Woohoo! An update! I decided to continue the story. A friend wanted me to continue when I voiced some ideas about Kakashi going after Sasuke and that there might be opportunities for some flashbacks (lemon and lime). A little SasuKaka? Don't know yet. You can yay or nay in reviews on that one. This is also for Kirai who reviewed the first story. Thank you!
And if you're expecting any happy stuff, you should know me by now, I don't do happy well.
Anyway . . . let's pick off exactly where I left off!

—

Kakashi thought up a story on his way back to find his team. He needn't have bothered. He caught the scent of smoke on the air and he saw a column of smoke when he looked behind him.
He took a detour into the woods and mimed picking up the bottle in his hand when he was close to the younger shinobi.

"Sakura, here." He threw it to her.

"Thank you, sensei. I knew I dropped it around here."

"We're delaying our mission."

"What?" Naruto said.

"Look to the west." They all did so, seeing the massive column of smoke. "We're going to check it out."

They rushed to the scene of Sasuke and Itachi's battle. They made for the middle of the rubble where a single wall remained upright, though askew. Kakashi's blood ran cold. Itachi lay there with his empty eye sockets directed toward the weeping sky. The rain tried to wash the blood and ash from his face, but it was useless. His hair fanned around his head in a limp way that didn't seem possible if he were alive. It seemed to Kakashi that Death remained here after he took Itachi and now reached for Kakashi's heart and squeezed, tempting him to follow his lover. Sakura looked at Kakashi with more sympathy than Kakashi would be able to tolerate if he'd looked up to see it.

They all saw the Uchiha fan on the wall. The destruction and Itachi's corpse suggested the same thing to all of them, even Sai: Sasuke had completed his revenge.

Kakashi got a hold of himself enough to make his hand signs, crouch, and summon his hounds. "Sasuke was here recently; can you track him in this rain?"

"I have his scent," Pakkun said. "But it permeates this entire area. We'll have to fan out and see if there's a trail we can follow."

"Two of you with each of us. Howl if you find his trail." He signaled and they all dispersed. A few yards away, he made a clone to go off with his hounds and he returned to Itachi's side. Out of sight and earshot, Kakashi allowed himself to breakdown next to the body of his lover.

He wondered if Sasuke had really left his brother's body to rot on this piece of broken concrete. But by the bloody form next to Itachi, he guessed Sasuke had been badly injured in the fight as well. Someone had come for Sasuke, but left Itachi's body.

"I'll take you home, my raven," Kakashi promised. He looked up to let the ran wash his tears and cool his skin before running after his clone.

They came back together quickly. "There's no trail leading away from here and the one leading here is too faint to backtrack and it's rapidly deteriorating."

Kakashi was staring at what one of the dogs had brought with him: Itachi's Akatsuki cloak. Kakashi picked it up and felt it for anything in the pockets. He found two glass vials filled with water. Itachi had told him a lot of things over the months they were together, he figured Itachi might have had these to threaten Sasuke with and/or for Sasuke to use for harvesting Itachi's eyes. Strangely, as long as the eyes were not completely blind, they could be transplanted with no deterioration in the recipient's vision or powers. His eyes were gone, but the vials were still here. Someone else must have harvested Itachi's eyes for Sasuke.

Kakashi wrapped the body in the black and red cloak and struggled with the stiff body to carry it. "We're going back to the village to report in."

"Why bring the traitor's body?" Sai asked.

Sakura hadn't wanted to belt the boy more since Orochimaru's lair.

"Is it any of your concern?" Kakashi asked as calmly as he could. He too wanted to strike Sasuke's replacement.

—

Kakashi carried the body to the gates. Izumo got a stretcher for him to lay the now pliable body. He let Izumo and Kotetsu carry the stretcher to the Hokage tower, but he remained right beside it. The Hokage admitted them immediately.

She looked down at the body lain in front of her desk. "Uchiha Itachi," she mused with a hint of disgust in her voice.

Kakashi had to restrain himself. Itachi was just an S-class criminal, but this was his lover.

"Why are his eyes missing?"

Kakashi explained briefly that Sasuke would need to transplant his brother's eyes or go blind.

"And Sasuke?"

"The entire area was rubble. There was a body shaped puddle of blood next to Itachi. Sasuke must have been wounded and collapsed and someone recovered him. We have intelligence that he was forming his own team; it's sensible that they recovered him. My hounds could not find a trail in the rain. I believe he's alive."

"If he's killed Orochimaru and his brother, won't Sasuke come home now?" Naruto asked.

"I don't know. He doesn't have anywhere else to go."

"We'll search for him," Tsunade said. "For now, Itachi's body may tell us something about Akatsuki. We'll examine it in detail." Those words cut through Kakashi, but he hid it well. The thought of what they would do to Itachi's body . . .

"You all can rest. I'll keep you in the village for now; you have the best change of convincing Sasuke to come back to the village."

Naruto and Sai began to leave, but Kakashi and Sakura didn't move.

"Kakashi-sensai?" Naruto asked.

"Go on, I have something else to discuss with the Hokage."

"So do I," Sakura said.

Tsunade nodded and the boys left.

"What about his remains afterward?" Kakashi asked when the door shut.

"It will be destroyed."

"I would like to be the one to do it. I'll cremate him myself."

"Why?"

"I knew him. I'm probably the only person in village who can remember anything good about him. Let me do it, alone."

"Not alone."

"Then I can go to make sure it's done properly," Sakura said.

"Alright. The body will be released to you once the examination is over."

"How long will the examination take?"

Shizune spoke for the first time. "Probably only a few hours."

"I'll take the body to the hospital myself then and wait. I can cremate him tonight."

"Alright," Tsunade said. "I would rather have him disposed of as soon as possible."

"Thank you, Hokage-sama."

"I'd like to stay with you," Sakura said to Kakashi. He nodded, as did Tsunade. Izumo and Kotetsu carried the stretcher again, Kakashi walking beside him, Sakura behind him.

Kakashi and Sakura waited outside as Itachi's body was dissected and examined. It was killing Kakashi. The laid back shinobi fidgeted, eventually pulling out a kunai and started twirling it and flipping it around, angry at what was being done to his lover's body. He wasn't worried that they would find evidence that he had been harbored in the village for a time, just agonizing over the way his body must be being treated behind this door. Eventually he could hardly take it anymore and stabbed the kunai into the wall in frustration.

Sakura wanted to say something to him, but there was nothing to say, at least not here where someone might overhear.

Finally, it was over. His clothing was gone, his Akatsuki cloak and other clothes taken for a more thorough examination to find their origin, replaced by a sterile white hospital gown. Sakura helped carry the body out of the village to a clearing in the forest.

Sakura stood back, present more so no one would disturb her sensei. Kakashi knelt beside his lover's body lying on the makeshift pyre. He'd placed a cloth over his eyeless sockets to try and make him look more like he did in life. He was overcome.

He turned his head slightly as his tears abated. He saw an unhealing wound on Itachi's chest above the white hospital gown he had been wrapped in. Kakashi slowly pushed the gown aside and saw the cuts in Itachi's flesh where they opened up his body and the pitiful stitches that barely held the skin together. Anger replaced Kakashi's grief. He tried to tell himself that this wasn't Itachi anymore, just an empty shell, but he couldn't stand the way his body had been treated, the body he knew so well and had stroked and caressed and kissed.

"I should have cremated you out there and not let this happen to you. I'm sorry, Itachi, that I couldn't do more to help you. You didn't deserve this! Cold payment for all you did for them."

Sakura turned at these words. "What do you mean by that?"

"Itachi was—" Kakashi stopped himself.

"Itachi was innocent?"

"No. Yes. He did kill them, but he had the well being of the village in mind. He was the spy in Akatsuki. He sacrificed everything for the village. And this is how he's repaid."

Sakura could say nothing to this.

"I swear to you Itachi, I will bring your brother home safely. I swear it."

Kakashi stroked the long black hair once more. He synched the tie around the ponytail tighter and cut it off with a kuni. He stood back and used the Uchiha's favorite fire technique, the Grand Fireball Jutsu. He sustained the ball of flame around Itachi's body, burning it to ashes. Sakura watched the flames consume the body.

The two of them stared at the mound of ash and scorched earth after the fire died. The gentle wind blew the ash away in small puffs of dust.

Is this what we're all reduced to in the end? Dust? Kakashi remembered his father's death, his cremation. He wouldn't let himself cry back then, not wanting to show emotion, especially not for someone as disgraceful as his father. His opinion of his father had changed, mostly due to Obito's words the day he died, but Kakashi had always loved his father despite everything.

Then something occurred to him: he had told Itachi the full story of his father's disgrace and suicide and Obito's words. Itachi had agreed with Obito.

"In a sense, he did end up dying for his comrades," Itachi had said. "I can't imagine a better end. You're father received cold payment for saving lives. Why is the prevention of death less heralded than saving someone in immediate danger? Is it better to sacrifice people blithely or to do something 'dishonorable' to do what you believe is best and save the lives you know you can? I would have taken the same path as your father."

He realized Itachi had done the same thing: Itachi had sacrificed his own honor and family to save the village, save the lives he knew he could. And they both took their own lives. In a sense.

"Sakura. We're going after Sasuke." He walked off, leaving Sakura stunned for a moment before following him back to the village.