| [Sep. 24th, 2013|09:58 pm] |
In another lifetime, Kakashi might have been tempted.
In this lifetime, Katsuko smelled like demon blood, Genma was having his hide pieced back together by semi-qualified locals, Ryouma was unconscious and unprotected, and he had no idea what had happened to Raidou.
So, no.
“Brace against my shoulder,” he instructed, and knelt down to strip Katsuko’s mud-encrusted belt off, followed by her equally disgusting boots, shin-guards, and, finally, pants. He had to cajole her into stepping out of the legs, but she managed not to actually collapse.
When he had her down to her sports bra (bright orange), underwear (lime green), skin (pale), and scars (many), he pushed her gently back into the shower spray. She toppled down onto the chair with an offended grunt and a tight, pained wince.
That’d be the broken collarbone.
And, well—everything else. A leaf-litter of bruises and cuts traced an afternoon’s work over Katsuko’s tired body, some already bandaged, others not. Most of the unattended ones would be too small to bother with, once they’d been properly cleaned. The collarbone was ugly, though. Three hours journey back to the village had given it time to swell and blacken, flowering a dark bruise over her right shoulder. The demon bite on her opposite shoulder had seen one healing from Genma, but it wasn’t much prettier.
And then there were the scars Kakashi was careful to avoid.
He found the soap and shampoo, and resigned himself to getting wet again in pursuit of Katsuko reaching a basic standard of livable hygiene. She wasn’t quite as mannequin-like as Ryouma had been; she squirmed, complained about soap in her eyes, hissed when he stung her cuts or jarred anything painful, then finally lapsed into tired silence and leaned against him, soaking his shirt.
He washed her wild hair twice, scrubbed her filthy hands and every mud-crusted cut, and caught her when she started to slide out of the chair.
She pushed herself back upright, and waggled her eyebrows at him. “You missed a spot.”
“You’re a little old for me to wash your mouth out,” Kakashi said.
That won him a rough chuckle, but not much else. Katsuko tipped her head against the chair-back, slouching down. Her eyes slid closed.
How much chakra had she channelled today? Her energy still burned beneath her skin, more than he’d ever have on his very best day, but it was dimmer than it had been. And it didn’t matter how much chakra you had left; the effort of using a lot still cost a person. That was one reason soldier pills were so carefully rationed.
“Don’t fall asleep on me,” Kakashi told her, tousling the last suds out of her hair and switching the water off. “We still need to get you dressed and find a bed for you.”
“There’s a chair right here,” she said, in a way that suggested she thought she was being reasonable and intelligent. “I’ll be fine.”
Kakashi considered his options. 1) argue. 2) manhandle.
He went to find a towel and clean clothes. When he came back, Katsuko was asleep. She twitched when he towelled her hair dry, but didn’t do more than murmur at him. He dried the rest of her as best he could, then paused. If he put her straight into clean clothes, her bra and underwear would soak them. If he forced her awake to change them, she’d probably bite him. If he changed them—
There was a limit to his nursing duties.
In the end, he shook his poisoned hand until the fingers worked well enough for a simple jutsu, and yanked the water right out of the cloth. Then he sealed her things into another scroll (except for her belt and belt-pouches, which were important), bundled her into the borrowed clothes—another rough set of laundered villager top-and-bottoms—and lifted her off the chair. She kicked, then clutched his shirt hard enough to half-throttle him.
“It’s me,” he said. |
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