| [Nov. 14th, 2011|07:28 am] |
Kakashi wasn’t okay. He’d looked for a moment as if he might cry, and Ginta almost wished he would. The horrible, heartbreaking thing was that Kakashi was probably right. Almost undoubtedly right. If — and even that word was right — if they got out, they were done searching. It had been a fool’s errand from the start. Konoha’s best trackers had tried three times and failed to find even a trace of Ryouma, and as much as the Buddhists liked to talk about karma and destiny, there was no mystical thread linking Kakashi and Ginta to Ryouma; no advantage they had tracking that the other teams had lacked. Even this husk of a former bunker, Ginta’s ace in the hole, the place he’d held as his last best hope for where to pick up Ryouma’s trail, had been nothing but a death trap.
“I know,” Ginta said softly. He didn’t let go of Kakashi’s arm, even when Kakashi held an antiseptic-soaked square of gauze up in one hand and held Ginta’s jaw with the other. When the gauze touched down Ginta flinched hard against Baiji’s side, but the dog didn’t complain, and Kakashi’s icy fingers gripped tighter. Steadying. Hurting. Not trying to hurt.
Ginta hadn’t been trying to hurt, either, and yet here they were, and the pain was almost unendurable.
“Breathe,” Kakashi said, inches from Ginta’s face, and Ginta realized he hadn’t been. When he let go his held breath, it came out with an anguished throaty grunt. Kakashi dabbed with the gauze again with a shaking hand.
Ginta shook, too. Shook and held his breath until he couldn’t take any more. “Stop. Please,” he hissed. “Just leave it.”
Kakashi stopped with the gauze poised. His mouth pressed into a thin, hard line. "Sure. But when your face rots off, your grandmother is going to be really unhappy."
“It’s that bad?”
"No," Kakashi snapped. "It's puppies and candy-canes. What's wrong with your nerves? Can’t you feel that?" His teeth clacked together and his mouth twisted into something even harder. He closed his eye and took a breath, let it go. "Sorry."
“Yeah. Do what you have to,” Ginta told him. He braced himself, focusing on Kakashi’s unmasked face. He studied the litter of pale, blood-stained stubble on Kakashi’s upper lip and the curved hook of a scar at the corner of his mouth. The long, not-quite-straight slash that bisected Kakashi’s left eyelid. It was a shock when Kakashi’s eyes flicked open again — both eyes, the grey right one, and the red Sharingan that looked black in the in the dim green light of the glo-stick.
And Ginta wasn’t there.
He was home in his garden — no, not home — but in Konoha at the koi pond at the park. It was summer. Warm. Cicadas buzzed in the trees, and a soft breeze stirred trailing willow branches that kissed the water’s edge. Orange and white koi glittered and darted just under the rippling surface, and a hand — his hand? — tossed a rain of pellets to the fish. It didn’t hurt. It didn’t hurt at all.
He knew it was genjutsu. He knew. Sharingan. Kakashi shouldn’t be wasting the chakra, not with a skull still ringing with concussion, and gods knew what they might need to do to save themselves if Pakkun didn’t come back with rescuers. But he was grateful. So grateful. He didn’t even try to break it. |
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