| [Jan. 1st, 2011|07:19 pm] |
Relief shouldn't have hurt. Kakashi stood his ground, breathing stiffly through the whiplash of unwinding anger, trying to keep his mental feet under him. He knew where Yukihana was -- had been there, ever so briefly, back in the war. He knew the different paths Ginta was talking about, although he'd only run two of them before. Starting in Konoha, the shortest was still almost three-hundred miles long.
The longest was three-fifty. Between the three trails, they had over nine-hundred miles to cover.
They'd run maybe one-twenty.
Ryouma could have gotten into trouble anywhere.
(threeweeks)
"Kakashi?" said Ginta slowly. In the gathering gloom, his unmasked eyes looked grey. His weight was canted to his left side, off his injured leg. And like a roll-call, Kakashi could remember the dislocated ankle he'd had to twist back into place, the fractured tibia and fibula, the four deep infected claw marks, the broken talus bone, right in the middle of the ankle. The septic wounds, the burns, the smoke inhalation...
The raging fever that had killed him.
Kakashi grabbed a fistful of his own sweat-drenched hair, dragging his head back. Gave himself a hard shake, until he remembered how to breathe. Ginta shouldn't even be here.
Kakashi couldn't cover nine-hundred miles on his own.
Are you giving up already?
"Stick with me," he rasped. "If you can't keep up, you can ride a dog. I'm not losing Ryouma and you. Not in one week." |
|