InsaneJournal

How to Save a Life [closed]
[Backdated to seven years ago, in a bunker in north-western Fire Country.]

They'd been stuck in this hell-hole for three days now, and rations and nerves and tempers were all wearing thin. The sole genin had curled up in a corner when they first brought him in, and hadn't moved since then; people were getting tired of stepping around him now. He shouldn't have been anywhere near the front lines anyway, but Konoha was growing desperate. They hadn't managed to save any of the rest of his team.

Of course, most of them were sole survivors anyway, or ramshackle teams cobbled together somewhere in the past few weeks. The suture-lines were beginning to tell, as tempers frayed and killing intent slipped. Ten minutes ago, two of the chuunin had nearly come to blows. Now the girl was amusing herself in a dark corner with one of the devil-eyed jounin, and the boy slouched against the wall and shuffled a tattered pack of cards between his hands.

Ginta had grown very tired of all the jounin by this time. They ignored him, or they paid too much attention to him--tried to touch him, tried to control him. He'd managed to avoid any outright confrontations so far, but the longer they stayed in the bunker, the worse it grew. He was pretty sure that next time No and Get away from me, you bastard weren't going to work, and unless one of the other jounin came to his rescue--unlikely--he was going to have to resort to drastic measures. Get a black mark on his record if he was lucky, and a court martial if he wasn't.

But he'd noticed that nobody was bothering the other kid. He couldn't be more than a year older than Ginta--coming into his adult height already, but still slender and gangly--and his face was just a little too rugged to be pretty, with high cheekbones and a narrow jaw. Messy black hair, black eyes fringed by ridiculously long lashes, a well-shaped mouth currently set in a stubborn sulk. He was taller than Ginta and certainly looked stronger, but he wasn't as tall or as strong as any of the jounin, and there was no way that sulk, or even the faint reek of rotting flesh that still clung to him three days after he'd stumbled into the bunker, was scaring them off.

Ginta decided to try his luck, anyway.

He shoved away from his corner, adroitly slipped around the hand that tried to grope him, and snagged one card out of the pack as it cascaded between the other boy's hands. "You play speed?" he asked.

The boy blinked. His eyes narrowed briefly, searching for any hidden threat behind Ginta's smile. Then the corner of his mouth twisted up, and he snatched the card back and cut it into the deck. "You like losing?"

"Nope," Ginta said.

The other boy's smile widened. "Neither do I." He dropped into a crouch; Ginta dropped with him, and watched intently as the boy shuffled again and dealt. Someone moved restlessly behind them; the chuunin girl gasped and moaned in her dark corner. The boy's grin grew savage as he slapped the last cards down.

"I cheat," Ginta said. The boy's dark eyes snapped up to him, and a shred of amusement tempered the savage grin.

"Great," he said. "So do I."