gaze moved up to meet his, light and unworried, and she smiled. "You know, two people sharing a body, things get a little shaky from time to time."

Kakashi didn't show if he was satisfied with her shallow explanation and he also didn't probe further. "Will you stop by the medical post on the way back?"

"Yes, I haven't been there today, and also have more chakra dome tags to deliver."

He watched her silently with an unnervingly intent eye, before shifting his attention to the movement of his hand as he straightened a map laying on the table. "I'm visiting my wounded shinobi tonight, see if they're making good recoveries. Maybe… you can walk back with me."

Her heart started hammering against her chest. "Yes."

"How was today? Did you have any… triggers or…"

Despite her resolution to be more forthcoming with Kakashi, Gohama had already evaded one of his questions tonight, so, against the prickle that wanted to dismiss his worries, this time she answered honestly.

"There was a moment when things could have… I could have freaked out a little, but I didn't. And you, how have you been doing?"

"Maa," His eyebrow lifted slightly in surprise and he pulled his hitai-ate out of his forehead to thread his finger through his hair. "tired but in control."

Gohama knew there was more to his tiredness, but the control seemed honest. It was a testament to his amazing strength that he was so efficient under so much stress and responsibility.

Here he was, steady as always even with the dark circles under his eyes and the division over his shoulders, but that did not mean he wasn't suffering through it, that did not mean he did not feel everything so piercingly. She selfishly wanted a piece of his strength for herself and at the same time hold the weight of everything for him, a delusional part of her was certain that she could do it if it was for him.

"You give too much."

"I feel like I don't give enough."

Her fingers ached with the impulse of brushing away his silver bangs as they fell over the sharingan, fingertips gliding over the skin of his forehead and down the side of his face, as if that would lift the misery from his eyes. In her mind, she imagined him with his head resting on her chest as he sat on the chair and her fingers threading through his thick hair in loving soothing massages.

But Kakashi was standing, towering her and so still, and suddenly all that weight was so intimidating and she was so inadequate. Whatever delusions her heart made up meant nothing in reality, because Gohama was just Gohama.

"Tell me what I can do."

Kakashi searched her face with his half-lidded eyes, silver lashes curving over grey and red. There was so much anticipation tingling in her skin, every of their breaths seemed to tremble in the air between them, his lightning chakra crackling with her own.

"Summon Yukine to go with you."

"Alright." Gohama took a step back to reign in all her longing and disappointment too. "I'll go now… Thank you for letting me do this, Kakashi."

"You'd probably do it either way."

"Probably." Gohama confirmed with a cheeky smile. "How did you put it the other day?"

Kakashi also smiled and it made her chest flutter. "Kyura Gohama and authority don't go hand-in-hand."

"I think my problem is not so much with authority itself, but my lack of trust in it. We've seen what happens when I do trust and follow blindly." She winced at her sudden oversharing and radical overturn of the mood of the conversation. "Well, I better shut up and go now."

"You don't need to. Shut up, that is."

Gohama nodded and offered him a little wave before turning around to leave. "Try not to burden yourself too much."

As her hand pushed open the canvas flap, Kakashi called her again. "Gohama." She looked over her shoulder at him, but he had that blank look plastered on his face. "I'm glad you're alive."

Her lips turned in a sincere smile. "I'm still glad I'm alive, and that you're too, Kakashi."

Only as she left the command tent, her feet leading her out of the campsite, did the sting rise from her heart to her tongue.

Her heavy heartbeat shook inside her ribs as she stood outside the tent of Daiki's mother. Gohama knew she had already learnt of his death, a list of missing and deceased shinobi reached every campsite at the end of every day, and this letter was coming four days late. Gohama had been busy with helping at the medical post after her first battle and a little too rubbed raw from it to have the fortitude of carrying such a heavy letter.

Every time she remembered the weight of it against her chest, Gohama imaged how much Aika, her own living image of motherhood, would suffer if little Misa died. Aika would also have been better at comforting a grieving mother, Gohama didn't need to go all the way to northern Snow to find a better person than her, but she had made a promise to Daiki.

Gohama called uncertainly for Yamamoto-san and, after a moment of silence when all she heard was the pound of her own heart, the swish of an opening zip sounded and the canvas moved to the side. A woman with light hair peeked at her, the weight of the world pressed to the creases of her face, the dark circles under her eyes. She only offered Gohama a blank tired look, but she could recognised the shape of her green eyes, so much like Daiki's.

"Yamamoto-san, my name is Kyura Gohama, I have come here to deliver this."

Gohama bowed at the waist before presenting the bloodied letter to Daiki's mother. A strangled gasp tore through the woman's throat. Gohama's eyes followed her trembling thin hands, afraid of knowing what her face looked like, as they reached, slowly and scared, for the piece of paper that held the last words of her dead son.

She stared down at it for a long breathless moment before stumbling back in unsteady legs. Gohama caught her by the shoulders and carefully led her to sit on one of the cots inside the tent. Yamamoto-san's wide gaze never left the letter, gentle fingers holding it with so much care.

"Do you need anything, Yamamoto-san?" Gohama whispered softly, afraid of interrupting the woman's grief.

"Can you pass me my water, please?"

She brought her the canteen resting above a folding beside table. "I can also bring you warm tea or food, if you wish. Perhaps something stronger."

Yamamoto-san laid the letter on her lap as she drank small sips of water and patted the side of her cot. "No, nothing, thank you, but if you could sit with me…" Gohama sat, her movements as uncertain as she felt, hands laced on her knees to stop them from fidgeting. "How did you get his letter? Were you there when…"

"I was…" Her voice left as a muted breath.

Yamamoto-san still didn't lift her petrified eyes from the swirling characters written onto the face of the envelop. "Was he scared…?"

Her teeth clenched shut, what could Gohama say to a grieving mother other than the truth? Nothing could abate the suffering, nothing could hide the loss. "He was, but he was so brave too. Daiki fought until the end."

"How?"

"A wound on his neck and stomach."

"Quick?"

Gohama wasn't sure how long he had been laying alone at the edge of the field, how long he had battled the cold pull of death in her arms, the seconds had both lingered and fled not giving time for a medic to arrive.

"Yes."

Yamamoto-san lifted the letter to her mouth and her head sunk over the weight of grief onto her hands. "It's not fair…" She whispered in a hoarse broken voice. "It's not fair… a mother should never live to see his son die… My Daiki…"

She broke into sobs when her son's name left her lips. Gohama was helpless as the woman cried after Daiki, her hand gingerly resting on her back even if under the weight of grief Yamamoto-san couldn't feel it. Her own eyes prickled, chest tight and aching, as the woman's pain smothered the tent until it seemed Gohama's own.

Gohama stayed even after Yamamoto-san cried herself to exhaustion, letter still unread and clasped in her hands. She carefully moved the woman to lay on her cot, who staggering between sleep and catatonic quietness, and settled the canteen right beside her.

It didn't feel right to leave her alone, so Gohama sat on the ground at the end of the bed, her arms around her knees, fingers pressing down on the scar at her shoulder, and eyes fixed on the swaying corner of the bedspread of the other cot.

One of the kunoichi that shared the tent with Yamamoto-san shook her shoulder and told her she could leave. The sea breeze mixed with the smoke from the bonfires spread around the campsite where the soldiers sat to eat, drink and talk some of the heaviness away.

Her eyes fixed on seeing the faces of the shinobi on that campsite, really seeing the faces, trying to memorise them, trying to find the person behind them, more than the soldier, more than the comrade. Under the uniforms they were someone's child, someone's sibling and cousin and friend, they were their own person with dreams and ambitions.

How couldn't she not do it when with each passing day more mothers and fathers lost their children, more fiancés would never get married, more little kids were waiting home for their parents to cross the threshold of their home again only for them to return in a body bag, a casket or an urn, more plans suspended for the war would never be taken on again?

What if it was selfish, what if she only wanted to put out the burning weight in her chest with the shape of all the letters and all the cries of childless mothers?

Someone rammed against her side and Gohama turned back to apologise, but before she could get her words out, her heart seized. She found both of them sitting around a bonfire, their faces flickering with the flames, Nikato, as he babbled with food in his mouth, and Kisamaru attentively gathering rice with his chopsticks.

Gohama would have been tempted to run away if her legs hadn't frozen under her. All she could do was stare, her trembling fingers holding onto the scales of her vest. It didn't compare to the feeling of having Kisamaru's head turn and skim through his surroundings before landing on her.

He didn't hide the surprise that opened through his face. For too long seconds, they just stared at each other, those clear lavender eyes as sharp and baring as before, while Nikato continued to chat away, not noticing Kisamaru wasn't listening anymore.

His dark eyebrows bunched together and it made Gohama break out of her daze. She raised her hesitant hand at the height of her shoulder to give him a small wave. It was a ridiculous thing to do after a year apart and a fake death between them, but in her stunted state that was all her body could manage.

Kisamaru didn't react, only a small inflection of his eyes let his resentment seep through. Nothing Gohama hadn't expected, he was the least foolish of them, he was the only one that had known asking her to come back to Konoha wouldn't bring her back.

Nikato noticed his state then, his own eyes following the path of Kisamaru's as they led to her. His gaze widened in shock as it landed before it narrowed, burning and hateful, something she hadn't seen directed at her from him since she first entered the team.

Unlike Kisamaru, Nikato didn't stay still. With large steady steps, he moved towards her, the dread circling in her veins washing away into resignation.

"How dare you show up here, Kyura!" He hissed as he landed before Gohama, a finger pointed at her. "How dare you not be dead! You have no right to fight with us!"

"I have every right." Gohama told him quietly. "Akatsuki destroyed my village because they were after me. I have every right."

"It always comes down to you, right, Kyura? You never did give a fuck about anyone else." The fist resting at the side of his thigh raised and Gohama didn't move, ready to take any blow. "You lying selfish piece of shit!"

Before his knuckles could connect with her nose, Kisamaru held onto the crook of his elbow.

"You're protecting her?" Nikato hissed again, his voice a growl of hate that was never meant for Kisamaru, while trying to shake himself out of his grasp.

"Leave, I'll handle him." Kisamaru told her with his unnerving poised expression, even as Nikato started spewing insults and threats at both of them.

Gohama rushed out of the campsite and once outside she ran, her eyes narrowed against the bite of the salty air. She tried to blank her mind under the adrenaline of a sprint through tree branches and tried to smother the prickling of self-loathing bitter in her lungs.

There was gratitude too, because she had seen them and they were well, even if the reunion had been nothing but sour, they were alive and well. She had wanted to see Hansuke too, from afar and not for long, just enough for her eyes to make certain he was safe for themselves. Who knew when it would be the next time she saw him? Who knew if there was even a next time?

Her heart wrenched painfully inside her chest and Gohama had to stop and grip at her vest as she breathed in steadily, clearing the futile storm growing in her mind with the quiet sounds of the forest, alive and furtive in the dark. An owl hooted above her, the wind rustled in the upper leaves of the oaks, a stick cracked underneath her and behind her a familiar chakra signature whispered into her awareness.

Gohama jumped down onto the grass and waited for the two clear eyes to bare her with a simple stare.

"Hyuga-san."

His hands rose into attack position, soaked in chakra, and he activated the byakugan. "You're a clone?" Kisamaru asked with a disgruntled tone directed mostly at himself.

Gohama let out a relieved sigh with his reaction at her uncharacteristic politeness. She had not been ready for killing a clone with Kisamaru's face.

"You never liked it when I called you Kisa-chan." The veins around his eyes fell with his hands and somehow that only made the dread in her stomach colder. "Now that we've asserted none of us are clones… are you here to…"

"To see you and talk to you."

Kisamaru took the final steps to break their distance, his hands grasping both her biceps as he watched her through dissecting eyes.

"Are you going to use those freaky eyes to exam me?"

Kisamaru shook his head with hidden amusement curling at the corner of his lip. "I don't need to, I can already see that you look different."

"In what way?"

"Alive, for one." His fingers pressed deeper into her arms. "And better. I'm glad you're back, Gohama, and I don't mean just geographically."

His words and gentle expression flowed through her as a wave of consolation and Gohama felt her throat tighten with the piercing emotion of it. Her hand came to rest above his own and she squeezed it.

"Thank you, it's so good to see you, Kisamaru… so good to see you…" The wetness in her voice was showing and he gave a last squeeze to her arms before pulling away, giving her the space she needed not to break down.

"I'm also going towards the medical post." Kisamaru commented and she lifted an eyebrow at him, there was no reason for him to know where she was going. "I've heard that you have been helping there, the field medics are also missing these," He took one of her chakra dome tags from his medic kit. "and I could see that your pouch is full of them."

Gohama laughed in delight because even if his attentive and dissecting eyes had sometimes been an annoyance, she had always appreciated them. And here he was, Kisamaru in all his Kisamaru-ness. Her heart was rebelliously soaring with warmth, a pretend play that everything was as it had been in Konoha.

"These are exceptional. We're grateful that you're sharing them with the Alliance."

Her finger pointed at the hitai-ate on her forehead. "I am part of the Alliance, all my jutsu are ours. And these are also a fruit of Jiraiya's genius, they never belonged just to me."

Kisamaru nodded solemnly at the memory of the dead sannin and Gohama couldn't stop the prickle of guilt in her chest.

"How are you just… okay with me?" Gohama asked, voice small.

"There are a lot of things I don't understand and that I am resentful about, but if I don't talk to you how are we supposed to get past them?"

"And you want to?"

"Of course I do, you're my friend."

A sudden tear escaped past her waterline and Gohama turned her head slightly to the side, her finger quickly brushing it away from her cheek. "Still, you should have let Nikato punch me, I deserve more than a punch."

"You do, but that's not how we can make things right again."

"It can be, Nikato and I started our friendship with a fight. Maybe that's just his way of dealing with things, punching his way through them."

Kisamaru answered her serious tone with a small snicker. "All right then, I won't stop him the next time he tries to punch that Kyura face of yours."

Gohama laughed as well, her heart light with his banter, before asking with just as much lightness. "How happy were the Hyuga when they learnt I defected?"

"Irritatingly glad that their mistrust was validated. No one knows, I wish they knew why you defected, maybe it would wipe some of that moralistic conceit off their faces to know their village was an accomplice in Buki's massacre."

"Kisamaru…" Gohama whispered, her heart suddenly heavy at the resentment in his voice, concerned that he would hold that bitterness against his own clan.

"It's true, they painted you as a demon with the power of a biju, while they pretend our village isn't built in blood."

"They were right, I was a demon, Kiyohime—"

"So you've heard that."

"I completely lost my humanity during those months, I completely lost it when I…"

The words died in her mouth, not wanting to voice what she had done to Kakashi. Her fingers started trembling and she could feel the slickness of blood coating them. Gohama looked down, curling and uncurling them, making sure that there wasn't any blood in them, stuck between the creases.

"I killed so many people… they had families, people they cared about… I only spared a few, and only in the beginning. I killed a kid, he was too young to have been in the massacre and in my rampage I killed him.

"We're shinobi…" Gohama breathed out with a dry, biting chuckle, the bile in her heart rising to burn a path up her chest and throat to her mouth, soaking into her words. "It justifies all the vicious things we do and are, it justifies that kids should go to war and die or survive completely ripped apart. Or we pretend it justifies anything. Duty is a piece of shit of an excuse to kill. I wasn't even protecting anyone… Where was the honour in what I did, where was the good?

"And you… I hurt you so much too, I wrecked our team. And then there's Genma." Her voice stuck to the lump in her throat and Gohama could only say his name in a breathless whisper. "Kakashi…

"I regret it. It's not just guilt or remorse, I truly regret it. If I could go back I'd change it. I'd change the past year of my life. I've obsessed so much over it even when I know it means nothing, what's done is done, it means nothing…"

"Would you prefer not to have known the truth?"

"No, never that. If there's one thing I'm glad for it's the truth. But I'd have returned to Konoha. If I could go back, I would endured staying in Konoha. You didn't deserve the way I abandoned you."

"You're doing the same thing, Gohama. Stop it." Her eyes snapped to him at the harshness in his voice.

"What?"

"What you've always done with Buki. You're doing the same thing with us. Did you hear your words? 'I would endure staying in Konoha.' I never wanted that for you, Gohama, and I would never ask that of you. Of course, I didn't want you to leave, but I most of all wouldn't want you to stay in a place that made you miserable.

"Nikato doesn't understand it, I'm not questioning his loyalty, but he was raised a civilian, that seed of us shinobi with our clans and our villages, he doesn't understand it, and it's okay. But I do, Hansuke does too, Genma, Kakashi.

"In the beginning, Hansuke only tried to get you to come back because he was being a blind fool. The time they finally found you, he had always meant to stay with you. Of course he was a fool again, thinking you would have accept that he'd betray Konoha."

Kisamaru shook his head, an uncharacteristic look of bewilderment opening his expression. "He probably knows you better than anyone else, but it's as if he always overlooks what he does know."

Gohama crossed her arms and watched her feet as they stepped on the grass of the forest. "We talked."

"And…"

"I told him I didn't want to be with him. Not now and not… later. I broke his heart." Her eyes rose to his as she begged him, "Will you look after him for me, Kisamaru? He needs your support."

"And you?"

"I already knew it was coming, I had a lot of time to discern over everything and prepare for it."

"Doesn't mean it hurts less when it actually comes."

Gohama stumbled at the open understanding in his eyes. Before, every time she had vented with him about Hansuke, Kisamaru had only shown his disconcerting neutral look. It seemed that she hadn't been the only one to change in the past year.

"I'm worried about him, but I'm appeased. There was always a weight from our relationship, even with how much good he did to me. I could never be fully in it and that wasn't fair for him, and it wasn't fair to me. And the friendship we had, it became so complicated… I know this was the right decision."

She smiled sadly at him as her words ended. "And you? How has your life been?"

His cheeks tinted with an embarrassed blush as he looked away from her and curiosity stirred in her stomach.

"I found someone…" With the timid tone of his voice, there was no mistaking his meaning.

Gohama's feet stopped abruptly as she let out a little squeal of excitement. Kisamaru's answer was to look at her with an unamused glare while the blush spread down his neck.

"Aren't you going to give me their name?"

"It's Mizuki."

"Mizuki, as in your friend from the Academy?" Kisamaru answered her with a small nod and Gohama broke into another squeal.

She had never become particularly close to Nikato and Kisamaru's friends from the Academy, but they had brought her to their hangouts a few times. Mizuki was a shy, kind girl, and even if he had never seemed romantically interested in her, bonds changed and Mizuki appeared to have left Kisamaru smitten enough that he would commit himself to a relationship.

"This explains it! I'm not the only one that looks different."

"What do you mean?" He asked with narrowed eyes and Gohama only offered him a delighted grin.

"I'm so happy for you, Kisa! Aren't you going to tell me anything else?"

Kisamaru explained in curt words that when Gohama defected and their team had become shaky, Mizuki had been a constant presence for him and once he finally let himself be vulnerable with her, their relationship had shifted into something deeper and everything had bloomed from that.

"Is she also in the Alliance?"

"Yes, she's a chunin in Gaara-sama's division."

"So, what else have you been doing the past year besides falling in love?"

A fierce red spread through his face and chest at her words and he tried to maintain his dignity with his familiar poised straight spine. "I've also started branching out my medical knowledge. Psychiatry, specifically conflict-related trauma and consequent disorders."

"Kisamaru… that's amazing."

"Shinobi are in desperate need of support and treatment in the mental health department, especially after this war, and it's incredibly undeveloped."

"Trust me, I know."

His eyes turned carefully to her. "Does it offend you if I say you are one of the reasons I decided to turn into psychiatry?"

Gohama let out a small sigh, her heart tightening again in so much warmth, so much gratitude for him, and always that hint of guilt and undeserving sting. "Of course not, I'm touched…"

Her eyes lowered to watch her fingers swirling around each other. "I've been thinking of giving it a try… Sometimes I wonder how I would have turned out with the right psychiatric care… I had always assumed all this… this brokenness… was a part of who I was and couldn't be changed… I don't know if out of self-loathing or fear of taking responsibility for my own healing. Maybe both. But now, these past months…, I've realised that I can heal, not everything of course, some things will always stay. And I have healed."

"I know, I can see it, even without the help of my freaky Hyuga eyes."

His simple joke made a small smile upturn her lips, but couldn't ease the regret of her voice. "I wonder if I'd realised everything sooner maybe… why didn't I see it then? Why did I fuck up so bad? Why…?"

"There's nothing like the duty to dead people that we still love. And there's nothing like having something hammered into you since a child. Something like this." Kisamaru said firmly as he pointed at her jinchuriki seal and then took off the hitai-ate tied around his forehead. "I know, I have one too."

Her heart broke for him at the sight of the sharp green lines of the Hyuga curse seal on his pale skin. She had only seen it once before, on a mission where he had been wounded with a gash near his eye.

"It's not the same."

"Maybe not, it's harder to see the cage when its bars don't literally torture you every time to try to step out of it. Your seal is good, you've done good with it and you'll do good with it, Gohama, but it's as much a curse seal as mine is, it just doesn't have the name."

Her mind fell back to the lives tied to her own, to Kisamaru and the thread that locked his life and led to her forearm.

"When we went after you in Buki and found Kakashi, I thought you'd only break free from all of it when you died. For one of the only times in my life I'm grateful that I was wrong."

"If it makes you feel better, I did die, in a way. I really was dying and people don't lie when they speak of death experiences. It helped me learn what I wanted of my own life, of myself and it freed me enough to start going after it.

"The Kyura's greatest downfall was being a shinobi clan, just as my greatest downfall was always being a shinobi. But I'm more than a Kyura, it just took me a long time to see that."

Gohama stopped again, her gaze meaningful as she looked at his byakugan eyes. "It's a shame I was too lost to have seen it in you, Hyuga Kisamaru."

Gohama had always found in Kisamaru a company in everything related to their sibling clans, so divided in their ancient resentment and yet so much the same in how they lived their bonds and duty. But her wounded eyes had always missed what she had needed most to see.

He searched in her expression for what she wasn't saying, and as always he read what was written in it so easily. "You'll resign after the war."

"Hopefully."

"What will you do then?"

Gohama smiled and let her head fall back to watch the sky between the leaves. "Great question, I don't have anything planned yet. There's some dreams of mine, some too crazy to ever come true, but others not so much."

"Like what?"

"This may sound completely uncharacteristic, but I wouldn't mind being a gardener." Gohama shared with her newfound shyness since returning to them, to the ninja world.

"Not really, you were always complaining about how Hansuke's backyard was a complete loss of potential, but you also never did anything about it."

"Unfortunately I was only worried about either getting drunk or deadly then. Mother had a beautiful garden, I used to love taking care of a little patch with some flowers. I think I could see myself doing that… I'll also continue studying and developing my fuinjutsu, but with a different approach, less like a weapon and more like a tool."

"Where are you going to do this?"

"I'm done being a reclusive wanderer and I'm done thinking of every place I stay as just temporary location. First the monastery, then Konoha, then the Kuma. I want a… a home… I just don't know if I'll ever find one…"

Gohama had already bargained with herself that for a good life she didn't need a home, but her foolish heart would not quiet its silent gnawing longing.

"And what do you see in those dreams of a home?"

"Snow."

Kisamaru watched her through sad soft eyes, with so much understanding and care, when before there had always been a probing edge to them. Gohama suspected that it had been his dear Mizuki to help him bring into his eyes the caring side he hid so well.

"Can we visit you at least?"

"I'll need you to visit. Will you, Kisa, even if you're the only one to come?"

"I won't be the only one. Nikato is Nikato, he won't stay mad forever, and Hansuke is Hansuke, he'll always want you to be in his life, Gohama. Genma never resented you for leaving, I think he always thought you eventually would, and Kakashi loves you."

Her heart jerked inside her chest at the blatant way he said it. Gohama wasn't oblivious enough to think that wasn't a big possibility, but she had never voiced it in her head, and she had never heard it voiced by anyone.

"Those crazy dreams you talked about, it's Kakashi, he's in them, isn't he?"

"You all are in them." Gohama could feel the heat rising to her cheeks and leaned slightly so her hair would cover her profile, but her skin still prickled from his unamused deadpan look at her attempt to evade what he was clearly asking. "But even if that doesn't happen and no one wants to come, will you come, Kisamaru?"

"Of course."

This time Gohama didn't quiet down her need to express her gratitude, her affection, her love for Kisamaru, even all of her regret. She moved in for a hug, her arms snaking around his torso and squeezing him against her, as her head settled on his shoulder. His tentative hands came to rest on her back, offering her a few soft pats.

"This is a little awkward but it's nice." Gohama was certain this was the first time they were hugging for themselves, their movements still uncertain. Nikato had always been the one to push them both into a group hug. "Thank you, Kisamaru, for everything. I missed you, I really missed you."

"I mourned you." He whispered back, but with no resentment in his tone. "You could have told us."

Her months with the Kuma would always be tainted with their grief. Had it even been different from when she abandoned them to become Buki's shuriken? Gohama always took from them to get something for herself. Her healing was at the cost of their suffering and it tainted it.

"I know."

With freshly washed hands, Gohama started redressing Ichiro's wound, carefully wrapping the bandages around his amputated leg. The worst of the procedure had thankfully ended, his hands grasping onto the linens at his sides and painful grunts escaping from his closed mouth. It was the most he showed, his dark eyes usually hollow every time she came into his tent.

Two divisions had fought that day which meant a new wave of injured had arrived. The medical post was a turmoil of overworked medics and not enough people to heal everyone, but in Ichiro's room there was always a stifling quiet. No one visited him. He preferred his silent lonely days to staying in a larger tent with other wounded shinobi and on his worst days asked the nurses not to talk when attending to him.

Since her first time helping with changing the bandages and toileting, the medics and nurses had delegated him to her. Still, all Gohama knew of him was that he was from northern Earth and her talk of Northern Snow with its white mountains was the only one he tolerated, softening for a few moments the hard edges of his mouth. Ichiro was only a couple of years older than Hansuke and still the grief carved into his face made him look so old, so withered.

He always watched intently as she changed his bandages, eyes sharp and loading on the stumps cutting down the bottom of his thighs. Every time she entered his room, Ichiro asked her to touch his calves and Gohama did, her hand pushing down onto empty the mattress. "I can still feel them." He always said, voice hollow and eyes hollower.

Ichiro had asked her to bring him a pen and paper so he could write a letter home and that had given her a hint of hope, but the paper and the pen just sat there, bare and unused on his bedside table.

For shinobi amputations were always the damage that hit the hardest, they were a certain end to anyone's duties. Overnight shinobi were ripped out of not only their limbs but also their sense of meaning.

"Gohama-san…"

"Ichiro." Gohama returned gently, not lifting her eyes from where she was redressing his leg.

"How was it like? Almost dying?"

It didn't surprise her that he knew of her close call. The Alliance had come to war sure that she was dead even without a body because of the pool of blood soaked into the snow. If Gohama hadn't been a jinchuriki she certainly would have died.

But she had expected him to be able to answer for himself. Perhaps the explosion that had tattered his legs had left him unconscious, and he had simply woken up on that bed with nothing below his thighs. That seemed crueller to her, somehow.

She finished her job first and after washing her hands on the basin returned to sit on the bench beside his bed.

"There was regret, fear, grief… and peace and…" Gohama stopped herself before saying the dangerous, easily misunderstood word, freedom.

"And?" His eager eyes watched her carefully with a light she hadn't seen in them before, it made her stomach twist.

"Most of all for the first time in my life I really wanted to live." Her lips turned in a small smile. "And luckily I did."

Ichiro searched her face before lowering his pensive eyes to his hands as they rested above his stomach.

"Do you need anything else from me, Ichiro?" Gohama asked and he answered with a small shake of his head. "Are you finally going to give that pen and paper a good use?"

His eyes moved to his bedside table, watching the pen resting over the blank pages and envelop she had brought for him. "Maybe."

Gohama stood and patted his arm gently. "I'll come back to bring you your supper."

"Gohama-san," The corner of his mouth upturned slightly and his eyes softened in the first attempt at a sincere smile that Gohama had seen from him. "thank you for your patience with me. I won't be such a burden anymore."

Gohama couldn't stop the wide grin that stretched her lips at his honest gratitude, and at the relief of seeing that tonight he didn't seem as weighed down in misery.

"There's no need for that, Ichiro, you were never a burden. But it'd be nice if you finished at least half your meal."

"I can't make promises."

Gohama left for the kitchen tent, meeting the nurse in charge of serving supper to help him. One of the common tents was loud with hungry shinobi waiting for their food. The loudest was a shinobi from Kumo that reminded her of Genma, with his cheeky smirk and a tendency to flirt with every woman, never failing to both exasperate her and lighten her mood.

The wheels of the cart squeaked as she moved towards the single and double tents, avoiding raised patches of grass, pebbles and the hurried medics running from injured to injured. She always started at the end, with Ichiro's tent to give him more time to eat, maybe this evening he would actually take it.

Ichiro had seemed less anguished as she changed his bandages, his eyes more serene, with not as much hollowness, and he had actually smiled, unlike the painful twist of his lips just to be polite. Maybe he would write that letter to his family, maybe he had found a sliver of hope that flickered in him with new gentle light.

Her shoulder pushed against the canvas flap. Before Gohama's mind made meaning of what her eyes were seeing, her hands were already covered in warm slippery blood, trying to press down on the pen-shaped hole in his throat, flooding it with Seiryu's chakra. Her chakra flared and she yelled for someone. Anyone else. Her hands had never been meant to care for life.