Chapter five: Agony
Kyoko disliked poetry.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say she never really liked poets themselves. Poets, writers, artists, they all tended to obsess with death to some degree. There was even a genre of poetry centered on death called Jisei, Jisei-ei, the dead living between the letters of words written. A romanization of a cruel reality, like magpies picking the prettiest bits of a whole to surround themselves in, chattering on and on in some cacophony of noise that no one truly cared to hear.
She refused to look at him, even his shadow reminded her of the other one.
She disliked poets primarily because they reveled in misfortune, they lived for it in a way she never could understand. Dead is dead and there is nothing to say or do for it. Death is death and there is no honor or beauty in it, it is simply an end, it was never waking up.
"There is a difference between classes, especially with civilians. It is something bone deep, in how they carry themselves and how they think. It is imperative for you to capture that if you are to accurately depict anyone of high standing." She began tapping her fingers on the tea set, something inside her itching to drop just a bit of poison if only to get him to stop, "As a male, you have things a bit easier, fewer things you have to remember. More likely to get away with what they would consider eccentric."
"Why didn't you tell me?" Stop the questions, stop the confrontation. She wished she could pretend she didn't know what he meant.
"It wouldn't have made a difference."
"You wouldn't know now," his hands were tucked in his lap, unmoving, "would you?"
She felt herself sinking, her heart dropping, her skin crawling. All she could do was stare, wide-eyed and blank at the little boy now ashen like her, dusted like the man who made them. It was the first time their eyes had met for a long time and now she couldn't look away. There was no silver lining, no way to make the rotting corpse lying in their memories any prettier or nicer to look at, the ink on her tongue was toxic.
"I hate you."
She couldn't help but wonder if this reaction, like the intrinsic need to eject sickness from the body, was because of him or because of her. A specter haunting her, the other side of the mirror.
"What is it like?" Truly it was because of her, ghosts were not real and the dead were dead, she was the only one left dying here.
"What?"
"To hate something." And there was no excuse really, for it was her as much as everything in her life had always been her. She was herself and there was no removing that from the equation, a part of a whole but still here.
A part of a whole, necrotic and festering.
"It hurts."
She blinked slowly, her lips twitch upward and her eyes, finally, dropped to their tea cups, half full and cold against the back of her throat.
"No matter what, never let that go."
Even as she saw no beauty in the dead like the poets she so disliked, she couldn't help but find that there is something truly beautiful in the suffering of life. For if there was no beauty in the unlucky then there would be no beauty anywhere at all.
She has always thought that the world was beautiful and alive and so very, very, unlucky.
Hypocritically she was obsessed with life like a poet was obsessed with death, and it was the same. It was the same and she was burning in her own damnation.
"Why are you a shinobi?" She traced the spider webbed scars on the ground with muddied fingers, her muscle jumping minutely in shock as she instinctively brought up another earth wall to block Kakashi's next attack. They had been training for a while now, their chakra sluggish with exhaustion, slow to react.
"Why are you asking?" His sandal met her forearm and she twisted, dropping to catch herself and pivot hard enough to hook and throw him with a rigid leg.
"Minato-sensei asked me once what my dream was, I am curious if being a shinobi has been yours or if it is something more." They separated and she carefully laid an area affect genjutsu out as she turned the area around them into a marsh, intertwine the two Jutsu to mask one under the other. Lightning sparked across the water as he leaped to higher ground watching her own flickering image appear in the canopy as well before he lost his footing on a branch that wasn't there. He caught himself from falling into the water he just charged, there was silence for a moment as they both hid, planning their next move.
He found her and shattered the tree branch she had been crouched on, his blade trailing static. "My dream is to be the best."
"Is that all?" The blood was annoying, the complete inability to move her face in the area around the cut was even more so.
"What do you mean is that all?" They stared at one another, Kakashi's deadpan stare slowly growing blanker the longer the inaction drew out, like a wind-up doll coming to the end of the energy its clockwork motor could store.
"I have found that many people's dreams seem almost unattainable, yours seems somewhat mundane, doesn't it?"
"I'm not stupid like Obito, besides if you find my dream so boring what is yours?" He sighed tilting his head absently.
"I don't suppose I have one." Kyoko tensed as she watched the telltale signs of Kakashi's next attack, after being a part of his team so long, the spar was more like a performance than a fight.
More a dance than a battle.
"And you are calling me mundane?"
"Can my dream be to someday have a dream?"
"Then you have a dream and the entire notion is rendered useless." He paused narrowing his eyes at her for a moment as if baffled, "Like this conversation."
And she was falling, her arms stinging from the punch she blocked. She landed gracelessly in the marsh she created, mud splashing up around her, the gleam of the sun blinding as it stared down at her from over Kakashi's shoulder.
"Oh," she tilted her head before glancing down at her own hands, "I suppose you are right."
Her clone grabbed his ankles from her hiding spot and pulled him into the earth.
There is a certain strain one feels on the mind as a shinobi, she had never noticed it herself but she reads about it. This strain can manifest in so many ways, in new hobbies, in aggression, in loud boisterous attitudes, in cold indifference, in isolation, in obsession.
"Obito?" she called out to him as she laid sprawled out on her back in the training field grass. The clouds were dark, it may very well rain.
These different reactions to the same problem is the very reason that she never really understood why people were chosen to be Kintsugi, they were such a brittle unpredictable medium. Even when one controls all other variables there are still too many possible reactions to make any sort of art worth the effort to make what is, ultimately, a defective model.
"Yeah?" He huffed as he did laps around the perimeter, the weights around his legs stark against his pants.
She thinks that is what she finds so disagreeable with it all. How utterly wasteful the whole endeavor is. She can't help to admire its brilliance, however, for it really is a rather fantastic idea in abstract. Erase the emotions, keep the body, give it skill, and one has a perfect weapon with its own self-destruct button to be used at the maker's leisure.
"What is love?" She heard him trip and the string of cursing that followed it.
"What?" He sounded rather like a dying bird, loud and frantic, "Do you have a crush or something? How cute!"
It was simply business in the end, it wasn't art, it wasn't personal.
"No, I just don't understand?"
"Oh, I mean everyone gets love, don't they? Like you love your family and stuff."
It was like being born dead, like never existing at all. That was the thing though, wasn't it? There is no such thing as the living dead. She was very much alive and yet she had been distorted so much that she couldn't function correctly. Couldn't understand something that everyone else instinctually understood.
"What does it feel like?"
"I don't know?"
"Contradiction."
"Shut up, it's just love, okay?" She turned to stare blankly at him. "I guess it is something that makes you happy, it makes everything worth it. If you love someone or something you would willingly do anything for them and try your best to be around them."
That inability made her defective, wrong, because if you could not relate enough to predict your enemy you were doomed to fail.
"Do I love you and Kakashi?"
"How should I know?"
"Ah."
She wasn't sure if what she felt for her teammates was love, she certainly didn't love herself so she was pretty sure she didn't love them. She and They were the same thing, after all, emotions mattered little. Is that it though, emotions. Emotion as a concept confused her, the complexity and subtle nuances a maze she found herself lost in.
She was too tired to try to find her way out.
"Do you love us?"
"You and Kakashi? I mean, you guys are my teammates and I'm stuck with you so I guess you are okay. I like you alright that is for sure. I definitely don't love Kakashi, he is a jerk, but I probably love you like a cousin or something."
"Isn't it generally accepted that you love your cousins whether they are jerks or not?"
"Nah, that is more of a sibling thing."
"Oh," she sighed through her nose, her lips pressed tightly together, "Do you love Konoha?"
"Of course, Konohagaru is my village and more than that, this is my home."
"Why don't we run away?" Ku whispered into the dark of their room.
"They will find us."
"You don't make loyal soldiers with fear."
She was restless, she often was these days.
"And yet here we are."
"And yet" she opened her mouth and released her drive with a gust of air, "here were are."
In all honesty, she never intended to fall in love with the world above the earth. It wasn't the village itself, for as long as she could hear and feel the thrum of life around her the world didn't seem so heavy. She didn't feel like the sky was trying to crush her, like her skin wasn't crawling over her bones and the stench of sulfur and burning bones clinging. She never expected even be able to identify the feeling, and she couldn't really but she didn't know what else to call it. It was sacred, her hallowed ground. She was content there in the deafening clatter of village life she stood amongst those bartering for food and clothing, and everything in-between.
It was home.
She stayed there long past her team meeting, a mild genjutsu keeping those around her from noticing. She stood and stared and lived as the sun rose behind her back and rested above her. The crowd had thinned when he found her waiting for him to find her there among the civilians and she smiled her stiff empty smile.
She smiled and she showed him her cracked and flaking lacquer, the ink on her tongue stark, prominent.
She didn't expect the panic on his face or to be whisked away in a flash of gold.
"Will you call me Ku?"
"Is that your name?"
"Does it matter?"
"Why would I call you by something that wasn't your name?"
"You call me Kyoko, don't you?"
"I know Kyoko, not Ku."
"I see." It felt strangely like rejection.
"Tell me what you can?"
She was silent for a long time, the loose papers around her fluttering with each turn of her teacher's fan.
"Did you know it's grass, Secale cereale, that has the longest roots? The thing about grass is that you will never find a single blade alone. Grass live and die together." She felt like she was drowning in the blue of his eyes, "Grass is somewhat self-sabotaging in the face of a predator."
Nothing changed.
He knew she knew and she knew he knew, the subtext may have changed but the outcome remained the same. She was still stuck, her lacquer still pulling at the edges, nothing changed. The leaves still refused to turn red and brown, refused to fall around the village heralding the snow they knew would come.
Nothing changed.
Dying, decaying, dead, Kyoko endured.
"Will it ever get easier?" Shi's hand hovered uselessly in the air, over the spot he knew his other should be.
"Yes." Roku responded, and in a way she wasn't lying.
Eventually, you get used to the pain. It stays like that until suddenly it just isn't enough anymore.
"I'm not late!" a figure slammed through the underbrush skidding across the ground before Kyoko lifted a foot to stop their momentum.
"Liar, you are late." Kakashi growled his eyes narrowing and his arms tensing in their crossed position, "What time did you think we were supposed to meet? You are a Ninja, there are regulations in place for a reason, follow them!"
"I had to help an old lady carry some things, calm down."
"What? That's a lie, again!"
"It doesn't matter, either way, Obito helped the old lady and is here now." Minato interrupted smiling sheepishly.
"Pushover." Kakashi snapped looking to Kyoko for assistance, she stared blankly in response. "Ninja who does not follow the rules are trash."
"Ah, I am sure he didn't mean anything bad by it." A nervous voice interrupted the two from their fight, her stance already wavering.
"Who's that?" Obito finally stood squinting at the unknown medic-nin.
"Are you stupid?" Kakashi sighed turning on his heel to begin the mission.
"What? Excuse me for not knowing some random person?"
"You are excused." Kyoko nodded falling into step with Kakashi.
"Not you too Kyoko!"
The fields of the land of grass spread out before them as they continued northwest, a storm brewing at their back. Kyoko listened with only half an ear to her team as Minato explaining the mission to Obito. She had already read the scroll and understood that Minato would not be a part of their team and that Kakashi would be their team leader while they completed a mission of their own. The little medic-nin they had with them was a temporary member of their team, they were very combat heavy and the mission may call for medical assistance.
They were to destroy the Kannabi Bridge this would eliminate the enemies' means to receive supplies.
It was a simple mission, stealth was one of her expertise. The bridge was to be destroyed. They knew, they knew what to do, still she could feel ice creeping into her veins.
They entered the forest so unlike their own and held formation, the hairs on the back of Kyoko's neck standing on end. She watched as Kakashi called for them to be halt, her eyes turning to Minato. She knew what this meant, could practically smell the metallic stench of the blood that was to be spilled. And yet instead she watched as Kakashi fell to his own pride. Her Kunai dragging smoke through the air as she destroyed a clone, her eyes barely kept track of her teacher's shunshin as he flickered out of view listening to his command to return to camp. Her bones ached with an age she did not have, Kakashi and Obito bickered, the medic doing what she can to heal their minor injuries.
She felt wooden.
"Why did you use an incomplete Jutsu in the middle of battle?" She interrupted Minato, he had been speaking to them about their performance. She hadn't meant to say that, she didn't turn her gaze away from the forest.
"What?"
She was silent for a moment, she could feel the bite of her own nails against the palm of her hand. "You have not trained yourself to be able to handle the speed of your own Jutsu, and yet you still put not only yourself at risk but myself, Obito, and the medic-nin you have never worked with. There is also the fact that you used an unknown Jutsu in a battle that did not require it, what if one of us had gotten in your way?" she glanced down at her hands, "Do you really think you could have stopped?"
"It would have been your own fault if you got in my way!"
"Fault has little to do with it," She sighed finally turning to glance over Kakashi, "The question is if you could live with yourself."
She knew her answer, she hoped he would never know his.
"Now, now, Kyoko," Minato said to pacify the situation, "that is a bit harsh. Yes, Kakashi should not have used an incomplete Jutsu like that when he can't even see his own enemy's counters but the mistake is understandable." He paused narrowing his eyes, "and will not happen again."
She hummed dismissively turning her gaze back to the forest around them.
"Before I leave you four, I will say what I have told you over and over again. The most important thing is that you all work together."
In the silence they rested through the night, breaking through the forest at first light, ghosting their way through the land of grass, over trees, tapping feet on branches and shoulders brushing through bamboo forests. Minato separated from them and they pushed forward, their eyes wide and watching.
"Kyoko, you are both a sensory ninja and the best we have at stealth," Kakashi began as they paused long enough to orientate themselves, "Scout ahead and report back to us every few hours until we reach the bridge. Stay and observe until we catch up then."
"And if you are engaged?"
"Interfere only if you think we need assistance."
She nodded "Then I will head out now, please wait five minutes before pursuing." It was easy enough to change her gate, shifting from the stride of a Chūnin to that of a Root agent. Undetected she slid through the shadows, eyes sharp with part of her attention held by the team at her back.
She disliked this mission, it wasn't that it was hard, she had done worse. She disliked this mission for the way it brought to attention how their lacquer was pulling, how she clung so desperately to her two other parts and yet one was still falling away. She could understand the problem, all the pieces had their own weight and material, it was no wonder they struggled to stay together. Still, she didn't want to go back to being incomplete, she had just filled in all the missing pieces.
Oh, she could feel the bite of failure already.
Kakashi was growing tired of it, the placidity of it all. He was a war hound, a dog bred for bloody teeth and fallen enemies. She understood well enough, she had been manufactured for war herself, after all. The only difference between them is that she was only as deadly as the hand that held her and Kakashi? Kakashi would always be a dog howling in time with the strike of a kunai, fingers itching for movement and action like the static in his veins.
Her thoughts were interrupted as she felt a shift in Obito and Kakashi's chakra, a second look coming up empty for the medic-nin. The other two pieces came apart, Obito's chakra signature turning off course while Kakashi's remained stationary. Kyoko frowned, her heels digging into the dirt as she stopped as well, turning to stare sightlessly behind her. She stood in silence simply staring for the longest time, barely breathing, before she made her decision.
It took her six minutes to reach Kakashi, she paused and they stared and stared and stared and then she left him. She easily tracked Obito's inferno of chakra and was unsurprised when she felt a cold spark at her back. It took them another four minutes traveling at top speed to reach Obito, Kakashi intercepting the attack that would have killed their teammate as she made for the enemy's throat missing only by a hair as he dodged. It was fine, even with the missed opportunity of eliminating the danger she still injured him, the poison on her blade would kill him in a few hours if nothing else.
"Silver hair and a white chakra blade?" The enemy coughed faintly tilting his head to regard Kakashi as Kyoko crouched in between them, "Konoha's White Fang?"
"This is a memento of my Father." Kakashi responded absently as he shifted to accommodate his old wound.
She never understood why people took the time to talk while battling.
"The white fang's brat? There's no need to worry then." He sneered, the chill of his chakra muffling itself as he faded from all of Kyoko's senses. It was unnerving, even in death chakra still lingered so the sudden absence of another's was mildly horrifying.
"Obito, behind you!" She turned in just enough time to see blood arching above them, a cut sliding over the entirety of Kakashi's left eye. The sound of Kakashi's scream set her teeth on edge, something inside of her grinding against nerves.
"Are you alright?" Obito's panic was contagious, she barely managed to keep herself still as she searched for any sign of the enemy.
"I'm fine." Kakashi's hand hovered over his injured eye as the other darted around, "Dirt in your eyes again, Obito? Come on, Shinobi don't cry. Besides, I'm not dead yet." He paused glancing over to Kyoko, "Did you notice anything?"
"He doesn't even leave a chakra trail."
"He's skilled then, he even got rid of the kunai with my blood on it. Be on your guard." The splatter of blood punctuated his sentence, Obito's Sharingan blazing, two tomoe spinning, the enemy impaled on his blade.
The silence was heavy between them.
"Congratulations I suppose." Kyoko felt like she was drowning, every limb felt like she was moving through water, it was too much.
They quickly patched up Kakashi's eye and turn to the cave interrupting the other enemy within.
"Her chakra is irregular, I think he has her in a genjutsu."
"From what I have sensed before her chakra is moving in a pattern similar to a level three genjutsu, likely for information gathering purposes if the pooling in her throat and crown gateways are to be trusted." Kyoko filled in the gaps for Obito for future use.
"Let's make this quick then."
Three moved in sync, all parts of the same whole working in tandem as they attacked, the enemy exploding into smoke as he replaced himself with a nearby rock that Kyoko's Kunai slide through easily. Kakashi released the medic-nin and Kyoko pursued the enemy just as he finished a sign sequence.
And then the cave began to fall around them.
She could hear Kakashi's command for them to get out and she listened attempting to create a few earth columns to at least slow down the mountains decent on her team. She stared wide eyed as Kakashi fell, her heart thundering in her chest as she watched Obito pick him up and throw him, her fingers brushing the others as she attempted to grab his hand.
Only she was too late.
Under the rubble lied Obito Uchiha. Under a mountain, buried alive was the boy with eyes redder than the blood on his skin. It was the second time she witnessed the birth of a river of blood, the second time a mountain rested on the backs of her comrades. She could feel herself breaking, the air in her lungs quaking, her heart choking her with every beat. She barely heard Kakashi's words, her finger clumsily running through a Jutsu only to be stopped by the medic-nin. She barely understood the words spoken to her, something about how he would only be in more pain, crush-syndrome, the medic's hands were too hot, the world was cotton, and she was underwater again.
"It looks like the end for me, huh guys?"
She felt herself screaming in the silence, her mouth wide like her eyes and just as empty. She couldn't get the words out past her throat, she didn't even know what she wanted to say. She couldn't hear Kakashi, hyper aware of every shuttering breath Obito made, every twitch and spasm she could see, committing the smile he wore for them to memory.
"I was the only one who didn't give you a present at your Jonin graduation." The words were halting, excruciating to hear as his skin snagged on the rock, pulling strangely with each movement he made.
"It's a good thing I came up with something then, yeah? You are a great Jonin, Kakashi, I would be honored if you would accept my eye as my teammate and friend. I'm already going to die, but this way I can become your eye and from now on see the future with you."
It was cruel, it was cruel, they had just found out how they fit together.
"Please?"
They stood opposite one another, their faces inches apart as they held themselves still, barely breathing.
"When I die turn one of my leg bone into a knife." Ro whispered, she knew what was to come.
"Why? Besides, we both know it is me who will die."
"I would still be protecting you that way, wouldn't I?"
"That's not how it works."
"Does it matter?"
The clone dispersed leaving Kyoko alone, she didn't know why she did this.
It didn't matter.
"Are you," her voice broke cutting her off as she forced herself to blink, "Are you afraid?"
"Terrified." And yet he still smiled.
"They say koi become dragons when they swim up the waterfall." Kyoko could feel her words echo around her. "Was it a hard journey?"
He didn't respond to her this time.
It was wrong, she could still smell the stench of burning bones, smoldering near her with a deafening crack. It was unfair, her skin itched with the ash. She stared and stared and stared as the medic took Obito's eye and gave it to Kakashi, 'no,' she tried to say as the pieces fell apart, 'we can fix this.' She could feel the rage boiling from Kakashi and all she could do was stare, Obito was too still.
Jisei.
She couldn't feel her heartbeat, it was raining.
"Hey, Obito?" She whispered, the sounds of battle at her back, "Why couldn't you leave the turtle behind?" She knew so little in this world above the roots and now she knew even less, broken without the third part that made them whole.
"Agent Roku, complete protocol."
Her fingers flickered through a Jutsu she wished would have never had to use again.
She thought of the flames that would roar so near her, too hot in the wake of the chill that settled over her like a thin layer of ice red like his twice cursed pinwheeled eyes. This time, she imagined, it would be the stench of melting plastic and burning hair that she would remember, the way his ash spread across her skin.
She couldn't do it.
She did as she was told, she always did as she was told.
Not again, never again.
She stared and stared and stared at the gaping hole where his eyes should be, she couldn't move.
Three became two, the silence between them was still, she felt glacial.
They completed their mission, their sensei watched them with tired eyes, a name unspoken on his lips. In the space between them she grieved, she grieved for the death of the boy with a desperate hope, a boy from a clan cursed.
In the space between them she drowned in the downpour.
The storms from her dreams shook the oceans of her waking world, the sky above her trembled.
Notes:
That moment you get attached to a character you knew you were going to kill off. But hey, the chapter is a bit longer than usual.
This is what authors do right? They help their characters get kind of healthy, or functioning I guess, and then just, stabs them in the heart a few times. adds a bit of spice, amiright? Yeah? It's fine, don't worry about it.
I don't know if this has one more chapter or two more left but we are coming to a close my friends. That poll is still up, Review voting is acceptable. Speaking of, thank you for all of the support, none of you will ever understand how much it means to me.
If anyone is interested next chapter I can write some fic recommendations? I have, uh, three? authors that are basically my heroes so, I mean, I would love to gush about them. Please give me an excuse to gush about them.
Side note I never really understood why they left Obito's body, the Sharingan falling into enemy hands is kind of a legit concern even in a time of war so like. How come no one destroyed the body? Sounds like nonsense to me.