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XVI

Shigure crouched beside Kakashi, eyes intent on the direction Mayuri would be coming from. She was late, but Shigure wasn’t worried. His cousin was strong and resilient, and if she just kept moving, she’d be fine. A shiver ran down his spine and he knew something had gone wrong, especially when Kakashi began to tense beside him. The jounin had uncovered the Sharingan, deciding to go in at full strength so there was no doubt at who would be the victor. Iruka was safely away now with Yukari who’d begun to wake up thanks to the antidote. The pair would, hopefully, meet up with Mayuri at the designated spot. If she didn’t show, Iruka was to continue back to Iiga and to Haomaru’s mansion. For no reason, even if he heard the sounds of death, was he to return.

Kakashi had drilled that into his head.

The leaves rustled and out stepped Mayuri, bloody and bruised but whole and healthy. Shigure about moved out to meet her, but found his path blocked by Kakashi’s hand. The jounin said nothing and for a moment resentment bubbled up in Shigure’s heart, so he turned his eyes back to his cousin and felt his blood run cold. Her gait was uneven, her limbs flopping as though she was nothing but a puppet. But her eyes were gleaming with life and with pain and Shigure couldn’t let her suffer like that.
He felt Kakashi’s hand snag the back of his flak vest but the elder man couldn’t retain his grip. Shigure launched from their hiding place toward Mayuri, a kunai clutched in his white-knuckled fist. He could save her life, he knew, but she’d never be able to do any missions with him. She would sit in their family manor and stagnate. It would be kinder to kill her than have her live in pain.

“Shigure!” Mayuri suddenly cried, “Please don’t!”

He froze long enough for Yutenji to surge up form behind Mayuri and thrust a sword through her neck, scoring a vicious hit on Shigure’s face. If Kakashi hadn’t have been fast as he was, the blade would have – at best – blinded Shigure. As it was, Shigure would only have a nasty scar that began at the bridge of his nose, ran horizontally across his left eye, and stopped before the tip of his ear. Mayuri’s dead form hung on Yutenji’s blade, as if mocking the young jounin who was now helpless in Kakashi’s hold. Kakashi leapt backwards as he heard the squelching of metal being extracted from flesh and settled Shigure against a tree trunk, quickly wrapping a bandage around both eyes, more to keep Shigure form seeing Yutenji step on Mayuri’s skull and break it open like an egg than to stop the bleeding.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Kakashi crooned, his tone decidedly deadly. As a jounin, Kakashi knew that he – and Shigure – had seen and done some horrible and brutal things. Seeing Mayuri die hadn’t affected Kakashi much aside from allowing him to slip easily into the ANBU-killer mode. Shigure, however, had been affected much more profoundly. Kakashi could sympathize with the boy. The murder had reminded Kakashi all to easily of Obito, and though the manner – and instigator – of death was different, Kakashi knew exactly what Shigure would go through, because he’d gone through it himself with everyone who’d died – Yondaime-sensei, Obito, Rin, Sarutobi, Asuma – and now he would take revenge for Shigure.

“Shouldn’t have done what?” He heard Yutenji – no, not Yutenji, the prey – say. Then the crack of more bone, the soft squish of pressure on flesh. “That?”

The Sharingan was whirling when he looked away from Shigure who’d gone into shock and straight at the murdering bastard who still stood on Mayuri’s cooling body. Kakashi didn’t make a sound, didn’t move. He didn’t need to. Yutenji was coming to him to get to Shigure. Chakra flared as Kakashi took off, fist slamming into Yutenji’s mouth, splitting flesh against teeth and knocking out a few of those too. Shigure – over the short time Kakashi knew him – had become his friend and more importantly he had been there for Iruka when the chuunin had been with this bastard trying to save an innocent girl. In other words, Yutenji was coming nowhere near Shigure. Kakashi planted his feet and quickly signed through several seals, disappearing underground before Yutenji regained his balance and his sight through the red haze of pain. At the last possible second, Kakashi exploded from the earth beneath Yutenji’s feet, kunai thrown only as cover for the silver-haired jounin’s real tactic.

The man before him wasn’t deserving of a painless, easy death. No, this man who had destroyed countless lives, who had murdered Mayuri, who had wounded Shigure in both body and spirit, deserved to die slowly and painfully.

The Chidori was only the precursor.

The build-up of lightning caught Yutenji’s attention, even through the shield of earth. The man scrambled for cover, but he wasn’t fast enough. The Chidori slammed into his knees – Kakashi had been aiming for his hips – and bone and flesh ripped and sizzled, blood cauterizing in the veins and arteries as Yutenji fell to the ground. The man rolled, hands up and pleading for mercy. Kakashi’s apathetic stare became quite deadly as he stared down at the man, quickly and efficiently severing the tendons in his wrists. Having a weapon drawn on him now would only serve to piss Kakashi off even more and force his hand to a premature death for Yutenji.

“Mercy?” Kakashi purred as he stalked around the sniveling man. How odd, Kakashi thought, that Yutenji as so strong willed when he was winning and such a coward when losing. “You want mercy?”

Something akin to babbling escaped Yutenji’s mouth. Kakashi ignored it and continued talking.

“Did you offer mercy to the girls you stole from their families? Did you offer mercy to the lives you destroyed? Did you offer Mayuri mercy when you murdered her? Did you offer mercy when you–“ Kakashi cut himself off and looked at Shigure, at the pink bandages that covered his eyes. Kakashi summoned all the animosity he could to his eyes, Sharingan whirling as he stared down at Yutenji. There was one last pathetic attempt at begging for mercy. Kakashi lifted his kunai.

“No.”

Blood spurted as tendon and muscle tore, Kakashi hacking away at Yutenji, not with the kunai in his hand – he didn’t want to soil it – but with chakra knives, each as sharp as his hate for the man. He took revenge for those who couldn’t and left the body there for vultures and scavengers to find.

Yutenji didn’t deserve a proper burial. But Mayuri did.

What was left of her.

He buried her with a jutsu, and placed a rock over top her grave. Another unmarked, unmourned ninja interned to the earth. Kakashi turned at a quiet plead and moved to pick Shigure up so he could say his final good-byes. Kakashi pretended he didn’t hear Shigure crying as he brought the boy back to Iiga with him. Shigure deserved the moment of weakness. The pair had definitely been good shinobi, skilled and well trained. But all that training couldn’t save Mayuri. Kakashi resolved to have her name added to the Memorial Stone. It seemed a fitting tribute.

He met up with Iruka at Haomaru’s residence and told his story. When Shigure was in a drugged sleep, Kakashi hand Iruka had sex. Neither of them called it ‘making love’ for a reason, because it was fast and hard and rough, more for Kakashi’s sake than Iruka’s. The next morning, Kakashi and Iruka bid farewell to Haomaru and the still-recovering Yukari and brought Shigure back to Konoha with them so that Tsunade herself could heal his eye. With Shigure tucked in at the hospital, the pair of ninja sat down in Iruka’s apartment to work out a report. Despite the horrible memories, Iruka deemed the report decent enough to turn in to the Missions Office. Kakashi turned it in to Tsunade and casually asked about putting a certain name on the Memorial Stone. There was resistance, to be expected since Mayuri hadn’t been a Konoha native, but all Tsunade needed to do to convince the council was introduce them to Shigure. Kakashi and Iruka visited him as often as they could and weren’t surprised to find him missing one day. Of course, every available nin was scrambled to find him, but Kakashi and Iruka spent those crazy hours sitting on the roof of the jounin bachelor complex, reading a scroll that had been pushed under Iruka’s door. The only words that had been on the scroll had been ‘Thank you. For everything’ and a map, a subtle invitation.

Kakashi rolled the scroll up and tucked it inside his flak jacket before he put an arm around Iruka’s shoulders. They sat on the roof till dusk and went into Kakashi’s apartment to bask in the warmth there, a warmth not caused by heat itself, but the love two people have only for one another.