Epilogue: Ubiquity
Death in and of itself is irrelevant. Life does and will go on, there is no real effect the absence of a single person or thing has in the world around it. If anything, death is where life puts what it no longer has a use for, a cosmic trashcan, 'pure lands' be damned. People look for God there, in the cosmic trashcan, as if this otherworldly being is waiting, wanting, to be found.
Like they care.
Evidently, they don't.
There is a God in the moon and she never cared. She stares with one giant eye, a monstrosity in the making, and every night little boys and girls look up at her with reverence. There are a series of deity that Konoha carved into stone, a line of demigods hidden in script on the skin of human sacrifices. They gave their village history and that was all the wished to give.
She was a side effect, part of the left-over filtered from soup to make it clear, useless and found wanting. She was no god, no wayward demigod, no innocent, just a dead girl dragged from her sleep.
She was a dead root, decomposing as fertilizer for the next generation, until she wasn't anymore.
Oddly enough, it's like waking up.
The first few moments were reminiscent of the time she was in shock, the overload of chakra from a jutsu not her own. An awkward buzzing of confusion filled her ears, her eyes itched and her skin crawled, then it cleared and before her was an inferno she thought once dead, thrown in the trashcan where it seems it belonged.
"And who are you?" the dead girl said the dead boy, two pieces of litter found polluting the wilds.
"I'm surprised you don't already know," there was an expectant pause as if she would suddenly stop pretending, like she actually cared after witnessing what he had done. "I'm the koi that became a dragon."
And she knew, she could smell it in the air, the ash that painted her skin, the blinking signatures of life flickering out, the screams, the anguish, the blackened sludge crawling in her veins.
"I see no dragon here."
He flinched as if he was stuck and for a moment they just stood and stared. His fingers dug into his gloves in through the eye of his mask she saw the gleam of blood on a blade.
"Eliminate the enemy, Kyoko." Wooden and hollow, she was surprised at how much it hurt to hear his voice so broken.
"I think I prefer Roku," she lowered herself into a crouch, her stance solid and low, her nails digging into the earth as she poured pure elemental chakra through it, "you seem to have lost the right to call me anything but that, haven't you?"
There was no chakra she needed to save, nothing that she had to store to keep her heart beating, her body alive, and so with a force she never dared to use she tore a ravine into the soft dirt of Konoha, digging a mass grave for the world she once loved.
The dog, the koi, and the root, what an odd team.
They were standing back to back to back, an odd triangle with their shoulders at the point of connection. It was a war and they were fighting in it, their combined spine the only thing keeping them standing.
Blood painted the green grass red, stained their skin, clung to their hair and clothes like a rotting perfume. They were young and tired and too small to be where they were.
The dog was a streak of silver before death, a crack of thunder in the middle of the night. He was the meticulous, the methodical, the cold and clinical. The perfect solder in so many ways but never where it counted.
The Koi, oddly enough was a flame that burned just a hint too bright. A scorching line of devastation, the open-mouthed hunger of a wildfire, he was perhaps the cruelest, with his hesitation, his passion.
And the root? She left trenches where she ran, lines carved through dirt and stone only to fill like moats with the bodies of those she fell. Too many teeth, too little hesitation, she dances at the edge of their sight forever a phantom.
Perhaps they were cursed, perhaps they never were real at all.
"Hello Kakashi," He looked exhausted already, "you've grown."
There was a boy to his right, black hair and blank eyes, she could almost taste the dirt of her birth on his skin from where she stood.
"Hello, Kyoko." He parried her Kunai, dropped to avoid the unseen wire that would have had his head, she almost smiled until a pulse of static froze her limbs. She could feel the cold touch of death lingering in her fingers and bones, she knew the answer to a question she had yet to speak.
Still she wished she was wrong.
"Have you kept your promise?" Her foot slammed down on the head of an ink summon, and the toes of her other foot caught, redirected, a projectile into the back of another shinobi. Her clone erupted from the ground and engaged with the boy as she rushed Kakashi, an avalanche, a landslide, she was the earth beneath his feet, the dust in his lungs.
"I don't break promises."
"Liar." They had that much in common she knew, and besides, he looked far too broken not to be one.
She remained still, her head bowed, her mask blank and staring as her eyes traced lines that didn't exist. There are many horrible things that are done in the name of war, things she wished she never knew existed, things she wished she didn't have to do now that she felt more whole and complete than she had in so very long.
But she did.
She had to be the hideous thing hiding in the dark because if she wasn't then Obito might have to be, if she wasn't Kakashi might have to be. It was better her than them, she had to believe that, it was better her than them.
She was so tired.
It was always fire, in fire she died and after the fire she began, this was no different. They were the land of fire after all, their leader the fire's shadow, their pride the will of that fire. It was only fair that the weakest of their enemies succumb to it. Poetic even.
Kyoko has always hated poetry.
An Iwa base went up in flames that night, volcanic.
"Tell me, little root," with a flick of her wrist she tossed poison painted senbon at a figure vaguely familiar as he cut into her dance with Kakashi, "did you hold onto your hate?" the words felt stale, odd on her tongue like licking paper.
"Kind of," Shi grinned for a moment, an honest one that nearly blinded her and caused her to stumble, "but I don't think that hate was ever for you."
Maybe it was jealousy, maybe it was happiness, but something was bubbling in her chest as they stared at one another. She used the moment to cast out a thin web of chakra, one he easily broke. Her bones felt brittle, the dust and ash on her skin cracking as he landed a punch across her jaw.
"Danzo is dead." He continued, tapping his cheek absently watch her wearily from her sprawled position on the ground.
"Well," She tilted her head staring wide-eyed at him for a moment, before gesturing to the space around them "Look where that got you, I suppose."
The flowers in Kyoko's hands felt heavy, the stems digging oddly into her hands causing them to itch. The grave before her was simple and well maintained, the ground around it weeded probably weekly. She wondered if they would bother for her body when she died, and if they did would it be as well maintained? Graves were not particularly commonplace during times of war, no one had the time or patience to dig a whole for a body that might not even house it, no one saw the point in wasting so much time. She doubted she would be more than carefully burned ash on the field, a body disposed of, so the enemy may not get to it.
Rin Nohara was carefully etched into the stone, the straight letters stark against the smooth stone.
Kyoko had never felt guilt for what she did to Rin, she still didn't. If she were to be honest she would even consider it a kindness that Kyoko had ended Rin's life early, something of a mercy killing. She supposed she was more here with Obito in mind than anything else, a nod to the relationship he had held with Rin.
It was a flimsy excuse, but she was always rather good at lying to herself.
She laid the flowers before the grave, two purple and one yellow Hyacinth with three white Camellia.
Kyoko told herself she wouldn't come again, and yet two weeks later found herself before Rin flowers in hand.
No matter the instructions that whatever jutsu had forced her into life, she didn't really have the heart to kill anyone in the leaf. She killed those of cloud and sand, of mist and rock. She lost limbs and ran herself threw with blades pointed out to ward her off. It was reckless abandon she never had in life.
She only wanted to return, she wanted to return to before she knew of Kakashi's misery, Obito's betrayal. Return to a void that while was not her sister's arms or a quiet conversation about mundane life over tea it was so much better than this.
Kakashi and Obito were fighting, she could feel it in the flickering of their chakra, in the instant need to be at their side.
She never made it to them.
Kyoko died finally for a second time under the heat of a jutsu cast by a boy as golden as her Sensei.
Oddly enough, it's like falling asleep.
She had enough will to stay dead this time.
Notes:
Feels a little rushed and is super short but I'm going to be honest it was kind of horrible to write. She was dragging her feet the whole time so I just made it happen.
The first side story is up, Kakashi's POV. If you still want to see stuff from this universe the stories name is Cracks and Broken Pieces, I'll be doing a few different POV's while I start up on the next story.
Speaking of next story that will be Stagnant Waters, you can use the same poll on my profile to vote for the one I'll be writing after this one the options as of right now are the same.
-edit 122317-
I added a bit to the story, it doesn't feel nearly as rushed now.