legacy | hatake kakashi

[ fourteen ] rose petal. [11-14]

            IN TWO weeks, Kiyoko lost her entire family. The kicker? The war was won three weeks later after an incident involving a bridge, Kakashi and Rin. Kiyoko felt like it was all for nothing. Months had passed as Kiyoko drowned in her own depression and the village was in a different place now. It was peaceful, but it all felt fragile; like one wrong move and another war would break out and continue its path of destruction.

Unknowingly, she had become the mirror image of 13-year-old Kakashi as she had isolated herself from everyone (everyone being Gai and Genma, her close friends) and had unconsciously ignored them when they would call out to her in public.

She couldn't even step foot into the main compound house and had holed herself up in trees, barely leaving beyond going out on missions – all solo. Her routine was eat, sleep, train, missions and would scarcely meditate, something she knew would piss her mother off if she found out, but Kiyoko couldn't bear to sit still and look inwards, her thoughts would drown her.

The weight of her guilt and grief was too much to carry. The Sandaime had stepped down and Namikaze-san had taken up the mantle, which didn't surprise Kiyoko at all; it was something that she had predicted would happen after his efforts in the war. Despite Kiyoko's idolisation of the man, she hadn't bothered the show up to his coronation and spent her time training in the compound.

The scrolls her mother had left her were still untouched and Kiyoko had long since abandoned the clan scrolls her mother also left her, not feeling worthy of their contents as she felt herself stray further and further from her clans embrace. The clan's warmth and presence that she had taken comfort in was slipping from her fingers; even her home amongst the trees lacked any familial warmth that it once held, and she considered making the leap and finding an apartment somewhere in Konoha.

It was coming up on a year after the war was won by Konoha, creeping closer to the anniversary she found her mother's ice-cold corpse laying peacefully in bed, seemingly unaware of lack of soul that inhabited the body. It would continue to creep closer to the anniversary the rest of her family had succumbed to; the guilt of their death weighing heavily on Kiyoko throughout the months.

Of course, during the funeral, would she find out that Misuo did in fact have a girlfriend. Or a wife, rather. She was seven months pregnant and a civilian. Kiyoko could barely look at her as the woman stood silently, tears running down her face as she made no move to acknowledge them. It felt like a cruel reminder of their carefree days, although she couldn't help but imagine Natsumi's and Kazuki's reaction to her existence.

What brought comfort to Kiyoko in that dark time was the knowledge that she wasn't a Yamada, and that her grief wouldn't kill her from the inside like it had her mother. What destroyed her all over again was the fact that Misuo would have lived to be a father to a beautiful baby girl if it hadn't been for her stupidity and weakness.

February used to be a month that Kiyoko looked forward too; her birthday, love day, Misuo's birthday (although he just missed out on being an Aquarius, like her) but now the month was just a cruel reminder of all that she lost.

Kiyoko would often have dreams that they had all survived and grown up together. Kazuki and Natsumi had realised that their feelings weren't all that one sided and married, Natsumi would be a tough but loving teacher that all her students adored (and feared), Kazuki had become a Jōnin – although he'd be gunning for Anbu, if it weren't for Natsumi, and Misuo had introduced them to his family, to his new daughter that had somehow been named in his honour (the fact would make him cry, but he would disguise it as the aftermath of his constant yawning).

Everyday, she woke up with a broken heart.

Kiyoko had barely any reaction to the nine tails attack. She had summoned clones and done her duty to protect the civilians, but found she bore no fear as she looked at the foreboding fox wreak havoc on the village she had once loved so much. Despite her initial feelings of apathy, her heart still squeezed painfully as the memories from her clones would flood in, the images of children screaming for their parents who were dead beneath rubble, hundreds of dead of all ages, the corrupted energy that forced her clones to disperse were almost too much to bear.