Summary: What might have happened if there had been a pair of visitors to the village before Makabe and Munataka? What if one of those two had been a woman? What if she and Itsuki discovered they had a special connection?

Disclaimer: I do not own the Fatal Frame games, I do not own Tecmo, I am not getting paid in any way for this, etc, etc. I usually only write Devil May Cry fics, but Crimson Butterfly got me thinking. If it sucks, deepest apologies. Flamers will have gasoline poured on them and be danced around sometime around midnight.

Queen's Quornor: So here we are. The final chapter of "Kindred Souls." Sorry it has been so long in coming, I have been a bit busy with my Final Fantasy 7 fics. This is supposed to be tragic, but I'm not so sure it comes off that way. So, enjoy it, and leave me a review, please!

Eternity

"Michiko? Michiko!"

The voice reached into the darkness, dragged her consciousness into the light. Michiko groaned softly, feeling a terrible burning pain in her neck, and opened her eyes. Itsuki was kneeling beside her on the floor, his brow creased with worry. His hand was resting on her shoulder.

But he's not draining me...

It worked.

I am... Dead.

"Itsuki..." she breathed.

"How are you feeling?"

"As if I snapped my neck in two," she quipped. She began to sit up, but her head spun and she had to lay back down. Her eyes traveled upwards, and saw that her body was still swinging from the rafters. It was not frightening, but very strange, to see her own corpse as someone else would have seen it, hanging limply from its silken noose. The robes were still open and fluttering in the slight breeze from the window, affording Michiko a look at her own body a mirror could not provide. She pointed up at her lifeless shell. "What is to be done with myself?"

Itsuki shrugged. "I suppose we could cut it down and throw it out of the storehouse. But I cannot leave this cell, and I am unsure if we could move it. If we are unable to move it, I suppose it will just hang there until it rots."

Michiko wrinkled her nose. "Do smells bother us when we are dead?"

"I have never had an issue with it."

"All right."

She tried sitting up again, and this time the vertigo was only minimal. Holding a hand to her head, she managed to stand up and look at Itsuki. "So... What do we do now?"

"I do not know. I suppose we must wait until the Final Sacrifice occurs." He suddenly turned and pointed at a writing desk in the corner. Atop it lay Michiko's half of the pendant, the blue stone still smooth and unscratched, although a little dusty. "I kept your pendant. I wore it alongside my own, everyday, until I got locked in here. I have not touched it since, because I feared you were lost to me." His back was ramrod straight. "It was all I had left of you, Michiko. I did not wish to contaminate it with my touch."

She came up behind him, wrapped her arms around his waist and leaned into him. "There is nothing to contaminate, my Itsuki. I am here now, and I will never leave you again. You do not have to cling to a necklace anymore; I am right here."

"But you had to die before you could be with me." He did not accept her embrace, holding himself stiffly against her. "Do you see, Michiko? I am responsible for the deaths of everyone I held dear. The Repentance would not have occured at all, had I kept my mouth closed and allowed the Kurosawas to go through with the ritual. And because I loved you, now you are dead as well. Everything is my fault!"

"That is not true, Itsuki." She squeezed him tighter, laid her cheek against his back. "I am unsure about Sae, but I know Yae was planning on finding her way out of the village and taking her sister with her before the ritual. She did not wish to kill her sister. And my death was by my own hands; I made that decision myself. You are not to blame for that. As for the Repentance, if the priests had simply allowed Sae to follow her sister, and not performed only half the ritual, this would not have occured. Not like this."

"I cannot help feeling guilty, Michiko." He still wouldn't look at her, but he did relax slightly. "I do not think I shall ever be free of that."

"I will be here to help you bear that burden, my Itsuki. And once the Final Sacrifice is over, we shall move on to heaven together. We will see those we cared for in life again...

"Together."

He turned his head to look at her. "Together?"

She nodded, closing her eyes and smiling as he turned around, curling his arms around her and holding her to him. "We shall be together. Forever.

"I promise."