CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

Crimson

He woke up, feeling the same coldness and emptiness as he had for the past two years but there was something...new. It took him a few moments of morning haziness for him to locate it as disappointment. There was supposed to be someone else here, he realized, someone that had been there before earlier in the night. Someone that filled space, someone that radiated warmth, someone that kept him there instead of tossing around.

When he finally located the name, Akane strode in.

She was wearing the same clothing as the night before, and her hair was a mess but he could instantly tell it was not from sleeping. It was from the wind, and he could only assume that she had went out somewhere early in the morning.

"Where have you been?" he asked, his voice rough as he slowly sat up. He could feel the air on his skin and wondered when had his mask slip down or if it had been deliberately pulled off. She turned her eyes to him, giving him that same look that could cut ice as she would with any other stranger although he was certain that he was past that level now - that he had been past that level for years now. And as he thought, she blinked and the look was gone and replaced by wide, pale blue eyes looking at him as if she had forgotten about him.

"Out," she said vaguely. When he said nothing, she continued. "I was looking for Jiraiya."

"And did you find him?"

She shifted, turning her head away and although he could see each lock of copper hair he told himself that it was only in his nature to observe everything and not because he was so attuned to her. "No," she said, rather oddly, "we might as well leave beforehand. I want to get to Konoha when there's still light out."

At that, Kakashi could not help but feel suspicious. Why was she doing this – it made no sense. Did she have that much of a confidence case that she could simply waltz back into Konoha after massacring an entire noble clan? Or –

Or….

Or was she planning to not go back at all? What if she was planning to take him out back into the forests uninhibited and untraveled so often to…kill him? He looked at her and she could immediately see the difference in the one way that one eye watched her. "Something wrong?" she asked slowly, taking a step closer. He felt it: the chill of being the prey. If she really was trying to kill him so that she could escape, of course she would do it without Jiraiya around. Then again, Tenzo was gone and that would set up a way for her to get caught; they were expecting Kakashi and Akane back. They would know that something went wrong if neither of them was heard from for more than two days.

Unless she handled Tenzo already.

No, this was getting out of hand, he told himself. There was no way she had killed Tenzo, and there was no way she was planning to kill him – Akane did not kill for personal gain. Then again, what was her motive for wiping out the Uchihas then?

He sighed, and rubbed his face tiredly. Brushing the silver hair back with his fingers, he looked up at her.

He could not simply bring her back to Konoha. He needed answers, he needed motives, and he needed it now. He was instantly alert and the warmth and comfort of the bed disappeared, replaced by a chill between them. "I need to know why you're doing this."

She raised an eyebrow and the Akane then erased any doubt from his mind – but only for a moment. She looked innocent of any and all crime out here, leaning against the window. The sun shone and there was a halo around her orange hair. The blue skies above her head matched the very blue in her eyes and she looked...normal. Not haunted, not disturbed, not dangerous. "Why did you change your mind?" she began, curious but not wary, "I thought you trusted my reasoning."

"I can't trust what I don't know."

"And yet we have gods," she murmured, side-tracked. She watched as he got up and fixed his gear, and checked his bandages with his back towards her.

And Akane remembered when they were younger, and it was early in the morning and Akane had woken up, still tired and eyes not quite open but still deftly bandaging Kakashi's wrist and hands and fingers. He could have done it himself, of course, he was just as capable of using his left hand as he did with his right. He had watched her intently, smiling slightly and there was something about sitting in bed when the world was still asleep and helping him get ready for a mission - she was stuck in Konoha - that made her want to wake up with him.

She blinked, and the memory faded. "I'm not going to tell you, Kakashi. But I'll co-operate any other way. Tie up my hands, my legs – I don't care. I just need to arrive in Konoha before night."

"Why?" Without looking at her, he headed towards the door and slid it open. She walked around him, standing in front of him in the hallway.

"It's dangerous at night." Her eyes stayed on him, her hands out, waiting. You're the danger, he didn't say. He wanted to take her up on her deal and bound her hands but it would only support the fact that yes, he was afraid that she was going to do something.

"Not here," he simply said, glancing both ways down the hall. She rolled her eyes but then nodded towards the entrance. They left through the back of the inn. She seemed to have been waiting for him to say something because there was only silence in their short journey from the inn to the edge of the town where the forests began. By the time they were well hidden, Kakashi turned around.

He felt like he was defeated, and yet: "Hands."

He wasn't going to take the chance. Not even a minute later Akane had her wrists tied, walking in front of Kakashi through the forest. She was smiling. The corners of her lips were turned up, amused, although her eyes remained down on the ground. And after three miles, his rational side started again. "I'm sorry."

With her walking in front, he could only see the way her head lifted to show that she acknowledged his apology. "For what?"

"This." He sighed. "Turn around."

She did so slowly and watched with a little smile playing on her lips as he untied her wrists. She rubbed them, and he could not help but to look at her bare hands – at the skin, and the knuckles and fingers not hidden behind leather gloves or bandages. "You've never been indecisive before, Kakashi," she remarked, "what made you change your mind?"

"We're on the same side," was his only answer. She stared at him as he walked in front of her to prove his point that he could trust her.

"You know," she said slowly, her eyes still on him, "I've always thought so." There was a maturity in her tone that he had not realized before. There was calmness. Before, it was more like a repressed tone with demons beneath it but now...it was as untroubled like seas before a storm. They walked in silence for several moments before Akane broke it again and sighed. Frustrated, she raked her fingers back through her copper hair and placed a hand on his back. "Kakashi, wait."

He felt shivers down his back.

"What is it?"

She paused, and let him go. "If you don't trust me, it's fine. I understand." She skipped in front of him, walking backwards and holding out her wrist at him. "If it'll give you peace of mind..."

He began to grow irritated at her home. It was condescending, to say the least, that she expected him to be afraid of her. His response came harsher than he thought. "What are you trying to pull, Akane?" He didn't stop walking. "You're being co-operative." Then again, over a decade ago, she had been too when her father died. "You're...walking straight back into where you killed the Uchihas and -"

"Is that what it's about?"

"It's what everything is about, it's why I'm here – to get you back so that -"

But then she cut him off; they went from an apologetic conversation into an argument in an instant. "I have always been on your side, Kakashi," she groaned, "I have never gone against you – against Konoha, whether you believe it or not. Everything I have done, it was for the goddamn village and I understand it's not fair to ask you to understand because you don't know but...but trust me when I tell you that I'm coming back to Konoha because I have absolutely nothing to hide. I don't have a motive, or a plan or...anything."

His jaw tensed as Akane stared up at him, her hand falling by her side. She looked genuine, but he could not believe her. Kakashi sped in front of her and refused to turn around. "I don't care for the reason as long as you're coming back," he concluded in a stiff tone only to realize a second later that they had went in a circle. She didn't respond.

As they made their way through the forest, time began to cease exist. He wasn't sure if an hour had passed, or ten minutes, and when she spoke again for the first time he could not tell if it it felt like the silence had been too long or if she had just spoken after the argument. "There's someone following us."

"No, there isn't." He would have been able to tell. He could hear her frustration going.

"I specialize in hiding our troops, Kakashi, I think I can tell when someone is using the same jutsu."

You're being paranoid, he wanted to say. But he didn't. He kept on walking.

But of course, he was wrong.

xxxxx

"That brat," Jiraiya grumbled as he got up noisily. He cast a glance to the woman asleep in a bed he did not recognize in a room he did not know but figured that it must have been a hell of a good night judging from the empty bottles that littered around the room. He quickly slipped on his clothing – a shinobi trait he was proud of, he had gotten ready in a matter of seconds – and left the room silently.

Jiraiya did not plan to get drunk.

Sure, he planned to enjoyed the company of women because he was sick of a certain ex-ANBU's dry glances and permanent looks of disdain for the world but he had a resolve to be the one to knock on Akane's door and bring her back to Konoha.

And instead, here he was: waking up at god knows where in god knows when. Smoothing out the mess of his long white hair, he looked around. He felt too old to be looking for the younger generations now, and he wanted to forget that he had ever run into either of them.

But he reminded himself that it was Sakumo's son and a deeply disturbed girl. Alone.

And he could not shake the feeling that one of them would probably be dead before the sun set.

xxxxx

It happened faster than he had ever expected -

Faster than he had ever witness, faster than he had ever done. The sound of a blade cutting through flesh – a bone, a large chunk – froze him but the gasp that followed was the one that awoken him starkly. Before even a single muscle of his moved, the metallic stench of blood in the air overwhelmed his nose and by the time he turned around, he only saw a gleam of a white porcelain mask before his chakra flared and he was crashing into the shinobi in a blink of an eye.

But not before he heard the sound of a body collapsing, falling off balance and over, before he saw a flash of orange descending.

"Who do you work for?" he demanded through his teeth as he collided into the man, knocking him to the ground and wrapping his hands around his throat. He spoke before he thought; instantly he recognized that person all too clearly – no, not that person, but who they represented. A black cloak. The animal mask. The swiftness, the silence, the skill. It was all there.

Konoha.

Realizing he wasted time but also realizing that he could not harm another member of the very corps he belonged to, Kakashi averted his attention back to Akane but there was someone already there, someone locking her to the ground - someone less than a blink away from driving a sword through Akane's unconscious body.

His eyes widened fraction by fraction. His muscles tightened. His blood was on fire but ran cold and his heart stopped but drummed so loudly he felt it throughout his body.

And although only three seconds had passed since he had been walking silently, in the next moment, his mind shut down. Everything went black, and he let everything went lose. He had kept everything locked down for so long, with only his guilt slipping through the cracks but as the blood pooled onto the dirt and the body fell limp..everything was released. Frustration. Anger. Pain.

And above all, desperation.

They were all dead - he was alone. His father. Obito. Rin. Minato. Countless other names and faces of necessary sacrifices and failed missions and now...Akane. The one thing that was suppose to remain in this world was gone before she was even dead.

I have lost everything.

And as Kakashi gave out, a savage took over.

xxxxx

The Sennin did not like tracking people by chakra very much. He could do it just fine but there was something unsettling about stretching his chakra thin in order to encounter another's. Regardless, he slowly began spreading his chakra until he could sense the very familiar one of Akane Mikuzen or Kakashi Hatake.

He found the latter and he knew that something was wrong.

The first idea that came to his mind was the little vixen attacked the Hatake boy and left him unconscious in the forest as she escaped. It was completely plausible - expected, even. But as he drew closer, he could only hear the outcries of a man.

And Jiraiya arrived in the forest, he found out exactly what happened in a scene that unfolded before him in blood.

xxxxx

Inhale.

His arm pulled back.

Exhale.

His fist moved forward, and then the sensation of a crunch of bone being smashed pulled his mind slowly out of the static.

Inhale.

He got up, balled up his hands and kicked the limp body – again, and again, and again. Heaving. He was panting, sweating, his eyes wide and his Sharingan only allowing him to see each tremor of the body as he beat the life out of it.

"Kakashi – Kakashi, stop."

But he didn't. He fell over, jerked the body side ways and with a knee on either side, began punching the man desperately. There was a burn in his eyes, and salt on his lips. Tears? He didn't remember crying. And yet even with the visual prowess, his eyes blurred away and all he saw was the brown of the dirt and the dark clothing and red. Red all over. Red on the face, pooling beneath the head, on his gloves.

He still could not breathe as he straightened his back, still on his knees but now looking down at the body. He was gasping, leaning back, sweating and unable to take in the reality of it all until -

Until he heard a foot step come closer.

And just like that, he was calm. His mind blanked out immediately. Swallowing slightly, he got up one leg at a time. By the time he turned around to face a guilt-ridden Jiraiya, Kakashi had wiped out every trace of emotion from his face but the stains of blood still remained.

He did not remember what happen. One moment he was going towards Konoha, and then he smelt blood. And then there was a body. And he remembered feeling everything all at once. And then..nothing. Next thing he knew, he was pounding the life out of a man and...and..."How did you find me?" was all he asked, his voice was still. Hollow.

"That isn't the most urgent question here," Jiraiya pointed out, appalled. It wasn't that there were three dead bodies – he had seen plenty more, and each more gruesome than the next – but it was the silence of the forest that accompanied the scene that made him feel like something was inherently wrong.

His eyes flitted down to the body not to far away – to the direction where Kakashi refused to look at.

Jiraiya looked at the man, with equally white hair that covered his face as his eyes were downcast. He hated apologizing, he always had. He'd always rather say I understand your pain because he truly did but looking at the young man in front of him, Jiraiya did not think about imploring words like that. "I know that you two - "

He was cut off as Kakashi moved again. He walked past him and picked up his ANBU mask that was cracked down the middle. When had he dropped it?

There was a flash of a memory, an image of everything being lit up by the blue of his raikiri and another body that he had drove his hand through. There was blood. There was always blood.

Perhaps his mask had fallen out then. Maybe the other shinobi got a hit at one point. The shatter began at the eye, and he wondered if the ANBU had gone after his Sharingan. He could not remember and he did not want to.

The moment Kakashi lifted it into his hand, shards of it fell apart. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "It would have happened eventually," was all he said . His voice was cold and the same emptiness filled him. He could not understand how he felt nothing but everything. Sadness was absent - he did not feel tormented, not really. He knew this was going to happen eventually. He knew Akane was going to die, and he had suspected he would outlive her. But he wasn't sure why but everything felt too...quick, too smooth. All he knew for certain was that he needed to get away and yet he knew that he needed closure. He had to see the body.

And when he turned around, he told himself he was only going to examine Akane objectively for a report. And then he dismissed that idea, and said he would do it…just to verify but only for a second. No, half a second. Then he would look away, and then he would return to Konoha. He would tell the Hokage that Akane Mikuzen was dead. He would tell him that whoever went after her died in the process. He would tell him that he was resigning from ANBU Black Ops. He would tell him that he was going to take a break, he was going to leave for a while, and when he returned, Kakashi would revert back to his jounin status.

But first, he needed to see the body.

And in that flicker of the moment that he gave himself, he saw everything in fragments. A body, tossed over to one side. Arm over her chest. Copper hair a spray of a mess, covering her face. He saw the curve of her nose, her blood stained lips and the blood that dripped down the side of her open mouth.

And from the centre of her body was a sword driven through her back, the tip of the sword and nearly the entire length of it protruding through her chest. Her body was tipped over awkwardly - and then he realized it was because the leg resting upon the ground...did not exist. Did not balance the other leg. It was gone in a mess of blood and wreck of muscle and tendon and bone.

A forest, blood, a missing limb. The scene was all too familiar but there was no little, orange-haired girl curled by a tree, hugging her knees and trembling.

This time around, she was dead.

x

Happy Halloween!

It has been a while, but hey, one more chapter, then the epilogue and finally, I have finished this story! Struggled to get through it, if you could not tell, but I really just want to tie this up. Plus school's a killer and this was a welcome distraction.

Hope you enjoyed this chapter (if that's the right verb?) and I'm sure that a lot of you have seen this coming for quite a while now but...here you go. Next chapter is already done and ready to be posted up so...yes, update depends on time :)

Reviews would be lovely, and thanks for reading!