Of Duty and Bonds

by RedPowder

Kyura Gohama, a kunoichi from the Land of Snow, has a heart and will full of duty towards her Village, Bukigakure. She arrives in Konoha searching for excellence as a ninja, with Kakashi as her one distant liaison to a foreign Village. A story that explores Naruto's universe and the trials of a shinobi life. Slow build. Cover art: The Moon on the Musashi Plain, by Yoshitoshi T.

66. VII - Chapter 7

Part VII | Chapter 7

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"Seiryu."

"Gohama." Seiryu answered in a gentle smooth voice and the fingers around her stomach loosened slightly.

His massive size seemed particularly intimidating now, even if there was only openness and kindness in his ice blue eyes that held the universe in them. Gohama took the final steps until she was standing in front of him as he lay on the empty space of the seal, his chin supported on his paws.

"I'm sorry I used your chakra." She started uncertainly.

"You know perfectly well you don't have to apologise for that."

"Were you seeing yesterday?"

"I stopped when Kakashi arrived and I knew you wouldn't need me."

Her heart mellowed at knowing that even through their fight Seiryu still worried over her and made sure that she could take hold of all her pieces.

"So you don't know…" Gohama whispered as she looked down at her hands, her lips defencelessly spreading into a smile. "We talked…"

"Good news I'm guessing." Seiryu asked with amusement and she nodded. "That's good, Kakashi can be as difficult as you sometimes."

"You should have seen him yesterday, I think I fell in love with him all over again." Her face burned with a blush at the sudden sap that slipped through her mouth without any thought.

Seiryu smirked, all too smug. "You sure took your time admitting it, kiddo."

Her hand rose hesitantly and with one look from him, she let it rest against his snout, his ancient overwhelming chakra shuddering through her palm and up her arm.

Gohama watched as her fingers soothed through his rough skin. "I've been think about us, you and me… I'm always talking about wanting you to be free, how I keep tying you to me and my decisions. And I am now, with this war… but," Her eyes rose to his and she smiled sadly. "but I'm also tied to you."

His piercing eyes softened, the last of his barriers washing away at her words. "I've been around for a long time, Gohama. I've seen so many senseless wars and death and hunger. Humans dying, it's normal. But you, kiddo…" Seiryu whispered, the deep roar of his voice breaking with a frail tremble. "And knowing it's all because of me…"

"It's not because of you, Seiryu, and you know it. It's because some delusional psychopath wants to use your chakra for his plans. He's the reason I die, not you. If anything you've saved me so many times."

"I do know it, but that doesn't mean…" Seiryu's voice died out into a sigh that ruffled through her clothes and hair, cutting at her eyes. "I'm scared, Gohama."

His words hit with a pang to her chest, stilling the air in her lungs and twisting at it until it physically hurt. It took too long for her mind to catch up, for her mind to tie the godly tone of his voice to the meaning of his words, to tie the visceral power of his chakra and the magnificence of his eyes to the fear in his gaze.

Seiryu was the ten-tailed biju, an ageless ancient being, one of the most powerful creatures to touch the earth, and there was so much helplessness in him, so much vulnerability he almost never allowed her to see, allowed himself to show her. The humanity she had seen in how he cared for her seemed to pale in face of his fear.

It ungrounded her so suddenly and trembled her own fear, turning them into cold sharp shards.

Gohama had to force herself to talk, her mouth dry and tongue heavy. "I… I can't promise that I won't do it… I wish I could, Seiryu, but I can't. We never know how things will work out. All I can promise is to do it only as a last resort and I won't shut you out, no matter what happens."

She had always failed so greatly at understanding Seiryu, her care for him didn't seem enough to breach the unfathomable being that he was. So many of their falling outs and fights had risen from that and only now was she recognising it.

A seal tied them to each other, bound their lives together, his own essence circling through her pathways. Yet they felt so far apart most times, so different from each other. Only when they fought together had they become united and that had always left a bitter taste in Gohama's mouth.

"But I also don't want you to shut me out. I want us to be in this together."

"We are in this together, jinchuriki and biju."

Her forehead pressed to his snout. "Thank you, Seiryu for everything. You know I'm grateful, don't you? You know how much I value you in my life? Even with all the shit, I love being your jinchuriki."

"And I your biju."

---

Gohama opened the flap of the tent and even if she had already sensed Kakashi's chakra from outside, her heart still jerked at the sight of him, lounging on the ground with his back propped on his cot, Icha Icha opened in his hand, silver hair falling messily over his forehead and long bare muscled arms.

"You're here early." Gohama drawled out with a smile before turning her back to him to untie the clasps of her vest.

"We finished things earlier in the command tent."

Her stomach twirled in delight, the exhaustion of working at the medical post washing away from her muscles and mind at the opportunity of a small moment together with Kakashi. It was always difficult to find time to be together, she went to sleep and woke up to an empty space beside her.

"They're alive." Kakashi answered and a muted tightness in her heart released.

"Was there anyone you knew?"

"A few, but not well."

"Your friends weren't in the injured."

He would always be the one to read the lists of the deceased from the other divisions and tell her that her team and Genma weren't in them. In turn Gohama told him if she had seen anyone close to him in the medical post.

Her skin tingled wonderfully with the feel of Kakashi's eyes on her. Her hands peeled off her shirt slowly and then her mesh, leaving her only in her pants and bindings. However temped Gohama was to peek over her shoulder and watch the look in his eyes that ignited her skin, she continued taking off her clothes, shifting slightly on her feet, so he could see a glimpse of the side of her breast.

Kakashi deserved the little show and it was also good to her own feminine ego when she spent most of her days covered in sweat, dirt and blood.

"I know you asked Gai to have dinner with me." Gohama commented as she pulled one of his shirts she used to sleep in over her head. This time she looked over her shoulder at him, to show him a grateful smile for making sure she wouldn't be alone.

"I'm sorry I can't give you more of my time…"

"Don't be. You're giving me enough, Kakashi, and even if you weren't, it's not the time for me to ask that of you. Technically we're not even in a relationship, we're in a weird impasse."

"I still wish I could." Of course he did, but somehow that brought more guilt to her than gladness.

She finished her little show by tugging the shorts up her legs and turned fully to him. "I also met Sai. He's pretty entertaining in how socially inapt he is." Gohama chuckled lightly remembering the inappropriate even if well-intended questions and comments he had made during dinner. "I didn't know you had Root in your team."

Gohama had fought Root as a missing-nin, when Danzo had still been alive and had wanted her hunt down. She could recognise it in Sai's smooth pale expression and careful calculated movements, but there was something more that shone behind his eyes, devotion to their hitai-ate, loyalty to Kakashi.

"Danzo wanted to get Sasuke and his sharingan, Tsunade and I thought it was a good way of learning his plans. Everything turned out even better, Sai became our double agent."

"Let me guess," Gohama started as she kneeled in front of him and crawled to sit on his thighs. "Uzumaki Naruto used his smooth talking to erase years of indoctrination."

Kakashi's face lit up in an amused smile, but it never seemed enough to wash away the tiredness stuck under his eyes and to the lines around his mouth. "You guessed right."

"You should have made Naruto talk to me, then." Gohama commented light-heartedly even if the words felt heavy on her tongue. "I wish I'd killed Danzo myself. His name is one of the few I wanted written on my scroll. He was everything that is rotten in the shinobi world. But I can see why Sasuke deserved it better. Danzo and his sharingan obsession."

"Did he? After he killed Danzo, Sasuke tried to kill Sakura. I was almost too late and after that if Naruto hadn't gotten there… I was ready to kill him."

Her heart wrenched as she heard it. There was so much sorrow in his tired eyes as Kakashi said it, not a hint of resentment or anger even as he talked of his student's complete ruin, his student's danger to his team. Sasuke had always been one of the sorest spot in his heart, had always been one of those gnawing regrets that he burdened himself with.

Gohama hadn't known how low the last Uchiha had fallen. She had seen it in his eyes, when on an impulse she had followed him and warned him not to kill Itachi. She had seen that consuming hatred that rooted deep and desolated every piece of him, the hatred that was a rotten shape of his love.

Sasuke had killed Itachi and Danzo, who and what else would he find to fill his insatiable purpose?

Her finger brushed down Kakashi's scar. "Such a curse, this eye."

Kakashi's sharingan watched her through his droopy lid, all of the Uchiha's curse of power locked into the bright red of the eye, like blood, like doom, like death. He let out a deep shaky breath before dropping his head back on the cot.

Yet Kakashi had done good with it, better than any Uchiha ever had. There was a reason Obito had passed on his power to Kakashi, he had known Kakashi was strong and worthy enough not to erase himself in the sharingan's voracity, in the Uchiha curse. Maybe if Obito had been alive he would have done good too.

Gohama pressed a kiss to the tip of Kakashi's chin and along the edge of his jaw, his skin smooth and smelling of shaving cream.

Kakashi's throat was opened for her and she glided her lips down feather lightly, following the raise of his corded muscle. Gohama let them rest over his quickening pulse point and kissed him there, her tongue darting out to taste him. His fingers pressed tighter onto her thighs, breath catching in his throat.

She learned his neck with her mouth, all his most sensitive spots from how his breathing itched, or throat rumbled, hands resting on his chest where they could feel his chakra and his heart. Her fingertips snaked down, over the dips of his abs and underneath his shirt. Kakashi's muscles twitched under her touch as her fingers glided over his scar-peppered skin.

The small bit out sounds in his throat and how his chakra buzzed between them led her on, as Gohama spread open-mouthed kisses down his neck, her hands rising and bringing his shirt with them.

Kakashi whimpered wonderfully as her thumb brushed over his nipple, the sound shooting right through her belly. Before Gohama could drag another moan from him, his hands clamped onto her wrists. "Gohama."

He straightened his head to look at her, his eyes glazed over and cheeks flushed. It only ignited the ache between her thighs.

"Sorry, I got a little carried away."

Kakashi sighed, his head falling back onto the edge of the cot, but he still didn't let her hands go.

Her eyes couldn't help but peek down. His shirt was still raised, showing her his pale skin over hard muscles, that enticing trail of silver hair that led down to his waistband and the bulge in his pants. Gohama swallowed, a flash of heat swirling low in her belly and making it so much harder not to touch all of him, not to taste him as she had wanted for so long.

She tore her greedy eyes away from him and slumped down against his chest, her head on his shoulder and careful not to brush his lap. Kakashi's heartbeat was still hammering against his ribs, but he finally let go of her wrists, his fingers burying in the hair at her nape and massaging her scalp.

They sat there quietly, letting the arousal wash out of their bodies. Gohama craned her neck back to see him still watching the ceiling of the tent.

She raised herself on her knees to peek at him, his hand fell from her hair limply, hitting the ground with a thud. Kakashi's lips were pressed into a line and eyes serious. She leaned into him, her forearms on either side of his head, and brushed her mouth against his, coaxing his lips to relax against hers.

"Are you back to worrying?" She whispered as she pulled away to look at him.

"I was thinking about Buki." A pang vibrated through her ribs as he said it and Gohama waited with a stilled breath for Kakashi to continue. "Me without this scar and this eye, and you without that seal and that chakra."

"But I like your eye." Gohama said as she kissed his scarred eyelid. "And I like your scar."

"I'd be a farmer and you'd be a gardener and we wouldn't have known any of this."

Gohama knew of this struggle, knew how easy it was to look outside through their shinobi eyes and see only good, because they saw no duty to kill, no duty to death.

"Not this specifically, but we would know of other things. Of poverty, hunger, civilian medicine, missing-nin ravaging our village without a way of protecting ourselves, I'd be defenceless against every men. And we would also know of the same things. Of violence, regret, pain. Of grief. Death."

"So we're doomed either way."

"We're doomed either way." Gohama agreed with a smile in her voice and in her eyes. "That's not such a bad thing, because it means it's all about doing the best with what we have."

"My best isn't enough." Kakashi whispered with the self-loathing that cringed at her heart.

"I didn't lie before, Kakashi. You give more than enough for all of us. So much, that it's too much." Her hands held onto his jaw, forcing him to look at her. "Don't… doubt yourself in this."

"I'm always doubting."

His sorrowful tone hit just as deeply, his half-lidded eyes heavy as they watched her, a quiet resignation behind them that stirred her own inadequacy.

"This is war, your soldiers will always die and get hurt. I honestly believe no one would be better than you, Kakashi, it's why the Alliance chose and trusts you to be a taicho. You earned it and you keep earning it. There isn't anyone else I would rather follow."

"You specifically asked to be in the First Division."

"Because Hansuke and Kisamaru are there. And also because I didn't think you'd want me under your command."

"I'm pretty sure you're above anyone's command, Kyura Gohama." Kakashi teased with a sudden lightness, but she wouldn't let him run away from the seriousness of how much faith she had in him.

"Not yours." Gohama said firmly, the touch of her hands as they cupped his face trying to mark her words into him. "I trust you, Kakashi, even to boss me around."

"Don't… I was always a terrible taicho with you."

"And I was a terrible subordinate. Things are different now."

Her words didn't appease him and Gohama was at a loss on what she could do for him. She leaned into him, her arms wrapping around his middle while she rested her head on his shoulder. Kakashi folded himself around her, his fingers brushing back the hair near her temple to press his lips there, to her forehead and her hair.

Everything about his strong hold around her was desperate and Gohama didn't know what she could do, helplessness clawing up through her chest until it clasped around her throat. She didn't know how she could feel so safe and so completely useless at the same time.

It was always this inadequacy, this helplessness with the people she cared about. And the guilt. The doubt in Kakashi was also her doing, she had worsened it, made it into a dark sucking shadow the moment Kakashi found the pool of her blood and he couldn't save her. How he still couldn't save her now from the bastard because there was a curse tied to Seiryu's chakra and he was tied to her own.

Love wasn't just a feeling, selfish and fruitless as it was locked inside of her. Gohama was loveless if she couldn't share it with others. Love was duty and surrender, love was action. And what had she ever done for Kakashi?

"I'm sorry." Gohama whispered through her burning throat.

"For what?"

"For being dead for months, for what I'm willing to do in this war."

His fingers stopped where they were brushing lazily through her hair and all of his muscles tensed up around her, hard as stone and prickling with his chakra.

She pulled back from his chest to look at him. "You always say that the cruellest thing I ever did to you was run away with the bastard, but we both know it was those months."

Gohama tried to read it in his expression, but the openness of before, when he had shown her everything of what he was feeling was gone. Back was the blank mask on his beautiful still flushed face. Even his eyes were back to their aloof droopiness and it made her heart pinch.

Gohama pulled her leg over his lap and his hand snapped to grasp onto her hip. "Where are you going?"

"To sleep, and you should too. You need to rest, Kakashi." Gohama explained while she moved away from him to work on unfolding the sleeping bag and placing their blankets so they could both fit comfortably.

The zipper echoed through the silent heavy air of the tent, her heart beating in her ears and skin prickling with anticipation, because she could feel that Kakashi wanted to say something in how his eyes settled on the back of her head.

"Why did you do it?" Kakashi finally asked, and even with such open words, she already knew what he was asking. "Why didn't you tell us you were alive, Gohama?"

Her hand soothed down the opened bag as she breathed through the sting in her throat. Her voice never shook as she said, "Because I'm selfish."

"But why were you selfish?"

"It doesn't matter, it won't justify anything."

"It does matter, Gohama, why do you always say that? Wasn't I clear enough? Haven't I been clear enough since I followed you to Buki?" His voice was forceful, with the same angered bewilderment as the last time she had said it and the muscles at her back stiffened at it.

Gohama could hear Kakashi dragging himself closer to her, the lightning of his chakra drawing a shiver down her spine, not a shiver of excitement but of dread. And she hated it, she hated that she felt dread at Kakashi's closeness, hated that her shame burned so deep that it rotted who he was to her.

"You matter to me, everything about you, I don't care if it doesn't justify things, I want to understand, to understand you… to know you, Gohama, everything."

His warm hand settled on her hip as Kakashi sat right behind her and her muscles relaxed in his gentle touch and soft deep voice. His lips brushed her shoulder as he murmured softly, "Won't you tell me?"

Of course she would, Gohama couldn't deny him anything when he asked it as lovingly as this, but it was the guilt that soured things, that turned her heart and tongue to lead.

"I didn't want to come back in the beginning." She started, her eyes fixed on her fingers as they griped her knee. "I thought it was best for everyone if you believed I was dead, I thought you would let me go."

"I could never let you go, Gohama."

"I know…" Her voice hoarse as she whispered it, her eyes burning with tears at the image of Kakashi in front of the memorial stone when her name had never been written there. That persistence of his, although blooming from his unbreakable love, had never been a healthy thing.

"The days passed and I wasn't so raw anymore. Then I started really working through everything in my life and I didn't want to stay forever hidden. I thought of sending Yukine to you, but there was always the possibility it would be leaked and I couldn't put the Kuma that welcomed me so kindly at risk."

Gohama bit into her knee with her nails as a bitter chuckle tore through her chest. "That's mostly an excuse, the real reason is that I needed to stay dead, to be free of everything and everyone. I forced you grieve me just because I needed to think, to gather myself, to… be dead to the world, even you."

It seemed even truer now that Gohama had returned from the dead. Once Gohama came back she was the Kyura heiress and ten-tails jinchuriki, everything in her life was tied down to it, from the people around her to the deepest crevasse of her being, her person, her identity. Gohama had always been a shinobi before she had been Gohama.

"Only dead shinobi stop being shinobi…"

Yet… with the Kuma there had been times when impossible things had happened. Immersed in the civilian life of the village, the civilian role of a healer, the civilian families and children, the civilian history, the tie had frayed, as a cord sunk too long in water. It had loosened where it had always constricted deep into her flesh, leaving behind marks and the light joyful feeling of unparalleled relief. And ever so slowly a new world revealed itself to her, ever so slowly she could recognise the silhouette of another and the same person.

And she wanted to learn her, to know her, to be her. More than anything else Gohama dreamed of her and reached for her.

Her eyes lifted to Kakashi as he watched her with so much aching tenderness. Suddenly it didn't feel as impossible, it didn't feel as if the confession was stuck to a drawer in her heart.

"I don't want to be a shinobi."

There was a moment of surprise in Kakashi's eyes before they warmed with bottomless understanding, even if there were still flickers of sadness in them.

"Then why are you here?" He whispered as his fingers brushed a strand of hair behind her shoulder and away from her face, his thumb gliding over her jaw.

Gohama gave him a small smile. "How could I not be here when all of you are here?"

His fingertips pressed into the back of her neck and jaw. "You don't have to fight, it's safer—"

Gohama stopped his rushing words with a shake of her head. "I want to fight for you and with you. That's all I've ever wanted with my life. To fight for the things I cherish. And that's what the Kyura weapon means, it's the fight for the things we cherish…"

She pulled back from him and turned away with a pitiful almost incredulous sigh, "It's so simple and I made it so complicated."

There was so much compassion in her for that lost girl, so much fear, and so much burning bitterness.

"I knew then and I know now how much you all suffered from my death, and still I don't…" Gohama looked down at her fingers as they tightened around the fabric of the sleeping bag, her throat quivering in guilt, but guilt meant nothing when it was barren, when it grew with no remorse. "I don't regret it."

"As you shouldn't."

Gohama snapped her head to watch Kakashi's expression shine with as much certainty as his voice.

"You were so thin that day I found you, you looked sick… and in Konoha, in Buki those last days… I've seen you break for so long, Gohama, I've broken you myself." Gohama was ready to protest, but he shook his head and gave her a wonderful smile. "And now I'm seeing you like this, with hope and life…"

Gohama couldn't not smile back. "I still have a long way to go, you saw me after Ichiro's death… But for me that had thought I would never get out that misery... This now… being here with you, Kakashi, the things I'm feeling, it's so… colourful… I'd forgotten how much I was actually missing."

"You're beautiful now." Kakashi whispered softly, a quiet loving wonder gleaming in his eyes as he looked back at her. "Not-not that you weren't before, trust me, you've always been beautiful," He added quickly, his words stumbling awkwardly before he recovered. "but a part of it is different now. More… radiant."

Her cheeks burned, the blush already spreading down her neck. The pinch of embarrassment became so uncomfortable, she had to lower her eyes to where her fingers rested on the sleeping bag. "That's so sappy, Copy-nin…"

"It is, isn't it?" He answered with amusement. "I lost you for a year, so I think I have the right to be sappy."

Gohama couldn't stop the light grimace at his words, and his thumb soothed over her cheekbone as a silent apology.

"Look at me again." Kakashi asked in a low soft whisper to which Gohama would never be able to say no. His eyes shone with delight and an endearing smirk upturned the corner of his mouth. "Yes. I definitely have the right to be sappy."

She couldn't stop her own smile from rising, but her pride wouldn't let him see it and Gohama pressed her forehead against his throat. A yelp slipped through her mouth as she felt herself manhandled onto her back, Kakashi pinning her down on the futon.

"Oh no, you don't get to hide from me, Hama. Especially not how charming you find me." Kakashi growled as leaned into her to spread fast kisses and nips on her face.

It was a burst of affection Gohama had never seen in Kakashi, hadn't even known he had it in him, and her heart was fluttering with so much fondness, so much love and a weightless drunken delight. Her chest broke with a laugh as he pulled her shirt up and decided to continue his assault on her belly. All of her shook from the free laughs, her ribs and stomach starting to ache as tears spilled past her eyes. Everything in her trembled from his tickling and her overwhelming joy.

Once Kakashi finally calmed down, he rose back to be in line with her eyes, his cheeks pink and a hint of embarrassment escaping from his eyes at the unexpected attack. Gohama smiled at him and he smiled back, so simple and so true her chest twisted at it. Her fingers brushed his bangs away from his eyes, unveiling the intense red of the sharingan to her. She traced the edge of his cheek and down to the small raise of his beauty spot.

"I also want to know you, Kakashi, everything."

That was what she wanted most, to know all of him, to understand all of him so she could love all of him, fully and truly.

Kakashi leaned his face into her hand. His lips pressed to her cheek, and glided down her neck until they found her scar, laying a kiss there.

"I would endure those months again if I had to choose, only to see you like this, Gohama…"

Gohama could feel the consuming surrender rising to her skin, where it heated, where it played at her want for him, where the blurred the lines between giving and taking. The violence of it always scared her, how it seemed to crush her from inside out, how it fevered in her with a sort of despair.

Gohama leaned in, her lips pressing into his softly. She always tamed it with the gentle side of her affection, even if it was never enough to abate it, it was enough to express a part of it. This time Kakashi was the one that didn't hesitate in rising the intensity of their kiss, lowering himself into her completely, his arm snaking under her back to press her closer, slating his head to where he could kiss her more deeply.

She was the one to pull away before they could fall into dangerous territory, the puffs of his breath teasing the skin of her chest through the fabric of her shirt as he rested his head on it.

"Kakashi…" Gohama breathed out as she held him impossibly closer to her. "I'll do anything for you. Anything you ask of me or order me and I'll do it."

Kakashi shook his head against her chest. "No, not like that, Gohama, not with me. I don't want to be another blind duty."

---

Her thumb brushed through the palm of her hand but there was no longer any blood stuck there. Gohama opened and closed her fingers into a fist and still she couldn't make it disappear. Not even Sakura with her hands that controlled life and death had saved her, not even Seiryu's chakra with the power to heal all scars and hold life by a mere thread had saved her.

Gohama had seen it in Sakura's eyes the moment she knew it was hopeless. The moment she knew she had to pull back from the girl because there were other dying wounded and her chakra was too precious. Still, she hadn't pulled away and still the girl had died.

It had been a girl this time, Kumo with a rare bloodline limit and endless burning duty. Her dark eyes had held on with a desperate alertness until she couldn't fight the blood loss anymore. Thirteen, Gohama had learnt later. Thirteen.

Hadn't Kakashi been thirteen during the Third Shinobi War?

Her nails bit into the palm of her hand. Gohama had renounced to the big ambitions but then there were moments when the cruelty and the injustice were too searing in her and she could only find purpose in desolating everything and building something new. She knew she had the power, a single breath of Seiryu and an entire shinobi village would be nothing but ash and burnt hopes.

If Gohama had been gifted with this power, wasn't it her duty to use it?

A sharp spear of ice pierced through her stomach at the sudden disturbing thought. Duty had always been a dangerous vine wrapped around her and all the others present in her life, one that could bloom with flowers or spiral with thorns.

Who was she to think that she could hold the truth of the world, that she could shape perfection with Seiryu's chakra when she had been only death and pain brought through him? Even with all the power in the world, Gohama was still just Gohama.

That was the only difference between her and the masked bastard. She had burst out of her own delusion, while he continued to believe that whatever he accomplished wouldn't rotten itself in the cruelty of the world.

There was something else trembling in her chest lost in all her fury, as she thought of him, something aching and warm… no, no. Fuck, it was crazy, it was dangerous, it was treason. It was understanding.

"Gohama." Her head snapped up at the sound of Gai's voice calling for her and she found the entire table staring at her. "What about you?"

It took her a few seconds to remember they had been sharing snippets of a perfect world. All of their scenarios had been shaped from their shinobi life, all of them growing from the bloody earth of the battlefield. They didn't know anything outside of it.

"In a perfect world, we wouldn't exist."

The table's cheerful mood, fuelled by the sake and the desperate need to hold onto something that wasn't the crushing anguish of war, was ruined with her single comment. A dark quietness fell around all of them as they stared at her, the weight of their eyes cringing through her skin and never enough to cut through the surface until they saw her.

Her eyes met Gai's and she could only see sadness in them, pity. This was the woman that had broken his best friend's heart and the woman that now shared a bed with him.

"Sorry." Gohama said before finishing her glass and raising herself from the bench. "Goodnight."

Gohama was not yet far enough from the table before one of the shinobi there spoke, "She shouldn't have come here. The ten-tails was better off lost."

Her legs sped through the clear gaps between the crowded mess tent, not wanting to stay long enough to hear others comment on it.

Gohama hadn't been able to shed herself of the gnawing from that day. She had thought a dinner at the mess tent around others would have held her above the verge of her rabbit hole. It hadn't worked, her heart was still beating as a restless bird inside a cage, and her mind couldn't release itself from the memories of the girl's dead eyes.

And it shouldn't, even if she selfishly wanted it to, it shouldn't because the war was meant for Seiryu and now that she had come back, Gohama needed to feel the full significance of her presence there, the full significance of what the tie of their seal and lives meant to everyone fighting and dying.

Her hand rose to her scar and the touch of it, the remembrance of all it meant to her felt like nothing but smoke under her fingers. The anguish ruled higher, creeping right under her skin, fading anything she could touch. And the fear, a fear that felt as if it was ripping her from inside out.

Gohama had seen things so clearly as she lay on that bed of snow, death spreading at the corners of her eyes. Gohama had seen so clearly when there had been nothing but the stretch of endless forest, Snow's ground and a village whose war was only with nature.

It had been so naïve, she had been so naïve just to come here and hope things would be painted in the same light. Gohama was as lost as she had always been.

Kakashi's chakra washed over her awareness, oozing from the command tent. He was alone, she could feel it, and before her mind had made the decision, her feet were already leading her to him.

"This is a surprise." Kakashi drawled out with a smile as he watched her enter the tent and walk towards him.

It was a surprise for her too, Gohama usually kept herself away from the tent, not wanting to disrupt Kakashi while he worked, not wanting to worry him with her own needs when the Alliance needed him more.

"Came to see how you are doing." Gohama explained as she stood in front of him. Kakashi didn't hesitate as he pressed his face to her stomach, her fingers easily sinking into his air and massaging up and down his scalp.

"Better now." Kakashi whispered and she felt the rumbles in his voice through her skin. "You're the only thing that grounds me in this war, Gohama."

"I shouldn't be."

"I could endure it without you," Kakashi said as he stood up, pulling his mask down to pool around his neck. His hands cupped her face and he pressed his lips to her forehead. "but I prefer to do it with you."

Kakashi pulled back, his eyes intent on her own before they softened and he brushed his thumb over her cheek. It was always his tenderness with her that broke her in the most wonderful way.

"We have some sake somewhere in here." Kakashi murmured as he stepped away.

Her fingers flexed, buzzing with the impulse to clasp around his flak jacket and keep him there around her. Gohama settled for watching his back while he searched through a cabinet, his familiar outline bringing her a sip of solidity and peace. She could find clarity in him, could find the stones in her path and where they were meant to lead her. Gohama had put all of her faith in him and in her heart she knew there was no one else where she could put it.

Kakashi pressed the cold bottle to her arm. "You're thinking."

"Well, I am human, humans unfortunately are doomed to think." He only gave her a deadpan side-glance while settling the two glasses on the table. "I said something at the mess that I shouldn't have said. I think people are scared of me now."

"Because they weren't before." He commented with a drawled blunt tone.

Her fingers tightened around her elbows and Gohama watched as the clear sake glided around the glass as he served her. "Are you?"

His arm snaked around her waist and Kakashi answered, voice low with a hint of teasing, "Personally, I find it sexy that you can kill me but choose not to."

Her hand stilled as she reached for the glass, her mind inevitably falling onto that cursed night in Buki. Gohama didn't want to sour this moment and swallowed the lump in her chest, but no matter how much she tried, she couldn't get a playful quip out of her mouth, her mind blank from anything humorous. Her fingers wrapped around the cool glass and she brought it up to her lips, but she never took a sip.

"That was a joke, by the way." Kakashi explained as he brushed his hand up and down her side. "You do scare me, Gohama, but not in the way you think you do."

His arm pulled her closer to him and his fingers brushed her hair away from her face, but he let her continue looking down at the sake in her glass. Kakashi leaned into her, his lips pressing to her temple and then her cheek.

"Talk to me, Gohama." He whispered so gently against her ear and her heart tightened. "Even if it's to say that I'm an asshole."

"You're not an asshole. I just…" Gohama watched the movement of her thumb on the glass as she tried to push the shameful words through. "The masked bastard. I hate him and everything he's done, but I still understand part of it…"

She clenched her teeth closed and her fingers tightened around the glass. Before she could break it Gohama placed it on her table, her hand pressing to her churning stomach, as if that would stop the nausea rising up her chest.

Gohama finally raised her head to look at Kakashi. "If I ever lose myself aga—"

"That won't happen." Kakashi cut in forcefully.

"It might. If it happened once, it can happen again. I'm…" Her voice faltered through the cold fingers always tight around her chest, the shadow of lacquer always marked into the skin of her face. "I'm scared of it. Everyday."

Gohama brought his hands into her own. Her fingertips brushed through the burnt chakra points on his palm, the callouses on his fingers from holding onto kunai, the knuckles and raised veins running down their back to his wrist.

There was so much violence marked into Kakashi's hands, they were the hands of a shinobi, of a man that had killed, the blood forever crusted into the creases, as with her own, Father's blood, Mother's blood. And so much care, so much gentleness in how he always touched her, so much devotion in how he used them to protect the most precious things to him, so much good.

"I trust your hands with my life, Kakashi." She raised them to her lips, laying a kiss to his fingers. "And I trust them with my death."

Gohama had never thought she would ever understand Rin and there was a prickle of disgust in her chest because she did.

"But it would break you… so it doesn't have to be you."

Kakashi pulled his hands away from her. "Good thing there's sake." He said as he filled his glass and shot it back in a single gulp, his face crumpling into a grimace.

"Kakashi." She held onto his arm before he could bring the glass to his lips again. "I'm sorry, I know how uncomfortable this makes you."

"Uncomfortable?" Kakashi scuffed, the bitterness deep in his throat. He tugged at her hold, she let him go without a fight, and he downed another glass, the grimace from the sting of the alcohol not vanishing as he whispered, "You just asked me to kill you, Gohama."

The words stabbed through her ribs like sharp guilty shards of a broken mirror, they sounded horrifying in his voice. Her fingers pinched the bridge of her nose as a sudden dizziness stumbled through her head. Gohama couldn't even remember what had ever led her to ask that of him. There was always her fear of the lacquer on her face and the pools of blood at her feet, but Kakashi didn't deserve to get dragged down into her own ruin.

The glass thudded on the table. "What did you say at the mess?" He asked with a painfully blank voice.

Gohama brushed her hand through her face as she tried to get her bearings and understand what he was asking and why he was suddenly asking it. "That shinobi shouldn't exist."

"That is the type of thing you don't say in a room full of shinobi, especially when they're sacrificing their lives every day for everyone."

She met his eyes head-on. "It's the truth."

"Who cares if it's the truth, Gohama? People are dying, at least show a bit of respect for them."

"I can't show respect for people that send children to war."

Kakashi turned fully to her, back straight and expression detached as he knew how to do so well. "I am the taicho of 357 shinobi under the age of sixteen, of which 45 are dead." He commented with the same matter-of-fact tone used during a mission report.

He stayed silent as he studied her, as he waited for whatever he was searching in her now, and already she could see the words pending in his pained eyes.

"I'm a piece of shit. I'm worse than scum." There they were, but Kakashi continued as he ordered her, the same as any command a taicho would relay to his subordinate, "Say it, Gohama."

She could only swallow through the knot of dread tightening in her throat.

"I want to hear you say it." Gohama only allowed the tendons on her neck to jump as he grabbed her arms, the smooth expression twisting into gut-wrenching loathing. "Come on, Gohama, say it. Tell me I'm worse than scum. Just say it! Fucking say it, Gohama!" Kakashi hissed, a hoarse desperate call she had never heard rip his throat.

Gohama remained calm, tried to share some of it with him only through her eyes while her heart pinched with every beat against her ribs.

Once he quieted, sharingan studying her, urging her, the despair washed out into a muted raw sorrow, overflowing his every of seam apart. Kakashi wanted her to confirm his guilt, his acid self-loathing, as he had done with Father.

Her hand rose slowly and markedly to his face and Gohama rested her fingers feather lightly onto his jaw, afraid anything too violent might make him pull away. "You're not a piece of shit, Kakashi. You're not worse than scum." The back of her fingers brushed gently through his stumbled cheek and his eyes fluttered close. "If you could, wouldn't you change it?"

The vice grip Kakashi had on her arms vanished, leaving them throbbing and cold in the mark of his fingers. His hold fell onto the bottle of sake but he didn't lift it from the table, staying motionless and hidden from her. Gohama hadn't meant it for him to close himself off and away from her.

"It's too rooted in what it means to be a shinobi."

"We pull the roots out. Sixteen should be the minimum age for combat active shinobi, in a perfect world, twenty-one."

"That would make you barely eligible to fight in this war."

"That's the point, Kakashi, to protect young people from this, but especially children. Our way of thinking child and teen development is wrong, kids shouldn't be put in the field and yet we still do it and hide behind what it means to be a shinobi. Children need to be protected, not protect. Children are children before they are shinobi. They have the right to be children."

The fabric of his glove squeaked as he clenched his fist around the bottle. "And then they're adults that day in minutes on the battlefield."

"That's what training is for."

"Training isn't the same as surviving the real thing." Kakashi turned to her with firm eyes. "You know this, it's why you first came to Konoha, you needed the field experience. Overprotectiveness is deadly, whether people are a shinobi or not."

"And you honestly consider not sending kids to kill overprotectiveness?"

"I sent my students to the Chunin Exam a year into genin because I knew they weren't ready, you won't win me over on this, Gohama."

"And how did that work out, Kakashi?"

His face flinched with hurt at her words and it hit right through her chest. Gohama had come there for comfort, not to fight and especially not to poke one of Kakashi's sorest spots and deepest regrets.

Gohama took a step back, trying to pull herself together, away from the painful overwhelming emotions rioting in her chest, but Kakashi followed her, gaze rigid. "Don't be a hypocrite, Gohama. If Buki had joined the Uchiha on the coup you wouldn't have been older than twelve. If they had ordered you to kill as the jinchuriki, wouldn't you have killed anyone they wanted? Wouldn't you have been their Shuriken?"

"I would." Gohama admitted openly, calmly, not shrinking from the coldness in his voice. "I would have killed everyone and destroyed everything if they had asked me to. I wanted it, I wanted to be perfect. I wanted to be the Shuriken, the perfect tool. And I was their Shuriken. For the past year I was perfect, so perfect I don't even remember being it. Would you have wanted that for me then, Kakashi?"

"I wouldn't have known you." He answered, voice smooth and expression smoother.

"You know that's not the point, Kakashi. If you could protect me from that, wouldn't you do it?"

His face turned slightly away from her, but he still couldn't hide the pain from her. Of course, he would, Gohama didn't need to ask to know, she just wanted him to think about the roles they had been born into, but that others didn't need to. She squirmed between him and the table, trying to stand right in front of him, close so he wouldn't hide anymore, so he could feel her there with him and for him.

"I don't want children in the battlefield because of shinobi like me, because of you, Kakashi."

Her fingers wrapped around the side of his flak jacket, her eyes trying to find his. Her mind recalled her already made up an image of a younger Kakashi, masked and yet with such a childish face, as he stood on a devastated battlefield.

There was an irrational prickle of protectiveness over the child-Kakashi Gohama had never met, a prickle of helplessness and so much hurt because what had happened had happened and could never not have happened, because it was only an image of Kakashi and Gohama couldn't possibly know him, couldn't possibly understand all of him, past, present and future.

"The thought of how much you suffered in the war, how much you suffered in those years in ANBU, how you're still suffering now…"

It was just an aching thought and not the truth of it, lived and suffered, and already her voice was stuck to the lump in her throat as she tried to speak. It was all so inadequate, it was all so little compared to him.

"I don't want any kid to live through that."

Kakashi still didn't look at her as he said, "I would have done it again if I had to."

"Of course you would," Gohama whispered softly as her hands tightened around the thick fabric of his vest. "it still doesn't make it right for anyone to ask that of you."

Kakashi still didn't answer, his head straight as he stared ahead and behind her. Gohama let her forehead fall onto his chest, her eyes stinging with the bite of tears.

"I'm sorry I said that about your team, Kakashi. I'm sorry I brought this entire thing up. I don't want us to fight… Please, just talk to me, even if it's to say that I'm an asshole." She begged, mirroring the words he had so efficiently used on her before.

"Gohama…" Kakashi breathed out as he leaned until his forehead rested on her crown. "You're obviously not an asshole. You should care about protecting those that are more vulnerable. I'm the one that—"

"Also cares." Gohama said as she looked up at him with smiling eyes. "I know you keep most kids on rear or support positions. You're not worse than scum, Kakashi, you're not even close to being scum."

"It always feels like I am…" Kakashi let his head fall onto her shoulder, his warm breath tickling the crook of her neck. "I'm so tired…"

Gohama clenched her blurring eyes closed, her nose burring on his thick hair as she breathed him in, as she tried to take in much needed air, and not let the tears fall now, not now. "I know."

But she didn't, it felt as if she did, but she couldn't possibly truly know it, she couldn't possibly understand him. Even when they were sealed onto each other in a hug, there always seemed to be a wide abysm between them, and Gohama couldn't possibly know how to close it and be there wholly beside him.

"You're the person I respect the most in the world, Kakashi, I admire the most."

"Now even I'm worried that you might be going mad."

"You're an idiot." A wet chuckle rumbled in her throat, the wrench clamped around her heart loosening as their fight was over, even if not completely resolved.

Maybe it never would, but it didn't matter to her, as Kakashi's lips made a burning path up her neck and finally met hers, still tasting of sake. He pressed her against him and the table, his arms fitting perfectly around her. Gohama was more than grateful that she could love him, she could touch him as she was now, she could kiss him.

Kakashi pulled back to watch her through his clear eyelashes, his fingers threading through the hair at her temple. "I'm so sorry, Gohama, I didn't want to hurt you. I'd protect you from all of that if I could, I wish I could protect you now…"

Kakashi brought his glass with him as he slumped down on the chair, so suddenly defeated, eyes fixed on the movement of his fingers as they twirled the sake around and away from her. His voice quiet as if he were whispering a risky confession, "I also wish we could change things…"

"Like…?"

"Mental health, that's what I would change first. No one should survive a massacre, a war, the death of a teammate and not get proper care."

"Kisamaru has branched out into psychiatry, there's people interested. And Sakura," Kakashi's head raised to watch her as she talked of his former student. "we commented about it, she's also not happy with how some things are being dealt with in this war."

The girl's death hadn't hit Gohama alone. Sakura would have punched a crater into the ground if there hadn't been an entire medical post settled above it. She saw more children die or injured than Gohama, and she saw their hollowed out eyes. Sakura was almost a kid herself, only seventeen.

"I'd change it too… right now the only thing I can do is start with myself…"

Kakashi seemed to understand her meaning as his eyes softened, his hand resting over her one as it gripped her knee, fingers interlacing and relaxing her own. "And you, what other things would you change?"

"No seduction missions." She said as evenly as she could and still Kakashi could see it behind her eyes, the scars that had never stayed marked on her skin, yet pierced deeper, under her flesh, still stabbing at her self-disgust, her cold shame when there had been years for her to heal.

He watched her through those guilty loving eyes, still so raw that his chakra shuddered against her. Kakashi hadn't disappeared during those years in Konoha only because of the guilt over her parents, it had been the guilt of allowing that to happen to her that had been the catalyst for everything.

Before Kakashi could rip his hand away from hers, Gohama held on tightly, showing him that she wanted him to touch her.

"And if there's need, with a specialised unit, with shinobi no younger than twenty-one."

"No seduction missions." Kakashi agreed.

"Mine gets big."

Kakashi raised an eyebrow at her. "Now I'm scared."

Gohama rolled her eyes at his teasing. "We would supplant the military based system with a civilian one. With peacetime, there's no need for a heavily militarised society. The financial powerhouse of a village would have to stop being missions and start being production."

Kakashi's only response was to watch her through an amused glint in his eyes. She squirmed slightly, the vulnerability prickling through her skin. "What?"

He had the audacity to smile through her suffering. "You're the first person I've ever heard share that opinion, not that I go around talking idealistic future politics with a lot of people. It's good to know I'm not the only one that thinks that."

A small grasp pushed through her throat as her mind finally made sense of his words and Gohama jumped down from the table, her hands falling onto his shoulders and pressing into his vest. "Are you serious? But… but you're the most shinobi shinobi I've ever met."

His amusement only grew as he smirked. "You've always been a very shinobi shinobi, Kyura Gohama, and yet you've seen past this way of life, so why wouldn't I?"

She loved him so much.

Kakashi's cheeks turned a slight pink and it made him even more endearing. "And now you're looking at me like you want to start a revolution together."

"Not me. I gave up the big ambitions a while ago, but you could. I'd be by your side."

"However touching your devotion to me is, Gohama," She could see the sincerity in his gaze even through the lightness in his tone and it twisted wonderfully at her heart. "I'm not very ambitious myself and I don't think our scenarios for the future are realistic, revolution or not. They're just dreams, hypothetical scenarios to entertain my mind before falling asleep."

"I know… but they're good dreams… And even if they'll never come true, it's good to share them with you…"

A blush broke through her face, so fierce she could feel her skin burning up, the small easy confession felt so large and heavy now that it was out of her lips and in the air between them. Her heart only grew more frantic as Kakashi watched her, silent and still, whatever thoughts he had were well guarded behind his eyes.

His hand held onto her jaw and the other her waist and he pulled her to him. The emotions Gohama couldn't quite understand much less name seemed to surge through him too as they kissed. Her arms wrapped more fully around his head as she pressed herself closer to him.

"It gets bigger." Gohama breathed out as they pulled back from each other to catch their breaths.

"Mmm, you know it does." Kakashi joked as his lips made a path down her throat.

A chuckled bubbled through her throat. "Not your dick, Kakashi." Kakashi made a feigned wounded whine, something his ninken would do. "I mean, your dick does get big, very very big," Gohama joked. "but the dream. We'd start thinking chakra and jutsu in a completely different way. Instead of a weapon, we would see it as a tool. For production, for medicine, for technology."

Kakashi pulled back theatrically, with a playful squint to his eyes. "Since when have you become such a dreamer?"

"Since I became free."

Gohama could finally understand what Mother had always tried to share with her, the words written into the page of her book had finally found a place in her heart as well, 'Free your heart and kindle your dreams'. It was a tempting part of her Gohama had drowned for so many years, had renounced to it like a teen throws old toys into the trash, because they had always seemed the ramblings of a child when her life had been marked into one fixed and clear path.

For so long, Gohama had resigned herself and the world to how things were, to their misery and disillusion, never believing that it could change, but because of those months with the Kuma, her time in the Alliance, the future opened itself to her with so much promise.

His gaze melted into a heart-warming tenderness as he breathed out, "Gohama…" His fingers brushed the hair away from her face, his touch light, a whisper, so different from how he had been kissing her. "I meant it. I'd go through those months of grieving you, years even, if it means seeing you like this."

How could he do this? Understand and see her with just one look?

"Kakashi… thank you…" Even if she knew her time in the Kuma had been good, there's always that guilt for having that meaning she would hurt them. Gohama felt that she could finally shed some of that weight that seemed only to pull her back. "Thank you." She whispered against his lips, before kissing him, trying to show her gratitude for him for everything through her touch, her love.

---

"Kakashi…" Gohama rasped as she felt the flap of the tent waving and a cool draft on her legs.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you up."

"It's okay, I wasn't asleep." She turned to lay on her back, an arm reaching to the side to turn on the small lamp. With the light, she could see Kakashi's tired expression, the lines of his face deeper and his eyes duller. "You can talk to me."

Kakashi watched her as he took off his mask, his mouth drawn into a thin line. "No talking. I already had enough talk."

He took off his shirt, his eyes intent on her, moving up her legs to rest on her face. His meaning was clear and it made a cool swirl of anticipation spur in her belly. Gohama had little time to relish in the sight of his naked torso and strong rippling muscles before Kakashi had draped himself over her.

His fingers threaded through her hair and neck as he cupped her face, making a shiver run down her spine. Kakashi's warm lips pressed to hers and he hummed at the gentle light touch. Without warning, his tongue pushed past her lips and Gohama answered his quick pace with a slant of her head to kiss him more fully. His hand found her naked thigh, caressing and kneading the sensitive skin, her own hands held onto the taunt muscles of his back, fingers denting into him as she tried to mark every touch into her flesh.

The swirls of anticipation in her stomach heated and lowered, her desire rising all too quickly, inflamed by his restless passion. Her fingers buried in his damp her, tugging slightly, as she tried to wash away the pent up desire through their kiss, following Kakashi's ferocity, almost desperate. His hold tightened on her hip, biting onto her flesh where he held her, pulling her impossibly closer to him.

Kakashi pulled his mouth away from hers, his chest heaving and brushing against her hardened nipples. Gohama didn't have time to catch her breath and clear some of the drunken headiness of their kiss, before his lips were clamping around the soft skin of her throat. She gave up on trying to meet his pace and simply let him ravish her.

Kakashi's bold hand traced up her thigh, bringing his long shirt up with it. Even the brush of her the fabric up her legs felt good on her oversensitive skin. His fingers played with the band of her panties where they wrapped around her hip and treaded up, beneath her navel, her taunt muscles fluttering helplessly.

While his hand moved up, the cool air waving on the warm skin of her stomach, his mouth moved down her neck, to where the collar of his shirt let him nip at her collarbone. Gohama arched her back and a moan tore through her throat as a bolt of pleasure shuddered through her body, Kakashi's hot mouth closing around her nipple through the fabric, as his calloused fingers teased the soft naked skin of her other breast.

Gohama opened her legs, the aching damp skin already so sensitive to the cool air even through her panties. Kakashi settled more fully on top of her, his burning erection pressing to her lower belly and igniting the burn between her legs.

His hardness brushed against her, a whimpered curse ripping through her throat, her back arching impossibly more. Gohama didn't think as she raised her hips to rub against him, searching for that shot of pleasure again. Kakashi rolled his hips too, his groan shuddering through her spine. The delicious unrestraint in his voice and the desperate hold he had on her trembled as a warning on her mind.

She knew they were dancing around the blurry line of no return and she also knew Kakashi's sudden abandon and rush ran deeper than simple lust. It was now that they had to stop, the pleasure building up too fast after so long, so fast that she knew only a few more strokes of his against her clit and she would come. Gohama commanded in her mind to stop and stop, while her body demanded just a few more moments, so close to what it wanted. She should never had let them get this far.

Her will won over and Gohama wrapped her hands around his hips, her own still twitching up. She opened her eyes to watch his handsome face creased in desire, stealing her breath away. Gohama could barely get the words through her mouth, "This is going to be hard."

"It's already very hard, Gohama." Kakashi rasped, his voice dripping innuendo as he pressed his erection to her thigh, hot and perfect through the fabric of his pants.

Gohama laughed, a hint of desperation on the breathless rasp of her throat. He pulled himself an inch away from her, as her hands fell from him, fisting into the sleeping bag. The heat of his body and chakra still tingled through her skin as he hovered above her, his dark eyes burned into her own with so much want.

They were both standing at the edge of a knife, Kakashi's muscles stiff and trembling under his skin, his heavy breaths fanning on her face and wet lips, his large hand possessive as it spanned the curve of her ribcage.

Every cell in her body was begging her to just give in and whisper a firm 'Fuck it'. But she didn't want it to be about a 'Fuck it' and her horniness, Gohama wanted to do things right this time, wanted them to do things right.

"We already made the decision, Kakashi, when our judgements weren't seriously clouded." Gohama tried to reason through her pathetically rough voice.

"What about other things? We never talked about it…"

"Why didn't we talk about it?" She whined as the indecision turned into a wide crack in her willpower, the temptation to give in already slithering through it.

The violence seethed under her skin and Gohama could only do what she usually did when it overwhelmed her from inside out. Her hand rose to Kakashi's face and she caressed him gently, all that want finding a small escape in a more quiet affection.

"I want to do things right. I don't want to feel any hesitation, or guilt, or worry when we move forward, and if we did tonight, I would. It's not that I don't want you, Kakashi, or want this, trust me I painfully do."

"I know. I can smell you." Kakashi breathed in the skin of her throat and groaned out a 'Fuck' that only made her stomach clenched. He moved up to press his forehead to hers. "I'm with you, Gohama, I didn't want to rush but… tonight we…" His brow crumpled and her thumb soothed down the creases and the hairs of his eyebrows. Kakashi closed his eyes at her touch before letting out a shaky sigh. "I need you to push me to the side."

Gohama chuckled, her hand resting on his shoulder, rebel fingers relishing in the strong muscle and soft skin before shoving him away from her. Kakashi groaned as he slumped beside her, his hand brushing through his face.

Her head slumped to the side so her eyes could wander down the pale skin of his chest, crisscrossed with scars, to land on the tenting of his pants. She swallowed as her hands hitched to touch him, the impulse so strong in her, as if she was burning from inside out. It was a desire unlike anything Gohama had ever felt, something so overpowering that stilled the breath in her lungs and pulsed through every inch of her body.

"Never thought this would get this hard." Kakashi commented and ripped Gohama from the drunk like headiness of her want.

She dragged her head straight to look at the ceiling of the tent. "It's your fault, you come in here, say no talking and take off your shirt."

"My fault? You're the one sleeping only in my shirt."

"The nights are hot and this smells like you."

From the corner of her eye, Gohama could see Kakashi roll onto his side, temple propped on his palm. "Don't play coy, Hama, you know perfectly well what that does to me."

"And you know what it does to me to sleep next to you shirtless."

As demonstration, Gohama let her gaze shamelessly roam through his strong lean torso, the movement of his chest as he breathed and the small twitch of his abs. She had to cross her legs at the sight of that too tantalising trail of silver hairs as they disappeared under his waistband.

Only when Kakashi's hand clamped around her wrist did Gohama realise she had been reaching for him. She raised a teasing eyebrow at him.

"Gohama." Kakashi warned at the challenging glint in her face. Still, she let her fingertip graze through the line under his navel, her eyes never straying from his, and Kakashi flinched back at her touch. "I'm serious now."

However entertaining it was to torment Kakashi with her touch, she pulled her hand away from him. His grasp on her tightened, holding her arm in place, thinking she would try to do something else. The gesture shot like lightning through her and pulsed between her thighs. With a gasp, her eyes snapped up to meet his.

Gohama didn't think any more lust could pass through his eyes, but they shone with a voracious gleam under the low light as she had never seen before, not even when they were actually having sex. It was even worse to know that Kakashi had another side to him, a rougher one, possessive and dangerous, even if with him there was no true danger, just the sensual feeling of it. Too many images flashed through her mind at it and for a moment she forgot they had decided to hold themselves back.

Kakashi tore his hand away from her wrist. "This isn't helping." He turned onto his back again.

"At least now we know one fantasy we share."

"Don't put images in my head, woman."

Gohama chuckled at the petulance in his tone. It was clear neither of them was actively trying to stop this. They enjoyed the torment, they relished in the tension between them, fluttering through their skins and soaking the air in the tent, even if they knew tonight it wouldn't lead them anywhere.

His head turned so he could watch her. "What should we do now?"

"Well, my horniness isn't going away."

A smug look settled on his eyes. "I understand how it would be difficult to resist me, just a sip makes it worth being alive for, right?"

Gohama couldn't help but smile, seeing as he remembered and had actually understood the full significance of her metaphor about their one night together. It was weird thinking back on that first true talk after she had arrived, when Gohama had never believed they would be like this now.

"Ah, so you did get my very obvious praise."

In a voice soft and shy as he asked, "Is it true? Did it make you feel like that…?"

"You did… and so much more than that, Kakashi… I didn't lie when I said it felt right in the moment. It made me feel cherished, and worth being cherished, and you… I loved cherishing you back, which is why… I still don't understand how—"

"No, Gohama, let's not go there tonight…"

"We have to go there, Kakashi. A single conversation isn't going to resolve things, maybe they'll never be resolved."

"They will, Gohama, we'll work through it together, I promise." His fingers brushed her hair away, exposing her neck, and his thumb rested right above her pulse point. "Just not tonight, please not tonight."

The desperation she had felt through how he kissed her and touched her that night bled from his gentle hold still and, as the restless lust in his eyes vanished, it bared the franticness it had tried to drown.

"What is it, Kakashi?"

"Naruto and Bee-san escaped the island, they're on their way here."

It was normal, of course it was normal for people to be afraid of dying, but this felt like more than fear, it felt as if it were tearing her mind apart, as if with one whisper of the night breeze she would blow out in the wind as nothing but broken pieces.

Through the battles, Gohama had tried to grasp the true significance of her role in the war and she had actually believe she had. Now she could feel it as if it were her own eyes seeing, she could if it so painfully true and real that it physically hurt. The way Kakashi said it, the hidden fear and desperation, mirrored what Gohama felt and made it grow into a biting devastating beast.

Gohama had once thought her death was her ownmost thing, but coming back had only made her realise how it didn't belong only to herself. Just as before there had been Buki, now there was Kakashi, Seiryu, Yukine, Kisamaru, Nikato, Hansuke and even Genma, who she wasn't even sure actually knew she had come back to life.

And on the other side of her scale, there was everyone else, there was the world, there was the future. She didn't know how to deal with it, she was terrified it would paralyse her in the middle of the battle, another suffocating tie, tonight so much tighter and heavier, so much realer.

"We had so little time." Her voice was only a rumour when the knot on her chest seemed to tighten even more.

"Gohama… you're not going to— I won't let it."

"What will happen to us after…? If there even is an after…"

Kakashi clenched his jaw until she could see the raise of his muscle. Gohama brought her hand to his face, gently massaging it and he relaxed, the anguish still not washing from his expression.

"Your heart belongs to Konoha and I can't stay there."

"By heart doesn't belong just to Konoha."

"Your village comes first and if there's someone that understands that it's me. Konoha needs you, it will need you after the war, and you need Konoha. Besides," Gohama started with a cheeky smile, hoping it would lift the sad shadow around them. "there's no way you'll get out of being Hokage."

Kakashi groaned dramatically as he buried his face against the pillow, muffling his sound of pain against it. "I'll hate every second of it…"

Gohama brushed his mess bangs away from his face, so she could at least see his profile and gave him a small smile. "Yes, but you'll also love it, because you love Konoha."

"And you, Gohama?"

It felt like Buki again, how the cruelty of their lives seemed to pierce too clearly into her, robbing her of any flicker of hope. Gohama felt as if she would never know of that silhouette thriving around her and that she wanted to know, wanted to be.

"Don't say it, don't say it doesn't matter."

"Maybe we really should have just been a farmer and a gardener."

"But I like your seal and I like your chakra."

Kakashi held onto her hand and brought the inside of her forearm to his lips. He spread gentle kisses to the dark ink seal branded into her skin and that gesture always made her heart ache and eyes sting. He glided up her arm and through her shoulder and neck, finally ending with sweet peck to the tip of her nose.

"Maybe we could have both, our shinobi past and a civilian future." Kakashi said tentatively, the back of his fingers traced her cheek as his eyes and words pierced through her. "An old house, with an engawa and a garden…"

"Don't…" She whispered, her eyes closing to stop the burning of emotion. "don't say things like that, Kakashi…"

"Is it too much?"

Gohama shook her head. "It's too good."

"We can pretend. Like we did in Buki."

"I don't want to pretend."

Gohama had done so much pretending in her lonely broken days as a missing-nin, so much senseless sterile dreaming of impossible scenarios just to entertain her dried out heart, trying to contain and mould the entire world to her own whims. She didn't want that for herself anymore, she wanted something fruitful, something that she could build into reality, something that she could share with others.

"I want it… I want it to be real… I want it to be true…"

"Maybe it will be."

---

Even through the dread and gnawing sense of doom in her guts festering her tired brain so she couldn't sleep, Gohama could still find joy in Kakashi's warm calming presence beside her, a small smile on her face.

His lips parted as he breathed through his mouth, cheek raising against his eye from being pressed to the pillow, white lashes hovering above pale skin, the scar that cut down his eyelid. He looked so unguarded as he slept, his face smooth, the small tan line crossing through his nose and cheeks was a mark that this was a privilege, to see him without his mask. Gohama would never stop being grateful that she could see him like this, all of him.

Kakashi was so beautiful it actually ached and the love she had for him grew into a monstrous craving that seemed that no amount of kissing, or touching or sex could ever satisfy. Gohama wanted to wrap herself around him, press his body deep into her, crush him to her, and that violence frightened her, the possessiveness.

Gohama wanted to make him hers, as she was his.

Her fingers glided, light and gentle, over the skin of his shoulders, following the dips and raises of his muscular back, tracing the valley of his spine. The violence wasn't the only side to her affection, there was also a well of tenderness inside her heart and she had found that Kakashi loved it when she touched him with soft quiet caresses.

Her finger lingered on a scar at the end of his ribs, the one that had a twin in his stomach, a clean cut framed with the rough texture of chakra burnt flesh. It was a token of the most defining and horrifying night of her life, a token of Father and Kakashi's fight for their lives. But Gohama didn't hate it, even through the well of anguish locked in there, she somehow didn't hate.

It wrenched in her heart, murmured of something she didn't understand that they had met that night in the worst of positions to meet, that they both had scars that belonged to the same night. The raise of his skin felt as if it was branded into her own as well.

All of his scars were like a map of his life and there were so many, too many. Gohama knew only a fraction of it, a fraction of his sacrifice and his suffering, and maybe that was all she would ever know.

They had had so little time. They had always had so little time.

Gohama couldn't cramp all the loving she wanted to do in the couple of weeks they had had together. She had tried to give him everything that she could and none of that had felt enough, could ever feel enough.

There was always an abyss set between Gohama and him, between Gohama and everyone else. No matter how much compassion burned in her for Kakashi and his past, for all of her precious people, it was just compassion and not the full weight of everything, it was just compassion that could never breached the jump into true understanding. And if there wasn't understanding could there be love?

Kakashi deserved perfectness, in all the loneliness and loss in his life, and Gohama tried to quiet down that gnawing of insecurity that drown and only grew in the quietness of the night, it hissed that told her she would never be enough for that, she would never love him as Kakashi deserved to be loved.

There was still so much grief and emptiness in her, so much blood, the open wounds from the massacre would never heal, Gohama had always known of that and accepted it, knew she had to accept for it not to hold her back, but it terrified her that her love would always fall short because of it.

Kakashi had the beautiful way he loved the ones dear to him, with a silent veiled care, almost shy, that had always been about actions and sacrifice, loyalty.

Gohama remembered in Buki, he had shared with her that in the perfect scenario his love would be open and full, with no guilt and fear. But his love was already open and full, almost obsessive sometimes, despite the fear and the guilt. That was what she admired most about him, that he hadn't let those drag him down. That was Kakashi's strength, his goodness.

They hadn't said the words to each other, and already Gohama knew that he loved her, had known of it since Buki, and now she felt it branded into every inch of herself. Did he also feel that she loved him? Did he feel loved? Should she tell him?

Was it even a good thing for him that she loved him?

Her love had always been a broken rotten thing. Shuriken had bloomed and devastated from her love for Buki and her love for her clan and her love for her family. Her attempt at perfection had fallen into horror and failure, into death.

Gohama thought of her love and yet that final night hadn't had a drop of love in it. If that was where her love led her, to pressing a tanto to his throat, to feeling the devastating duty of killing him, how could she ever say those words to him if they meant nothing, could never mean anything?

No matter how well Gohama tried to love him, it would never erase that night, her crime. No matter how well Gohama tried to love him, it would never be enough, it would never be good enough for Kakashi.

Her love for Kakashi had bloom through the worst of situations, how could she make sure it would remain the burning clear flame she felt now in her heart? The world always rotted things and the shinobi life was the richest ground for all the sickness.

Kakashi with all his self-sacrificing character, that was both his goodness and his illness, would endure through things without telling her. Even after the promises they had made of honesty and truth, Gohama was still terrified of how well he could throw a mask on himself and pretend that she was good as he was good to her. Hadn't Hansuke promised he would tell her too?

Kakashi was her snowdrop and her weapon. Gohama was his, she would always be his, but that didn't mean he should be hers.

Why was she even worrying over this? It didn't matter, not when there were more useful things to worry about. There was so much uncertainty in their future. Even if they survived the war, there was still so much uncertainty. It didn't matter.

Maybe it was because it was useless, her heart clutching onto it as if it mattered, deluding itself as it had always been good at doing, pretending, pretending that there wasn't a reason for why it was useless.

Kakashi's eye snapped open, Obito's sharingan shining between white lashes, bloodshot from sleep, as he looked at her, and Gohama jolted. Her hand stopped where it traced the skin of his back. She had woken him up with her staring, Kakashi was a ninja after all, and no ninja liked the prickling of eyes on them when they slept.

"I'm sorry… go back to sleep." Gohama whispered as softly as she could, her fingers rose to his hair, brushing it in soothing rhythm.

"Not with all that thinking, I can even feel it in my dreams."

"Now that's sad," She teased. "there are much better things to dream about me."

"Gohama." Kakashi called for her with as much gentleness as firmness, his eyes seeing right through her.

"I'm scared." She confessed quietly, as if that would take away the weight of her words.

Kakashi pulled her to him, his hand cradling her head as she cuddled her face to the warm skin of his chest. The way he held her, so warm and strong, strong enough that it felt like he could keep all of her pieces in place, it felt like she could dream of impossible things.

"I know. I know, Gohama. I'm scared too."

She couldn't die, if there was one thing Gohama was certain was that she couldn't die again and forever.

---

I have regretted the way I wrote the seduction mission during Part III for some time, but finally feel the need to address it (in honesty, I cringe at most things I wrote before Part IV and lot of things after). It centred around a sensitive topic that I don't think I've handled with enough thoughtfulness and care.

In the universe I have developed, a shinobi village commanding ninja to use their sexuality wouldn't have been thought as we see it now. Becoming a ninja means surrendering your body as a tool, including your sexuality, for the village.

The characters themselves would have been somewhat oblivious to the wrongness of the situation Gohama had been forced into, having been a product of the views of their culture on their sexuality and consent. Recognising the emotional and mental scars it may leave does not equal considering it wrong or immoral.

One of the things I wanted to explore in Part III was this obliviousness of characters inserted in a particular cultural context and how that still doesn't take away from the actual wrongness of the situation; and the characters' struggles with their own roles and the world they live in.

The characters (Gohama, Kakashi, Tsunade, the shinobi system) didn't think of the seduction mission as rape.

Gohama struggled with the contrast between what was expected of her as a shinobi and what was her own personal experience, to the point where she becomes completely unprofessional and unreliable. She sees her suffering as a weakness and blames herself for not conforming to her role emotionally, then tries to do the opposite of what her emotions are telling her, which translates in her irrational thoughtless actions (going back to the target's room even knowing she has no way of completing her mission objective by killing the target, because of the chakra-shackles).

As for Kakashi, he did know from the beginning that the mission was wrong and tried to convince Gohama not to take it.

Kakashi struggled in his role as a taicho, one he is usually very secure in. He was also unreliable as a taicho. He knew from the start the seduction element of their mission was a failed plan because Dazai was too prepared for it, but he still let things go on, when he should have put his foot down much sooner than when he did. In Part III, he was still very much emotionally stunned and Gohama confused him to the point where it meddled in what he does best, being a taicho and a shinobi.

My biggest fail and what I truly regret the most was with Kakashi's character because I let him conform to the need of my plot (having Dazai reveal that Akatsuki was behind Bukigakure's massacre and the ten-tails chakra break loose). The character-Kakashi I am writing would never have allowed Gohama to submit herself to one more night in Dazai's room when he was being openly violent with her and robbing her of her 'consent' (which 'in reality' Konoha had already done) by threatening them. Kakashi would have gone against any shinobi to stop that, at that point he knew it was rape.

At the end of the mission, all Konoha cared about was the fact that it was successful, they got rid of an S-rank criminal inside Fire's territory, and not how poorly managed it had been.

I will not have the characters fully address and work through the situation now, because I believe that is unrealistic considering the war scenario. However, in this chapter, I have left an indication that it is still an acknowledged point of strain and trauma in Kakashi and Gohama's characters and their relationship, something that they recognise, and that it will be a matter worked through in the future.

Anyway, I'm sorry it took longer than usual to post this chapter. There's only two or three chapters left… which is a little surreal, honestly.

Thank you everyone for reading and accompanying me through this monster of a story. As always, stay safe.