Four hours felt like nothing when the clone set its hand on Kakashi's neck, barely got a twitch, and shocked him awake with Ryouma's chakra-to-brain technique. He bolted upright, shedding blankets and knocking the IV stand over, and grabbed his mirror-image by the throat before cognitive thought switched back on.

Grey eyes stared at one another.

Slowly, the hand Kakashi had clenched around the kunai left on his cot-side table relaxed, releasing the weapon. The clone opened its mouth, rasped something unintelligible, and gave up. It signed with hands held very carefully out to its sides.

Let go?

Kakashi blinked, shook his head in a tangle of flyaway, chemical-stained hair, and pulled his hand back before he accidentally crushed something, like a voicebox. "How long?" His voice was a croak.

"Four hours."

Kakashi coughed and touched his throat; fingers flicked away before they did more than brush old steri-strips. He frowned, lifting his hand to his mouth. "You took my mask?"

"Priorities," the clone reminded him. It was starting to shimmer around the edges, chakra weakening after so long.

"That is a priority," Kakashi grated, hauling himself up. Bandages pulled him up short. Hip, shoulders, right hand; the clone had been busy. He tried again, prepared for the tight squeeze of linen over protesting injuries, and found himself dressed in nothing but blood-splattered pants.

His shirt was folded on the floor. He reached for it and had to stop. He felt beaten. Every muscle from the neck down moaned the kind of dark red protest you would normally associate with sledgehammers wielded by strong, violent men. It was like having a body built out of heavily twanged rubber bands. His head pounded.

"Son of a--" He started to groan, and stopped. The curse was Ryouma's, and if he thought about Ryouma now he wouldn't be able to stand.

Carefully, he stretched. Joints cracked, an orchestra of bones settling back into place. He reached for his shirt again. "News?"

"None."

"Enemies?"

"No sign."

"How's Ginta?"

"See for yourself." The clone offered his mask back, and tipped its head sideways. Kakashi yanked his shirt down, pulled the mask over his head--exhaled, soft and quiet, because cloth sliding down his face fixed something basic--and turned his head.

In the warm light cast by a single oil lamp, Ginta's skin didn't seem quite so pale. Kakashi took a step closer, not-quite-awake gaze taking in everything there was to see. A blanket covered Ginta up to the ribcage, hiding the worst of his injuries. His hands rested lax at his sides. Deep bruises, almost black in the low light, kissed the edge of his narrow jaw and the corner of his right eye. His cheeks were hollower than Kakashi remembered, sharper, bones lifted out in razor-blade relief. A single split marred his lower lip. Cinder-burns slick with shiny ointment slid down the left side of his face, dropped off the jawbone, and reddened his throat.

Slowly, steadily, his narrow chest lifted.

Beyond exhausted, aching from head to foot, ravenous and still entangled by his IV line, Kakashi managed the edge of a smile. Even with Tsuyako's death on his soul and a whole factory-clusterfuck to explain back home...

Worth it.

He sat down by Ginta's head, and touched two careful fingers to the pulse in his throat. Eyelashes flickered; a sliver of blue glinted. Kakashi pulled his hand back.

"Hey," he said quietly.

Ginta took a slow breath. He blinked focus into his eyes, taking in bandages and shadows. He raised a hand to his throat, touching the spot Kakashi had touched, feeling the memory of Kakashi's living chakra, not the steadily draining battery of the clone's.

"Hey."

He couldn't quite get his bearings. He knew everything that had happened. Everything. He had a sharply etched memory of Kakashi telling him to go to hell. He had every instant of his catastrophic mission, the almost miraculous appearance of Kakashi at the very last second, and their escape from the inferno. Tsuyako's death and burial. Everything.

But somehow here in silence and the gentle light of the lamp, he couldn't find his balance. Couldn't remember what to say. Or how to keep his guard up.

"You look better." His voice came out leaden and dry, like ash from last year's Obon offerings. Gravity clung to him, pinning him to the cot. What could he say? Thank you? Why the hell are you here? He licked at his dry, split lip and felt the burn on his cheek crease.

Burns. Back in Rain. Back in winter. Not at all the same.

"Didn't we already do this?"

It took Kakashi a second to catch Ginta's meaning, and longer than that to find the mental twist that gave it sense. Their first mission together, back in Rain, when Ginta had suffered broken ribs, burned skin, and temporary blindness--because Kakashi hadn't moved fast enough. Old guilt turned over in his stomach, worn smooth with time like a riverbed stone.

Reason one of many why Ginta's throat had ended up with a handprint bruise in a hospital hallway. Why Kakashi had snarled and threatened and ignored the shard of ice biting between his ribs.

Come near me again, and it'll be worse.

He'd been right.

He'd been trying not to think about that.

Ginta's eyes tracked him, weary and unreadable. He looked older, new lines etched around his mouth, bracketing grey lips. Kakashi almost expected to see silver in his hair, but there was just a pinkish cast from washed-out blood. Blackness from soot.

And he had no idea what to say.

Finally, he touched his own chest. "Copy-cat. What's your excuse?"

"Jackass, remember?" Ginta's breath caught in a husky pantomime of a laugh, a chesty sound like a reflection in shattered glass. "Just fucking with you." His eyes glittered bright and sharp, as Kakashi's narrowed. The corner of Ginta's mouth twitched in an ersatz smile.

It didn't matter. Nothing mattered.

Nothing except...

It was still Kakashi there.

"Yeah. Jackass. I shoulda probably done something simpler to get your attention."

That woke Kakashi up. Something crunched and snapped; he looked down and realized his fingers were clenched too hard around the IV port in the back of his hand, breaking it. He jerked the needle out, tossing it and the line still attached to it onto the floor.

Across the room, very quietly, the clone sighed.

"You really are too stupid to live," Kakashi said flatly, meeting Ginta's fever-bright eyes. "This isn't a game. People are dead. I could tell you the exact number if you gave me a second to think. I killed most of them." Fucking with you, like a kiss that had cracked his head against a wall. An army of genjutsu'd men trying to drive a point through his skull, and missing the real one completely.

Kakashi killed people. And Ginta was too damn stupid to get away from ground zero.

Or he'd been in ANBU too long to care when he danced on cracking ice.

"Do you even get this?" Kakashi demanded, waving a hand that took in Ginta's shattered body from the hips down. His own masked face. "I'm not a prize; I'm the warning story, and you need to start listening."

Ginta sat up like a corpse rising, using a chakra-laced palm against the wall to force himself upright. He shook, teeth bared, eyes cold as a January midnight. If he'd had the strength in him, he would have stood to face Kakashi, broken leg or no, but he didn't. It was all he could do to hold his back rigid, chest heaving, heart racing, and glare at his rescuer.

"Tsuyako was my partner. My partner. Understand? You don't get to be a sanctimonious prick about her sacrifice. You don't know what I get."

His shaking rattled the metal frame of the cot. He could feel the rails flexing under his white-knuckled grasp.

"I didn't make that factory. I didn't endanger those civilians. I didn't kill Tsuyako. And I sure as hell didn't ask for you to show up, no matter how grateful I am you saved me so I can go home and make a report about how she died."

Rage had its own scent, unique to the person, but acid-adged for everyone. Ginta's smelled like liquid metal, heated beyond the point of tolerance. Like burning diamonds. His eyes glittered, hands trembling around their bloodless grip. All of him trembled. Kakashi could feel the low cot shaking, held half-way still only by his own, carefully unmoving weight.

Scent added spark to flame; his teeth clenched, muscles tightened. Hands trained to break bones from childhood ached with the urge to put Ginta down.

But that wasn't how this worked. Ever.

Slowly, deliberately, he set an empty palm against Ginta's sharply angled shoulder and pushed him flat. Muscles tensed like petrified wood, but Ginta didn't have the strength to resist. Where he'd gotten the strength to even pull himself up, Kakashi didn't know.

It was amazing what anger could do.

He kept his hand against Ginta's shoulder when the man tried to surge up again, and bit his tongue hard enough to bead blood around a sharp canine. Breathed slowly through his teeth, trying not to scent more fury. Not to say something stupid before he'd figured out exactly what he wanted to say.

"I'm sorry," he murmured finally, face set marble still. "Now stop struggling before you injure yourself."

For a strained moment, Ginta continued to fight. Kakashi was unrelenting. A civilian would have felt the restrained threat in Kakashi's tense hold, and trembled in fear: Ginta's shaking was from shock, fatigue, pain, and anger.

But there was something there in Kakashi's leaden apology. Maybe something genuine. It was enough to temper Ginta's fury just a little. To take the edge off enough that he could look at the stone-still face and the unblinking grey eye above him, and see something like grief behind the façade.

He went limp, flinched once, then lay utterly still. Pale fingers with torn, bloodied nails and scabbed knuckles clenched around the blanket the clone had thrown over him. Ginta's eyes slid towards the wall, away from Kakashi's accusingly blank face.

"Did you know her, too?" His voice was barely louder than a whisper. "She worked in Intel. Her sister's getting married next month..." A breath, and then his head snapped back around, expression fierce. "I tried to save her. I tried twice. There were just too many of them. They were too good."

Ginta was determined to break his own neck. Kakashi lifted the hand still pressed against that fine-boned shoulder, and flattened it over Ginta's too-hot forehead, forcing his head still.

"I know," he said. It was a lie. He didn't know anything, beyond two cold facts: Tsuyako had broken; Tsuyako was dead.

Tsuyako's sister was getting married next month.

Ginta's pulse beat in his temples, thready and fast. High colour burned across his cheeks, the flush of anger or fever--or both. Fragile bone, protected only by a thin sheath of skin, curved beneath Kakashi's ungloved palm. The unwanted memory of Tsyuako's neck snapping like a stick of rock-candy rose up. He jerked his hand away.

"I didn't know her," he muttered, nose filled with the broken iron scent of guilt. His or Ginta's, he couldn't tell. "But she broke and you didn't, and that's the thing that matters. Wherever she is now, she's not hurting anymore."

Unlike Ginta.

He glanced at the clone, still silent in the corner. Its edges were almost transparent. It caught his look, waited for meaning to ripple down the fraying bond between them, and began to move. Cupboards banged gently as it rifled through them.

"I need food," Kakashi told Ginta, snapping the conversation through a 180-turn. "So do you. If no one catches up to us, it'll be at least eighteen hours before a pick-up team gets here. Let's just... try not to kill each other before then, okay?"

His voice should have been wry, it came out flat.

She broke and you didn't, and that's the thing that matters. She's not hurting anymore. It was the kind of cold comfort only one ANBU would offer another. If she'd survived having broken, her suffering would have been unendurable. At least she was spared that last indignity.

Ginta nodded, acknowledging that tiny olive branch for what it was.

"I'm glad you were... There. For her." For me. "I wouldn't... I'd have done what I had to. But..."

Kakashi holding Tsuyako gently. Snapping her slender neck without a tremor of hesitation, once he understood what had to be. She'd broken, she was dying. She'd have slowed them down, and never have survived in the end anyway. She was in agony from her injuries, and from her knowledge that at the last, she'd failed her mission in every way possible.

It had been a mercy.

"Thank you." Ginta's voice was as controlled as Kakashi's, but rougher, edged with something as raw as the weeping blistered burns on his skin.

Thanks. For bringin' me back.

Same words, same scent of charred flowers and exhausted grief, same red-rimmed eyes that were a half-step from tears, but Ginta wasn't Ryouma, and Kakashi was so tired of gratitude from half-broken men.

He took a long breath between his teeth, trying to re-centre himself. Ryouma wasn't dead. Ginta wasn't dead. And even if they both insisted on talking like they were getting ready to say their last words and good-byes (thank-yous were always bad), he hadn't managed to kill them yet.

He hadn't.

The thought brought strength, tempered by the weight of Tsuyako's death, but there. He brought his hand slowly back to Ginta's forehead, smoothing smoke-blackened hair from sweat-dewed skin.

Don't thank me, rookie. Just insult me like you know you want to.

This time, all he said was, "You're welcome."

"My report," Ginta said quietly. "In my report, I'll have to tell them she broke. I don't know what she could have told them, but someone will need to know. She was Intel. I was just the weapon on this mission..." He trailed off, lost for a moment in the echoing heat of fever and exhaustion.

Kakashi's hand stilled for a moment, then brushed again over Ginta's forehead to push his hair back, gentle and rhythmic.

"She was in command on this mission. She sent me to check out the sleeping quarters for the ninja guarding the place, and I don't know what she did, but while I was there, there was a general alarm and the Taki nin just went insane, scrambling around. When I got back to where I was supposed to rendezvous with her, she was already captured."

Kakashi probably didn't care, but at least he didn't tell Ginta to shut up.

"I spent six and a half hours trying to find a way to get her out from the outside, then I let them take me, too, so I could spring her from the inside." He laughed humorlessly. "Don't let anyone ever tell you Waterfall ninja treat their guests well." There was another empty space, where Ginta breathed and hurt, and Kakashi sat like a stone Buddha, listening. Hand still stroking Ginta's hair back as if he'd forgotten he was doing it.

"We took down their captain and his lieutenant. Took down six of them that were guarding us. We got away. We almost got away. She was right there beside me... And then she wasn't. They brought in reinforcements. A lot more men than we expected."

The clone rattled something in the tiny kitchen, preparing rice. Outside the wind hit their hideout again, rocking it like a baby's cradle.

"I'm like you, you know," Ginta murmured. "I usually take solos."

"You should try rescues," Kakashi said, after a long beat of silence. "Better karmic payback."

And it was easier not to split your focus between the mission and your teammates when your teammates were the mission. Even if rescues had a higher cost; longer odds, harder fights, the worst kind of guilt when you gave everything you had and still only managed to limp home with an extra set of dogtags.

His hand was still on Ginta's forehead. It hesitated as he looked at it, but didn't move away as his gaze skimmed down, taking in half-lidded blue eyes and relaxing lines of tension. Ginta had said his piece, unburdened some part of himself in laying out an unnofficial report he knew Kakashi was required to memorize. It was healthy, probably--a good sign that he was willing to talk.

I'm like you, you know.

I want you to remember me.

A hundred other memory-echos in Ginta's voice, wanting to get closer, get noticed, forge a connection.

Run away, coward. You make me sick.

Lashing out when he got knocked away.

"Sometimes," Kakashi said grimly, soft as a breath, "I don't think you'll be happy until you can get inside my skin and stay there." He lifted his voice, pulling his hand away and turning to check on his clone. "Don't fall asleep. We're eating in a second."

Ginta closed his eyes anyway. "Don't go getting all weird and religious on me," he mumbled. "Not gonna be a hungry ghost." He listened to the clone preparing them food, smelled steam and cooking grain. When he opened his eyes again, it was to watch Kakashi; to stare at a lean back hunched in weariness. Kakashi's broad shoulders showed bandages where the sleeveless ANBU shirt bared them, and beyond the bandages, a few spots of reddened skin where the burns had been only first degree.

Under Kakashi's skin. Like a tick, he thought. Like a parasite. Was that why Kakashi was here?

I'm not afraid you're going to die. I know you're going to die. But I've got no plans to be the one left hurt enough to mourn you.

This wasn't mourning. Not yet. But Kakashi's posture spoke volumes of grief.

You don't want to mourn me? Then die first.

The layers of meaning in his own words struck Ginta now. Was that why Kakashi was here? Because Ginta was already under his skin? Because the only way Kakashi could avoid having to mourn Ginta, whether he called him a friend or not, was to die first?

Ginta clucked his tongue and sighed. "I guess it's too late, huh, Genius? Good thing I didn't die."

There's still time, whispered a nasty little internal voice, the same one that kept track of reality; the likelihood of getting attacked again before they made it home. A muscle flickered in Kakashi's jaw.

"Good thing," he echoed flatly, and leaned sideways to check the feed of Ginta's IV. Fluids and antibiotics coursed steadily into weary veins, beating back dehydration and Ginta's low fever. After four hours in the safehouse, he looked much better than he had. Even the fever was good in its own way--his body was still fighting.

Kakashi settled back just as the clone made a small, pleased-with-itself noise and did something that made thin steel rattle. It was ladling rice and re-hydrated vegetables into field-issue collapsible food containers; he glanced back to find it digging spoons out of a drawer before it came over, food in hand and two bottles of what looked like isotonic sports drinks tucked under its arm.

Kakashi blinked. "Are those even in date?"

"Two months left on the lables," the clone said with satisfaction. "Someone stocked up recently."

It knelt, waiting patiently. Kakashi felt his stomach clench and growl, stirred by the scent of food, and looked at Ginta. "If I sit you up, can you feed yourself?"

"My leg's broken; my hands are fine." Ginta took a deep breath, preparing to push himself up. His fingers tensed, gripping the rails of the cot, but before he made any headway, Kakashi slid an arm under his shoulders, lifting him in a half embrace. The worst thing about it was how impossible it was to do more than let him. The second worst was the way both injured legs scraped against the blankets and thin mattress

"I'd have been fine," he protested, panting. The look Kakashi gave him made it clear that was one lie he wasn't getting away with. That and the wave of dizziness that hit as soon as he was sitting all the way up. Kakashi didn't let go until he had him wedged against the wall with pillows and blankets as much restraints as supports, and even then he sat where his body braced Ginta's.

The clone handed over the bowls of food. Kakashi's was half devoured before Ginta had taken three bites. The rice slid down Ginta's raw throat to sit like tar in his stomach. It had been too long since he'd eaten. He took another bite, then let the container rest in his blanket-covered lap. The clone and Kakashi both gave him a look, then the clone held out the bottle of sports drink.

"I'm trying to put off having to get up and take a leak," Ginta groaned at it. "Give it a rest."

The clone shook the bottle. "Electrolytes," it wheedled. "Sugars. Salts. Everything the growing body needs. And when you're done you can piss in the bottle."

Kakashi snorted into his rice.

The clone tipped him a wry look. "If you prefer, you can help carry him to the bathroom. I'm not sure this building has actual plumbing, per say, but there has to be something."

"Sealed bucket, probably," muttered Kakashi, made practical by necessity. You got good at dealing with certain indignities after a lifetime of practice, but you didn't have to like it. He grabbed another bite of rice--hands, mask, and bowl moving in a long-perfected dance that never quite showed his face--and reluctantly put food aside long enough to drink from his own bottle.

For a body that had burned through most of its resources in the last two days, salt-sweet water and relatively bland vegetable rice was nothing short of divine. His eyes, visible and not, half-lidded. Muscles relaxed slightly, emotions got shunted aside.

The clone gestured at him, then looked pointedly at Ginta, brandishing his spoon. "If he's eating, you definitely have to. Don't make me resort to playing momma bird."

Kakashi wasn't sure which part of his personality this clone had, but he thought he might like it.

Ginta raised an eyebrow, then two, and stared at the clone. Then at Kakashi, who seemed to be amused by his construct. "Are you kidding me?" he asked.

The clone took advantage of his open mouth to insert a spoonful of sauce-laden carrot. Kakashi choked on his rice.

Ginta's face reddened, and he scowled at the clone and its maker, snatching the spoon from the clone's hand. "Are you feeling okay? How in the fuck did you make a clone with a sense of humor? I thought you had yours surgically removed weeks ago, when you were in hospital with Ryouma."

He dropped the spoon and reached for his bottle, tipping it up fast to wash the food down. To stop his mouth before he said anything else stupid. Conversations with Asuma and Tsume about his poor broken heart haunted him. What the fuck was he doing thinking about that now? He looked down at his food, stirring it resolutely, avoiding penetrating grey stares.

"Morphine makes me stupid. You already know that, from that other mission."

You already know that.

There was that connection again. Ginta trying to reforge something Kakashi had killed.

"Your apologies need practice," the clone told the lowered blond head, while Kakashi sat stone-faced. "I'm sorry would be a good sta--ow!"

My inner three year old, Kakashi thought, pulling his hand back. That's the personality. He set his empty rice-container aside, kept the half-empty sports drink held loosely in one hand, and felt his emotions come rushing back. That was something Ginta and Ryouma had in common, amongst others: the ability to destroy his grip on rule twenty-five.

But this time it wasn't anger, or guilt, or even fear.

Resigned, he realized, as the silence stretched. I feel resigned.

"Stupid's a word for it," he agreed finally, and slipped off the cot. Aching muscles complained as he sat on the floor, stretching his legs out, and braced his back carefully against the steel frame. "Pissed off is another. And you're probably entitled to that one."

He tipped his head back, easing out his neck, and looked at the ceiling. Mapped out the last four months on bare wooden joists as he thought about Ginta and Ryouma and two very different rescues--two very different people--and himself stuck in the middle.

Two more rescues, when Ryouma had ripped Sadao away, and Ginta had watched Kakashi's back long enough for him to sleep. A hundred other moments, laced with meaning. Bruises, bite marks, broken bones, shared jokes, messed up missions, sex, stolen birthday kisses...

He wasn't even sure who he was thinking about, now.

"Just ask me, Ginta," he said eventually, without inflection or nickname. "We're stuck here. Get it off your chest."

Ginta had expected anything from Kakashi but that. Anything but stark admission that what they were really wrestling with wasn't injuries, or pursuit, or Tsuyako's death, or the failure of Ginta's mission. It wasn't even the word 'friend' at issue. It was a man Ginta had once called friend, and Kakashi probably didn't call anything at all, but should call 'lover'.

Ginta took a slow breath, feeling his heart beat under bruised ribs. Kakashi's back was to him, his face turned so Ginta could see only profile. Masked features sharp under black cloth. A heavy-lidded grey eye that expressed far more than Kakashi was likely to want it to. Right now it held weariness. Weariness and waiting.

He'd called Kakashi a coward for running away--the man was no coward now.

Ginta took another breath. The oil lantern burned steady, casting a yellow glow over the wooden interior. Wind rocked the tree, and suddenly the blankets couldn't keep him warm enough. He shivered and hunched down a little lower in the bed.

Who was a coward here?

Kakashi still wasn't looking at him.

"Why?" The word hung in the air for a moment. "Why..." Why what? Why Ryouma? Why not me? Why the fuck did you do that? Why are you here now? Ginta's voice was low and steady, but edged with splinters. "Why did you even come out in the hall that night, after I tried to walk away?"

Stiffly, Kakashi pulled one leg up and braced his elbow on his knee, sports bottle still dangling from his hand. The liquid inside was bright blue, sloshing gently behind clear plastic. His visible eye flicked to it, tracking the movement.

That was not the question he'd expected.

"I smelled you," he admitted, after a beat of silence. "Thought I saw you, but when I woke up properly you were gone. And I couldn't believe you'd been there and--left."

It was hard to remember his exact train of thought, beyond faint memory-echoes of surprise and confusion. He'd been exhausted--still recovering from dragging Tsume and Ryouma home--and solidly determined not to leave his broken little pack unguarded. Though when they'd even become his pack...

Ryouma still was. He had no idea where things stood with Tsume, beyond a brief exhange of bared teeth in the mens' showers and Kuromaru's new determination that Ryouma was alpha.

None of which answered Ginta's question.

"I don't really know," he said, turning the bottle over in his hands. Blue liquid splashed, rippling like a wave. "I wasn't thinking much of anything until you snapped--" do you always sleep with straight guys, or is this some kind of new kink for you? "--and I snapped back."

"I snapped?" Maybe he had. It was odd how even a few weeks had blurred his memory. How much exhaustion and injury had been a factor then. Funny how much worse both those factors were now. If he'd been a religious man, he'd have had to ponder whether Fate was fucking with him.

"I tried to leave," he said again, because that was important, and it was the one thing he knew for sure. "You were... You and him. I didn't expect it. I didn't think I'd care. I tried to leave."

Maybe it was some kind of fucked up karma. It was the same ankle--sprained then, broken and then some now. The same arm had a sword slash, though that was more predictable, since he was a leftie--he attacked with his left and blocked with his right. And right now he felt the same head-spinning nausea that came from fatigue and narcotics.

"You know how sometimes you're on a mission and it's going to utter hell, and you can see it going to utter hell, and there's nothing you can do because everything you try fails? How you can tell yourself 'get out', and then you don't because you can't?"

That wasn't it. That wasn't quite it. Kakashi was looking at him now, and all Ginta could think about was the way he'd said I couldn't believe you'd been there and--left.

"You can't have it both ways. I can't have it both ways. So I tried to leave as soon as I knew, but you stopped me."

Stopped him just to make him leave. That had to be the definition of ironic. If he'd had the energy, Kakashi might have put his head in his hands. He hadn't meant to do that.

He hadn't meant to do a lot of things. It was funny, lately, how rarely intention and action seemed to meet the same goal.

It's going to utter hell, and you can see it going to utter hell...

But Ginta's hell just held two men in a hospital bed--two men and an Inuzuka, but Tsume didn't seem worth the mention--and a heart that had bruised before it'd ever gotten close enough to break. You and him. I didn't think I'd care. But that healed.

Kakashi's hell was here, sitting with his back to a bed where the pieces of a man lay. But even this could heal. Would heal, if he managed to get Ginta home. If he stopped thinking about Tsuyako's neck twisting under his hands.

He looked at Ginta, at blue eyes that wouldn't quite meet his own. The clone sat quietly, now, ignored.

"So what do you want?"

"What do you want?" Ginta asked, turning the question back around. He didn't give Kakashi a chance to answer. "I want you to get it, is what I want. I want Ryouma to stop treating me like I raped you. Shit, he's the one that screwed you, when it comes to that, not me."

What had he seen in Kakashi? Looking at Kakashi now, weary and angry and closed off inside his shell, it all felt so remote. I'm not your friend Kakashi had insisted. Ginta should have left it at that. Why hadn't he?

"I want you to stop acting like I'm below contempt for having given a shit about you. Hell, at this point I'd like to just stop thinking about you."

He balled his fists in his lap and curled his lip in disgust at himself and the whole damn situation. Kakashi, who wasn't his friend, nothing like it. Ryouma who used to be something like a friend, but wasn't really anymore. And this. Now. More than anything else, this. "I want to not have had my mission blow up in my face. I want Tsuyako to go to her damn sister's wedding. I want to know why, of all the people HQ could possibly have sent to deal with this fucked up mission, they sent you."

He paused for breath, feeling cold--so very cold his shoulders were shaking. "So what do you want?"

To have one of these conversations when he wasn't dead on his feet. Was there a law somewhere that stipulated he had to be exhausted when he dealt with other peoples' emotions?

"Nothing," he said, after a second to twist the honest answer out of his brain. Disbelief flashed over Ginta's face, quickly chased by anger. Kakashi could almost read his thoughts: Are you mocking me? "I'm serious," he said quietly, turning to look back at the room. "What's left for me to want?"

The air tasted like scorched metal. Like blood and antiseptic and the bland edge of cooling rice.

"Intel sent me out because I'm the only one who stood a chance of making it to you on time." He hesitated, mental fingers wrapping carefully around the next thought before he shaped it into words. "Ryouma..."

--treating me like I raped you.

He'd told Ryouma about the kiss in the hallway, smelled the anger that had rolled off him like a black thunderhead--I'll melt his damn face off--and Kakashi had grabbed and snarled and forbidden Ryouma to do anything, because a kiss meant less than nothing in a world where bones broke like an afterthought. Because he hadn't let Ryouma kill Sadao, and why would he let Ginta get hurt for so much less?

But Ryouma had done something.

"Both of you need to get over this habit of interfering in my sex life," he said shortly. "It's my choice who I screw, and if I ever find myself on the losing end of a fight--or something worse--it'll be my choice to do something about it." For a flickering second, he thought of the bitemark scar on his shoulder, felt it tingle, but the fleeting sensation was gone before he could do more than notice it. "You don't have a claim on me, Ginta. And you sure as hell don't have a reason to be concerned about me--I warned you. More than once."

He raked a hand through his hair, trying to organize his thoughts.

What do you want?

"I wanted to be left alone. And I did everything but paint a neon sign on my door about it. Now I don't want anything, because every time I try to untangle my life I just end up with more people in it."

It wasn't quite a lie. He just didn't give voice to deeper, painful wants. Like the half-crushed desire to feel Ryouma's hands on his shoulders, hauling him back onto his feet, standing strong at his back. Or the wish to see Ginta's face split with laughter again, while his eyes gleamed and his hands gestured and he spun out some insane idea wrapped up in a grain of logic and too many words.

He'd never wanted partners. Never wanted friends.

"I think," Ginta said slowly, in a voice as icy as the chills that swept his frame, "that that's exactly what I was trying to do. Leave you the fuck alone to sleep with whoever you want, and not give a rat's ass about it. You were the one who stopped me in that hallway, like you wanted something from me. And you were the one who brought this whole fucking thing up now."

Coward. He'd called Kakashi a coward before, and this was a coward's tactic, initiating treaty talks that turned out to be an ambush.

"Don't act like such a fucking victim. I didn't wake up one day and decide to fuck with you, and neither did Ryouma. He may hate me now, but he was my friend before you got in the mess. You're the common denominator here, Kakashi."

And Sadao. His name hung like the stench of rotten cabbage over the conversation. Ginta shifted stiffly under the blankets. His legs hurt. They hurt and it was good, because it gave him something to focus on in the here and now.

He'd killed Sadao for himself as much as for Kakashi, and he'd done it on orders.

Why was he even thinking about that?

He was cold and starting to feel sick, like the rice and vegetables were putrefying in his belly.

"You want to be left alone? Then don't start things you don't want to finish."

Still perched on the end of the bed, the clone lifted its gaze to the ceiling and whistled softly. "Ouch."

Kakashi broke his hold on it without looking, banishing it in a flutter of smoke. Chakra snapped back into his coils, stinging like a whip strike. He exhaled through his teeth. A low shiver of heat, trapped behind iron control and years of practice in leashing emotions until they could be useful, rippled through his stomach and demanded blood.

"Like what? Kissing someone just long enough to pass out on them? Standing in the door of their hospital room until they wake up and feel obligated to come check on you because you've collapsed in the hallway?" The words flowed like an arctic river, smooth and dangerously cold. "Or maybe you're thinking about my missions. Like the last one I ran, when my teammate fell and I did all the right things. Like getting captured and tortured, instead of putting her out of her misery long before she broke."

Ginta smelled like nausea. Like sickness wound through too-hot flesh and too much misery. Like bitterness and grief and the urge to grab hold of something and squeeze until it shattered.

"Or maybe," Kakashi said, soft and nasty and unrelenting, rising to his feet, "you just feel victimized because your friend picked the man you wanted to fuck over you."

He picked up the dishes, left Ginta's mostly untouched sports drink by his hand, and stalked away to throw them in the waterless sink.

There was a heartbeat where Ginta felt himself slipping, felt his guts catch like broken clockwork. Where he thought about that vat of flames he'd nearly fallen into, and wished he'd been consumed by the fire.

Tsuyako had been worth trying to save, hadn't she?

And then Kakashi turned the whole argument inside out. He was a cornered, vicious dog, snarling and lunging indiscriminately. He was being nasty just to be nasty. Hurting just to hurt. You didn't try to reason with a rabid animal: you stayed far enough away and you waited until you had a clean shot.

Jealous of Ryouma? Maybe. Who cared? Who the fuck cared?

"You have it backwards, genius," he whispered. "I was pissed you ditched me to sleep with him. But I don't really care. Do what you want. Just don't tell me I fucked up trying to save my partner, unless you're prepared to kill me, too."

Braced with one hand either side of the sink, fingers curled around the rough-hewn edges of the thick plank that made up the counter, Kakashi felt his anger drain away. Even without Ginta's soft-voiced words, he wouldn't have had the energy to keep it. Four hours of sleep didn't begin to make up for two straight days of constant motion.

He breathed out slowly, eyes closing, head lowering.

Kill Ginta?

Not even if he'd broken. They'd only run one mission together, made it through one hospital stay, seen each other once when Kakashi could barely stand, still reeling from Sadao's attack, and once again on Ginta's birthday. Kissed once. Fought once--

Twice.

--and that only added up to four times spent in each other's company. Five times, if you counted a rescue that felt more like a massacre. But Kakashi couldn't kill him, couldn't even think about it. He'd rather drive lightning through his own chest.

He inhaled, exhaled, hissed softly as stiffening muscles protested when he straightened up, and flipped open a cupboard. Stacks of ration bars met his gaze; he chose four, swapping a sticky red bean flavoured one for peach-and-mango, and shut the cupboard again. Another yielded bottles of sealed water; he took two. Then he found the safehouse's impressive medic kit and dug out two tablets designed to dispell nausea.

Walking back to Ginta felt like crossing a gulf, but he forced himself to do it.

Carefully, he set the water bottle by Ginta's left hand, the tablets by his right hand, and two of the ration bars in his lap. Peach-and-mango--Ginta's favourite fruits--and a bland, inoffensive vanilla-and-ginger combination Kakashi'd never tried.

Then he sat back down on the floor and braced his head in his hand, resting his elbow on a bent knee.

"I didn't plan on ditching you to sleep with Ryouma. I woke up the morning after your birthday with you on my chest, and--panicked. Ryouma found me down at the training grounds, because I'd agreed to meet him up to... check in, and I'd forgotten. We got in a fight with three of Sadao's friends, and then I owed him a drink to make up for the one I missed..." The two remaining ration bars gleamed in his free hand, catching the light from the single oil lantern as he twisted them. He kept talking, getting the words out before he lost his nerve. "I don't know how it went from there to sex--and I'm pretty sure he doesn't, either, especially because he thinks he's straight. But suddenly I had two people in my life convinced they were invulnerable, and I didn't want to prove them wrong... And then Ryouma had his mission."

Ginta knew which mission.

"And you've had yours and you're right." His eyes closed. "You're always right, jackass. Who's the common denominator here?"

Ginta took the offerings silently. He swallowed the tablets with a gulp of his sports drink. He picked up the ration bars and tried to read meaning in them. Did Kakashi actually remember which flavors he preferred, or was it a lucky guess? But Kakashi had swapped bars in the cupboard as if looking for these in particular...

He listened to the words tumbling out like glass pebbles from a broken vase.

It took a moment for the sense to soak in. When it did, Ginta didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Smacking Kakashi for being such an idiot, for not getting it, for having such a god-complex, was tempting. Instead he reached out a hand and touched, very softly, an unburned patch of Kakashi's shoulder.

"You didn't listen to a single thing I said before, did you? You actually think this--what happened to Ryouma, what happened to me--you think it's your fault. Do you really have that kind of power, Kakashi?"

Gods help them both, he had no idea how to tear down that kind of fortress.

"You know the last time I got really hurt on a mission--well the time before the last time, if you count that thing in Rain, but that wasn't really that bad..." He laughed dryly. Of course Kakashi was counting that thing in Rain.

"Did you see the scar when you had me all stripped down? Big one on my belly? Ryouma was there when I got that. Maybe he's the real culprit. Or, you know, the Hokage. His signature was on all our mission scrolls, right? Yours, mine, Ryouma's, Tsuyako's... Maybe he's just fucking with us." He waited a beat. "Or maybe it's the fact we're ninja in ANBU."

You couldn't argue with logic. But guilt, fears, emotions, didn't come from a logical place. And even as Kakashi's head lowered slowly in acknowledgement, his gut roiled and whispered no.

Ninja in ANBU. But he'd been watching people fall long before that. He'd even given Ryouma the number once, listing off the facts scorched inside his skull without ever letting his voice break.

I've been a ninja for fifteen years, a jounin for seven, and an ANBU for five. I've run four-hundred and twenty-seven missions, lost one genin team, sixteen dogs, and eighty-seven genin, chuunin, jounin, and ANBU. One hundred and one teammates.

And one sensei

Four-hundred and thirty-one missions, now. One hundred and two teammates.

Don't act like such a fucking victim.

Exhaustion dragged at his bones. Ginta's hand rested lightly on his shoulder, scarred, calloused fingertips rasping gently over unburned skin. Kakashi shifted, turning sideways, and lifted his arm up onto the bed, laying it flat where fingers could touch rumpled blankets and feel the solid warmth of a living body beneath them. Without opening his eyes, he let his head drop until it rested on the cot, masked face turned towards Ginta. Scent drifted in the air, rippling over his senses with every inhale.

Candy-iron blood, the burned toast whisp of a serious adrenaline crash, pain, the fading edge of anger and jealousy, a sharp catch of caution. Unease, like the bite of oiled steel. Medicine and bandages and burns. A hundred other threads, too complicated to untangle.

Blond hair.

A twist of quiet, aching laughter caught in Kakashi's throat.

"I know," he said, agreeing to everything and nothing. Scraped clean by gut-feelings so old they barely had names, and logic that only shattered against them. "I know. I saw your scar. What did you do? Wrestle with a tiger?"

"More like a Kumo nin and his naginata, but yeah, something like that." Ginta shrugged a little lower in the bed, watching Kakashi. What the hell was it all about now, anyway? Kakashi was a broken, exhausted man, and he was worn to the bone himself. What was that touch for? Why did he reach out like that? Did it make any fucking difference at all?

Their tree house rocked gently in the wind.

"I had a mission to eliminate a really big deal government figure. It went all kinds of wrong. Team Badass--Ryouma tell you about them? They were stationed up near the border, keeping an eye on Kumo. I staged a lot of my operations up there from their base. He called me Seishi then. That's when I wore a mask like yours..." Ginta giggled hoarsely. "Maybe he's got a thing for masks and that's why we have this stupid little non-love triangle."

He wasn't sure of that flicker of a noise Kakashi made in response was a laugh or a cry.

"My cover got blown. I got run through with a naginata. I was lying there, watching my blood stain the daimyou's priceless silk carpet. Figured that was it for me. Then Ryouma breaks protocol and comes in like some kind of berserker, and he's got his team with him, and they got me out. Came pretty damn close to biting it, though."

He let his head fall back, and took another small sip from his bottle, then leaned forward to touch Kakashi's arm again. Knowing he shouldn't.

"Mission report said they broke protocol. Had to, or else I should have been dead. I never did find out if they got shit for that."

It took a minute for Kakashi to realize that Ginta had stopped speaking, ending his weary-voiced answer with a sentiment that sounded a lot like something Obito would have approved of. Sometimes you had to break the rules to save lives, and that was always, always the right thing to do...

It didn't surprise him that Ryouma had been the one to do it.

"Probably," he murmured, in answer to Ginta's not-quite-question, "but not a lot. Especially if you managed to complete your mission."

Ginta's hand was on his arm. Ginta's words were in his head, painting a picture of younger days: Ryouma, before he'd ever gotten into ANBU; Ginta, before he'd ever met Kakashi--and still getting into, and out of, trouble, which was oddly comforting.

Team Baddass. It was so typically young male that he smiled a little beneath his mask. Kept smiling, even when Ginta said non-love triangle and pulled a noise Kakashi didn't recognize out of his own throat.

Ginta's hand was on his arm. Maybe it was exhaustion that made it feel like some kind of forgiveness. He almost reached out and tangled their fingers together blind, but--

Don't start things you don't want to finish.

He was already far too close. He didn't have the strength to move away.

"Ginta," he said, words beginning to slide together. "Why did you join ANBU?"

"Because I'm suited to it," Ginta answered. "Solo missions. Assassinations. Dirty work. Got my grandfather's blood, and I grew up around politics." His voice was a soft rasp in the quiet cabin.

Ginta let his eyes drift closed a moment. Kakashi was there, so tired he was practically falling asleep where he sat. He was there with his hand outstretched towards Ginta, and something had changed. And nothing had changed. They still had half a broken relationship, and Kakashi was still fucking Ryouma, and Ginta still wished it had gone the other way.

"ANBU needed people, after the Fox. And I was suited to it. Perfect for it. Gonna be Arakaki some day, and be my grandfather. Advise you when you're Hokage, right? When we're old fuckers with bad prostates and have to trim our ear hair." He chuckled softly, trailing off into silence.

Kakashi was still there, still hadn't pulled away. Why? Ginta's question still hung there, unanswered. Why are you here And why do I care so goddamn much?

"Why'd you?"

"ANBU needed people, after the Fox," Kakashi echoed. "And I was suited to it."

Fifteen and grief-stricken and finally, truly alone in the world--which almost made him the perfect candidate. ANBU liked people whose only tie to home came from loyalty and memories and a brand new scarlet seal; it was easier to wear the mask without having to come home to a family who'd be ashamed of what you did behind it.

And Minato hadn't exactly been around to drag him out by the hair.

"'sides," he murmured, as sleep settled heavily on his shoulders and started to pull him down, "what else was I gonna do...?"

Advise you when you're the Hokage, right?

He was twenty years old and living on time so borrowed it was broken. Ginta was two years older, shattered from the hips down, and making plans too rusted to be pipe dreams. But Kakashi didn't have the heart to call him on it.

Besides, he thought, as he slipped under, Ginta already knew.

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