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.

67. VII - Chapter 8

This chapter is going to use some lines from the anime, from episode 326 to 362. Those belong to Kishimoto and the writers from the anime. I tried to be as faithful to canon as I could, while squirting away from some of the fighting, since I'm not a fan of written ones, and focusing on Gohama and Kakashi. This chapter is pretty long, I'm sorry for that, but couldn't bring myself to cut out some parts.

Thank you, my kind guest reviewer, for your unwavering support! And all the others who have silently accompanied me through this story.

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Part VII | Chapter 8

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His finger brushed away a thin strand of Gohama's hair that had fallen over her face. A part of him felt as if Kakashi was still grieving her, even as he watched her alive, chakra swirling through her pathways and heartbeat steady in her chest. The pain from those days hadn't vanished and it had yet to catch up to what his eyes were seeing, what his own heart was feeling.

Maybe it was also the fear that made it cling on. This fear and sense of doom that seemed to eat at him from inside out. Kakashi was always hopeful with the ones he cared about, but he also had his own track record of failures gnawing at his hope. He had always failed when it came to protecting the lives of the people that mattered most and Gohama was the one person that mattered most to him now.

'I won't let my comrades die.' Kakashi could no longer count how many times he had failed his own life purpose. It was what had kept him afloat through those years where there had been nothing holding him to life but that thread, and it was also the promise that most shattered him into tiny pieces.

It felt as if every decision in his life had led him to this day, when everything Kakashi was and had lived for would be put to the test.

Even if he understood why Gohama had come back to fight in the war, a part of him still burned with the regret that didn't even belong to himself that she hadn't stayed hidden away. It was selfish, he knew, it wasn't love to want her safe and dead, to them and to herself.

Because Gohama wouldn't be Gohama if she didn't come to fight beside them, no matter the risk, no matter the consequences to her life. It was one of the things he admired most in her but also the one that scared him the most.

Everything in him still trembled when he remembered Gohama's whispered confession, 'I don't want to die'. It was so simple, so normal, and yet hearing it from her had felt ground-breaking.

He knew, he had always secretly known that it was a hopeless hope. Kakashi would never be enough to protect Gohama from pain and death. Being alive meant being thrown helplessly into the world and the world was as cruel and as rotten as it was good and beautiful. And Gohama… life had tossed her coin and Gohama had always ended up on the wrong side of it. It was as if every curse of the world had fallen onto her.

He lowered himself to brush his lips on her forehead, the softest of touches so he wouldn't wake her up.

"Kakashi…?" She called in a rough, drawled out voice.

That had been a failed mission. "I have a meeting."

Her sneaky hand held him close to her as he tried to pull away and Kakashi didn't even try to fight her. Both her arms wrapped around his neck, trying to press herself as close to him as she could. It was a shame his flak jacket was in the way, he wished he could feel her soft body and warmth seeping into his skin.

Kakashi inhaled her wonderful addicting scent on her hair and neck, especially as it blended so perfectly with his own smell, making sure it was safe in his memories where he would never forget it. He could still smell her arousal from last night imbibed into the air of the tent, into the bedroll and her pillow.

The night had been full of dreams of her and his shower minutes before had been mostly about releasing that edge with his own hand. But it hadn't been nearly enough, his affection burning through him with an urgency, his fear urging him on, whispering 'If it's not now, it's never', but he couldn't know that. Kakashi had hope in his heart too and a burning fire of resolve to protect her, one that wasn't willing to fail against anything and everything that came their way.

His hand sneaked under the covers, fingers tracing the silky feel of her thigh, down to her knee, the back of it and up again, to the mound of her ass. Kakashi wanted to learn everything he could while he could, his lips tasting the flesh of her neck, her collarbone and shoulders, his fingers running through her messy strands, around her ass to her hip and her stomach, the twitching ridges of her abs and ribs, the valley of her spine.

Kakashi pulled back to watch Gohama, her eyes softly closed, breathing hitching and lips parting every time he brushed a more sensitive spot on her body. And the way she shivered against him, the way she breathed out his name, full and heavy in her mouth, it was all too much and not enough.

This time he let his lips press to her scar, her only scar. Kakashi hated it, every time he saw it through the slip of her collar his guts clenched, one more mark of how he had failed in protecting her.

But he had also seen how Gohama seemed to cling to it like a lifeline, her fingers brushing through it in the battlefield, under the showerhead that evening, even at seemingly trivial moments like waiting in line at the mess. Kakashi had learnt how she wanted it there, branded into her own skin. So he brushed his lips over it, learnt the ragged feel of it, tried to read all that the scar meant to her in how it felt to his touch.

"Go." Gohama whispered in his ear, but her arms had yet to let him go. "You'll be late."

"I'm already late."

She gave a tender slap to the back of his head before pulling herself from him. "Why would you ever indulge this terrible habit?"

"Obito." Her eyes widened in a too endearing disbelief before she frowned at him and Kakashi chuckled. "Look at me."

Gohama had said she wanted to know everything of him and he also wanted her to know him, because even with all his fear and doubt and guilt, there was hope. Hope that maybe Gohama would love him at the end of it…

His sharingan spun and Kakashi shared with her all the memories he had of Obito being late for their team meetings, all of his ridiculous excuses and their childish fights, all of Kakashi's secretly hidden care behind insults.

It had been an impulse of the moment and now Gohama's eyes were watering as she looked at him with too much emotion, maybe even love, the one that melted with compassion.

"This wasn't supposed to make you cry." Kakashi commented with a lopsided smile, his thumb brushing away the few tears that had started to spill.

"Maybe you should warn me next time." Gohama puffed as she wiped the tears herself. "You can see them too, my own memories."

Kakashi shook his head. "I like it better when you tell them to me."

He remembered still that Chunin Exam where Konoha had stolen and violated Gohama's memories in search for Seiryu. He remembered still how she had looked with her back to him, curled into herself in the bed of Suna's hospital, so much emptiness in her voice. In a time when he had no idea and no feeling that they would ever end up like this.

Kakashi could never in a thousand years have been ready for it, could never in all his life have planned for the burning endless and forever blooming space Gohama had taken over in his heart. It had been so gradual and still seemed too sudden, so completely earthshattering and terrifying and still it was the thing he was most grateful for in his life.

He could see a new future raising in her green eyes as she looked at him, he could see it in how she touched him and how he touched her. Kakashi wanted it so fucking much, but wanting had never been enough for him. He would fight, he would fight for Gohama's life and her new dreams of her own, he would protect them and make sure that she could make them true. He would fight for the future of the world and he would fight for his own life with a new unknown fervour and he would fight for their future, now and after.

But, whatever happened today and whatever happened tomorrow, at least he had this moment now, where they were Gohama and Kakashi with everything, sharing everything and accepting of everything that made them be themselves, the past and the present and the future unfolding in infinite possibilities.

It was as if the quietness of those few minutes before dawn, when the edge of the horizon was starting to lighten and the silence of night still rested over the campsite, had drifted inside them. There was no war, in this quiet moment, there was no war in and outside of them.

Gohama's thumb traced the edge of his jaw in a quiet irresistible touch that always seemed to reach deeper than any heavier one. "What are you thinking?"

His fingers rose to his face, brushing over the eyelid of the sharingan. "Obito… he gave me the sharingan so he could watch the future through it and for most of the time I've only showed terrible things. But there are times when I finally fulfil my promise. Times where I wonder, isn't this good, Obito? Isn't this beautiful?"

"Kakashi…" The corner of Gohama's lips trembled, she let out a shaky breath with a smile. Her fingers held harder onto his jaw and she ground out good-humouredly. "You really do want make me to cry."

His arm snaked under her back, trying to bring Gohama closer to him as he finally pressed his lips to hers, exploring her soft sweet mouth with his tongue, saving it in his memory as he had with everything else that was her.

Gohama was the one to pull back from their kiss, her cheeks flushed and eyes still closed, her thick eyelashes draped above her pale delicate skin. "I'm making you even later."

It was so hard to leave Gohama when he didn't know how the day would end, when it felt as if she needed him as much as he needed her right now, as if he still hadn't given her everything he wanted to and she deserved to have, as if he still hadn't loved her enough.

A part of him already felt that he would never love her enough, because what did it mean for him and his love if he couldn't protect her? His love would always fall short if Kakashi didn't protect her.

"I can't start showing up on time. People need consistency in times of war."

She shook her head with a fond smile, eyes narrowing at him. "You're especially inspired today."

"Maybe it's you that inspires me, Gohama."

Her eyes rolled, the gesture not shedding the loving tint of their green. "You're so sappy sometimes."

Kakashi lowered his lips to her cheek, spreading kisses down to her ear as he whispered, "And you like it."

"Maybe." Her fingers buried in his hair and tugged his head back with an enticing sting. "But it's time for you to go now, Taicho." There was a hint of teasing in her tone but behind it there was only seriousness, reminding him that he had a duty besides them. Her arms around his neck fell onto the sleeping bag and she laid a last caste kiss to his lips and ordered, "Go, Kakashi."

But Kakashi wouldn't leave with just that. He kissed her deeply and slowly, pouring all the motions frantic inside of him for her. "See you later, Gohama." He nipped at her ear, inhaling her tantalising scent one last time, arousal fresh in her skin again from all his exploring touches, and murmured, "Think of me when you touch yourself."

Kakashi slipped away with a giggle before Gohama's kick could hit him.

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Kakashi didn't have to say it for her to know why he was standing on the other side of the clearing, her chakra still buzzing through the air and heaps of Zetsu clones slumped on the overturned ground.

He made his way to her, each of his steps a thunder in her heartbeat, as his eyes bore into her own, sharingan opened and measuring, executioner blade casually resting on his shoulder. Gohama could look at him forever as he walked towards her, all rule and sensuality and tenderness, a hint of dread and vulnerability. All opposites and contradictions mixed together as Kakashi had always been, and she wished it would never stop, she wished he didn't have to walk to her.

Kakashi stopped only a breath away from her, closer than he had ever been with people around them. "There's still time to hide you away."

"There is."

With his typical nonchalance, he pulled the massive sword away from his shoulder and let it pierce the ground, his eyes never leaving her own. Her belly twirled, uncaring of their impending doom, maybe even enticed by it. Or maybe Kakashi was just too irresistible for her own good.

"Anything I should know before we venture into the unknown?" Gohama asked with a lightness she didn't feel inside of her.

His hand rose to her cheek, thumb wiping some of the dirt on her skin. Gohama cupped the back of his hand pressed its warmth more fully against her, soaking in the small gesture of affection they could steal in between battles.

"There's some very sappy things and other very deep poetic ones."

Gohama had meant it in a strictly practical way and seeing Kakashi's mind fall into another meaning made her heart clench in her chest.

With a mute shaky breath, she joked, "If you start reciting me poems, I might want to hide you away with me, Kakashi."

"That's a shame… I have the perfect one for you, even more perfect now that it's being left unsaid."

Her eyebrow raised at the easily dismissed comment. That was the type of things Kakashi came up with through the dread of a difficult and life-deciding battle?

"And I'm the pretentious one?"

The fabric of his mask shifted around his lips and Gohama could see the shape of the teasing smirk he was giving her. "You're just that pretentious, Hama."

Even now Kakashi was his charming self and it helped ground her a little. Her head turned so she could kiss the gloved palm of his hand before she gave a squeeze to his fingers.

"Have I ever told you how much I like that you call me that?" His own twist to what her precious people had used to call her, touching right into the most tender, warm places in her heart.

Her affection was boiling behind her skin and she needed to pull herself back slightly before her impulse to jump him and tug his mask down for a long deep kiss won out. Gohama let his hand fall down, but Kakashi interlaced his fingers with hers and tugged her, his head lowering to meet hers, until their foreheads bumped on each other.

"Let's fight for our lives too this time, Gohama. Please."

Her eyes clenched close as Gohama nodded, their mirrored hitai-ate scratching together. "I think it's time we really fight for them." She pulled back with another smile. "I'll follow your lead, Kakashi. Always. Anything you ask of me."

She looked around Kakashi to Gai, who had followed behind him and was now standing a few metres away, very interested in the canopy of leaves in an attempt to give them a little privacy.

"Gai, come here."

The words were barely out of her mouth and he was crashing into both of them. His strong arms shoved Gohama and Kakashi into each other as he shook them from side to side in his hug, spilling odes about the beauty and youth of love.

"I didn't meant it like this, but a hug is always good for morale." Gohama commented through her amusement as Gai finally freed them from his arms. He had the awareness to look a little sheepish, just as sheepish as his rival, who had just been forced into friendly affection with no way out. "I need you both to stand beside me, Seiryu will get us there in a minute. Can I summon you, my dear old lizard?"

"You're becoming all sappy in love, kiddo. Go ahead, I was getting bored in here."

Gohama let her thumb slide along the edge of the executioner's sword, making a superficial nick on the pad. She ripped her armguard off to drag the bloodied finger along the jinchuriki seal on her forearm and made the hand sign.

Seiryu's chakra rushed from her core, into her pathways and out of her body, materialising where her hand touched the ground. Gohama saved enough inside her to create a cloak for herself and still his size engulfed everything around them. Without warning he sprang up, slithering gracefully through the air and up, almost at the height of the clouds.

She kneeled down, her hand smoothing down the top of his head, the feeling of him so real and moving as he was materialised into the real world. "It's been quite some time, hmm?" Gohama commented with a wide grin, her heart soaring at having him free, flying under her, the feel of Seiryu's mirroring smile of delight.

"Kakashi. Gai." He greeted, his deep voice vibrating from their feet and up their bodies.

"He knows my name?" Gohama heard Gai whisper to Kakashi, with as much giddiness as incredibility.

"It's good to see you again, Seiryu." Kakashi returned the greeting.

"Indeed. I'm sorry I couldn't stop Gohama from doing something stupid last time." Of course, the old lizard would touch one of the many unresolved subjects between her and Kakashi, how she had abandoned him to fight the bastard alone.

She waited with a still breath for his answer and it washed out of her with relief at the light teasing tone, with none of sorrow or resentment she had felt before. "I doubt anyone could."

"Why do you two always gang up on me when you're together?"

His hand wrapped around her own and he tugged her to him. "Because we have the same interest in mind." Kakashi said, the soft tone and eye a clarification on their own.

Seiryu's chuckle rumbled under them. "If I said something like that, Gohama would find a way to argue against it. She's very mellow with you, Kakashi."

Gohama groaned. "Seiryu, please, shut up."

"It's a good thing, kiddo."

"Can we stop talking about this and actually focus on the battle?"

That was enough to sober everyone up. They shared what they knew of the bastard's methods, and of Bee-san and Naruto. Gohama was the weakest link in their team, having little to no practice with anyone but Kakashi and Gai. From how Kakashi talked of Naruto and his range of skills, she could understand why every shinobi in the Alliance held him as their hope, and the man in front of her was no different.

"But the thing with Naruto is that he's not just a powerful shinobi, he has the power to change people for better. I believe in him to build a good future for our world." Kakashi looked at her as he said it, his eye heavy because he knew how important that was to her.

Even in Buki he had already shined with pride and hope when speaking of his student, it seemed the past year had sealed the deal, leaving little to no doubt in him.

"I trust your judgement." Gohama commented with the smile that made Kakashi expression soften. "And I—" A tremor ran up her spine as she sensed the chakra signatures ahead of them. "Jinchuriki…"

"What?"

Gohama ran up to the edge of Seiryu's head, trying to see through the blue hazy distance for any sign of what she had felt. "All of them, I can feel their chakra."

"He must have reanimated them and connected them to the biju he collected." Kakashi dissected and it prickled her how he talked of it so unemotionally.

It could have been her there. If Gohama had lost against the bastard months ago, it would have been her and Seiryu as well and he would have had to fight them.

That bastard, her fingers curled into her palm. It wasn't enough that he had killed them, stolen their lives in exchange for a biju. He wouldn't even allow them to find peace in death, bringing them back to fight as tools for the side that had slaughtered them. Like Father.

Her lip curled over her teeth as she saw the devastated clearing cut into the forest, two biju already materialised. "Faster, Seiryu."

"We need a clear head, Gohama." Kakashi said behind her.

His hand on her shoulder made the muscles of her back twitch, wound tight and ready to snap in furry and precision. Kakashi turned her to face him, eyes always so steady, how could he be so steady now? Didn't he know it could have been her down there? He cupped her face, fingers pressing into the back of her neck, expression still balanced but there was something else there, hidden underneath the underneath.

Of course, Kakashi knew. He didn't only think three steps ahead of anyone, he thought the ones behind and to the left and right, he thought of everything that could have happened, and everything that hadn't.

With a simple gaze, he showed her all of that and more, he shared with her so much of his unwavering solidity through the fear, built up from his strength and that Gohama had always admired in him, had always wished she could have at least a piece of it.

Her hands rose to hold onto his forearms, grasp tight and grounding, as she breathed deeply, long calming breaths, and drank in everything she could from his composure. Gohama nodded, fingers loosening.

"You have a special power, Kakashi." Seiryu mocked under them, the jab meant only to embarrass her.

"Oh, shut up, old lizard." Gohama mumbled as her eyes rolled.

Kakashi chuckled, his arm wrapping around her neck and pulling her side to him. She whispered a small thank you to his shoulder, because she knew Seiryu was right and was glad for it. Kakashi seemed glad too, his masked lips pressing to her cheek.

And then she felt his lips, soft and naked, brushing against her own.

It surprised her that he would actually kiss her, neither of them were comfortable with showing off their affection, even when there was only Gai and Seiryu there. Gohama didn't complain, her hand raising to gently cradle his jaw, her mouth pressing more fully onto his. It was tender and short, and still it pierced right through her heart.

Her eyes opened to watch him, mask dangling just under his lower lip, loving eyes looking down at her. It was enough to fill her with a pulsating energy that didn't rise from her anger. A shot of courage and resolve stronger than any whiskey could ever be.

They pulled back from each other as Seiryu circled over the biju-made clearing, the masked bastard with the five-tails. Gai and Kakashi shared a look that had an entire conversation behind it.

"We'll drop down to Naruto. Stay with Seiryu and support us from up here." Kakashi commanded, that taicho voice of his swirling in her belly.

Seiryu hovered close enough to the ground that they would injure themselves with the fall.

"Even if you're jinchuriki, six against two appears bad odds, huh?" The bastard taunted with his hand extended to reach Naruto, who was stuck to the biju's skin. "I touch you, I win."

A grin stretched through her face as the two arrived at the perfect moment, spoiling the bastard's victory. Gai kicked him, forcing him to dematerialise and Kakashi pulled Naruto out.

"More joining the party won't change anything. Not against my visual prowess and power of the tailed beasts."

"We have a sharingan on our side too." Kakashi countered.

"As well as the noble Green Beast of Konoha."

Kakashi tilted his head back to look where Gohama was flying with Seiryu. "The Kyura bloodline limit and one more tailed beast."

"Gohama!" She heard Naruto call as his eyes meet hers. Not only did he know her name somehow, but Naruto was also looking at her as if they had always been close friends and he couldn't be happier to see her. Now she understood why every shinobi adored him, with just a smile Naruto made people feel worthy and treasured. "You all came!"

"You know I can't sit back and relax while my student from Team 7 is working hard." Kakashi drawled out and Gohama looked down at him with a smile. It was heart-warming, even in the middle of such a decisive battle, to see Kakashi with one of his precious students. It filled her with a sort of melancholic consolation, seeing Gai and Naruto, and knowing that even if she didn't come out of this war alive, Kakashi wouldn't be alone through the grief.

The ground trembled under her, pulling her attention away from Kakashi, and she held onto Seiryu's head with her chakra. He cut through the air in the direction of the five-tails as it trotted. Her eyebrows rose as she realised the biju wasn't coming to attack them, but sped against the bastard. Seiryu noticed it too, as he halted and hovered close in the air.

Purple chakra-infused chains burst out of the bastard's hands to wrap around the five-tails. "It's those chains again…"

And then so quietly, almost the rustling of a whisper in her mind, Gohama heard a voice, anguished and desperate, piercing right through her. It vanished as suddenly as it had appeared once the five-tails chakra had been absorbed back.

"You heard the voice, didn't you, kiddo?"

"The five-tails… the bastard doesn't fully control them."

"It pisses me off to see one of my kind treated like that."

Her eyes widened at the sudden gruff voice that spurted in her mind.

"That's Gyuki, the eight-tails." Seiryu shared with her.

"Now you get mad." Another deep rumbling voice said, tone bratty and indifferent.

"The nine-tails?" Gohama asked Seiryu, but she already knew the answer. "We can all telecommunicate?"

"Yes, biju can and as our jinchuriki you can as well."

"It's always been the same with any shinobi that keeps us as pets." Kyubi mumbled, his tone weighed down with resignation and Gohama couldn't really disagree with him, not when Seiryu had been kidnapped by the clan she loved and made into a tool, imprisoned inside a seal of nothing. "Eight-tails, you and that brat Bee are a special exception."

"I know all about it, Kyubi." Gyuki began. "You…"

"You talk too much!" Kyubi's loud voice cut through the words and Gyuki didn't let the interruption go, the two of them stared arguing, voices piercing through her mind and the focus on the battle.

"What about you, Jubi," Kyubi asked. "don't you have anything to say?"

"Not when you're being petty."

Kyubihuffed at Seiryu's answer. "Talk about pettiness. You've let yourself be enslaved for generations. You've turned soft, Jubi."

Before Seiyu could defend himself, Gohama cut in, annoyed with the unnecessary fight between biju, so similar to the petty scrabbles between villages and people before the Alliance.

"I agree with Kyubi. This jinchuriki and biju thing is complete bullshit, but the bastard's plans are even worse than that. You talk about Seiryu being a slave and soft, but you're not even willing to fight against it now. Don't tell us to finish things here, when you should want to finish them too."

"You got yourself a brat too, hmm, Jubi?"

"Oh, you have no idea, Kurama."

Kurama, the Kyubi's name. Gohama had little time to wonder over the conversation she just had and how it somehow fluttered warmly in her chest, because there were more of them, there were more stuck to this same bullshit of a bond. Even if rationally Gohama knew it was better for everyone if she and Seiryu were the only ones suffering from it, it was always nice to feel understood, to feel accompanied.

The earth shook under them and two more biju developed fully from the jinchuriki, the four and six-tails. Gohama's eyes searched for the shape of Kakashi in the middle of the rumbling. On one side the jinchuriki in their cloaks, on the other a wave of acidic gas washing through the air towards Gai and Kakashi.

Before she could say anything, Seiryu was already flying for them. Gohama jumped down, helping Gai disperse the acid with her chakra, as Seiryu helped Kakashi fight off the jinchuriki.

A mere glimpse to the side and she could see Naturo struggling with the four-tails. "Seiryu, Naruto."

"Let Kurama worry about him." Gohama was ready to protest, but Seiryu continued first, "Trust me, Gohama, he'll come around."

"If he dies, I'm going to be really pissed off."

A spike from the bastard's chakra made her turn her eyes to him, his hand extended and those purple chains shooting out of his palm again to wrap around the four-tails. Her eyes focussed instead on what had spiked the bastard's interest. Naruto, of course, his hands wrapping around a black metal rod and trying to pull it out.

"Seiryu, your tail." Gohama called out as she ran towards them.

Seiryu's tail extended for her, no other words needed from her for him to understand, and she jumped onto it. With a flick of it, she was piercing through the air, tachi drawn forward and burning blue.

"I'm sorry for this." Gohama whispered under her breath, even if no one could actually hear her.

She stabbed right beside the rod, her arms burying to her shoulders in the four-tails skin. Naruto stumbled back from his own force as it came free. She pulled herself away and jumped down to him, making sure he was okay from the fall.

"Thanks, Gohama!" His lips spread in the most genuine blinding smile, blue eyes glittering with kindness.

The over-the-top gratitude made Gohama stumble, her cheeks warming in an embarrassed blush. But instead of dismissing him and what left like an ill-placed sentiment, she nodded and offered him her own small turn of her lips.

Gohama reached out for his arm, as he heaved with heavy tired breaths. Her eyebrows furred and she pushed more energy into him, feeling it inside his pathways and still it wasn't enough to boost his energy. Was it because he was a jinchuriki, already overwhelmed with the Kyubi? Where was the chakra going?

The earth shuddered under them and Gohama was yanked out of her concern, eyes snapping up to the tsunami of chakra appearing right in front of them as one gigantic statue. But it wasn't a statue, it was a vessel, just as Gohama, just as Naruto and Bee-san.

The four-tails was absorbed into it, leaving behind the limp body of his jinchuriki. Horror trembled at the edges of her heart from the sight of it, a dread exploding in her chest that felt more like doom, more like a premonition. It could have been her and Seiryu, and whatever relief could come from that thought never did.

Her feet were already moving before she could think of it and then she was staring at the face of a man. Gohama should have been numbed after watching so many comrades' dead bodies. Still this hit deeper, because it punched right through that personal and selfish sense of injustice at everything close to her, it punched right through her guilt.

Her fingers closed his eyes gently and she picked his body in her arms to lay him safely at the edge of the battlefield. Gyuki called for her and she lifted her gaze to him. He would hold onto him with his tail and so Gohama laid him carefully there.

"I'm sorry the world was too late for you." She whispered so no one would hear her.

Gohama didn't even know his name.

Gyuki wrapped his tail carefully around him. It was not the time for mourning, it was the time for fighting. Gohama turned to stand beside him and Naruto, Seiryu joining them and picking her up to stand on his head. In front of them were the other five biju.

"Let's do this, Octopops, Gohama, Old Lizard!" Naruto shouted, voice filled with energy, whatever grief he held igniting into resolve.

"Not another one. I'm an ageless mass of chakra, not old." Seiryu grumbled under his breath.

"Naruto, you just be back up, agreed?" Gyuki advised. "We're going up against five tailed beasts. You can't stay in the front if you can't do a tailed beast transformation."

"There won't be any leading or backing up. We're going in together!" Naruto continued unwavering, his eyes fixed on the enemy in front of them. "Especially since the three of us are already in two-man teams."

Her lips spread in a wide smile at the full meaning behind his words. The relationship between Kyura jinchuriki and Seiryu had always been different from the others, but there was a time when Gohama had been all alone and lost, no one to guide her through it.

The raging chakra locked inside of her had been nothing but a curse, a curse that had saved her once from a mad man, and a curse that had left her alone with a village etched into her heart, a curse that had loomed uncontrollably inside of her and could crush everyone around her, had crushed Hansuke.

But then she had met Seiryu, annoying and arrogant and so caring. It was no longer her and her curse, it was them and their curse, and even through the pain it brought them, there was also so much goodness. Gohama could see the same now in Naruto, that fruitful shift in his relationship with Kurama.

"I told you to be patient, kiddo." Seiryu said, a smirk in his voice. He was right too many times.

The biju in front of them opened their mouths, their chakra rising and joining into a purple ball of pure destruction. Gohama looked back at Kakashi and Gai, two defenceless dots in a battle between titans, but Seiryu was already pulling them up beside her with his tails.

A mass of Kurama's chakra erupted beside them, shining in a bright yellow light and shoving into her front, stirring her awe.

But suddenly there is only a wall of familiar chakra and tails all around them. "Seiryu?"

"The kid got it."

"You have more faith in Naruto than you ever had in me."

"Don't be jealous, kiddo. I have faith in you, just not for the same things as them. Besides, it's not just Naruto, my faith is also in Kurama. He was always the most powerful of us, but also the most stubborn."

Through Seiryu's protective tails they could still feel the power of the jutsu. Gohama grunted, her skin burning with the mirrored sensations of Seiryu. Her teeth gritted so she could keep the expressions of her pain quiet in her throat.

"You have one hell of a student, Kakashi." Gohama breathed out, once the remains of the chakra explosion died out, Seiryu's tails falling from around them, the pain a mere throbbing, rapidly fading through the biju regeneration.

When she met Kakashi's gaze, his eyes were achingly soft with the pride and love Gohama always saw when he spoke of Naruto. "I know."

"Naruto gaining such strength and experience makes me feel old and feeble." Gai commented beside them and Gohama's eyebrows rose in incredibility.

"What's the matter? You're not being yourself. It may sound funny coming from me…" Kakashi drawled out as he turned his head slightly to give her a meaningful glance. "The springtime of our youth is far from over."

Gohama smiled softly at Kakashi, a quiet blush warming her cheeks.

"We still have a lot—"

"Quiet!" Gai barked. "You're making me feel worse."

Her throat rumbled in a chuckle at their bickering, her heavy heart lightening a little. It was good to see their roles reversed, Kakashi showing some of his inner sap and joy, a part of him that he had kept hidden under his many masks, his fear of disillusionment and his dark sucking grief. He was thriving still, through all the suffering in his life, Kakashi was still blooming.

A drop fell onto her cheek and Gohama dabbed at it, surprised that it was there. Then she felt another one on her head and realised it was rain, not a stray tear of emotion. She glanced up to the clouds only to see beacons of pure clear light raising up. It was the jinchuriki, their souls floating up, free from the constraints of the resurrection jutsu. Someone had released it.

Father should be there too, one of those lights flying up to the sky, returning to his pack, maybe returning with a piece of her to share with everyone. And hopefully… hopefully she wouldn't meet them herself yet. Her gaze watched Kakashi's profile, his eyebrows furred as he focussed on their enemy. Every cell of her body would fight for her life, Gohama wouldn't leave him again. Kakashi had had enough of that for a lifetime.

"We have to destroy the statue." Kakashi started, with his firm taicho tone. "That's the vessel for the biju. We destroy it and he can't do whatever he wants to do with them."

"Kakashi." Her head snapped to the bastard, as his low eerie voice calling out to him. "You speak your mind way too easily. You're a man for whom a life full of regrets is fitting."

Her heartbeat ceased in her chest, muscles tensing up under her skin. The bastard had made his homework apparently, studying them and their past so he could destabilise and weaken their fight with stabs as this one. Still… how could he have measured Kakashi so seamlessly?

Gohama shifted slightly on her feet, her arm stretching at her side to pull Kakashi behind her, as if that could protect him from the cutting edge of those words. One glimpse at Kakashi's face and, even through the mask, it was clear they had it their mark.

"My end goal is a super genjutsu, the infinite Tsukuyomi. I will put every human on this planet under a single genjutsu. A single world that belongs to nobody. One perfect world without war or ill feelings. The world no longer needs hope, famous heroes or a future. Then reality will cease to exist and all that will exist is a single unending dream that will last for all eternity."

It was sadder and crueller to know he had done all this for a genjutsu. It was twisted and it was weak. The prickling warmth that had terrified her so much days before returned, that understanding tasting bitter in her mouth. How desperate could he be to wish for a lie?

Maybe there had been a time when Gohama would have fallen for it too, when she had been nothing but broken pieces and a ripped out mask on a bed, her own name sounding of nothing to her mind. A time when she would have given everything up to make sterile dead scenarios true, scenarios were everything was perfect and everyone was alive, no boundaries in reality but her own want, her own burning desires made into being.

But even then she had realised the problem wasn't just the world, it was her. It was all of them that wished for better but never reached for it, that wished for better but stood quietly and resignedly waiting for it to be better all alone.

"I had Dad, Mom and Ero-sennin. Kids love looking up to their hero. That's why I can keep running forward without hesitation. I will become the greatest Hokage of them all! That's my dream, you idiot!"

And then there was Naruto, blue eyes the colour of the sky and the future. It ignited her hope in him that until now Gohama had only copied from Kakashi and all her division comrades. Now her faith in him was her own.

"Even if you don't want your youth to end, dreams must come to a conclusion at some point." Gai joined too, tone hopeful.

"Dreams must be fulfilled." Kakashi commented with a more contained voice, the back of his hand brushing hers.

Gohama stayed silent, her tongue heavy in her mouth and that sense of inadequacy shuddering through her ribs. Shuriken's mask had been burnt, yet she saw it still, across a devastated battlefield, white and with two mismatched eyes behind rounded slits.

Naruto rushed forward to attach the statue and relief wash through her now that she could just act and not think. But Kakashi held onto her shoulder before she could move and whispered into her ear. "I'm going to erase it with my kamui." It seemed Kakashi was heeding the enemy's advice about not saying everything out loud.

"It's too big."

"That's what they always say." His warm breath tingling against the shell of her ear, voice low and wonderfully drawled out. "Just the head." Kakashi added with no less innuendo, before recovering as if nothing had happened. "Seiryu, please raise me up high."

Gohama didn't know whether to be mad or flustered that he had decided to tease her in the middle of this shit-show. Instead she chose to assist Naruto and Gai in distracting the bastard with close combat.

Her eyes spied the whirlpool at the head of the statue, a bend in space that sucked everything into nothing, so similar to how it felt when the bastard's hand had touched her. It was almost gone, only the colours of the sky being drawn into the black dot of void.

And then the bend was gone and the statue was the same as it had been before.

"Naïve." The bastard barked.

Dread frosted in her chest but she had no time to think on it as Kakashi fell to his knees and Gohama drew back to him. Her hand pressed to his back, sending Seiryu's chakra into his pathways so he could recover.

Kakashi picked himself up, wide eyes staring into the masked bastard, his thoughts rioting behind them. His lightning chakra trembled into her side, prickling her skin, his breaths shallower and not because of exhaustion.

Her jaw clenched closed, because even if she had been certain, there had always been a sliver for the possibility of doubt in her mind. They hadn't breached the subject since the day she returned, but now she could see Kakashi piecing together the simple puzzle, accepting what Gohama had said in the command tent and that they had decided to keep silent and forgotten between them.

But it had never really been forgotten, of course it hadn't. There wasn't a day Kakashi didn't obsess over Obito, there wasn't a day he didn't remember he had the eye of his dead best friend in his socket.

And now Kakashi was fighting the other one, the mirroring one, and he knew he was fighting it.

"It's no use thinking about it." He whispered to her, his voice even. Gohama tried to search for the hidden panic in his eyes, in the creases of his face, but there was only a smooth porcelain mask for her to see. "We can use it to our advantage."

How could he just do that? Bottle everything in, so tight and so closed, pouring all of his focus, all of his purpose on the battle. Kakashi's endurance was admirable but endurance didn't mean no pain and it also didn't mean it couldn't break. It always left behind thin cracks, so silent they could shatter without a warning.

Gohama breathed in. Even if she couldn't endure it for him or with him, Gohama could endure it beside him, and if he broke, she would endure it still, she would endure it until the end.

She looked up at him with confidence. "I can see that you have a plan."

His mask stretched in what she knew was a smug smirk. "I always have a plan." Kakashi turned to the others, calling them into regrouping. "His transportation technique is linked to the same time-space as my kamui."

"How come they are linked?" Gyuki asked.

And Gai, for all the emotional physical beast he played, was a smart man, piecing together the puzzle on the turmoil behind his friend's eyes. "Kakashi, is he…?" He didn't have the courage of naming him.

Kakashi turned a fierce gaze to the bastard. "Where did you get that eye?" He asked, voice forceful voice.

"Where?" The bastard repeated nonchalantly, but his gaze was harsh behind the slits of his mask, pinned to Kakashi. "In the last Great War, the battle of Kannabi Bridge where you earned the name of hero of the sharingan."

The bastard was making it personal and Kakashi was falling into it, as he pushed himself away from her. And of course he was, this was personal, this was about Obito.

"Are you…?" Kakashi asked.

And then it hit her, like a kick into her chest. Gohama had never pondered it, had never even let the possibility surge at the edge of her mind. Gohama had been so deep in Kakashi's Obito, the silhouette of a boy that was all goodness and perfectness, everything Kakashi wanted to be, she completely forgot there was a real person behind him, she completely forgot he was more than Kakashi and his burden.

What if… what if he hadn't stolen the eye?

Her eyes searched through everything in the man in front of them, trying to see behind the mask, trying to find any resemblance between the shape of him, lethal and cruel, and the boy from Kakashi's memories. There was nothing that overlapped, even his chakra didn't match the one saved and alive inside Kakashi's sharingan.

It couldn't be, not Obito, it couldn't be. It would break him. Kakashi's luck couldn't be that bad.

The bastard raised his finger at him. "I thought I told you not to flap your mouth so readily! You're just all talk now. Your words are worthless!" He growled the words. For the first time in that battle, it was a sound that rose from deep inside him and it only made her dread grip around her heart.

"It's too late for regrets. Reality just keeps cruelly moving ahead. You've seen reality so you must know. Not one wish gets granted in this world. That's why I'm guiding it to the dream of Infinite Tsukuyomi."

Beside her, Kakashi's breathing rasped in his throat, louder with each new word the bastard spat out. His chakra rioted against her senses, the wild lightning loosening inside tight restraint and prickling through her skin. Gohama had seen this before, had felt it burst beside her once, a night long ago when Kakashi had woken from a nightmare, rubbed his hands raw in the cold river of Buki, wiping out the blood that wasn't there, panic trembling in his eyes.

"Seiryu?"

"All yours." He answered as he slithered through the air with her.

"I'm going to create a world where it won't be necessary for a hero to pathetically make excuses in front of a grave."

Fuck. Now she was furious.

Seiryu formed a biju ball and launched it at the bastard, the explosion flooding the air around him. When it started dissipating, he threw Gohama. The moment he materialised once again, Gohama was stabbing him with her chakra-soaked tachi. She went right through him, burying her arms into the ground.

"We've made you bleed and burn once." Gohama growled, her blade piercing on his immaterial stomach again. The memory of him wounded with hers and Seiryu's chakra ignited through her skin, eyes sharp and steady, fingers precise, chakra buzzing with impetus. "We touched you. We'll do it again. Then I'll rip that mask off your face."

The bastard barked out a laugh, his wrist twisting to blow his fan against her, but Gohama stopped it with her tachi, the impact trembling up her arms.

"You lost. What even makes you think you'll win this time?"

Gohama pushed against the metal of his weapon. "This time, we're not alone."

The bastard disappeared from under her and surged a few metres away. Gohama didn't lose time, chakra arms reaching for him at the same time she sped to meet him, swaying from spot to spot so he wouldn't know where she would be coming for, Seiryu filling the battlefield with explosions of chakra, trying to catch him in one as he reappeared on a random spot.

It was a game of catch as he fled away from her and it only enraged her further. Seiryu's chakra flared out of her pathways like needles as she soaked the air with it.

"Kiddo, if we keep this up you'll pass out right into his arms."

She could see Kakashi frozen, his eyes fixed on the ground, as Gai tried to pull him out of it. Lethal waves of chakra erupting through her skin, burning and melting the earth beneath her and boiling the air around her.

"Come on, you fucking coward!" Gohama shouted as she stretched her chakra out for him. "Fight me!"

She would sink her fingers into his socket and then she would rip away the eye he had stolen.

"Are you not alone, Kyura Gohama?" He threw from his eye a torrent of massive shuriken that Gohama evaded with her tachi and chakra. As if that could stop her.

"She's not alone." Naruto called out, circling for the bastard's back. "She has me, Eight-o, Octopops, Gai-sensei and Kakashi-sensei."

It was easier to pressure the bastard with Naruto and his kage bunshin. They didn't let him fully materialise, every instant one of his or her attacks passed through him, the other one was already piercing through another void in his body, each time with larger more powerful attacks. Naruto and Gohama could hold this dance up for longer than the bastard, she would hold it up for as long as it was needed.

The corner of her eye glimpsed Gai and Kakashi moving in to support them. The tension pressing on her ribs from inside out eased slightly. From his eyes, she could see that Kakashi wasn't fully there yet, but it was better.

The bastard jumped away from them, his eye expelling those giant metal rods. One pierced Gyuki's tail, chakra chains wrapping around him. Gohama expelled her chakra, creating a barrier for the ones on the ground, while Naruto's kage bunshin rushed to reach the bastard with a rasengan while he had to be touchable.

The exhaustion was creeping into her body, her muscles trembling and pathways burning, mind overwhelmed from her connection with Seiryu. Gohama sighed in relief as she could dispel her chakra, the real Naruto having created a biju ball large enough to engulf a tailed-beast.

"That's my plan." Kakashi rasped as he fell to his knees beside her from using his mangekyo to transport one of Naruto's kage bunshin, Gai already there to hold him up. She wasn't entirely sure what his purpose was, but if there was one strategist she trusted it was Kakashi.

"Hey…" Gohama whispered softly as she rested a hand on his temple and another on his back to share Seiryu's chakra.

She had only the time to flow some of it into him as the biju ball exploded in the air, the impact of it punching through their chests, ringing in their ears, the sharp burst of light cutting their eyes. Her feet flooded with chakra to hold them to them together to the earth.

Gohama had felt this anxious anticipation before as it swelled through the silence settled over the battlefield. The eerie feeling of the whistle of a firework bound to explode, the darkness of a storm hoarding in the sky ready to burst over the earth. It was as the groan of the wooden floors on an abandoned house, the sudden presence of his chakra signature jarring through her shoulders with a shudder, a ghost coming back to life.

The bastard materialised away from the explosion, in front of them. Her eyes caught first the broken pieces of a mask before dark sandals, cut with the clear swirls of a rasengan. Gohama held onto those shards because a part of her didn't want the firework to explode and didn't want the rain to fall and Kakashi to shatter.

But somehow she knew already. Somehow she knew from how the breath in Kakashi's lungs had halted with a small gasp, she knew from how he had stilled, from how his chakra seemed suspended over two distant moments, the before and the after.

Her eyes lifted from the broken shards of the mask at his feet. It was so easy to not look at his face, to not rise above his shoulders, it was so easy to pretend there was a stolen eye from the corpse of a good crystallised dead boy.

A man with deep creases of scarred skin Gohama had uncovered before. A man that was an older shadow of a boy Gohama had only met through memories on that morning.

"Is that you…" Kakashi started, voice grating through his throat. "Obito?"

Obito.

Kakashi pronounced the name and he was made true, materialised from behind the untouchable jutsu of his mangekyo, drawn and traced from behind the mask with the simple heavy and meaningful sound of those three syllables.

Uchiha Obito.

"Are you really Obito?" Gai asked, no longer reticent over saying the name now that Kakashi himself had spoken it. "I thought you died."

It was the smothering silence again. The silence that answered with the truth.

Kakashi's choked out a gasp, hearing what she had heard in the silence, seeing in the scarred face of the man in front of them the fuller cheeks and kinder eyes of a boy.

"There's no mistake. That's Uchiha Obito."

"You can call me by that name if you want. It means nothing to me." His voice had changed into a rougher timbre, unveiled itself now that Madara's mask had crumbled.

Weren't those words familiar? Gohama almost felt like laughing, that desperate mad laugh so close to the sound of crying.

Kakashi pulled away from Gai, stumbling a few steps to his side, his shoulder pushing against hers. "But that day, you… You're alive."

There was a sense of betrayal piercing through her chest and Gohama hadn't even known him. All Gohama knew was of Kakashi's idea of Obito, of those hours in front of the memorial, the impact he had in Kakashi, those memories he had shared with her. Perhaps the betrayal came from that, seeing the boy that had shaped Kakashi made into everything that he fought against. A sense of betrayal because Obito betrayed Kakashi's trust in him, Kakashi's love for him.

Yet there wasn't an ounce of betrayal in Kakashi's eyes, only confusion, as if this was merely a misunderstanding and the Obito before them now wasn't the antithesis of his own Obito.

How could someone have as bad luck as Kakashi? In two weeks, two of his precious people had come back from the dead. Would it break him? He was already breaking and Gohama found that her hands weren't enough to hold his pieces together. How could they, how could she?

"If you survived why didn't you come forward sooner?"

The question pierced right through her lungs, stealing away her breath. Her unseeing eyes trembled through the shards of his mask.

They were the same, Obito and Gohama. They were the same and they caused the same pain to Kakashi.

Obito had spoken of a hero making excuses in front of a grave, he had known of how much Kakashi had suffered from his death and Rin's. Just as Gohama had known how much they had suffered and had still decided to follow her own selfish reasons to stay dead.

The familiarity swelled her understanding for him and yet it only made whatever compassion warming in her heart as cold and stilled as ice. All that resentment and loathing for herself spread freely, like her chakra flowing from her pathways to another's. It latched onto the mask shattered at his feet, latched onto him, latched onto her.

"It's irrelevant whether I had survived or not."

Her head dropped down, fingers curling into tight painful fists, her nails ripping through the fabric of her gloves. That indifference… it was crueller than any resentment could be. How could he even face Kakashi and say that it was irrelevant when he knew how non-irrelevant it had been to him?

"Although I suppose… if you really want an answer." Obito's eyes sharpened, cutting through Kakashi, but never as deep and as cruelly as his words did, "It's because you let Rin die."

Fuck.

Of all the things he could have said that was the worst possible one, it was a blow meant to pierce right through Kakashi's heart and shatter him from inside out.

What was Obito's purpose with this? Was he simply trying to break Kakashi, to destroy an enemy in his weakness or was it more personal? Because it would be ruthlessly efficient, manipulating Kakashi's tendency for blaming himself to make him believe Obito's downfall was his fault. To make him believe he had failed to save his friend not once, from death, not twice, from a broken promise, but three times, when he killed Rin and all of Obito's world with her.

Obito was carving his own blame over everything in Kakashi's flesh. His failure to his friend was no longer just a failure to his friend, it was a failure to the world and to Konoha.

Her eyes rose to see the despair Gohama already felt through his chakra shuddering in Kakashi's eyes. She couldn't run away from it, her duty was to take all of it fully, especially when it was merely a crumb of what she saw in his eyes and that was merely a mirror to his true unadulterated pain.

The guilt run so deep and melted into his flesh, deforming the muscles around his eyes into something harsher than anything Gohama had ever seen in Kakashi. It looked less like guilt and more like horror. The horror so alike that of people begging for their lives on the other side of her chakra-soaked fist.

Gohama had almost forgotten that love was also this, burning bile at the back of her throat, cold cutting fingers sinking into her chest and carving her heart out. Her love for Buki had always hurt more than it warmed.

"Relax." He let out in a mockingly dismissive breath, as if he hadn't just stabbed through the open gaping wound that was Rin's death in Kakashi. "Besides, what's with that look in your eyes, Kakashi?"

It was the look of a man with the guilt of the world on his shoulders. It was the look of a man drowning in the hell of his self-loathing.

If Rin could have known all the pain her last act of despair and love had caused…

Do something. Gohama shouted to herself, her mind running with anything she could do to save him from this, from the anguish. There was nothing… Gohama could do nothing…

"You're not going to condemn me?"

Even through the wrenching those words made in her heart, they did not surprise her. This was Kakashi, he was staring at a genocidal murdered and still saw all the blame hanging between them tied around his own neck alone.

That day had bound Kakashi to Obito, the boy and the man.

Obito's death had been one of those greats moments in life that shaped everything that came after it. The boy and his death had marked Kakashi's life, Kakashi's whole person, from his personality, to his values, to his shinobi way and skill, even his ridiculous tardiness.

The boy he had mourned and grieved, the boy he had idolised, loved. Obsessed over, saw in Obito all the hope and measure of his life.

And now the man. The sharingan was like a cursed seal, extending above time and space into their united kamui, the sharingan was a mirror on the tattered battlefield and breaking the distance between them.

But Kakashi wasn't just a man moulded into the ideal shape of a brave, selfless, loyal boy with big dreams. 'Those who left their precious people behind were worse than scum', Obito had offered a seed to Kakashi and he had watered it, cherished it until it had bloomed into a wonderful thing. He had been the one to make himself into the person he was, so much greater than his image of Obito had ever been, because he was real.

And Kakashi wasn't the reflection of the real man standing before them now. Just as Kakashi was more than that boy, Kakashi was more than the man.

They had diverged, their paths running opposite to each other. Obito's sins weren't Kakashi's to take as his burden and still he took them, still he accepted it as his own failure, his own doing, as if it had been his hands shaping all the destruction Obito had planted through the shinobi world.

To Kakashi, that sharingan was the token of their unbreakable bond, always merging the lines between him and Obito.

"What would I gain from criticising this absurd reality at this point?"

Kakashi deflated with Obito's words, head bent down, eyes unseeing on the ground, a mirror of all the times he stood in front of the memorial stone, the weight of his guilt and his failure crusting into nothing.

Her eyes moved pass him to settle on Naruto and Gai, both of them recognising how the nothing was worse than the anguish.

Obito had a point when he called this reality absurd, what he didn't understand was that criticising it, trying to make sense of it was where the fun was. That's why they were fighting this war. What if the world was cruel and absurd and the most ruthless and painful thing? It was still worth living in it, if Gohama had found worth and meaning in it, anyone could. Who was Obito to play the victim over Rin's death when Kakashi had lost so much more?

Fuck, she hated him and she understood him and it only made her hate him even more.

"I have no interest in the affairs of a world that will soon cease to exist."

And just like that Obito had robbed Kakashi of his will to fight.

Anything she could do felt so fatally inadequate. How could she even begin to understand the pain that was shattering through him? She even understood Obito better, with his mask and his attempt at erasing himself for some big murderous delusion.

What use was her comfort to Kakashi if it was empty without understanding? There was a wide abyss separating them and she didn't know how to break it.

The murmur of Gai and Naruto's voice echoed through her ears as they tried to pull Kakashi out of it. She didn't have Kakashi's special power for soothing her, Naruto's bright hopeful smile and words, Gai's persistent companionship that could pierce through walls.

All she had was a sterile love that couldn't make itself real and true when Kakashi needed it.

Her eyes lifted from the ground to watch Seiryu and Kurama's chakra roaring as a barrier between them and Obito's attack. She couldn't even protect him as Gohama had promised herself to do, had it been just Gohama and Kakashi, Obito would have burned them into ash, exploiting her absolute failure.

How useless could she become? Her sharp hands like blades had no use in love and they also had no use in fighting.

And just like that Obito had robbed her of her will to fight.

A bitter defeated laugh wanted to break through her lips but Gohama clenched her jaw closed. Obito was so much more dangerous when he didn't use his fists. As his words had guided Kakashi when a misguided child, they had guided all the pawns for his project Tsuki no Me.

But Gohama and Kakashi had made a promise to each other that they would fight for their lives this time and she would make sure they wouldn't fail that. She would endure and she would do a ridiculous attempt at consoling him.

Her legs trembled under her, from tiredness or insecurity, she didn't know, as Gohama took a step for Kakashi. The blues and oranges of the biju chakra made Kakashi's pale skin like ice, a statue of marble, cold and stilled, when moments before Kakashi had spoken of the springtime of youth and of dreams fulfilled. Now all the disillusion in the world was carved into the drained lifeless eyes fixed on the ground.

Gohama let her fingers slid through his trembling ones, squeezing the back of his hand, hoping the simple touch could pull him back from the whirlpool of self-loathing he was drowning in. Never before had such a simple gesture held this much importance.

Kakashi didn't move, his fingers stiff as they hovered away from the back of her hand, his eyes and frame not shifting with a flicker of recognition.

Gohama was so far away from him, an infinite spreading between her fingers and his. She didn't know how to break it, she wanted to so much, she wanted to stop all of his guilt and his pain with words that didn't come and a touch that soothed all wounds, but she couldn't, she didn't know how.

Kakashi was just stumbling farther and farther away from her and her hands couldn't hold him, safe and loved in them.

She turned to him, her lips and nose pressing to his arm, above the swirl of the Uzumaki on the fabric of his sleeve.

"Kakashi." She only had his name in her mouth and her awkward unsure hand around his.

His fingers pressed to the back of her hand, squeezing her back. Gohama trapped a sigh of relief in her mouth and her hold tightened.

Gohama shifted on her feet so she could face him, bending her head slightly to catch his gaze in her own. "We're—"

But a chakra signature exploded in her awareness, her muscles stretching like springs ready to snap, spine racked with shudders and cold sweat. She had only the time to turn around to see another shinobi landing gracefully beside Obito.

The shinobi. The Uchiha. The Madara.

There wasn't a doubt in her mind as she watched his famous long hair, a mirror of the depictions of history books, but most of all it was that chakra, all-consuming, creeping and mesmerising, like forest fire made into lively energy, the sun itself locked in the core of a human being.

Fuck. How long could she keep Seiryu outside of her pathways?

He chatted with Obito as if they were long-time accomplices. Perhaps they were, perhaps it had been Madara who dug the boy from under the boulder, when everyone had thought the two of them were dead, and shaped him into the delusional murderer he was today.

Were their goals the same? Did Uchiha Madara also wish for the Infinite Tsukuyomi?

Madara himself seemed to answer her question as he mumbled, "I can't depend on any of you. Well, no matter… It's not too late. I'll capture the biju. Obito, you take down those two."

Before Gohama could process her decision to stay beside Kakashi, Seiryu was already scooping her up with his tail and flying away.

"Seiryu, what the hell?"

"This is Uchiha Madara, okay? Kakashi's a grown man, he can take care of himself."

"But what if he can't…"

Seiryu didn't answer, his mouth opening wide, dark burning chakra growing into a massive ball between his fangs. He expelled it towards Madara and didn't wait to see if it had landed before slithering through the air again, another biju ball growing in his mouth. The explosion of the first washed over them with a ruthless gush of wind and before it had settled the second was already cutting though the distance for the lone figure.

It would hit, there was no way Uchiha Madara could evade it when it was that close to him, his attention focussed on Naruto and Kurama. But as the certainty solidified in her, he was evading it and the blast with a grace and easiness of a dancer. His gaze turned to them, sharingan piercing through their chest in all its menace.

It was death materialised into a glare.

Gohama's fingers shook, her eyes shifting down to watch it with confusion. This wasn't exhaustion, this wasn't the dread and sense of doom from a decisive battle, the fear of losing Kakashi and the war. This was that visceral despair of an animal when confronted with its predator, this was fear in its most primal. The type of fear Gohama had felt when the life had been washing away from her veins.

All this after one look from Uchiha Madara's sharingan.

Her hand curled into a fist and she pushed it against her forehead, damp with sweat, feverish from the effort of keep the connection up. Fuck, she needed to pull herself together, this fear didn't sharpen her, this fear made her unhinged and that led to mistakes.

The sound of Obito's voiced brought her eyes to him in time to watch as he pierced a shuriken through Kakashi's knee.

Fuck.

A massive wooden dragon slithered through the air for them, Seiryu's claws splintering its side and still it continued, glided around him and locking him and Kurama. Gohama could feel their chakra being stolen away, the connection thinning, forcing more of her mental focus to keeping it stable.

There were too many things happening at the same time. Her fast heartbeat pounded in her temples and made her vision blur, still she pushed through it, chakra soaked tachi slicing through the wooden dragon.

Her arms raised above her head and she swung the blade down to shatter the tightening curve that caged Seiryu. The impact shuddered up her wrists and down her spine, a grunt pierced through her lungs. Gohama's breathing rasped against her throat as she watched the naked metal of the blade sunk a few centimetres into the wood, useless when there was no chakra to push past the hardness.

Her control on their chakra had failed, retreating into her pathways and dissipating into the air. Gohama hissed a curse as she tried to catch her breathing and gain some of her strength and skill back.

"You have to unsummon me."

Gohama raised her gaze to his between wet strands of her stuck to her sweaty forehead. "I can't. I'll pass out."

"You'll pass out either way. Ask Naruto to share a bit of Kurama's chakra with you and maybe that'll be enough to revive you."

Gohama tugged at her tachi but it wouldn't come out of the wood. "Shit. What the fuck is wrong with me?"

"You're tired and your mind is somewhere else."

She pulled away and let herself fall back. With a swing of her legs, Gohama landed on her feet and ran for Naruto. "I'm going to pass out. I need you to share some of Kurama's chakra with me."

"What?"

Her only answer was a grunt as all of Seiryu rushed back into her core, burning up her pathways. Her head spun and then there was only dark.

Gohama opened her eyes to find herself in Naruto's arms as he jumped through the wooden dragon. A new strangely familiar chakra, hot and raging like flames, circling through her. Seiryu's chakra was dormant, Kurama's not enough to revive him as it had her, but now she could use hers freely without worrying about keeping up their connection.

"You can put me down now, Naruto."

Naruto's blue eyes snapped to her, wide with surprise and confusion. "Gohama!"

She couldn't help but smile while extracting herself from his hold to stand beside him. "Thank you, Naruto. You too, Kurama, for the chakra." Gohama said as she tugged her tachi out of the wood and cloaked the balde with her chakra. "Let me repay the favour."

She swung the blade down and splintered the wood, helping the biju free themselves with Naruto and Gai.

And then her eyes snapped to Kakashi, because if Gai was here…

He was on his knees, Obito standing before him with that giant shuriken in his hand. "I said scum should keep their mouth shut."

Now that the mask had shattered and fallen from his face, this was no longer the nameless bastard. He was Obito, not Kakashi's Obito, but the real one, personal and cruel, with a shared past and sharingan with Kakashi.

All her rage flowed through her tachi as she broke through Madara's dragon. Her arms rose once again, ready to cut and shatter.

Everything in her froze as she heard Obito's voice. "Die."

"I couldn't keep my promise to you. You're right, I am scum. But you…" Kakashi drawled out, too much sorrow in his voice and also so much delusion. "you're a hero of Konoha. There's no reason for you to become scum too."

"Go, Gohama." Her wide eyes turned to Naruto. "Kakashi-sensei needs you more now."

She didn't need to be told twice, already racing towards him. Obito was laughing, like mocking acid, head cast low.

"This is reality." Obito's eyes lifted to look at Kakashi with malicious eyes. "All shinobi who survive in this world always become scum. You and I are prime examples, Kakashi, your woman Gohama, or is it Shuriken?"

He raised his shuriken and Gohama's heart shook, yet there was no doubt that she would reach them in time, because Gohama had to, she had to.

"No one can escape the cycle that makes scum in this world. That's why I want to remake it."

Her chakra rose in front of her, the shuriken meant for Kakashi never breaking through the bright blue barrier. She let it fall, the metal clanking on the ground at her feet.

"That's where you're wrong, Obito." Gohama said, head facing straight on, fierce eyes locked on his. "Kakashi is not like us. He's not weak and evil, trying to find a misguided purpose to hide how meaningless and hopeless our lives are, hiding behind fake names, Tobi, Madara, Shuriken, behind masks of nothing.

"Don't call Kakashi scum." Gohama commanded. "You're the one that is scum, worse than scum."

"Not scum?" Obito sneered. "You have to come and protect him because now he's all talk and a quivering mess, and you say he isn't scum? The shinobi to murder your parents in your own home and he isn't scum? The shinobi that killed the girl that loved him when he promised to protect her?!"

"Yes, Kakashi did all those things, and that's why you're wrong, Obito, he suffered all those things and he's still the best man I know, the person I admire the most.

"Those who abandon their teammates are worse than scum." Gohama declared the famous words, words that belonged more to Kakashi than they had ever belonged to Obito, because he had been the one to make them true.

"Kakashi took what you gave him and actually made something good out of it. Maybe you could have too, Obito. I have so much more respect for the kid that stood up to brat jonin Kakashi and fought to protect the girl he loved than the pathetic man with both a mangekyo and rinnegan."

Part of her felt a pang of sympathy for the boy, not the man that called himself Madara, the man that renounced to his name, the nobody. How could anyone ever match what Kakashi had drawn of him in his hours of loneliness and guilt as he stared at the cenotaph, a carved name that held so much meaning and love in its lines? It had been more than a name, more than characters, it represented Obito's Kakashi.

And Obito's Kakashi was both too full and too empty, a shadow of a person, because he had never been real.

"This that you're doing, this project Tsuki no Me, this is weakness, Obito, this is being worse than scum. You're abandoning everyone, you're abandoning the world." Her eyes bore into his and she took a small breath, reading herself to say the sharp cutting words. "You're abandoning Rin."

Obito glared at her, a stilled moment before his chakra erupted with a killing intent that shook through her muscles and sharpened all of her senses. "You know nothing!"

"Probably not. But now you're mad." Her tachi spread through the space between them as she pointed the tip at his face. "Fight me for real this time, bastard." Gohama didn't look back, her eyes pinned to Obito's as she spoke with confidence, "Kakashi, remember, you're fighting beside me."

Obito threw his head back theatrically as he laughed. "You call me weak, but he can't even stand up, looking at us with that pained face."

"Oh, Obito, Kakashi's so much stronger than you'll ever be."

And then her tachi lowered without her mind's command. A sudden warmth flickering through all the loathing agitating for the man in front of her, a warmth that hung in the muddled edge between pity and compassion.

"Maybe you can borrow some of his strength, Kakashi wouldn't hesitate to share it with you. Just as he never hesitated to share his strength with me."

Obito only sneered through her narrow attempt at conciliation, the scars marring his face twisting in a way that reminded her of Uncle Hideki's own scarred face every time she had displeased him.

"Let's see how strong he is when I rip that tailed beast out of your corpse."

He sprang towards her and at the same time the hairs on her arms stood on end from the frantic buzzing of lightning, the sound of a thousand birds chirping through her ears. Gohama didn't move as Kakashi grazed past her, arm stretched forward, hand ruling the controlled wildness of his raikiri. It broke through Obito's shuriken with ease and he jumped back to evade the reach of Kakashi's fist.

Gohama rushed to meet him, before he could fall to his knees from low chakra reserves. Her arm wrapped around his middle and Kakashi's easily pieced itself to the support of her shoulders. His tired breathing sounding right beside her ear as he leaned into her, letting her take more of his weight.

"I remember." Kakashi whispered softly.

Her cheeks hurt with her smile, heart swelling with pride and admiration, and so much relief. "You better."

Kakashi had been the one begging to fight beside her and he had also been the one to make them promise to fight for their lives. She wouldn't allow him to run away from those so easily, she wouldn't allow him to run from everything that made him who he was.

Gohama pressed her hand to his stomach, letting her own chakra spread into his pathways. It wasn't the same as Seiryu, but it was better than nothing. Kakashi made a small gasp at the feeling of her own chakra and turned his eyes to her, eyebrows bunched together in a question.

"He'll wake up in a moment." As she shared more of her chakra with Kakashi, his weight lifted slightly from her, until it was completely off her, except for his arm on her shoulder.

"Gohama, I'm—"

She shook her head to stop his words, already knowing what he would say from the guilt in his eyes, that guilt that always pinched at her heart. There was no need for him to apologise, he had scared her, of course, but he had done nothing wrong. Just the fact that Kakashi had pulled himself from the shock and the guilt over Obito, the disillusion, was a show of the strength she admired so much in him.

They moved in together to fight Obito, a remembrance of that battle before she had left him behind and decided to confront the masked bastard alone. He only let certain attacks pass through him, choosing to parry or evade, eyes focussed on Kakashi's sharingan for the swirl of the mangekyo.

His hand held onto Kakashi's fist before it could hit his face.

Then Kakashi was gone.

Her heart stopped in her chest as her mind tried to make sense of the lack of Kakashi in front of her. The bastard had sucked him into the kamui. Her chakra rushed out of her to tear through him, but he let his pass through him this time. Suddenly, Obito crumpled on himself, his arm holding onto his stomach, but there was no sign that her attack at hit him.

Gohama's lips spread into a smile as realisation dawned on her. "There he is."

Kakashi was hitting him from inside the kamui, that would be useful against Obito's power. Except, Obito didn't seem particularly bothered by it, which didn't sit well with her.

"Now that is just the two of us you don't have to pretend you don't want this, Shuriken."

"It's Gohama, actually."

Obito took a small step towards hers, his eyes flickering through her, sharingan and rinnegan reading every of her small inflections, every shade of her own eyes, every shadow that stirred behind them.

"Is it? Can you actually come back from that? The mask is just a mask, you've been Shuriken since the moment you were born. Shuriken, Gohama, the Kyura heiress, you're all the same. The failed Buki jinchuriki that let her entire village die, the pretend Konoha shinobi that tried to be part of a team, the selfish bloodthirsty murderer that killed and killed just so she could fill the hole in her dark weak soul. Was it filled, Gohama?"

No, it was not. Gohama had accepted it, she knew she could build a good life despite it. It wasn't a fake genjutsu that would fill what she missed, it wasn't a fake genjutsu that would make the world good.

"It wasn't, was it? It never will be. In this world there will always be something missing, there will always be despair and pain, death. Kakashi will die, your team, they'll all die just as Buki did."

"Of course they will, they're human after all."

"Yes, but you're different, Gohama, you're not human, you're a jinchuriki, a monster, a weapon, a shuriken. Your hands were shaped to bring nothing but misery and death."

Gohama raised her eyebrow at him. She had grappled with it, would continue to grapple with it but it wasn't Uchiha Obito's taunt that would make her crumble. Did he really think he could manipulate her into giving her life over to him, into surrendering Seiryu for a lie?

"You can run from it, you can hide it behind small touches, you can pretend, play house and lovers. But you know, deep down you always know that not any of it is real, that whatever you feel for them will never be true, not when you have a hole in the shape of your heart."

Her fingers twitched with the need to wrap her arms around herself, to find cover from that dissecting gaze, lying all of her bare for him to poke at and cut through. Gohama couldn't underestimate him, Obito had been the man behind Akatsuki, the man pulling the strings of the shinobi world for the last decade only to lead to this, to this very moment where they were now. He knew how the world worked and he had discovered how she worked just as easily.

"You will never love Kakashi, not with true love. You will never love anyone."

Obito's eyes sharpened, the softest of smirks curling the corner of his lips.

"I'm honestly sorry for Kakashi, between you and me, he really did choose the worst people to care about. You're right, Gohama. Kakashi isn't like us, but we, we're the same. We don't have any more love in us, this world ripped it from us, we have only our masks and our duty to make the world better and rid it of its scum. We're the same.

"But with the Infinite Tsukuyomi we'll be perfect for him. You have the power to make it true, Gohama, you have the power to love him, love everyone with true perfect love. You can give your worthless life for Kakashi's perfect one, you can give your worthless life for everyone's perfect one. Everything will be perfect. Even you."

Her eyes caught movement below them as his hand extended to touch her, his chakra so close it seemed as if it were running through her. How was he only a step away without her realising it?

"My life is not worthless." Gohama hissed, voice firm as she lunged away from his grasp, tachi drawn to point at him, as her eyes narrowed. "And right now the scum of this world is you."

"I know your weakness, Kyura Gohama." Obito commented confidently, not the least deterred by his failure at manipulating her.

It was all for the better, if he remained cocky he would inevitably make a mistake, like he had when absorbing Kakashi. With him in the kamui, materialising was useless and their attacks could finally hit.

Her chakra shuddered through her pathways as she let it wave off her, sharp and ruthless, soaking in killing intent.

"Gohama."

Her eyes widened at the sound of Hansuke's voice, the knee flexed to spring her in a fast attack tensed. Gohama looked over her shoulder, the confusion not washing away from her brow as she saw them in battle ready positions. Hansuke, Nikato and Kisamaru, her team.

"What the hell are you three doing here?"

Hansuke gave her a self-satisfied grin. "We heard Kyura Gohama had gotten herself into the big battle. We couldn't leave our teammate to fight alone."

"We're a team." Nikato added, a sheepish and genuine smile on his lips.

Her heart soared at the small gesture of reconciliation, a lump of emotion pressing to her throat until she could barely breathe out his name, "Nikato…"

"Unfortunately we are not in the place for a sentimental reunion." Kisamaru said, his byakugan activated and pinned on Obito.

"Right." Gohama ground out as she turned to face Obito again. "Get behind me, I'll—"

"Don't start being all motherly. We can take care of ourselves." Nikato let out and she could hear the eye-roll in his voice. "Besides, Hansuke-sensei is the taicho, not you."

"I guess he is, isn't he?" Gohama threw him a glance over her shoulder. "Hansuke-taicho."

"Standard formation."

With just that command, they fell into place as if the past year had never happened, as if she hadn't cut a hole into their team with the shape of her, as if it were marked into the marrow of their bones. Gohama felt so stupidly light moving in harmony with them, just like any other mission where they worked like clogs on a clock, each of them with a certain role, for each opening another took the place, no blank spots left for them.

Gohama had forgotten that this was also part of the shinobi life, the comradeship, the undying trust, the feeling she had a place even through the horror of a battle, a home.

Her veins burned with the sharpness of battle and a warm elation that should never belong in a war, so fluttery and uncaring, so piercingly all-consuming it burned in her through everything around her. It was almost otherworldly.

It felt like happiness. The name had bloomed in her mind, foreign and yet no less true. Was this happiness? Was she… happy? If this was happiness, Gohama would do anything to make it hers, keep it hers forever.

And then there was red, it splashed against her face, warm, burning, the bitter taste of iron gnawing at her tongue. Her fingers rose to her face and when she pulled them back they were red, red and liquid with blood.

A scream ripped through the air, but it couldn't have been Nikato's, not when he was limp on the ground in front of her, his throat sliced in half.

"Gohama!"

Something collapsed against her and she was dragged away, her back hitting the ground and skin scrapping on the rocks.

Her lungs were heavy and she could barely bring a breath in, blood still in her mouth, and wetness. Her eyes watched the dark sky, there were clouds but there was no rain. If there was no rain why was she wet? And why was it warm?

Her eyes fell down. She knew that hair, she knew how it looked when it was resting on her chest, tingling her naked skin, she knew how it looked when his head slanted back and hazel eyes smiled at her, and she also knew never again would that happen, not when she was soaked in blood, his heart unmoving against her belly and his guts spilling down onto the dirt, his legs metres away from them.

Another scream and this time she realised who it was that had screamed before. It was the first time she was hearing it and it would probably be the last in the way it gurgled, eerie and horrifying, as death always was.

Gohama cradled Hansuke to her chest and he was so light, her hands slipping on his guts, her eyes and nose prickling with the stink of it and she swallowed the bile on her throat. Her piercing chakra tried to reach for them, but she had only time to see Kisamaru fall from Obito's hold as he dematerialised for her chakra. It was just as Uncle had fallen, a broken dead doll, one obstacle in the way to reach her.

"Give them back…"

Gohama dragged herself on her knees, whatever strength was left in her walking corpse carrying her forward, arm still cradling Hansuke, or was it just half of him? That was impossible, Hansuke had always been fully and whole in everything.

"You have me... let them go, please... you have me, now let them go… please."

They were thrown to her, rolling in the air and on the dirt. They stopped right at her knees. There was a gap between her mind and what her eyes saw, Nikato and Kisamaru limp and lifeless and so so red and white. Gohama poked their bodies with a finger and they were there, touchable and motionless, her fingers spread on their skin, still warm, and they were still there, chakra washing out and breathless.

It was Buki again, it was Father and Mother and Yukine, it was Kunimaru and Haku and Isune, it was everyone and everything she had ever loved and ever cared for. It was Uncle. It was her snowdrop.

It was Gohama, the killing blade in her hands and piercing through their hearts with Seiryu's chakra.

"You have me. Give them back, please…" She whispered to the silent nothing around her.

None of her nightmares could ever have prepared her for this. Her hand tried to wipe away the grime from their faces, tried to piece together their hair and their clothes as if that would piece together their lives.

"Give them back!"

"Give them back to me! All of them! Give them back to me! Give them back!"

"Give them back… Give them back, please… Give them… give… please…"

A hand extended towards her. It was so warm, Gohama could feel it just through the shape of its palm, so solid and welcoming. It almost seemed to shine, a small happy flame flickering when there was nothing else around her, no one else around her. There was only Gohama alone, pieces on the ground, always alone, and that hand.

It was the hand of promise, the hand that could bring all the dreams of the world into being, it was the hand that could bring death and create life. The hand that could make her disappear.

God's loving hand.

Gohama held onto it.