Ling doesn't want to go back to field duty. It's cowardice and it's so, so stupid. But like Rin, after Kannabi Bridge, she isn't too fond of returning to that active spreed of killing. The mission desk clears out, and the few nameless shinobi with it. War efforts are still going along, and with that, her hours at the mission desk become shorter.

She subs in for a few academy classes.

"Class," Tomoe-sensei introduces her. "This is Hongou-sensei, she'll be my assistant for a few days."

Ling laughs, remembering the awe she had been in when she had her own classes. "You can just call me Hongou-senpai, I'm not that old." Tomoe jabs her in the side and a few of the girls giggle.

The kids learn genjutsu that day and Ling watches with some wistfulness at a few of the kids. Ling herself excelled in all of the academic proportions of the academy right up until Kenjutsu and Taijutsu, which she still worked hard on in the academy. Since she had been a civilian, there were no parents to object (or warn) to graduating early, nor was there a clan sitting behind her to support her if she got mediocre grades.

Some people were born with the advantage. Others worked their entire lives to catch up. Others never did, or were never able to.

"Mayumi, Mayumi! How do you do this?" A little dark haired boy complains as he watches his dark-haired counterpart demonstrate a genjutsu— A fluttering butterfly flawlessly.

A boy beside them rolls his eyes and slaps him on the back of the head. "She's busy. Why didn't you just ask me, Jin?"

Jin rolls his eyes. "Because I don't like you, duh! Know-it-all Kaoru!"

Ling laughs again. "Stop fighting, children," she says as she drops onto a desk beside them. Vaguely, in some of the back corner of her mind, she realizes she sounds like Kakashi.

Two boys turn their nose up at him while the girl looks at her with curious eyes. "Can you do genjutsu?" she asked suspiciously.

Ling laughs sardonically. "Brat, even if I couldn't, I'd do it better than you."

Jin and Kaoru turns to her, the two boys likely ganging up on her to earn the favour of Mayumi, the girl who currently has her pinned with a pair of narrowed hazel eyes.

Ushi, Hitsuji, Uma, Saru. The classroom disappears and with it, comes a meadow — golden and alight with life beneath a setting sun. The wind sways briefly before the cries of white cranes cuts through the silence.

The cranes fly over the skies above them as Ling perches on the desk and watches the children— A few gasp and others stare in awe. Ah, academy kids are so easy to please, she thinks, pleased that she was able to influence something positive.

"Alright," Tomoe claps her hands. "Kai." A few of the kids sigh in disappointment as the woman's gaze sharpens. "That, is a low-level genjutsu. And if you don't pay attention, you'll never learn it. Now, let's proceed to dispelling genjutsus. Hongou, if you would."

She beams and lifts herself off of the desk and shuffled back towards the front of the room.

The class goes on for the day, but the moment it ends, Ling finds herself surrounded by eager faces asking for her to tutor them or to create a genjutsu landscape for them. It's not bad, she thinks.

So she comes back. It's not until a year after that she realizes, some of them will die.

+

"Oi," Something vaguely cold drapes over her shoulders. "Are you cooking?'

Ling shrugs him off. Kakashi was weirdly touchy in the morning. "Not for you," she snipes. "Go get some food from the market with the fortune you've amassed from those A-ranked missions you love."

"Too far. Cook, slave"

"I'll poison it, you bastard. All of it."

"So we can die together? I'm not into that, no thanks," he says cheerily.

"Kakashiiiiiiii," she drags out in frustration, and he just laughs at her for one, two, seven seconds and Ling realizes she is a ninja. Her apartment's stable enough to fend for itself against Kakashi for one evening, at least, is her verdict.

She was wrong. Oh, so, so wrong.

Kakashi's laughing beside her as she looks at the multiple puppies piled in her living room. Minato's there too, grasping at his stomach as he struggles to rein in his laughter. Ling would like to die. Yes, dying at Kannabi doesn't sound so bad compared to this.

Dogs were infesting her apartment. They were everywhere. She takes the only avaliable seat next to Kakashi and buries her face into her hands.

Kushina chooses that moment to step in. Ling splits her fingers to look at her. Sharp blue eyes observe Ling's apartment. "Why didn't you hold a wedding before moving in?" She seems genuinely hurt and not at all joking or mocking like she usually was, blue eyes blink rapidly with confused tears. "We could've chosen wedding dress and flowers and—"

And she bursts out laughing.

Ling makes the sound of a dying whale and sinks into Kakashi, trying to disappear.

Oddly enough, he on the other hand, seems to be weirdly pleased about everything.

+

She's summoned by the Sandaime one late evening.

"Hongou." Ling was rarely referred to by her surname after she walked out of her family home that one summer night, a bag clutched under her arm and rage fuelling her every step.

"Yes, Sandaime?" She kneeled in front of him. "What is it that you require of me?"

"I'd like for you to join ANBU." An order. Not a question. The old man smiles lightly, painfully wistful and seemingly regretful ( for what? ). "It would suit you, Hongou-kun, the work will be rewarding for you, I think."

( For you, Hongou-kun. )

Her veins chill and her heart stops. ANBU. The monsters beneath her bed, the beasts hiding in her closet. The darkness that bequeaths all shinobi and she was about to become one herself. "What will you have me do?" she asked carefully, wondering just how much of the humanity she had left would she manage to retain in a hole as deep and dark as the ANBU. Wondering if she could even refuse.

"You will become a spymaster, Ling-kun."

+

Ling had been instructed to meet a man in the markets. She was told to find him amidst the civilians and she doesn't know what she was expecting, until she comes face to face with an unassuming man with blank angular features— But cold eyes. Cold eyes. Ling stops in front of him and the face melts off of him to reveal a porcelain mask.

A man named Koi. He doesn't take off the mask and Ling doubts he ever will in front of her. ANBU is a place of enigma and mystery and death. Death creates fear and should Death ever be given a name, all those it governed will try to erase it to be rid of the fear.

They leave the market place. It isn't long before the smooth, worn sand of the marketplace transition into hard rocks of the path leading up to the Hokage Mountain. The hill they're climbing is like one of those ridiculous paths that are almost vertical. Steep and littered with versatile trees that made the path almost invisible.

They stop before a stone and Ling almost laughs at the simplicity of it all but— She falls, and falls and falls before abruptly there is light and they land on hard, stone ground. The entrance is foreboding and carved, looking as if it had weathered a storm fit to swallow the world for hundreds of years.

Koi leads her down an endless path of spinning and spiralling tunnels before reaching a window barred with iron polls. Finally, he turns to her.

"Your name is Lynx," he says simply as he hands her a tray— Mask, gloves, sword and tunic. She gets dressed. "Remember," he says crisply. "Anything you hear or see will not pass beyond these walls, Lynx."

He doesn't tell her anything beyond that.

Her training begins almost immediately. Yamaneko, Lynx. That's her name. The wild-cat. Lonely and adaptable. Koi drills her harshly, but the moral is clear—

Spies do not have ties, they are only defined by the information they bring. They do not even get remembers for their death.

Ling puts on the uniform and pretends as if the mask on face isn't burning and that the dark cloth of her uniform isn't a shackle.