A/N: I haven't exactly gotten to the point in the series where Kakashi dies, but my sister told me about it and I was depressed for awhile. Now I have this new story to drown my sorrows on the OC I created that some people seem to like. I hope you like depression and angst because I think this is full of it.
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She held a knife in one hand and a photo in the other. All around her candles were burning away, throwing dark shadows on the walls and just barely gave her the light to see the face of the man in the photo.
He was the man she had lost. The man she felt she had lost for no reason at all, who had been lost like every other person she had ever cared for in her short life that felt like an eternity. He had been the beacon of light in the darkness that would have consumed her very soul and he had given her friendship when everyone else would have turned their backs on her. He had loved her despite the monsters that lay waiting inside of her and he loved her knowing that she could one day lose control and destroy him completely.
And she had loved him back with all of her heart.
But he was gone now. Another man lived because he had sacrificed his life to do the right thing. She hadn't even been close to him when he had taken his last breath. She'd been so far away and didn't even know if she had crossed his mind when he had died.
She remembered standing in the hospital and just staring at the covered body of her beloved with Lady Tsunade talked to her in what the older woman must have thought was a compassionate tone.
"I'm sorry Kurayami," the older woman said, watching Kurayami's eyes suddenly become wet. "There was nothing we could do. There was absolutely nothing I could do to save him."
Kurayami's cheeks became wet with tears that spilled over. "How – how could this happen? He promised me that he wouldn't…he said he wouldn't die! He promised me that he would make it back to me!"
Tsunade shook her head and looked at the bed that held the remains of the man who had done her great services. "There was nothing he could do to change fate. The Goddess called him back to her own service because it was his time."
"No it wasn't! He was supposed to grow old and grayer!" Kurayami cried, shaking. "I was supposed to grow old with him…We were supposed to get married one day and Gai was supposed to grow old trying to find a way to break us up! He was supposed to have a family of his own and raise strong sons with perverted tendencies!" She laughed. "He was supposed to be overprotective of his daughters and raise them to be strong kunoichi… He was – he was –!"
Tsunade grabbed Kurayami and pulled her from the room. "Kurayami you need to calm down. Kakashi Hatake is dead and he's not going to do any of the things you planned. We're going to bury him tomorrow morning and then we're going to honor him by carving his name on the memorial stone next to the names of your parents. But you have to be able to let go."
Kurayami shook her head. "I can't let him go. I can't let him be gone!"
"Kurayami…"
"He was the only one in the world who could ever love me for who I am!" Kurayami exclaimed, her hands curling into fists. "Itachi and Orochimaru loved me for my looks and for my power, but Kakashi loved me for my entire being! No one else will ever get close enough to realize that I can be loved! He was my soul mate!"
"Kurayami," Tsunade said patiently. "You're still young. There are plenty of eligible men out there just waiting for you to give them a chance…"
"I don't want to give them a chance because my heart belongs to the man in there!"
The two women looked up when they heard a shuffling of feet and the crinkling of a bag of chips. Kurayami's eyes narrowed as her eyes locked onto Choji.
"You!" she hissed. "You and your father are the reason that Kakashi Hatake is dead!"
Choji froze where he was standing and stared at her in horror.
"Kurayami, you know that's not true!" Tsunade snapped.
"One of you should be dead instead of him!" Kurayami roared at Choji, ignoring Tsunade. "Your lives aren't worth a tenth of his! Yet, he lays there dead and you're walking around, filling your body with poison! You and your father disgust me and the world would have been much happier with you dead!"
"Kurayami Houka that is enough!" Tsunade yelled.
Kurayami straightened and walked past Choji. "I will never forgive you for what you have done!"
Tears fell on the photo as Kurayami stared down at Kakashi's smiling face and the hand holding the knife shook. She had gone to the funeral two days ago and had refused to say goodbye to the empty shell he had left behind in this world. She couldn't believe that he was gone, even though she had been in the house by herself since his death had been announced to her.
Gai had stopped by first to try to comfort her, but even his joyful antics were diminished at the loss of his rival and the sight of her suffering form. Iruka had come next and he had tried to talk with her to help her move on with her life, but he had to give up when he couldn't control his own emotions. Kakashi's students, Naruto and Sakura, had come just hours before nightfall to give her their sympathy and had hugged her, though she felt no warmth from them.
"No more crying Kurayami," she ordered herself, wiping away her tears with the back of her hand.
Once the tears stopped coming, Kurayami put the photo of Kakashi to the side and pulled a bowl towards her. With determination in her eyes, Kurayami drew the knife across her wrist and let the blood flow into the bowl. She overrode the power of the monsters in her body, canceling all the healing properties they gave her to ensure that she would bleed enough to fill the clay bowl.
Kakashi, I do this for you, she thought, blinking back more tears that threatened to fall. I do this because my life is nothing without you in it. I can't go on without you for much longer and I will do anything to have you back again…
She dropped the knife and pulled her wrist away when the bowl was full. Without any gentleness, Kurayami bound her arm tightly to stop the bleeding and pinned the end down. It wasn't like she could feel the pain anymore. Everything was numb and she knew it would continue to be numb unless Kakashi was brought back into her life.
"Kakashi," she whispered, his smiling face flashing before her eyes. "You will be back with me tonight."
Kurayami crawled forward and took the bowl up in her hand. A human shaped object lay covered by a white sheet and Kurayami placed a hand over the heart of it. Cold seeped through the thin sheet and up through her arm until she was chilled to the core. With a sudden heaviness in her aching heart, Kurayami dipped her fingers into the bowl of blood and started drawing designs on the sheet.
"Kakashi, we'll always be together," Kurayami stated, smiling over at him as they lay on the grass, staring up at the clouds. "We'll grow old and we'll have a happy family…And…" She noticed that Kakashi wasn't smiling. "What?"
"Kurayami, you know with our line of work that there might come a time that one of us won't make it back home," Kakashi said quietly. "One of us could fall to an enemy's hand and the other would have to bury the one lost. I pray to the gods that if one of us is lost, that it will be me –"
"No!" Kurayami sat up quickly and looked down at him. "Kakashi don't say that! You're not going to die and leave me behind!"
"Ami," Kakashi breathed, sitting up also. "It's bound to happen because each of us has accumulated some dangerous enemies during the span of our careers. And let's face it, I'm getting older and not any stronger and my enemies are getting the advantage…you don't have the same disadvantages as I do."
"But Kakashi!"
"Ami, I would rather give up my life than live without you in this cruel world," Kakashi admitted, never breaking eye contact with her. "I'm not strong enough to live in a world where you aren't. I've already lost you too many times to enemies and I'm not going to lose you to death."
Kurayami wrapped her arms around Kakashi, hugging him as tightly as she could and burying her face against his shoulder. "Kakashi, I'll never leave you. I can't lose you. I'm not strong enough to be without you anymore…Please, don't you ever die on me."
Kakashi hugged her back. "Remember that I love you, Ami and never let our love leave your heart because I will always be in your heart when you need me the most."
Kurayami's had to fight to keep her hands from trembling so she wouldn't make a mistake on the designs she was making on the white sheet covering the shell of the man she had loved. A normal person would have been disgusted to be touching the body of a man who had been dead for three days, but Kurayami was beyond disgust. A person wouldn't have unburied a corpse, thinking it blasphemous, but Kurayami could care less about blasphemy. As far as she was concerned, living in a world without the love of her life was comparable to living in Hell.
She finished drawing the designs on his feet and moved back away from him. She glanced at the old scrolls she had unearthed from her family's private collection of Forbidden Jutsu, double checking the patterns to make sure she hadn't made any mistakes. The jutsu she was doing was very touchy and even the slightest difference in a mark could screw up the entire jutsu.
Assured that she had done everything right, Kurayami started using the remainder of her blood to draw out signs around the body, starting from the feet up. She didn't care if the wood floors tore at her skin as she painted the designs in her blood. The splinters would not hinder her for long and the monsters inside her body would probably destroy them before they could do any real harm.
Kurayami's eyes lost their wateriness and became focused, sharper. Her movements were sharp and precise as she moved around the body, careful not to smudge any of the previous designs. She felt eyes watching her, but did not look up until she made the finishing mark at the top of the head.
Kurayami straightened with a sigh and wiped her bloodstained fingertips off on the leg of her pants. She set the bowl aside and opened a window to the let the moonlight fall upon the covered body of the dead man. The fresh air stirred the flames of the candles for a moment and cleared away the stench of death that had been choking the air.
Kurayami was tempted for a moment to peek under the sheet at the peaceful face of her beloved Kakashi. She knew that he had the appearance of being asleep, but it was the wrong kind of sleep. It was the eternal sleep that no one was supposed to wake up from in this realm.
She'll be coming soon, Kurayami thought with another glance out the window. If she doesn't already know what I'm doing, she'll soon find out and I know she won't like it. But she's not the one who lost the one person who loved her completely this time, so she can just keep her mouth shut.
Kurayami glanced at her clone that sat on the bed, watching her. The clone nodded and crossed her legs, holding Kakashi's photo now.
"It's time," the clone whispered.
Kurayami nodded and sat down at Kakashi's feet and summoned all the chakra she would need for this jutsu, not caring that it was going to be an excessive amount. Her eyes became catlike and she started chanting the words to the jutsu as her hands flew through the precise hand signs that she had studied for hours earlier. The clone on the bed was the one to notice that Tsunade was in the room and she was the one that the older woman addressed in a low voice.
"You know that it was wrong of you to steal his body away," Tsunade said quietly.
The clone shrugged. "It was wrong of the world to take him away from me and his Village. Something that I am trying to correct here."
"Kurayami, you know that doing this jutsu is forbidden. Only one person in your family mastered it and they died trying to bring back your great-great-grandmother. That's why no one in your family was supposed to learn the jutsu after him."
"My family members did not possess the power of two demons either. They did not have access to vast amounts of chakra like I do." The clone looked at Tsunade with hard eyes. "And don't think you can stop me from completing this jutsu just because you call it 'forbidden'. The real Kurayami pumped me full of chakra so that I can withstand your blows, no matter how strong you are."
Tsunade looked sad. "So you will not give up? No matter the cost?"
The clone shook her head. "I would give up my life if only to bring Kakashi back into this world. I would be happy to have him be the last person, the last thing I see before I died so that he may know that I gave my life up for him."
"Kurayami, you know that's not what Kakashi wanted you to do in the event of his death. He wanted you to live, so that one of you was alive and could make new plans with someone else who would love you just as much as he did. Don't let his sacrifice be made in vain."
The clone smiled a sad smile as the bloody designs started to glow on the sheet and on the floor. "His death will not be in vain. Those Akimichi men are alive, aren't they? They won't be killed because of this…Everything will be the same, but Kakashi will be alive once more."
Tsunade raised a hand to shield her eyes as the designs grew brighter. "There is a chance with this jutsu that he won't be the same man that you fell in love with. He could come back as a completely different man."
"But he won't. I've taken all the necessary precautions and have performed this jutsu to the exact letter. Nothing will stop this now. Nothing."
Tsunade watched as the Kurayami kneeling on the floor at the feet of Kakashi's corpse finished doing hand signs. The designs around and on the body grew blinding and Tsunade had to look away. Moments later, they dimmed down and then they were gone completely.
"It is finished," Kurayami whispered as her clone exploded out of existence.
"At what cost?" Tsunade asked just as quietly.
Kurayami looked at Tsunade with catlike eyes. "Ai is near death. If Ceres does not help her, there will be no more twelve tailed cat demon. Please Tsunade, do not send me into battle for at least a week. I need to conserve what little chakra I have at the moment so that Ai does not die."
Tsunade looked astonished. "You were willing to trade the demon that you were born with to bring Kakashi back? The demon that is as much a part of you as your soul?"
"Yes." Kurayami turned her back on Kakashi's corpse and stood up. "Tsunade, don't you understand that I would give up everything that I have to be reunited with the man I love? Didn't you feel the same way when you lost the man that you loved all those years ago? Did you not feel like trying everything you could to bring him back? Weren't you ready to give up your life just to see him again?"
"Kurayami, this is different. This is you and you have some much to lose in this gamble for the life of Kakashi. The odds don't look good."
Kurayami glanced over her shoulder at the unmoving body of Kakashi. "The odds never look good from another person's perspective. And yes, I know how much I have to lose, but that is overshadowed by all that I can gain." She smiled at Tsunade. "I can regain the love that was lost and the happiness that has fled my body. I will find a new meaning in life, a new purpose. And I will cherish every minute I spend with Kakashi from now on."
Tsunade looked sad. "Kurayami, he's not getting up."
Tears swam in Kurayami's eyes. "He will get up! He will! I did everything right! I fulfilled the exchange of blood and chakra! I did everything that was required! He will get up!"
She collapsed against Tsunade, crying and muttering 'he will' over and over again. Tsunade lowered her gaze and patted the younger woman on the back soothingly. It was her professional opinion that Kurayami needed to get some sleep because it was obvious by the dark circles under the girl's eyes that she hadn't slept since told of Kakashi's death. Tsunade could promise her a dreamless sleep, knowing that she would have wanted the same thing when she had lost someone she had loved.
"It will be all right in the morning," Tsunade promised Kurayami, summoning chakra to her hand as she closed her eyes against a wave of unexpected tears.
"He'll come back for me," Kurayami whispered into Tsunade's shoulder.
Tsunade nodded. "He will."
Just as she was about to lower her hand upon Kurayami's back, to send the distressed woman into a dreamless sleep, she realized that something was moving in the room. Her eyes snapped open and she gasped in surprise at the sight before her.
"Ami…" whispered a voice that made Kurayami's heart skip a beat.
"Oh my goddess!" Tsunade gasped as Kurayami turned around with a wet smile on her face. "You – you did it!"
Kurayami beamed. "I love you Kakashi."
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A/N: So there it is. I have finally fixed the Kakashi death thing and if you ask me if Kakashi's really dead, I'll tell you not anymore. Review me if you would be so kind and let me know what you think about this little one-shot of depression.