Friendly reminder: this fic was conceptualized in 2012/2013. No Zetsu villainry, no Kaguya, the Rinnegan was pretty much just magic, etc... I believe all of Madara's character that we'd seen, at the time, was his curbstomp of the five kage. Also, if somehow nobody ever noticed, Kakashi's my fav... as the ending shows. It might upset some people. If anyone wants to pretend this chapter doesn't exist and that it ended with last chapter, by my guest :)

Also: new coverart by TeaRosePedall on deviantart, fanart for this fic. Thank you kindly!

Ciao, Naruto fandom! It's been fun!

When the darkness around him became something more, Kakashi knew he was dead.

His strength had not returned to him, but he felt as if he had no need for it anymore. He landed softly on an expanse of grey, a dry field with a lack of grass or wildlife- it was simply an endless stretch of nothing for as far as the eye could see. It was night here, the sky black but with no hint of moon or stars, but somehow there was light to see.

He looked down at himself for a moment, curious. Despite him having long transcended a need to wear his mask, he still had it, but his clothes were a simple black- neither affiliated with the red clouds of the Akatsuki or the red swirls of Konoha. There were no weapons on his person, the comfortable weight something he missed, but he had no doubt it didn't matter.

So... this is what it's like, then.

He turned slowly, though he expected to find nothing in any direction but what he had already seen.

Then, he saw it.

If Kakashi had still had a heart, and if hearts still beat here, wherever here was, his would've stopped.

As it was, he merely looked at the sight of Uchiha Madara, standing there like this was any normal day, simply watching him as if he had been waiting for him all along.

The rush of emotion left him weak and unsure, so many feelings hitting him at once and yet, not a single one was something he could name. He opened his mouth without any sort of plan as to what to say, then shut it again.

Madara was the first to react.

"So," he murmured, crossing his arms with a slight rustle from the buckles on his armor. "...You failed."

Kakashi had no idea what to say.

Madara's black eye narrowed slightly, scarred eyelid shut over the empty socket of what had been transplanted into him. He stood staring and blank, a cold judgement lurking behind the eye he had once thought to know so well. Now, he found himself unable to read a single thing out of the expression.

"...I suppose I did," he answered at last. Because he had. Failed, that was. In so many things.

Madara shook his head, looking down from him to the grey earth beneath his feet. His mouth was set in a flat line, and, for the life of him, Kakashi could not tell what he was thinking. The Uchiha heaved a deep sigh at last, raising a long, smooth hand to rub over his own empty socket. "You didn't, by chance, set any plans in motion before you got yourself killed? No one else is trying to get the Rinnegan for me?"

Kakashi opened his mouth to answer unsurely. After all, there was not much he could say. No, no one was going to come along with the Rinnegan and bring him back. He hadn't simply failed, he had actively chosen to work against what Madara had wanted. They were both dead, and they were not coming back.

"...I know about the Tsukuyomi, Madara-sama," he said at last.

It was an answer, after all, in some way. If he knew about the Tsukuyomi, chances were he hadn't proceeded with what Madara had wanted.

For a moment, Madara's expression did not change. It remained as still and vacant as it had before. Then, it shifted, just a short flicker of something moving across it, far too fast or far too fleeting for him to catch, and then the emptiness was back. Kakashi still wasn't sure if it was a facade, or if Madara literally did feel nothing.

"I see," he murmured at last, and his voice, too, was a lack of anything that mattered.

Something in Kakashi's chest clenched.

"...Are you even real?" he managed, when still, Madara had given him nothing but a blank stare. "Am I even dead yet? Is this some last ditch hallucination before I die- or- are you really here?"

Because, if you're not really Madara-sama- just because you're reacting like this- it doesn't have to mean anything.

Madara's eye narrowed again. "You are really dead. And I am real. Do not ask me to prove myself to you; nothing I could say would do as such, and I do not care if you doubt me. That is none of my concern."

Well, Kakashi hadn't been going to ask him to do that in any case, but now he knew.

There was another short, uncomfortable silence. Madara did not seem very inclined to carry on a conversation, but that wasn't necessarily in contrast with what he remembered- he'd always been taciturn. That didn't have to mean that...

He can still be the person I remember.

This- how he's reacting now- it doesn't have mean I was only his pawn. It doesn't have to mean that.

"...You don't seem to care very much your plan failed," he said weakly… because waiting for Madara to speak seemed to be getting him nowhere.

Madara gave a simple shake of his head. "No," he said carelessly. "I'm dead, after all. My plan would have only affected the living world. The people who gave me the inspiration- dead as well. If you had brought me back as you were supposed to, my answer would be different, but now? I fail to see why I should care."

He had a point, Kakashi decided. Death was a liberating thing, a release from the concerns and worries of life. And Madara had had a long while to wait. It would make sense he really wouldn't care that his plan had failed. It wouldn't mean anything to him or anyone else he knew.

And the one question Kakashi had left still had no answer- and he didn't know how to ask it.

"So, how close did you get?" Madara asked finally, and he seemed almost morbidly curious. "Before you found out the truth. How close did you get to the Rinnegan?"

Kakashi hesitated. That was a complicated question, and not one he much wanted to delve into now. He didn't want to explain the time travel or Orochimaru, or the fight that had ended his life. He reverted back to a time when things were simpler, and a very cut and dry, black and white- when war was for Madara, and that was all that had mattered. "I had already done everything you wanted. I was fighting a war against the Hidden Continent, and… I was winning. I wasn't far away from capturing a powerful Uchiha, either. If I'd had a couple more months, perhaps... things would've been very different."

Thank god, Obito, that you didn't give me that much time.

Madara sighed, evidently displeased by this. "Years of planning," he muttered, but more to himself than Kakashi, "and you ask for just a few more months. Ha. A few more months... if I had known this is how you would turn out, I would have chosen someone different. An Uchiha, for one... someone worthy of my eyes- a person like you was beneath me and the Sharingan from the beginning."

Slowly, his world began to close in around him.

All along...

It was a lie...

I was really- just a pawn-

That's all I ever was to him-

"Then why did you pick me?"

Kakashi marveled at how steady his voice was. How he managed to simply ask it, and not gasp it. The fact that he could still, somehow, put on this unaffected facade without even trying when inside all he was was a mess, and he felt almost like he was going to be sick. He wondered why he even bothered putting on a facade at all- why, somehow, what Madara thought of him still mattered, and if he fell apart now, he, for some reason, would care that Madara would think he was weak or, god forbid, had emotions.

When he continued, his voice was still flat and without inflection or feeling- and Kakashi still did not understand why.

"Why pick me at all? Was I simply convenient for you? Did you have no choice but to use me or- was there... something that made you chose me?"

Did you see something in me? Did you care about me? Was I ANYTHING to you?

Or, was I nothing- just as I am now?

Madara shrugged easily. "I had no choice. I was dying, and there you were. You had enough Chakra to prove that you could be of some use. That was the only requirement. Beyond that... there was nothing. I found it a little interesting, perhaps, when Zetsu reported back on what he had discovered on you- seemed the Hatake had become the new Uchiha. Prodigious and the black sheep, both... a clan Konoha would rather see die out, but if they could take your skills and put them in someone else then leave you to die, they'd be quite thrilled. But the similarities between my clan and yours end there. And it was no deciding factor in my choice. I simply found it a fact of interest. Nothing more, Hatake, and nothing less."

And that was that, then.

He, and the war that had followed, were the result of nothing more than sheer bad luck. Madara had picked him simply because that rock had crushed him and he'd been left for dead.

Left for dead, quite literally- according to the memories he put in my head.

He looked back at Madara. The Uchiha still stood there just looking at him, not innocently, because Uchiha Madara did not have an 'innocent' look- but without guilt or regret. He looked utterly unperturbed by all that had happened. The war, the deaths, the suffering- even the Tsukuyomi. Kakashi would not shy away from all responsibility in what had happened- but Madara had had the intention to cause all of this destruction, and even more than what had already played out. Like or not, Kakashi knew that neither one of them could be cast as innocent.

He had not expected to encounter regret for that the war. After all, the people who had suffered and died were nothing to him. Especially to a dead man, Kakashi figured, such a guilt would mean nothing.

But the Tsukuyomi...

Necessary, from Madara's point of view- and, also, it seemed, not regretted in the slightest.

Kakashi closed his eyes and breathed deeply- sucked in a shaking gasp of air and tried with everything he had to stymie the emotions battling to take him over and ruin him. "Y-you... Madara-sama, you..."

"Please, don't get emotional. I do not care or have the patience for that. Yes, I took advantage of you. No, I did not particularly enjoy it; it was just something that had to be done. And I'm sure you had friends or people close to you that you probably ended up killing. Those are your concerns, not mine. Deal with them yourself, Hatake- do not try and seek your absolution and redemption from me. I have none to give, and if I did, I wouldn't waste them on you."

And, that was it.

Everything he'd wanted to know since he'd learned the truth.

The answer to it all- why Madara had chosen him, whether he'd used Tsukuyomi just because it was easy or if he simply hadn't cared, whether he'd been anything at all to Madara besides a means to an end-

Everything he could've possibly wanted to know, with just that careless, flippant comment.

He wondered if it was fitting that, for twenty terrible years, he hadn't been just disillusioned- literally everything he had known had been a lie. The things he would've fought, bled, and died to accomplish, believing in them so strongly it was his very reason for living- when, in reality, he had been nothing more than a simple chess piece carrying out orders. Just a particularly sharp knife with the name Hatake on it in Madara's tool box.

He'd been the very thing he wanted to stop.

Obito.

Rin.

Minato-sensei.

Naruto.

...I was always just- Kakashi to them. I was never a shinobi or Sakumo's son or a pawn. I was- a friend.

He closed his eyes, lowering his head for a moment, gasping to just try and understand. He didn't know how many more life-shattering revelations the fates had in store for him, but he was sick of it already. He should've been numbed to them by now, at least desensitized a little- but, nope. Each one still managed to make him feel like the world was closing in around him, he'd been turned around his head and everything was suddenly upside down, and someone had reached into his chest, grabbed his nonexistent heart, and started wringing it out like a wet rag until he couldn't breathe.

And, Kakashi simply did not have the strength to cloak emotion in indifference anymore.

It felt like a dam that had been cracking all along finally smashed to bits, the waves that overtook him were so powerful. He trembled from the force of it, suddenly light headed and dizzy, full of so much damn feeling that he didn't know what to do with it.

His mouth opened on its own accord, and what came spilling out was something that didn't sound like him at all; half-formed words, speech too fast, the ends of sentences crammed into the beginnings of others, slurred phrases, fluctuating between a scream and a whisper- it was the emotional, cathartic type of just ranting that he'd never been able to do, because simply releasing emotion had never been an option. He'd always thought before he spoke.

Not this time. His mind was completely and utterly empty of anything resembling logic or rational thought, and in its place was only this deepest, most violated, heartbroken betrayal drove each breath from him as an anguished gasp, stricken through him in a tortured blade of anguish, and had bled and bled and bled him dry until he was nothing more than a hollow, broken shell.

"No- no, no, no, NO! You're wrong… you're wrong!"

Madara continued to look down at him like he was just contemplating something as inconsequential as an ant or something even smaller than that. Some part of Kakashi, some still functioning part of his brain, realized he was.

"NO!" he bellowed again, with a sheer strength that shocked even him as he was suddenly on his feet, striding for Madara in a blind-red rage that stole his breath away. "I destroyed my home! I killed my friends! You knew what you were doing to me, what you were forcing me to do, and you're telling me it was all nothing to you?! I was just a convenient find and that's it?! What would you have done if I'd won the war and brought you back- just killed me because I was too strong to exist without threatening your precious peace?! The cost of your peace, Madara, that war- d-do you know how many people I slaughtered for you?!" He raked a claw of his hand over the Sharingan, so fast and with such an abject lack of care he expected to feel blood drip down his face. "Any normal human would've lost count, but you took even that away from me, too, my humanity, and this eye, it saw each death, every person I killed, and it will never forget! You think I'm not worthy of your Sharingan, Madara- I don't want your Sharingan! Take your eye back! Take it, O Uchiha-sama, and take you clan and take your Tsukuyomi and stay dead!"

There was no reaction.

From the man who had given him both life and death, who Kakashi had thoughtlessly served with all his heart and soul for decades of his miserable, pathetic existence, every breath taken to bring him back- there was no reaction at all.

Madara simply stood there, still, cold, and impassive. Watching him like one might stare at a rock.

For the first time since his heart had stopped beating, an enflamed rage bled through him from head to toe, so violently it nearly tore a scream straight out his own throat.

But then, finally, the Uchiha spoke.

"You would've died long ago, then," he said coldly, deadly, dangerous eye narrowed on him in an implacable, cold as ice stare. If I hadn't been there, you wouldn't have lived past that cave in. Is that what you wish, Hatak-"

"Yes! Yes! I wish I had died then!"

The wretched scream tore loose from his throat, slicing through Madara's speech and cutting it off as cleanly as a blade- and for the first time, the Uchiha was stopped. His dark eyes widened.

Panting slightly, Kakashi continued- and while the scream was gone, the fervor had only increased. "I died then to save a friend. I died then to help save my village. I've seen what Konoha looks like if I had just stayed dead, and I've seen it when I returned to crush it- and if I had died, then they would've all been happy! They all were, Madara-sama! My friends and family, the people who actually took care of me, the ones that fought for me and loved me and… and died for me… they died for me, Madara- not the slave you gave your eye to.. my friends and family and their friends and family, their children…"

Anguish stabbed through him again, a violence washing through him in a wave of pain and shocked guilt that was suddenly almost too much to bear. Minato, holding him in his arms, Obito cradling his hand as he died in that cave, Rin standing by his side, Jiraiya sitting with him late into the nights that he couldn't sleep, Gai shaking his hand as an equal, Hiruzen burying his father, his father, Naruto- Naruto- Naruto-

Kakashi shoved violently back, turning away before the anger could swim through to possess him any more. His mind still spun sickeningly fast and it felt like he couldn't breathe, the anguish of a lifetime of sorrow piercing with every breath, but Madara was there, and his guilt was a burden not meant for now. "I wish I haddied then," he spat, as cold and venomous as he knew how. "I destroyed that world. I'd rather see it prosper without me than burn with me. …burn by my hand."

Madara shook his head, and at last, there was some irritation there, a bit of annoyance, something other than blank nothingness. "You," he snapped, and he jabbed his finger at Kakashi's chest, eye flashing. "You, and people like you- you're what I wanted to eradicate. You haven't even changed at all, have you? Just as willing as you were back then to kill so long as their headband didn't have your precious Konoha on it. That's not peace, no matter how you fool yourself. That's oppression at best, and war at worst. How'd you die, Hatake, how are you here now- were you really defending an ideal like peace against some mythical villain? Or just fighting someone for the sake of fighting?"

"I died for KONOHA!"

Again, another scream. This time, Kakashi didn't wait for it to stop echoing to keep on going.

"I wasn't killed, Madara- I let myself die to save someone who hasn't wasted every chance life threw them. I saved him so he could save Konoha, and I saved him so he could live on and do things I never could. He's Hokage, Madara, something that you or I could never be because we're both selfish, self-absorbed pieces of trash who'd rather watch the world burn than see it try its best to make something better than it was made as.

"Ah. Dying for the Hokage. How poignant. I congratulate you, then, Hatake, on being a good little loyal Konoha ninja. I'm sure he was just as touched by your sacrifice as I am."

"It's not about whether anyone cares when you die! It's not about any great sacrifices! All I was able to do was die the way I should have the first time- to help defend that village and save my friends!"

"Ooh- your friends, now?" Madara quoted with the slightest hint of a sardonic grin. "Well, that is patently ridiculous, now; every good little loyal Konoha ninja knows friends have no place on things like missions. Hmm... if I remember correctly, your father was one of the ones who didn't understand that. Ah- and he killed himself, too! 'Let yourself die', you did... that's just a euphemistic way of saying you killed yourself, Hatake. Like father, like son, ne?"

Kakashi himself didn't see the fist coming to punch Madara in the face. He didn't really believe until his hand started stinging that it had even been him.

But there they stood, Kakashi with an aching hand formed into a fist and Madara, stumbled back a feet and with his hand over his cheek, both of them staring at each other in shock.

And in looking at that man that he'd idolized for the past twenty years, the person he'd remembered as both family and a master, turned into his mind into some kind of god-

Kakashi saw nothing but simply another person.

Uchiha Madara was flawed like everybody else, but while he wasn't simply evil, he also wasn't simply perfect. Maybe the times he'd grown up in were a breeding ground for war and sacrifices, maybe his end goal had been altruistic after all, but it hadn't mattered to him what he had to sacrifice to get there. His own eye, the Tsukuyomi, his life, even, and a world torn by war- Madara would've given up much more, he was sure, if it would've seen his goals realized.

The person he saw before him still wasn't the Uchiha Madara the world knew and feared, but it wasn't the one that he remembered, either.

It was the real one.

Then Madara retaliated, and Kakashi was ready- he also made no move to fight back. He let Madara punch him back, coming at him in a whirl of black that brought him down onto his back and pinned his arms above his head in a mere second. Kakashi let him all the while, simply watching and letting himself be hit- because his will to fight had been exhausted long ago, and now, he found himself with no reason to fight with Madara- for or against him.

And when Madara was done, the powerful Uchiha having easily forced him to the ground and now crouched on top of him, pinning him down with one black, absolutely livid eye- Kakashi still just looked at him.

"Are you done?"

Madara's eye widened. He was seething now, deadly form trembling with rage- and Kakashi, meanwhile, didn't have so much as a drop of emotion left.

"Yeah. I did kill myself, Madara. And I'm still glad I did it, and I'd do it again if I could," he said with conviction. "I've been living in the past for twenty years now. I fought for you, long dead, and the wishes of a long dead world. Naruto... the person I saved- he lives for the future. This is the first time in my life I've managed to do something right, and I'd do it again without hesitation. Naruto deserves to live, and that world needs more people like him and less like me. …less like us."

And that, Kakashi thought, if this was just a simple story with a simple happy ending, would be the point where he got 'closure'.

He certainly did have it, by all definitions of the word. Madara hadn't just answered his questions- the Uchiha had firmly sliced all ties between them with an axe, cutting away all Kakashi's memories of him and tainting them, turning himself into a figure Kakashi could not believe he'd once trusted his life. The shadows of loyalty to Madara that had remained in him- they were very definitely gone now.

Except closure hardly mattered now, because this was not his story. Naruto was the protagonist here, and Naruto had already gotten his closure.

Naruto had already won.

And that would have been that, then… because that was all Kakashi had really wanted…

But Madara was not reacting the way he had been expecting.

His face had steadily grown more and more enraged, eye widening, mouth opening. When his chest plate was suddenly lit by the low light of a soft, green glow- he knew it wasn't because of anything he'd said.

Kakashi looked down at himself with a sense of trepidation.

(Because he knew, really, what that light meant. He just didn't want to believe it).

His torso didn't exist anymore. It was just a collection of faint, luminous particles, floating gently in the air- and it was spreading. The things crawled over his shoulders, his arms, his hips, his legs, turning flesh and bone into nothing but light.

He knew what this was. And he didn't want it to be happening.

"No..." he whispered, slowly beginning to shake his head back and forth. "No, no, no..."

"No," Madara murmured himself, and his expression, too, matched Kakashi's- both of them staring in horror at what was happening. "No- this is impossible- youare going back? Someone… someone is giving you another chance?!" Madara was suddenly moving forward, reaching out, and for the first time his dead face finally shifted to break into shock, horrible eyes widening as Kakashi was suddenly grabbed and hoisted up, shaken before the Uchiha. "Why?! How is this happening?! Who would possibly give you another chance?!"

Kakashi had a pretty good idea who that was.

"No…" he moaned, feeling the panic claw sickeningly up his throat, "no… he can't…"

But the light was everywhere now, his limbs nothing but air, the glowing green substance having overtaken him completely. He felt light and unreal, gone, and he gasped, fighting desperately to hold onto this world after-

But it wasn't his decision to make.

"No! Naruto!"

"Na... Naruto... Naruto, please, god, no..."

Desperate sobbing- desperate, hopeless, despaired sobbing...

"Please, Naruto, no... please..."

What... what is this?

What has happened?

"H- He- He's dead. Minato... our son is dead!"

Am I- am I still alive?

Kakashi breathed in slowly, one deep, shaky breath that filled him from his toes to the tips of his hair, and it hurt, too, but in a good way. A mild, sore kind of ache that encompassed him all over, the pain making this once comfortable semi conscious state not so comfortable anymore. He felt a little more awake now- but awake was not a good thing.

He couldn't be alive. He just could not. He remembering casting Izanagi... remembered the terrible, forbidden genjutsu snapping up the rest of his Chakra like a carnivorous beast. He'd hovered on the edge of death several times from Chakra depletion, had come vey close more than once, when simple luck, fate, or some other inhuman force had saved him. This had not been like those times. He'd known before he'd used Izanagi it would take all his Chakra, been confident, assured in that fact, and it had. Every last spark had been gone. His Chakra pathways had already been mostly sucked dry and impassable anyways, from the lightning- Kakashi doubted he would've survived even if he had enough Chakra. As it was, he didn't even remember hitting the ground.

Just opening his eyes again to see Madara, in what was very certainly death.

Yet now, he was somehow, inexplicably, alive.

There was no doubt in his mind who the culprit was.

Damn it, Naruto.

I wasn't supposed to live. That attack wasn't just meant to save you; it was meant to kill me too. Why can't you ever leave well enough alone?

God damn it… god damn it… goddamnit goddamnit goddamnit… no no NO…

Naruto…

Kakashi swallowed, then winced; his mouth was drier than a desert and his throat felt like sandpaper. It still hurt to breathe, and it took him more than a couple of moments to find the strength to open his eyes.

The first thing he saw was Rin.

The young medic was kneeling by his side, her hands held out over his torso, the characteristic light and sound of medical ninjutsu filling his ears for a moment. He blinked tiredly, looking her up and down, then realized with a jolt that he could only see out of one eye.

The Sharingan was blind.

Somehow, it felt right to him. It had never been his in the first place, and Madara had given it to him to create a new Uchiha soldier. That wasn't him anymore- only fitting he should return the eye.

Besides, he knew the price of Izanagi. Even if he hadn't expected he'd be alive to pay them.

He didn't bother shutting the useless eye; it didn't hurt anymore. Instead, he examined Rin with his own eye. The loss of clarity and detail was jarring- but, that, too, he found himself to be strangely okay with. He didn't need them anymore, nor did he want them. It felt almost as if he was handing back Madara's gifts one by one, cutting painful ties- and it hurt, yes, but there was a finality to it, too.

I'm really not Uchiha Madara's anymore.

The hurt felt to be something simple, less encompassing and terrible than the truth had been. That wound had been long and bleeding, poisoned, festering; a mark carved deep in his heart that no words would ever teach. This time, it felt like just a flesh wound.

He looked at Rin, watching as she healed him. The action seemed strangely futile to him, but also, not, and he watched her unsurely, eye wandering over the details of her face. She seemed pale and tired, her features set in a cast of mourning, her eyes wet even as she worked. There was a small hand on her shoulder, an arm clad in dark blue around her back, and Kakashi followed it to see Obito kneeling by her side. The Uchiha, by the looks of him, needed the attention far more than he did, but at least none of the wounds were presently bleeding. His head was bowed, eyes closed, like-

Like he was praying.

When shinobi looked like that on the battlefield...

There is only one reason.

Something inside him went cold.

Kakashi sat up. Rin made a small noise of surprise but he pushed her hands off him, looking to his other side in something like a panic. He didn't want it to be true, didn't want to see just what Naruto had sacrificed for him to breathing now, but the force driving him was stronger than just what he wanted. He didn't want any of this- but he needed to see it.

Naruto lay on his other side.

One cliche Kakashi had always hated, had always hated with an unearthly passion, was the saying that dead people looked like they were sleeping. No, they didn't. They looked like they were god dammed dead.

But Naruto had actually managed it. His ocean blue eyes were closed, and he was smiling, not that too big, idiotic grin that Kakashi couldn't deny was contagious; no, just this small, content smile. He looked- at peace, was the only way he could put it. Yes. At peace. It was a feeling Kakashi had never felt himself, but there he lay, calm, relaxed, and… at peace. The wind ruffled through his blond hair, strands brushing gently along his bare forehead, black Konoha headband lying loosely in one hand. He looked strange without it- like he wasn't the Hokage right now, or even a ninja, but just... Naruto. The kid whose lifeblood was his village…

And who had just given everything up for the man who'd tried to destroy it.

Him and that dammed peaceful smile...

He knew what Naruto had done. He knew exactly what it was. Naruto had exchanged his life for his, and he'd lain down there to die with a smile on his face. A smile, for him.

Well, Kakashi didn't want it.

He didn't want Naruto's life. Naruto was happy- he could've gone on to do so much, and he deserved the people who cared about him and could love them fiercely back. He'd fought so hard for so long, loved so desperately, cared for so many people, battling again and again to create a peace for his family and by the gods, he had earned it! If anyone in this cursed world had earned that peace, it was Naruto. If there was anyone who'd fought so hard for his loved ones, carving out a home and a life worth it all…

Kakashi wasn't sure if he even remembered what love felt like.

Naruto had still had a life to live. Kakashi... his had been over. It wasn't that he'd particularly wanted to kill himself; there was no reason potent enough for him to raise a knife to his throat- but he had nothing to live for, either. No reason to dodge if it was an enemy aiming for his non existent heart. Caring whether he lived or died... that was something far beyond him, and had been from the day Madara had brought him back to life.

He couldn't understand why someone who loved life so much would simply give it up for a person like him.

A wretched sob pulled his eye up, and the mass of regret and sorrow inside him swelled a little more; Minato and Kushina were on Naruto's other side, the redhead crushed against Minato's chest with her arm tight around his neck and her head buried in his shoulder, her whole body shuddering with heavy sobs. Minato's head was down, hidden in a swath of red hair, but his shoulders were shaking, too, the loss of a son a keen blow, both mother and father huddled together in a terrible mutual grief. Something within him, he almost wanted to call it his heart, throbbed and protested at the sight, and it almost simply broke, right then and there.

He'd killed his son.

He'd killed their son.

Obito crawled over to sit by his side, his hands and feet on the tired earth the only sounds in Konoha aside from those of mourning. Kakashi didn't even look at him, but then Obito's hand entered his line of vision, reaching out to lift the headband from Naruto's cool, limp hand.

It hung there for a moment, dark cloth and bright metal, suspended smoothly in the air. The simple symbol etched into it glinted dully in the light, hard and cold.

"...He said he- he wanted you to have it. That you deserved it."

A few moments passed in absolute stillness. Then, carefully, Obito reached out to drop the headband in Kakashi's limp, open hand.

I deserved it?

I DESERVED IT?!

Kakashi simply didn't have it in him to be angry anymore. He dropped weakly back onto his heels, squeezing a fist, letting the metal of the headband dig into his palm.

He was cursed to live on borrowed time, it seemed. Except Madara had given him life to do with it as ordered.

Naruto had given him life... to simply give him life.

The hollow emptiness inside him that had persisted; it felt even darker than before. But at the same time- it was also... smaller. It consumed just a little bit less of him, and in that tiny space left that was not simply a deep abyss of nothing, there was a spark. He wondered at it, that bright spark.

An idea crossed his mind, an idea so ludicrous he wanted to laugh at it. He closed his eye, instead, for even the idea of laughter was painful in a way he didn't understand.

Naruto's Will of Fire...

A single spark, passed from one man to another, as with life. It was fitting, he supposed. If this third chance now was truly not just another senseless circle of dark dead ends and purposeless turns- if that spark was true-

Naruto had given him more than just his old life back.

He'd been reborn once as Uchiha Madara. Given a working body when he was supposed to be dead- but given the name and will and soul of Uchiha Madara.

That wasn't what Naruto had done for him. Naruto hadn't kept him alive so Kakashi could carry on Naruto's dreams.

Naruto had brought him back so he could have his own.

Kakashi swallowed hard, looking down at the man, peaceful and content at last in death, and knew it still was not enough. Not to make this sacrifice worth it. Nothing would ever make it worth it.

I wish I could hate you for this, Naruto. But you're a pretty hard person to hate.

The edges of the headband dug hard into his skin, he gripped it so tight. He could feel the Konoha symbol, slowly etching itself into his palm.

Out of the deep swirl of confused, mixed emotions, of sorrow and anger, grief and regret, mourning and guilt, there rose two words. It was all he could there was that he could say that was an honest truth, and when they fell out of his mouth in a cracked, dry voice that was nothing like his own, he felt the spark inside him grow into something more.

"Thank you."

The headband in his fist felt warm, the black cloth, rough and flakey with dried blood. He slowly opened his fingers, looking down at the thing. The Konoha symbol was red in places, blood having leaked into the deep etching, and there were smeared crimson fingerprints on the metal from where he'd gripped it. At this point, the blood could've been his or Naruto's- he didn't know; didn't want to know.

Slowly, and with the utmost care, he raised it to tie around his forehead.

Maybe he didn't deserve that almost forgotten, comfortable weight settling down, but if it was up to him, he would say he didn't deserve to be alive right now, either. Naruto had evidently thought different, and not to wear it now would be the worst thing he could do.

He said he would save me. I thought such a thing was impossible, but Naruto... he did far more than I believed anyone ever could.

He gave me his life. It's no longer my choice wether or not to live it.

He tightened the knot.

"K- Kakashi!"

Rin's exclamation- uncertain, confused, fearful- it drew more than just his attention; Obito looked at him and he gasped too, and that drew Minato and Kushina out of a deep well of grief and the two raised their heads, then stared at him as well. Kakashi blinked back, shifting away from the suddenly prying eyes, and looked down at himself to see just what was wrong.

His body had become transparent.

He could still feel the ground underneath him, the sun on his face, but he no longer looked like he was fully there, and the longer he stared the worse it became, until at last he could see the ground he was kneeling on through his legs. His body had become nothing more than a pale outline, colors faded, a white ghost kneeling in the dust.

"Kakashi- Kakashi, what's going on?!" Obito reached out for him frantically, trying to grab his arm, but the hand passed straight through him. Kakashi flinched but he couldn't feel a thing, hadn't felt Obito touch him and couldn't feel his hand hovering somewhere in the middle of his abdomen now. "Kakashi!"

He stared for a moment, utterly shellshocked, the sight of himself nothing but a transparent spirit surprising him to his very core- but then he understood.

Kamui's consequence...

For no jutsu had no downside.

He hadn't understood at the time, how Obito's Mangekyou Sharingan had had the power to send him and Naruto back in time. It was just too convenient that such a jutsu could exist- and if a jutsu looked simply too good to be true, then that was because whatever consequence it had was a terrible one indeed.

Although in this instance, it wasn't so much terrible, as right.

Obito had sent them both back in time, not to save his village or their world, but simply to save him. Even killing the other Kakashi hadn't accomplished that- but the Konoha headband with him... that was as close to saving as they were going to get.

And whatever technique it was that had sent him and Naruto back was now canceling. It had done its purpose, and now, with no need for it left... it was reversing what it had done. Like when a fire jutsu ended, and the caster stopped breathing flames, or when a water jutsu was stopped, and the rain ceased falling- when this time travel jutsu had ended, the people it had sent back were returned.

He was fading away, disappearing right out of this time... and back into his own.

Kakashi looked up again at the others, his old family surrounding him, staring at him, reaching out to him in desperation and panic. They think I'm dying, too, he realized, and he smiled at them, pouring everything he had into that one expression, doing anything he could to reassure them.

"It's okay," he said. "I'm not dying. The jutsu is over. I'm leaving this time. I'm okay. I'm not going to die."

His vision started to fade, going white; he could barely hear and he could barely see. He could just make out Minato, terrified and shaking his head, shaking violently, and his wife clinging to him, tears streaming down her cheeks. Naruto's dead now, at least, this one is, and now after all this time, they're losing me as well, because for some reason they still care-

Suddenly, the price of the jutsu seemed too high, not for him, but for them. He reached out; saw only the barest outline of a hand that tried to grasp around Minato's- it squeezed right through him. "Look for me. In eight years, look for me. I'll be where you found me."

"Kakashi- Kakashi, no, don't do this-"

"Eight years. I'll be there."

"Kakashi, please-"

"I promise."

Then he was gone.

To Kakashi, again, the hurdle was just one second.

Just one single second of darkness. A deep, empty chasm of nothing to account for eight full years. It felt just as it had the first time, but also nothing at all, because that single second in some other world, that single second that carried him over years, that was the same. But his return to reality was not.

The first time around, it felt like he'd been violently dropped down in the past, torn away from his own time with a hand so powerful it left him bleeding and sore all over. This last time around, it was gradual, gentle and peaceful, his body and his world fluttering together like distant leaves on the wind. At first it was all white, but then, he could see, even if he could not yet feel.

Obito, Rin, and Minato.

The three stood there- waiting.

Waiting for him like they had been all along.

Kakashi's still dead heart in his inhuman, Zetsu chest healed a little more.

Then with a rush of feeling, Kakashi returned to himself; there was suddenly soft grass beneath his feet, warm sun on his face, a light breeze tangling through his hair, and it felt as if the last piece of it all had finally clicked in, and there was at last nothing left of him in the past- he had returned to the present.

Rin clapped her hand to her mouth to hold in a sob, slim shoulders shaking so much she could've snapped apart and broken. Obito closed his eyes and let out a deep, shuddering breath, a breath that carried the weight of eight years' worth of emotions on it, so heavy he could've broken, too. Minato slumped like the life had been sucked out of him, a terrible tension nailed into him for so long at last yanked out, sinking down slightly like his legs no longer had the strength to support him.

Between them all, there was one single similarity.

They were all smiling.

Desperate, impossible, relieved smiles.

Kakashi felt something tight inside him unwind.

"Oh, no," he murmured, when it seemed eight years worth of waiting could not be cured in just a few seconds of relief. He lifted a hand to scratch at the back of his head, a weak, unsure smile stumbling onto his scarred, twisted, inhuman face. "Don't tell me that I was late… you'd never let me live it down would you? Ne, Obito?"

Rin let out a startled, bright laugh; Minato gasped weakly, shaking his head and chuckling softly, his shoulders shaking, but Obito- Obito. His one best friend. Obito stared at him with his big, silly wet eyes, those eyes that had had dust in them for all this time, and after a stricken silence, let his face be split in two by a smile so big and bright it shone like the sun. "Damn right I wouldn't," he told him, and it was as comforting as anything he'd heard in his life.

Then Minato was suddenly striding forward, steady and confident in all the ways Kakashi could not be. He wanted to flinch a little at the approach of his teacher, heavy heart shuddering, because he had taken that man's son, but then Minato was there and looking down at him with Naruto's eyes- and his arms were around him so tightly it felt as if his dead heart had split and cracked all over again.

"Welcome home, Kakashi," he said.

Somehow, Kakashi got the idea Minato had been planning those words for a very, very long time.

"…Thank you," he whispered. The words came out muffled into his shoulder, but Kakashi said them anyway, because he meant them with all his heart. "It's… it's good to be home… Sensei."

There was a moment of silence, a short, easy moment of peace when it sunk in, and Kakashi finally realized that he was, in fact, home.

Home.

Minato squeezed him even tighter, a gesture Kakashi imagined meant so many more things than he could ever say, and to his ever continuing disbelief and astonishment he felt him kiss the top of his hair. Then the others were joining them, Rin's hand finding his just as Minato stepped back and Obito's arm dropping to land on his inhuman shoulder. They all smiled at him, forgiveness and wonderment and so much kindness that he never could've deserved, kindness that had been offered to him for years through a war and then still in Naruto's outstretched hand- the hand that had saved his life in more ways than one.

The Naruto that had given him this chance may have been gone, but his Will of Fire lived on, here and now, in them all.

"Well?" Minato prodded gently after several moments, smiling at him. "Are you ready, Kakashi?"

Obito nudged him like it hadn't been years, like there'd been no war at all, because there hadn't been. "Sure hope he is, Sensei. There's someone very, very eager to meet him, after all."

It took Kakashi a second to realize, what with the way they were all smiling at him, waiting expectantly; when the realization finally did come, it drove a startled gasp from him like a blow to the chest. "Naruto," he murmured, and another of the splintered cracks in his heart slowly began to fill.

Minato, still beaming, nodded.

The Naruto of this world still lived.

The Naruto of Kakashi's had died to save him… but in this new era of peace… the future that Naruto had given his life for…

He hadn't died.

Naruto… not the Naruto that Kakashi had known, but a new one, forged by peace instead of war…

Naruto was still alive.

Kakashi's mouth trembled, a suddenly tightening growing in his throat and a burning in his eyes, and for a heartbeat, he felt too winded to speak at all.

His friends- his family- waited for him, and were there to catch him when he landed. The same way they had always been.

"Let's go home, then," he murmured at last, and once again, smiled. "I can't wait to meet him."