"Again," Koi demands as she picks herself up from the ground with shaking arms.

They began with Taijutsu first. Ling's always been terrible at it.

Koi is lightning fast and her senses don't react fast enough for her dodge, but— Rin's doing the best she can in the hospital, Kakashi's always done well. His leg slams into her solar plexus, Ling cries out and spits out the blood and ducks when he strikes again. Raising up her forearm just in time to block another fist, she swings up her leg toward him, but he grabs her ankle in one hand and uses her momentum to swing her toward the wall.

She hits it with a slam and falls to the ground, her kidney taking the brunt of her damage. It's only then that the taste of copper and blood sink into her tongue. Ling spits it out and gets up again, skin ripped and hands raw from dirt and grime and pain.

He's expecting her to fail, she knows, as she grits her teeth and shoves her way through the training. Chuunin, no genius, no kekkai genkai and most of all— Civilian.

But Ling gets up and for the first time, there is a semblance of acknowledgement in Koi's eyes.

( That maybe, just maybe, she could become something from nothing. )

+

"GUESS WHAT?"

Minato bursts into her apartment with Rin close behind— What, has her apartment turned into a hostel? Her teacher is basically bouncing off the walls, as is Rin — who gave Kakashi's book a scathing glare before returning to being happy for Minato.

"Kushina's pregnant!" he squealed as he ran around.

She's still nursing her leg from Koi's kick, but before she knows it, she's squealing with them and Minato just continues beams before he grabs both of them and before they know it, they've landed in the Kushina and Minato's apartment.

Ling winces as her foot hits the ground and she stumbles, only for a pair of hands to catch her. "Don't fall, Ling-chan," Kakashi says cheerily with a suspicious look in his eye.

"I certainly won't for you," she retorts as she gets up.

"Ling!" Kushina beams and Ling skips forward to give her a hug.

"You're gonna be a mom!" Rin cheered from beside them. "We can do all sorts of things like shopping for it and throwing birthdays parties for it!" Kushina laughs and puts a gentle hand on her stomach.

Ling inches closer and sits on the table to take off some weight off of her bad foot. "When will you know if it's a boy or a girl?"

Kushina cocks her hair, unfairly beautiful hair shimmering like a waterfall. "When I'm four or five months in, I think." She pauses for a while thinking, before beaming again. "If it's a boy, I want him to be just like Obito-kun," she says.

The room freezes for a moment, before Ling begins to laugh, a sort of good pain pricking at her heart with tiny needles.

( But couldn't the pain be happiness instead? Couldn't it have been a good happiness instead of a good pain? )

Civilians are temperamental and reckless and lack abandon. Ling has never been one to let things go. Kakashi watches her with cautious eyes. But Ling doesn't turn, this time, to soothe his fears, his worries. Why should she? When he has always been the cause of hers? 

Deep down, she knows she doesn't mean it. He knows, she doesn't mean it. But Obito has always come first; for her, and for him. 

+

Until he doesn't. 

+

The explosion catches her by surprise.

This is her first mission, to act as the red herring for an ANBU who had a message to deliver. She knows neither the importance nor the significance of the message, but she freezes when she feels that chakra either say.

Kakashi. Her heart picks up pace and she stops, only to see the bright spark of Chidori flashing after a spark of purple flames.

Lynx, is the hiss that scraps against the edge of her mind. Ling always knew that if need be, she would abandon a comrade. She would kill and lie and maim to save herself and to justify herself. But that is when she remembers Kakashi. Almost half a decade before at the funeral of a boy who always tried his best.

Those who break the rules are scum. Those who abandon comrades are worse than scum.

( A warmth curling around her fingers, a desperate voice—

"Ling, please." )

But this is where the road ends.

This darkness, the apathy, is so signature and iconic to black ops that it almost doesn't hurt when she turns her back, when her feet regains pace on the rooftops and the purple flames, the silver sparks.

In her mind, she can picture his death. The crimson that staining silver hair and a single eye wide with shock (or was it pain?). Light fading, kunai falling from limp fingers. Thump. Head rolling back, oblivion.

Yet even then, Ling doesn't look back once, even if there is a streak of an angry tear rolling down her cheek, even if her lungs are screaming and her heart shatters. She doesn't look back. She won't.

+

Kakashi does not come that night. Nor the next, nor the next week, or even month. Ling thinks that he knows, and even if it does sting, she thinks that it is for the best.

+

"Congratulations on completing your training, Ling-kun," the Sandaime gives her a worn smile. Her training took eight months, almost an eternity compared to the children who only have mere days to adjust. Ling accepts the porcelain mask again — cold and lifeless in her hands, streaks of blood red instead of inky black.

Ling kneels, whether to fate or death she does not know, but she kneels nonetheless and accepts her destiny in hand. There is no looking back, and Ling cares not for the consequences.

The tattoo comes after. On the skin of her arm and albeit concealable by fuinjutsu, she thinks it's the most hideous thing she's ever seen, albeit that its intentions were far from ill. A spiral of fire to remind its receiver of the will of fire. The pain is nothing, but what strikes her is that it is the day Koi finally deems her worthy, He dips his head at her, a tiny difference, a mere fraction of angles of the neck really, but a show of respect nonetheless.

Ling responds with cool eyes.

+