Genma jerked his head away from Kakashi's icy fingers. "What?" he demanded. A perfectly reasonable question. Cobwebby shreds of dream still clung, evaporating in the sunlight filtering through the canvas walls. Chasing Suguru, trying to work jutsu with broken, bleeding hands. They hurt. Of course. It was morning. At least in waking he knew they were whole, and Suguru was in his grave. There was nothing left of the man but his dogtags in Genma's utility kit by now, thanks to Kakashi's dismemberment and Genma's chemicals.

"The morning. It's good," Kakashi said blandly, as if he hadn't just had his fingers on Genma's pulse. As if nothing had happened at all. He pulled away and sat up, shivering at the chill. The flush to the tips of his ears gave him away, though.

Genma smirked. "Teach a guy one jutsu and he thinks he's a medic," he said with a short laugh. He didn't want to get up. Didn't want to leave the warmth of his blanket cocoon, but it was well past daybreak. And he was the real field medic here. He sat up with a long, low groan, stretching painfully stiff limbs and feeling every bruise, every ache his seizures the day before had earned him.

"How's your chest? You sound okay from here." Which was a relief and a half. By now, if that antidote had been going to fail, or the poison to reassert itself, it probably would have.

Kakashi exhaled slowly, half an eye still on Genma's throat and ribcage, counting breaths in the back of his mind. "About a two," he said, sparing a flicker of thought to measure the slow burn in his chest against ANBU's pain scale. A ten was bloody, screaming death. A two was negligible.

"Asshole," he added as an afterthought. "You can't even do that jutsu. I managed it with no training, your instructions..."

Genma's breathing still looked normal, if annoyed now. Radiating palpable smugness, Kakashi stretched until his spine cracked, loosened up his shoulders, and crawled out of the tent. The September sunshine was barely a step up from arctic--or felt that way, at least, on armour-bared shoulders--but it was clear and bright, reflected a thousand sparkling times off dew-wet leaves.

"What makes you think I can't do it?" Genma demanded, struggling out of the tent. "I just can't do it on myself." He was dragging the blanket with him, and, with a deft twirl, swung it up around his shoulders to drape like a cloak.

"I can smell lies," Kakashi told him. "Literally." Then the corner of his mouth twitched a sharp smile when he realized he could. He could smell everything. The acrid chemical-scorch had eased out of his sinuses, leaving normal scents and just a faint metal-sting behind. He settled on his back foot, arms folded tightly to conserve heat, and inhaled deeply. Cold air bit at his lungs, but he could smell--

Breakfast.

Genma hadn't quite finished staring at him when Kakashi twisted, drew two kunai, and flung them arrow-straight at a low level bush. Twin squawks cut off into silence. Grinning, back in control of his nose and his muscles and his body, finally, Kakashi sauntered over to dig out a brace of quail.

He'd been right. It was a very good morning.

"I've done that jutsu on pigs and rabbits," Genma said defensively. "Just not humans. I told you, it's a hospital jutsu. It's not like it's the kind of thing you run into every day. Chakra poisons are unstable as all hell, that's why you don't see them used much in the field." Kakashi continued to glow with an aura of self-satisfaction. Genma pursed his lips and hissed over his teeth. "You're such a conceited ass. And I believe if you check, you will smell no lies. That's my true opinion."

He went back into the tent and got out his travel kit, extracting a toothbrush with a tiny tube of toothpaste, and a larger bamboo cylinder of rice. "Here, since you're such an expert, you can cook breakfast," he said, tossing Kakashi the rice. "I'm gonna go have a piss. I'll light the fire when I come back."

Just don't fall in," Kakashi returned with a mocking smirk. "It'd ruin your kind and modest nature. And then where would I get my examples from?"

Genma offered up a rude gesture and went to take care of business in the bushes at the river's edge. When he came back, toothbrush still in his mouth, Kakashi had both birds plucked, and was working on eviscerating them.

Quail and rice--that was actually a damned fine breakfast. And Genma was hungry now that he'd had a solid night's sleep. His hands were still just a little shaky, his legs a little weak, but that was hardly surprising, given how long it had taken him to clue in to the true nature of the poison he'd been tagged with. He finished brushing his teeth, rinsed with water from his canteen, then went to rekindle the fire.

Bright sun made him squint, and for a moment, just as he brought his hands up to cast the katon no jutsu, he had a strange sensation of déjà vu. Dry grassy tinder sprang quickly to life, but the main fuel for the fire was still damp with morning dew. Genma pushed a little more chakra into the flame to bake the branches dry enough to light. As he did, he felt a catch, a stutter in his chakra, and then a thunderclap of a headache burst from the base of his skull. He staggered back, clutching his head. The jutsu evaporated in an instant, but it had done its work: the fire crackled to life.

Kakashi materialized at his side, catching him by the elbow. "Sit down. What's wrong?" he barked.

For a moment Genma couldn't answer. Simply couldn't. Gibberish replaced words, as sinister black sparks detonated in his head. Then, almost as suddenly as it had started, it subsided. Genma blinked open eyes that had squeezed reflexively shut, panting and leaning against Kakashi for balance. "Head- headache. It's-- Gods. It's going now. Almost gone."

Headache? Genma looked like his skull had caught fire. Kakashi had been bracing for the word 'stroke' to stutter out of his mouth, armed and ready to ruin the whole morning.

"Why is it," he said, deadlocked-calm, "that every time I bring back wild game, you have some kind of episode?"

"Guess I'm a city boy," Genma said, in a voice that guttered ragged in the back of his throat. His words didn't flow quite right, inflections changing at the wrong moment. Still pain-shocked, Kakashi hoped fervently, rather than brain-damaged...

His hand had moved from Genma's elbow to his shoulders somewhere in the last minute, supporting that solid-muscle weight. His other hand wrapped securely now around the back of Genma's neck, fingertips calling seeds of chakra. Not another medic jutsu--not another medic jutsu ever--but just enough blue-white energy to sink through Genma's skin and touch the abused chakra coils winding around the base his brain.

They still felt the same. Kakashi just had no idea if that was good.

Genma's muscles twitched with a rolling shiver; he shrugged Kakashi's hands off and stepped away, looking pale but steady. Kakashi watched him for a long moment, lone grey eye cataloguing every shift, every breath, and comparing them to his mental picture of a healthy-looking Genma. After a minute, Genma squared back his shoulders, blew out a thin stream of cold-clouded air, and gave Kakashi a Do you mind? look.

Maybe it had been just a headache.

"You are so weird," Kakashi told him finally, and returned to the fire to rescue his quail.

Genma growled a low, exasperated noise and crawled back into the tent to start putting things in order while Kakashi cooked. "I slept for shit. Maybe because someone took my bedroll, so I had to sleep on bare ground. And oh, yeah, in full damn armor, and on a belly full of rat bar and soldier pill." None of which was Kakashi's fault exactly, and he certainly hadn't been willing to sleep in Kakashi's tent and let the man out of his sight, what with him still suffering the side effects of that experimental antidote, not to mention the poison.

And yeah, he'd been too wrecked himself to do much more than collapse next to Kakashi and sleep. Why was it he felt so terribly unrested, though? By his reckoning they'd had a solid eight or nine hours sleep... He yawned, sighing in a deep breath that felt strange, almost as if he'd been holding his breath and gotten light-headed. The not-quite-headache still sat at the base of his skull, a soft little thing, barely there.

He carefully packed up the things he'd gotten out, checked through his medkit, counted his soldier pills now that his hands had for the most part ceased their strange St. Vitus dance. Three left, which meant between himself and Kakashi they'd taken four. That wasn't nearly enough to account for the headache, but then there were plenty of other reasons to choose from. When he came back out of the tent, he brought the blanket and bedroll with him, to air them out before he restowed them in their scroll.

Kakashi had evidently succeeded in getting the quick-cooking rice going, and had the two quail skewered and roasting on branches arching over the fire. Little birds like that didn't take long, especially over a hot flame. Maybe resealing everything could wait.

"I don't suppose you brought salt or seasoning? Or tea?" he asked, rejoining Kakashi by the fire.

"What am I, your personal chef?" Kakashi replied dryly, but he hooked a hand into one of his belt-pouches and dug through until he pulled out a little white sachet. It wasn't technically salt, but the dried sodium-sucrose-electrolyte mix used normally for making energy drinks was close enough. He tossed it at Genma, along with a collapsible bowl filled with sticky rice, and jerked a thumb at the right-hand skewer.

"That one's yours. Don't touch mine while I'm gone."

Genma's eyebrows lifted, then he made a little 'ah' sound of understanding when Kakashi ducked back into the tent for the personal-amenities part of his pack, before heading out of camp. It only took a minute to find a suitable tree out of earshot. Kakashi studied it intensely at eye-height for a focused, bladder-relieving moment, then went down to the river to wash his face in freezing water and brush his teeth.

Feeling decidedly lighter, cleaner, and minty-fresh, he returned to camp and found Genma making ferocious headway into his quail. The bird was almost half-gone already.

Cautious hope flickered in Kakashi's stomach. Hunger was always, always a good sign.

"Do table manners come standard with seduction-training?" he inquired, almost reflexively, with an ironic nod at Genma's greasy fingers as he sat down by the fire again. It was gloriously warm. "Or did you just forget to pay attention?"

"I didn't realize I was sup--posed to be se--ducing you," Genma said. He stumbled over his words, feeling them catch on his teeth, and shook his head to clear it. A yawn interrupted him, a deep, sighing breath. He stretched and sniffed, and took another bite of the quail. "But some guys like it if you're messy. I guess you're more the fastidious type. Figures."

"That's me," Kakashi said. He looked dryly down at himself, at ANBU black and white sporting grimy red-brown smears and stains, spatters of blood, flecks of foam, and god-knows-what else. Nothing Genma really wanted to contemplate too deeply, though his own attire was just as soiled. "Can't stand to get my hands dirty. They teach you observation skills, too?"

"It's a para--doxical thing. Ironic. You des--ire in others what you lack in yourself." Genma sucked the flesh off of a tiny quail bone and tossed the bone into the fire. "You're not a bad camp cook," he added. "Wouldn't have ex--pected that. You seem like the kind of shinobi who lives on rat bars."

"I'm a paradox," Kakashi said with some flavor of disdain. He looked darkly, sharply amused, as if he'd understood some complex and sinister joke Genma hadn't realized he was making.

Genma shrugged. "At least you're interesting. Although kind of an ass."

"Only kind of?" Kakashi said, arching an eyebrow. "I must be doing something wrong."

Something very wrong, if Genma was actually starting to warm up to him. Kakashi turned that thought over in his head and felt his gut roil. Genma was supposed to be the one who never liked him, no matter what. They'd shared three pointless deaths together, three teammates who never should have fallen--

Arihiro, Kakashi remembered, with a white press of lips beneath his mask. The thirteenth lost dog of fifteen, and the youngest so far, all giant paws and sharp-angled joints he'd never had time to grow into. It still hurt to remember him.

--and had baptized the anniversary a year later with a shower-fuck that had ended in blood and scalding, soul-aching relief. Had ended in a thank-you punch and Genma's ass on the floor, his face looking every kind of shocked white.

You desire in others what you lack in yourself.

But Genma knew that was wrong -- or should have remembered, at least. Knew that Kakashi liked fast and hard and halfway to violent. Liked to wear bruises afterwards, as if he could force the purple-black stains of old nightmares out on his skin, away from his brain. Liked to not think, just for a scatter of heartbeats, which was...

Well, nothing like him, but it wasn't exactly a quality he sought out in other people, either.

His fingers picked absently at hot cooked flesh; Kakashi glanced down and realized he'd almost stripped his entire quail carcass without actually putting any of it in his mouth. A pile of meat-shreds mounded up on his bowl of rice, steaming gently.

He picked up the bowl and slid to his feet, turning his back on Genma. Genma with his kind of's and his tired eyes and his weird new stutter Kakashi wasn't worrying about, dammit.

"I'm going to scout," he said coolly. "You should start packing up."

"Already started," Genma answered with a nod at his airing bedding and readied equipment. "And I take-- take it back. You're a com--plete ass." He watched Kakashi stalk off with his food, with his shoulders up around his ears and a scowl that could have cut trees down.

What the hell was his problem?

Genma sucked the last quail bone clean with a disgusted sigh. Kakashi was, in the light of day, the same damn SOB he'd always been. It was just the mission enforcing a false camaraderie that had led him to think otherwise for even a moment. Just the strangeness of having had to worry about him, as a medic.

With the quail gone, he turned to the rice, but it formed a lump in his throat that wouldn't go down. Genma reached for his canteen and missed the grab entirely. On the second try he got it, sloshing water over his hand. How in fuck's name had he gotten more jittery now, after eating, than he had been on an empty stomach?

The next bite of rice was just as difficult to swallow, and by the third he gave up. He'd eaten most of it already, anyway. He dumped the leftovers into the fire, rinsed the bowl out with his canteen, and stood.

The ground lurched under his feet.

For a heart-pounding moment Genma scanned for an enemy, for some sign that it was an earth jutsu. There was none. In fact, there was almost no sign that anything had happened at all. Birds still sang, Kakashi didn't come racing back. Earthquake, maybe? They were prone to them in Earth country, Genma recalled. There had been a devastating one near the border with Waterfall, not far from where they were now, before Genma was born. Konoha had sent shinobi to aid Iwagakure in clearing the debris and caring for the injured--one of the last acts of alliance between the two villages before diplomatic ties had been broken. Before the Third War.

He went back to work, taking down the tents. When Kakashi finally reappeared, looking just as displeased as he had when he departed, Genma frowned. "Did you feel the earth--quake?"

Kakashi felt his eyebrows arch. A half-dozen responses flicked by in the time it took for him to canvas for enemy chakra, just in case Genma wasn't being insane, then he settled on, "What earthquake?"

"Just now, maybe..." Genma checked his watch. "Maybe ten minutes ago? It was a little one, but I definitely felt it."

"I didn't feel anything," Kakashi said. "Didn't sense anything, either. Are you sure--"

"Yes," Genma cut him off with a scowl. "It was like an earth ju--stu. It-- wasn't one, though."

Kakashi resisted the urge to rub his temples. "There aren't any other ninja around; I checked. And there definitely wasn't an earthquake, because I would have felt it. So either you stood on a gopher hole, or -- what is with you and the stutter?"

"There was," snapped Genma, ignoring Kakashi's question entirely. "I felt it. Right-- when I finished eating."

Genma's face looked paler, Kakashi noted, with muted alarm that was getting difficult to ignore. Genma was breathing harder, too; far too hard for a ninja trained in breath-control. And this was going nowhere good, Kakashi knew, with all the sinking certainty of a coming lightning strike.

"Shiranui," he said. "Focus. What's with the stutter?"

"What stutter?" Genma demanded furiously.

And there it was, Kakashi thought wearily. Sometimes I hate being right. He tossed his empty, cleaned rice-bowl onto the waiting packs with a flick of his wrist, and freed a notched, blood-stained scroll from the recesses of his armour. Held it in one hand, like security in his fingers.

"Sit down," he told Genma, "right now. I screwed up the jutsu. There's something wrong with your brain."

"What do you mean, you--screwed up the jutsu?" Genma demanded. "What--stutter?" He completely ignored Kakashi's instruction to sit, backing up instead, with a seething gaze riveted on Kakashi. He stalked over to the tent packs and opened a containment scroll to seal his own pack away.

"Shiranui," Kakashi said again. He sounded like a teacher about to scold an errant student, which just made the hairs on the back of Genma's neck rise.

"What-- is your problem with me? Seriously. One minute you're fine to talk to, the next you're-- a com--plete bastard." Genma spat. He made the first sign of sealing.

Kakashi was a blur in Genma's peripheral vision, grabbing for Genma's hands to yank them out of position for the jutsu.

The explosion at the base of Genma's skull this time put the previous headache to shame. The earthquake that wasn't an earthquake knocked Genma off his feet entirely. He gasped out a broken series of low, wounded noises, curled fetal on the ground with his hands clutching his head.

A touch on his shoulder. Kakashi's gloved hand. His masked face swimming into tear-blurred view.

"What the fuck did you-- do to me?"

Killed you.

Kakashi snapped his teeth closed on the answer and focused on what he could do about it. Genma was curled like a comma, fingers digging into his hair, legs pulled up as far as he could get them. But talking, which suggested whatever pain had dropped him was receding just a little.

Okay. Okay.

What had Kakashi done to Genma exactly? He'd seen it with the sharingan, and it only took a moment's focus to pull the image back into view: his lungs spasming with a rising cough; his hands slipping; the unnatural shapes Genma's chakra coils had wrenched into, only for a moment, before Kakashi had shoved them back into place.

The chakra coils around Genma's brainstem.

But it hadn't killed Genma instantly, so something was just damaged. And damage was repairable. What did the brainstem control? Kakashi's hands checked Genma's pulse while his thoughts picked up speed. Breathing, core body temperature, heart rate -- what else? Come on, he'd learned this years ago. Motor functions, most of the touch-related sensations, pain, and--and--

Sleep. Maintaining consciousness.

God. Of all bits of the brain to mess with.

But Genma was still breathing--swearing, actually--and his pulse was definitely there. Thready and not quite rhythmic, but there. So Kakashi just needed a plan. One involving actual, competent medics for preference.

Konoha was too far. Even if they'd set off at first light, they'd still be the better part of a day and a half away. And that was moving at full speed.

Waterfall's ninja village was closer, at least on a global scale. But still a good day's travel away, on the other side of the country, and Kakashi seriously doubted they'd have the technology or the skill. Not when most of their high-level shinobi had been wiped out in the war, along with half the damn village.

Which left Rock. Closer still, even if it was on the other side of the border, and definitely big enough and strong enough to have what they needed. Advanced enough.

But... it was Rock.

Kakashi looked down at Genma again, at pale skin sheened in sweat and ticking, trembling muscles. He'd done this. It was his mistake, his error to fix. The mission was over, objective achieved, which left keeping teammates alive as his one and only priority. If Rock could be persuaded to help...

There was a tentative treaty. But more importantly, they'd been wanting to skin Kakashi alive for years. He could use that, if nothing else.

"Right, okay," he murmured, steeling himself. The he lifted his voice. "Change of plan, Shiranui. Just stay very still and try not to break yourself."

The scroll was still in his hand. He backed up, sliced his thumb open on a kunai, wrenched up his chakra, and called his dogs.

"What did you do to me?" Genma pleaded. It had to have been the sieve. Kakashi's rough, overly energetic, poorly focused medical jutsu. Genma tried to think through the cacophony of pain that echoed in his skull. What kind of error could Kakashi have made with the sieve that would account for this? The possibilities were universally dire. This could be a brain bleed, if Kakashi's jutsu had torn some tiny blood vessel. It could be something more like a grey matter contusion, if he'd lost control of the depth of the jutsu's focus. It could be spinal-cord damage high enough it was inching into the brainstem itself, although if that were the case Genma should be having numbness, paralysis. He pulled one hand away from his head and tried touching his thumb to each fingertip in turn, relieved that he could complete the task.

Dogs had appeared from nowhere. Summoned dogs, no doubt. Genma remembered some of them from that mission two years ago. He winced and tried to roll onto his back, spinning in a vortex of vertigo until he felt sick. One of the dogs whined and nudged his leg with its nose.

What had he done? Lit a fire and given himself the worst headache of his life, for half a minute. Just barely begun to channel his chakra, and nearly died from the pain. It could be an organic brain injury, but Genma was too well-schooled a medic to buy that. Evidence pointed to chakra coil damage.

In the brain.

Fuck.

The dog was still there, lying down next to Genma now to brace him with its own body. It whined again. Genma lifted one limp hand and settled it into the fur, not really petting so much as simply holding on.

He tried to breathe evenly, short of breath as if they were at elevation. Tried to come up with some kind of plan. "We-- need to go home," he said, not even sure Kakashi was listening.

"Mm," said Kakashi, eyeing the dog tucked up hard against Genma's side. It was a youngster, a solid-looking hound crossed with some kind of long-haired breed, and too young to have even been in training when Arihiro had died. Which was precisely why it had no qualms about curling up against Genma's ribcage, and precisely why Kakashi had summoned it.

Good job, Reiji, he told it softly in canine. Keep him warm.

Reiji's tail waved.

Pakkun, however, remembered everything, which was why he was busy bristling on the other side of the fire. "What the hell, kid?" he demanded, staring at Genma.

Kakashi squashed a growl -- briefly, and then let it out, stopping the argument short. Teammate, he reminded Pakkun pointedly, and then launched into a rapid-fire explanation--all in canine--before Pakkun could draw breath to respond.

By the end of it, Pakkun's stare had gone a little bug-eyed, Reiji was whining in a quiet, continuous breath, and Baiji--Kakashi's huge, faithful mastiff--had planted his massive head against Kakashi's flank in a silent show of worry. Kakashi slid his hand absent-mindedly under Baiji's thick leather collar, fingertips digging into fur.

Rock? Pakkun almost-howled. Have you lost your mind?

Probably, Kakashi admitted to himself. He switched back to human.

"It's the only option. I need you to get to Konoha and bring me back the right people. Go directly to Arakaki; he'll know who to send." Diplomats if things went well, an extraction team if they didn't.

ANBU with a kill-order if everything went to hell.

Kakashi thought things through one last time. Worst-case scenario, Rock would try to torture them. But Genma wouldn't last five minutes--literally wouldn't last, which meant Rock couldn't get anything out of him. And Kakashi trusted his own abilities to stand up under interrogation. He'd never broken yet.

Best-case, Genma might get out of this alive and Kakashi could go back to disliking him.

It was a stupid idea.

It was worth a try.

"Get going," he told Pakkun, and watched the little pug sprint hell-for-leather out of the clearing. They were committed now.

He crouched down by Genma.

"We're heading out," he said, which sounded just enough like home that he hoped Genma wouldn't fight him. "I'm putting you up on Baji's back. Tell me the second anything feels different, okay?"

Not that he could do anything about it, precisely. But it'd be nice to stay informed.

"Going where?" Genma demanded. "Why did you tell your-- dog to get Ara--ka--ki?" One horrifying possibility sprang to mind: was Kakashi planning for an inquiry? An autopsy? Konoha would certainly want to examine the body of a shinobi killed in the line of duty by a lethal combination of chakra poison and unauthorized medical jutsu. "I'm not gonna die, damn--it. You don't need a kill team. Just a-- medic."

He grabbed for Kakashi to pull himself up, clenching stiff fingers around the strap of Kakashi's armour. Kakashi responded by slipping an arm under Genma's shoulder, another under his knees, and lifting.

"What the-- hell?" Don't!" Genma kicked and arched his back reflexively, his sense of balance utterly shredded.

Kakashi's grip instantly tightened until it was almost a restraining hold. Genma could feel the tingle of blue-white chakra against his skin where Kakashi's hands touched him. Kakashi's face was suddenly inches from his own, hot breath filtered by that black mask. His voice was soft, almost emotionless. "Get this straight, Shiranui. I don't kill teammates unless I have a direct order from the Hokage in my hands. You are safe with me, okay? I don't care how much we dislike each other, I am getting you home safe and in one piece, even if I have to knock you out to do it. So quit struggling."

Genma searched the eye he could see for any hint of deception, but found only intensity. He shivered and swallowed, and tried to let tight muscles relax. The sensation of falling persisted. "Li--sten," he started. Shutting his eyes only made the vertigo worse, so he snapped them back open. "Just give me a minute. Dizzy."

Kakashi dropped into a careful crouch so that Genma could feel the ground under them. He shifted his hold by painstaking millimeters until Genma's head rested against his shoulder. "Breathe," he advised. "You keep breathing too shallow." Genma could hear the fear underlying Kakashi's calm, like a river of snowmelt flowing silently under a blanket of ice.

Slowly, agonizingly slowly, the whirling unbalance diminished, the pain in Genma's head ebbed. "Can you open my-- med kit?" he asked. "There's a scroll. Cha--kra seal." A stop gap emergency measure, something to slow the flow of chakra through damaged coils. It would buy them some time, at least.

Another medic jutsu. For a second, Kakashi was sure he felt his throat close. But when he dug through Genma's med-kit, being careful not to drop or jostle the man himself, he found an ordinary sealing scroll instead, bastardized for medical use.

Seals he could do. Seals were his world.

And it was perfectly normal if his insides felt like melted wax. Kakashi spread the scroll open with one hand, slid his chakra through it, cast three awkward seals, and locked the jutsu closed on the back of Genma's neck. Muscles stiffened beneath his touch, Genma's teeth ground together, then Genma let out a long, slow breath and relaxed.

Relaxed like water, actually, becoming almost dead-weight--

Heavy. Becoming heavy in Kakashi's arms.

"Better, I take it?" Kakashi asked, as he risked standing up again.

"Mm," Genma said, closing his eyes. His face was still waxy, eyes still bruised hollow, but at least he was breathing properly.

Kakashi thanked the universe for small favours and boosted him up onto Baiji's broad back. The mastiff helped the proceedings by lying down, belly to the ground, and shifting heavy shoulders until Genma slid into place. He lay like a sack of wet rice, but his fingers twined loosely into Baji's steel-studded collar: showing willing to help, at least.

"Better hold him on," Kakashi told the dog, and crooked a faint smile when Baiji rolled one brown eye at him. The dog's chakra rose like a wave, sticking Genma into place like a limp, thoroughly sick-looking burr. Then Baiji got back to his feet; at full height, he stood taller than Kakashi, and at least three times as wide, a solid weight of canine muscle-and-bone. Completely trustworthy.

In contrast, Reiji only came up to Kakashi's hip, but he still had a ways to go. And at least he wasn't as scatter-brained as his litter-mates.

Kakashi finished sealing the rest of their camp into scrolls, packs included, and took down the traps. Then he swallowed the still-smoldering fire in an earth-jutsu, obliterating every trace of its existence, and scattered leaves over the camp-site with a twist of wind. A skilled tracker might have been able to tell someone had been here, but only if he was looking for it. And only if he looked hard.

"Right," Kakashi muttered, turning on one heel. "Let's go."

North-West, yet again. He set the pace, as fast as he dared, staying well within arm's reach of Baiji. Reiji brought up the rear, the world's youngest, furriest guard--well, until Pakkun got back.

The dog's chakra was thick and warm, dark coffee brown tinged with russet glimmers, like the last orange rays of the setting sun. It was a strange feeling, being held in place by someone else's chakra, and called to Genma's mind the edges of memory of being held as a tiny child in his mother's arms.

His own chakra was slowed to just above a stall. With the injury so high, the seal affected every system. Muscles were sapped of energy, nerves drained. Genma could feel the slowness of his breath, the quiet, rhythmic lurch of his heartbeat. He wondered where the smaller dog had gone, but couldn't manage to lift his head to look.

For several miles he drifted somewhere between waking and sleeping. Then the steady rocking motion slowed and stopped, and Genma rose closer to the surface of consciousness; he looked for Kakashi, unable to perceive his chakra without the benefit of direct touch, since his own was sealed. Hot fingers pressed against the side of his neck, making Genma aware of how very chilled he was. "Where are we?" he asked. Nothing looked familiar. The trees were wrong for southern Waterfall or northern Fire Country, the stones too large, too grey -- granite not sandstone. Huge fungus-like shapes towered over them, and the air felt dank.

It looked like Earth Country.

Genma's heart raced, his eyes widened. Was he awake? Was he hallucinating? But everything else remained: the headache crouching at the base of his brain, the trickle of chakra draining from damaged coils even with the seal in place. Kakashi. The dogs.

"Where -- are -- we?" he gritted out.

It was amazing, in retrospect, that the deception had lasted so long. Genma wasn't stupid. But Kakashi still gave the landscape a sighing sideways glare, as if it had personally betrayed him.

This was going to be... difficult.

For a brief second, he considered simply knocking Genma out. But even without medical-training, Kakashi knew Genma probably wouldn't wake back up. And despite a lifetime of killing for money, he had never actually murdered someone over something so small as avoiding an argument.

Even one likely to end in a serious convulsion.

"Heading to Iwagakure," he said finally, blunt and simple. Just words in the air. Like neither one of them had lost an eye and a best friend here, or a fully functioning set of hands. Genma's breath hissed between his teeth. Kakashi got ready to leap up and pin him flat. "They're the closest Village with decent medics. And they'll have poison research, seal-experts--"

It was amazing, in retrospect, that Genma even let him get that far.

There was no way. No. Way. Genma surged against the dog's chakra, tearing himself up with a wild twist. The dog fought back, tendrils of chakra turning into stabs that penetrated deeply into muscle, almost to bone. Genma lashed out with one free fist, striking the dog's flank as hard as he could. That earned him a yelp that turned into a growl. He kicked, gasping for a breath, grabbing for chakra that would not come thanks to the seal.

"You bastard!" he raged. "You traitorous son of a whore!" Adrenaline compensated for chakra, and he lurched free, screaming at the raw wake of chakra that clawed at his back. The dog howled and barked, and the world spun in a dizzying spiral. Kakashi's weight smashed into him, pinning him to the leaf-strewn, muddy, forest floor. Kakashi's hand clamped over Genma's mouth, forcing his jaws shut with a chakra-enhanced blow that snapped teeth together, rattled bones. Shook the headache back to life.

Genma convulsed under Kakashi, but with his chakra sealed he was too weak. Too weak and oh god, oh god his head. His thrashing turned from purposeful to non, died away to groaning shudders.

It smelled just like it had when Kobo had died. When Iwa ninja had ambushed them, severing Kobo's head, driving Genma and Seijuro finally to the ground. His eyes rolled, showing whites. Kakashi glared at him from inches away, completely controlling him.

He'd let himself in for this. He'd let Kakashi do that jutsu last night. Taught him how to do it. And asked him to slap that chakra seal on his neck. What had Kakashi said? He didn't kill teammates? No, he just handed them over to others to do the killing for him.

My parents were married. I will never be a traitor. Don't talk about my mother.

If it hadn't run the risk of putting Genma in the ground, Kakashi would have seriously contemplated adding another bruise to Genma's jaw. Instead he loosened his grip over Genma's mouth, pressing rather than crushing, splaying his fingers so that Genma could breathe better. Adjusted until his weight was off Genma's body, mostly, and poised above him instead.

Thought. Hard.

It was wildly ironic, Kakashi realized, that they'd run into the one situation that could only have been improved by being friendly. Approachable. Because Genma needed to trust him, and that was the one thing Kakashi had never encouraged, ever. Respect, yes. A willingness to work with him, sure. But trust was something else, and paranoia was far healthier in ANBU.

But he couldn't tie Genma down. Couldn't drug him. Couldn't knock him out. Couldn't even genjutsu him for fear of what the chakra-stress would do to his brain.

Which left talking.

Which left them both screwed.

Genma smelled like fear and betrayal, inarticulate rage; like his worst fear was coming to life and Kakashi had made it happen. His eyes glistened white all the way around.

Kakashi had no idea how to turn that into trust.

He leaned forward anyway, grabbing words blind. "Shiranui, I need you to think real hard and get your head out of your ass. I've served Konoha for sixteen years. I've been in ANBU four. I've never done a single thing that wasn't for the good of the village, and that includes saving your ungrateful hide. I'm going into Iwa with you, as your ally, and a bargaining chip if I have to be. Because they sure don't like me any more than you -- and I'm betting they like me a lot less." He drew a breath, forced himself on. "I need your help with this. I can't bargain with them and hold onto your sanity for you at the same time, so I need you to be sane. All by yourself."

He released his hold on Genma's mouth, dropped his hand down to Genma's wrist--a hands-breadth above Genma's scarred, black-gloved hand, because he was being nice--and pulled it up to his own throat. Squashed his instincts when Genma got the idea and gripped tight.

"We're doing this together, or you can snap my neck and try to crawl home by yourself. Because I am not going to stop dragging you to Iwa. Got it? I'm getting you fixed." He looked levelly down at the hard-breathing man beneath him. "I'm getting us both home, Genma. I'm just doing it the long way 'round."

Genma's mind spun frantically as sense filtered in. His fingers around Kakashi's neck tightened a fraction, then loosened. He let his hand fall away from its threatening position, but didn't let go, catching hold of the strap of Kakashi's vest again. It all made a sort of bastard sense, even if it was the most godawful stupid plan anyone could possibly have devised.

Kakashi wasn't a traitor, wasn't going to kill Genma, or turn him over to be killed. At least not alone. No, he was going to get them both killed, and for no good reason at all. The fact that Kakashi had used Genma's name was proof, Genma thought, that the other jounin had lost his mind.

"Are you insane?" he demanded. ""That's sui--cide."

"Do you have a better option?" Kakashi asked, sounding completely honest. Sounding backed against the wall. Sounding young. "Because I'd love to hear it." His grey eye scanned back and forth across Genma's face, as if he was going to see the answer there somehow.

"You send your dog for-- medics. We-- meet them halfway. Go to a safe--house." Genma had to stop for air. Breathing too shallowly, Kakashi had said before. Chakra coils in his fucking brainstem were damaged.

He grimaced. "At least one of us would-- make it home safe. Iwa will-- kill us both. You're more im--portant to Konoha than--"

Kakashi's hand slapped down over Genma's mouth. He felt the agonized flinch, saw the white-wash of pain leech all the colour from Genma's face, but only relaxed enough to let Genma breathe again.

"No," he said, roughshod raw. "Don't you dare tell me that, you bastard. You're a soldier of Konoha and you're still breathing, that's it. And your life--" He clenched his teeth, jaw aching. "I'd be dead twice-over if you hadn't saved me. You think that's not worth--"

Doing everything possible.

He pulled his hand back, sliding it beneath Genma's neck instead. Genma was still holding onto Kakashi's armour strap; Kakashi moved to one side and worked his free arm beneath Genma's knees again, picking the heavier man up with a spasm of back muscles.

"A safe house won't work," he said with finality, over Genma's breathless protest. "At the rate you're getting worse, you'd be dead long before anyone could meet us."

Baiji was crouching to one side, a study in canine misery. Kakashi eyed the short drooping tail and flattened hackles, the look in dark brown eyes that said Sorry, boss, and whistled him quietly. Floppy ears pricked; Baiji slunk close. Kakashi heaved Genma carefully up onto his back, trying not to jostle the man more than necessary. Baiji straightened. The smaller hound Reiji, bounded over, fur a-bristle with ravenous enthusiasm. Kakashi scruffed him with brief, grateful affection.

Genma still looked like a sack of wet rice tossed over Baiji's heavy shoulders, but his grip was stronger in that dark fur.

Kakashi moved close enough to look him directly in the eyes. Look up at his eyes, at least.

"This has a good chance of working," he said, and he believed it. "We're too valuable to kill. And too much of a liability to torture." Hopefully. "Arakaki will know where we are in thirty-six hours. They'll get us out through diplomatic channels. Both of us."

They would. Because it was insane and stupid, and bloody-desperate enough to work. Like the impossible marriage of sharingan and chidori in the middle of a battlefield, when the only thing left to fight for was one still-breathing teammate. When the only thing that mattered was whatever it took.

Kakashi hadn't cared about dying then, either.

It was funny, in a way that really wasn't, how often that helped.

When the only chance at surviving involved the need for a miracle, it was easier to believe in them. Genma nodded his head a bare fraction, gave Kakashi a steady look, and acquiesced. What else could he do? "There's a trea--ty now. Iwa's better than when I was--" The halting non-rhythm of his speech ceased. He saw something like understanding in Kakashi's eye. Understanding and empathy. Kakashi knew. Genma got that with a finality as firm as the knowledge that Kakashi was right, and he was dying. Going straight into the viper's nest was their only real chance of both walking out alive.

"It's bet-ter than before. But they'll prob--ably recognize me. Someone there will." Terror rose like a tide, pushing bitter memories and waking nightmares ahead of the foamy swell, eroding fragile hope. A treaty was nothing but a piece of paper, weak in the face of Iwa's interrogators' jutsu and steel.

Kakashi understood that, too. His hand curled over Genma's shoulder, a firm grip without malice. "My message is on its way to Arakaki," he repeated, looking Genma steadily in the eye. "The Hokage will send a team for us, and Iwa will have to let them, or face another war. They can't afford a war."

Yes. If logical heads prevailed, if diplomats and village councils got involved before lower-level interrogators had their way with a lost pair of Konoha ANBU... Yes. "They won't want-- war." Genma echoed. And tried to believe it.

Kakashi made some noise in his throat that must have been a command to the dogs, because the movement started again. Genma closed his eyes and tried to let the motion of the mastiff's spine under him, the throbbing at the back of his neck, and the seething, vertiginous nausea that his sense of balance was dissolving into, become a single thing. A sensation to be breathed through. To be prayed through.

Kannon-bosatsu, giver of mercy, protector of the wayward, hear my plea...

The rest of the journey went quick after that. Kakashi took point again, with Baiji keeping up a bare few feet behind his shoulder, and Raiji running behind them. The smaller dog circled off every so often to do an outer sweep, checking for followers.

Kakashi was a little surprised how close they made it to Iwagakure before hitting trouble.

Raiji's yelp was the warning. Kakashi banished him in a snap of chakra before anything bladed could cut him off. Baiji skidded to a halt, churning up leaf-mold and cold dirt, then backed up hard against an outcrop of heavy, dark-coloured stone. Protecting Genma.

Four dark shapes flickered on the edge of eyesight. Four new scents bloomed hot and strong.

Kakashi threw up weaponless hands, grinding his instincts down. "Peace!" he shouted. "We're not here to fi--"

Metal flashed; he knocked a kunai aside with his bare forearm. Caught the second by the steel O-ring and flung it point-down into the dirt. Baiji snarled as chakra lashed at him, dancing up on his hind legs; only the mastiff's swift-rising chakra kept Genma from sliding off. Kakashi lunged in front of them, deflecting a shower of shuriken.

"We're not here to fight!" He drew his katana and tossed it down, followed by his kunai pouch. Flung his hands up again. "We need help."

"You got that right." A flicker of chakra and movement became a man, almost a head taller than Kakashi. He stood just out of reach. "You're a long way from home, Leaf-nin."

Bright blue eyes glanced just over Kakashi's shoulder. Kakashi stiffened, then snapped aside when an energy-signature appeared behind his back. Sharpened steel grazed his shoulder; he twisted and caught the blow on the back of his hand, right where ANBU-gloves had a metal plate sewn.

Which would have worked fine, if he'd been wearing ANBU gloves.

"We're here--for amnesty," Kakashi managed, through tightly clenched teeth. It was a sword, held by a woman; he could feel the blade-edge scraping across the small bones in his hand. Blood spilled like a stream down his wrist. "Under the treaty. My teammate needs urgent medical care."

"Mm," said the man with bright blue eyes. "And we should care, why?"

Kakashi wrenched his hand free, sparking hot pain all the way up to his shoulder. The woman pulled the blade back and licked it thoughtfully. Two more ninja had flanked Baiji, forcing him back into an awkward crouch. His teeth were bared, a continuous growl rumbling in his throat.

"Because you'll be risking a war otherwise," Kakashi said, on a slow exhale. Reflexes and years of training screamed at him to start breaking necks. He held himself in check. "Konoha knows where we are. They'll be here soon."

"How long?" The man's eyes ticked to Genma and back.

"Three days," Kakashi said, because lying wouldn't help them here.

"And how long does your teammate have?"

Kakashi exhaled again. "Hours."

The woman chuckled under her breath, then sheathed her sword. She stalked closer, circling Kakashi, then stepped over to look at Genma. Kakashi tensed, smelling the rising crest of fear on the air. He could see Genma's hands shaking; his ribcage hitching. Had a woman tortured him, or a man?

Baiji snarled. The woman slapped him hard in the face. "Bad dog."

A whip-crack order from Kakashi stopped the mastiff dead, a scant inch from tearing her face off. The woman smiled and stepped back.

"I think he's telling the truth," she said. "His friend's in a bad way."

"Mm," said the blue-eyed man. "I suppose he'd have to be, for the great Copy-ninja to show his face in these parts."

A little ripple of laughter rose from four throats, dark and nasty. Kakashi wondered how many of their friends he'd killed during the war.

"So you want amnesty, yeah?" The man continued. "Medical care for your friend. Anything else?"

Kakashi clenched his bleeding hand. "Food, water, basic amenities. No one lays a hand on him but your doctors. Everything that's detailed in the treaty."

The blue-eyed man glanced at the woman. "What d'you reckon, Yuuko?"

One shoulder lifted in a shrug. "The Tsuchikage's probably going to want to know about this. Bring them in, I say."

The man looked at his other teammates. "Daimon? Issei?"

A nod. An agreeing grunt.

Yuuko held up one slim finger. "On one condition, though."

Kakashi looked at her. Braced himself.

"Prove yourself," she said. "Prove you're not setting up an elaborate trap."

Kakashi didn't look down at his stained armour, or his weapons on the ground. Didn't look back at Genma, draped limply over Baiji's worried shoulders. Didn't listen to the way Genma was breathing far too hard. Didn't let himself think.

"How?" he asked.

She smirked. "Don't dodge."

There was movement, a hiss of air, all the time in the world to get out of the way, and an ugly crack as something hard came down on the back of his skull. Sparks shattered across his vision. Kakashi's knees folded. Everything went red, then black, then it just went away.

Baiji growled and lurched under Genma, torn between his last order to protect Genma, and his overriding instinct to defend Kakashi. Genma didn't have any such divided loyalty. Terror was, for a moment, completely banished by white hot rage. He dragged as deep a breath as he could, forced strengthless muscles to lift his head, nerveless fingers on one hand to tear the chakra-seal at the back of his neck loose. The other was already flexing into hand signs. A jittering half of tiger.

Chakra surged through the breach as the seal lifted away, fountained out like a geyser. Coursed into his body again, enlivening muscles, quickening nerves. It brought with it an explosion of pain in his head, almost enough to drive sense away

The man grunted a curse and snapped out an order. A shivery paralysis stopped the breath in Genma's lungs, as one of the other Rock ninja cast a restraining jutsu on him. Baiji's roar cut off abruptly.

"You have to be kidding me," the woman said. "As close to dead as you are, you'd try something that stupid?" Her voice sent a chill through Genma that was far worse than a fear of death.

"Someone deal with that damn dog," the man ordered.

Baiji had stopped moving, too. Stopped breathing. Frozen in the jutsu, Genma could feel the world closing down to nothing. No heartbeat. No breath. How long would it take?

"Don't kill him, Issei," the woman warned. "Let the man breathe. He's halfway in the grave already." The jutsu eased off, and Genma gasped in a breath, Baiji, under him, shuddered in a breath of his own, and staggered, nearly falling. Genma started to slip from the dog's back. Immediately Baiji's chakra rose, sticking him fast.

"Alright, let's see what we have here," the woman again. Genma felt her fingers on his throat, caressing his bruised jaw, turning his head towards her. Her breath smelled of onions and something sweet. Her face was heart-shaped, delicate almost, under a shock of short black hair. Violet-blue eyes met Genma's, large eyes with thick lashes. She grabbed his dogtags. "Shiranui Genma. Huh."

Did she recognize the name?

"Take him off the dog," she ordered. Baiji snarled, and Genma felt the wash of coffee-brown chakra from the mastiff grow stronger. "And honestly, Daimon, make yourself useful and deal with this mutt!"

Hands grabbed at Genma's shoulders, tugging him hard against Baiji's pull. A blade glittered in his peripheral vision, driving towards the dog's throat.

"Ggggggggo!" Genma managed to force out.

The blade hissed through a wisp of smoke, and Genma fell, landing hard on his belly. He could see sandal-shod feet. Kakashi's limp, crumpled form. Discarded weapons.

"Huh, it was a summon," the tall man said.

"I thought you knew that. Copy-boy there summons dogs. Is he still breathing?"

"He's breathing," someone answered.

"Good. Daimon, you carry him. We've got this one."

Genma couldn't move. Still couldn't move. Nothing more than shallow breath and limping heartbeat. Nothing more than wide, frantic eyes. The big man rolled him over onto his back, heaved a shoulder against his abdomen and lifted Genma into a fireman's carry.

The woman appeared again, face close to Genma's. So close. "Scared?" she asked sweetly.

Genma struggled for a breath.

Her face hardened into something altogether too pleased. "Let's go," she told her companions.