Damn it Naruto. How could you do this to her... But most of all the copy nin was thinking. How could you do this to us?

Kakashi wasn't by far a stupid man. He never would have lived as long as he had by being stupid. He had known since the beginning that the Naruto that had been his student, his knucklehead friend, was a fake since the very beginning. But reality was a difficult thing to face. His guilt over the real Naruto's death was a difficult thing to face.

(*****************************************************************FLASHBACK**************************************************************************)

He had been right fucking there!

The child had been right in front of him, wounded, defenseless, alone and though he had had to kill five of his former comrades trying to reach the boy, he had still been too little too late. The image of the little seven year old body laying broken, and bleeding on the ground would forever be etched into his mind.

He had had to be put in a cell in the Anbu headquarters like a common criminal to keep from going after everyone that he had ever seen hurt the child. He had screamed, and cried, cursed the gods and the village he had lived to defend for so long. Two weeks after his incarceration he had very nearly turned into a raving lunatic, the acid sting of his rage had built, and started burning him alive inside. Eating away at his heart and mind, staining his soul just a bit more than cold blooded murder had.

He recalled sitting in the farthest, darkest corner of the cell, deciding that it was time to break out and paint the village scarlet with the blood of it's people when the Hokage had come to see him, carrying a small blond child in his arms. The elder moved in close to the cell, almost right up against the bars, and he had bared his teeth behind his mask.

This old man, this fool who allowed innocent children to die would be his first victim in a long stream of victims. He no longer cared that the elder was like a great uncle to him, precious to his heart. He no longer cared about his comrades, he just wanted blood. He wanted so much of it that it would drown the world, and everything in it.

"Kakashi? Are you there?"

Kakashi didn't move. No point in giving his intentions away so soon.

"Kakashi?-" The elder sighed tiredly and shifted his hold on the little one in his arms and pulled out a ring of keys and Kakashi's eyes widened in shock. He was opening the door!

He was a fool to open the door to the cell when Kakashi was planning to rip out his throat, but then again who was he to complain, he could still kill the guy up close and personal. Just the way he liked it.

The elder unlocked the door and pushed it open as Kakashi tensed and got ready to attack, his mind going blank with a killing rage as he reached around his back and slipped his gloved hand inside of his weapon's pouch and pulled out the single kunai that hadn't been taken form him before he had been locked up.

"I know that your in here Kakashi. Planning my untimly demise no doubt..."

You got that right asshole.

"Well since that is the case, then go ahead and kill me. But before you do, I want you to see this child that I brought to see you."

Kakashi frowned behind his mask and let his eyes flicker to the sleeping child's back. From his vantage point he could see that the kid was small-maybe a little too small depending on it's age, gender was male, the little ones hair was blond and sort of spiky. His heart started slamming against his ribs as the elder put the child down, laying him on the dirty cot where Kakashi had been sleeping then turned and walked out of the cell and slipped out the door, leaving the door open and the child on his bed.

Frankly Kakashi had thought he was insane. And for a second he had contemplated letting the Hokage live so that he could convince him to act as his partner and help him destyroy everything and everyone, after all he knew that the old man had loved Naruto just as much as he had.

The little one made a sound, a whimper that drew his attention and made him nervous. What the hell was he supposed to do with this kid? Why had the Hokage brought him here? Curious to discover som answers Kakashi moved, silently, across the room and stopped cold when he saw the child's face, his heart stuttered and nearly stopped he was so shocked.

Naruto. It was Nartuo.

But that was impossible. Naruto was dead. He had seen his corpse with his own eyes, had seen the wounds, there was no way that the boy could be alive. And yet...

He placed a shaking hand against the child's throat and nearly jumped out of his skin when he felt the soft pulsing of his heat under his fingertips. Jesus Christ! Kakashi scurried across the room and stood there looking at the sleeping boy as if he were a zombie that had just popped up out of the ground and taken a huge bite out of him or something. He watched the child sleep for a second and bent down and picked up a small rock and tossed it across the room, hitting the child on the head.

The boy yelped and jackknifed up on the bed holding his head. "Owie." Kakashi blinked and pressed his back against the wall and watched the boy as he looked around.

His heart was beating far too fast now, shock, fear, adrenaline and several other emotions warred within his chest as the boy locked eyes with him in the darkness. Blue eyes. He had blue eyes, like the fourth Hokage had. Like Naruto had. Deep blue, dark, bottomless, like the depths of a really, really, really deep well. They simply seemed to go on forever and ever and ever. He was suddenly very afraid of what those eyes saw when they looked at him.

Would they see the man that had tried to save him?

Or the man that had let him die?

The boy shifted and slid off of the cot and picked up the small rock and shot a funny look in his direction, hysterical laughter bubbled up, and he had to slap his hands over his mouth in an effort to keep it from spilling out. It didn't work so well, the sound still came out it was just softer, and made him sound like a cat that was being strangled.

"Why did you throw a rock at me?" The boy asked as he moved in closer and Kakashi looked around for something to stand on in a panic, he suddenly felt very scared and vulnerable to this boy.

Finally he decided to answer the boy-but only after he had climbed the wall and was safely attached to the ceiling of the cell where the kid couldn't reach him.

"I uh...was... checking to see..." What the fuck was wrong with him? Why was this boy's question so damn hard to answer? He wondered while another part of his mind wondered,

What do I say? What do I say?

If this boy was in fact Naruto-if he had actually somehow miraculously survived, then did he ever remember the attack? Cause if not then Kakashi certainly wasn't going to be stupid enough to point out that he was supposed to be dead. That would just be careless and dumb.

So he changed tactics to avoid any unpleasent questions and answers. "Who are you anyway?" He snapped at the boy, the kid just grinned at him.

"IM'Naruto Uzumaki, I'm this many-" And then as if to demonstrate his age he held up five fingers, then looked at them and scowled and muttered ' That's not right' and took a second to work on his math and then held up seven fingers and grinned again.

"That's..." Highly improbably. Not likely. Impossible? Kakashi could have said any one of these things, yet for the life of him couldn't seem to get the words out. Logically he knew that Naruto was dead.

Logically he acknowledged the fact that the dead didn't rise, it just wasn't possible. Because if it was then they would be over run with the walking dead by now.

Logically he knew that this kid could'nt be Naruto. Again it just was'nt possible.

But then doubt started to kick in, pesky and nagging and damned frustrating to a man who had seen the events leading up to this...'little incident' as he had dubbed it in his mind.

And quickly on the heels of doubt was the pesky idea that he had finally lost his mind, and the boy was simply a figment of his stressed mind, a tool to drive him even crazier than he had been to begin with.

"Hey mister man-" Kakashi blinked and looked at the boy. What had he just called him? "I'm here and yet I'm gone, a person yet not the same person as before. What am I?" The boy asked in an sweetly childish voice that tugged at Kakashi's heart strings as he mulled over the question.

"A clone?" He finally said and the boy smiled at him.

"That's right."

It had taken over another week for Kakashi to put all of the pieces together after that, and finally assure himself that he was in fact sane. Though that took a lot more doing than figuring out what the boy had been trying to tell him, but in the end he had decided that it was best to simply forget the whole sorted mess. It was just too depressing to face. And he would much rather live in the world that had a Naruto in it than one that had none at all.

(***********************************************************END*FLASHBACK****************************************************************************)

Kakashi turned to look at his teammates and their friends. It looked like it was finally time to wake up and face reality.

He needed to tell them what he knew.