Kakashi’s mouth tightened. There hadn’t been much room for hope, but disappointment was still sharp and painful. He swallowed it down, along with the hot-ice ache in his head and the fear of not remembering, and tried to get back on track.

“How badly are you hurt?”

“Smashed my face up pretty good. It's bloody… Can't tell if I'm woozy from bleeding or just from smacking my head around." Ginta hesitated, and Kakashi felt the nervous-tic squeeze of fingers tightening around his arm and chest. "I can't remember if I took a blood pill. Pakkun told me to, I think…"

Oh, fantastic. Kakashi closed his eyes against the darkness. The only person with a working memory was who-knew-where, and they were trapped in a hole in the ground.

“Are you still bleeding?” he asked.

"Not a lot.” Ginta drew a shaky-sounding breath. “It's… Hurts too much to put pressure on it. It's mostly stopped, I think."

“Take a blood pill. Even if you double-dose, you’re probably too low to stroke out.” At least he could remember that. Kakashi found Ginta’s hands in the dark, one wrapped around his chestplate and tangled in the strap, the other clenched hard around his upper arm. They were both freezing; Kakashi’s hands were just as bad. “Let go, jackass,” he said. “I need to feel where the roof is. Have you got a glo-stick?”

“It’s low. Don’t sit up all the way.” Ginta unclenched his hand from Kakashi’s armour, moving stiff and slow, but didn’t let go of Kakashi’s arm. Kakashi could feel him fumbling at his belt, awkwardly trying to get at the pouches that were half-crushed between them. Ginta’s breath hissed and hitched, catching on his teeth. Kakashi tried to lift up.

There was no room. When he shoved the blanket aside and reached out, his fingers found stone immediately. The wall to the left was mostly smooth, broken by a heavy crack that had shafted through it -- a bunker wall? Above there were tumbled slabs of concrete, barely the full stretch of an arm away. If he sat up, he’d crack his head on them. Behind them...

His fingers touched fur just as Ginta found a glo-stick and snapped it.

“Ha,” Ginta breathed. “And that’s jackass, genius,” he said, with a laugh that fell flat. In the sudden sick glow of green light, Kakashi could see the fracture-pattern of broken rock all around them. Far too close.

“We need a new joke,” he said, twisting carefully. His whole body flared with pummelled agony; when he moved his legs, rocks slithered and shifted. There was nothing to brace himself on except Ginta and a narrow strip of space to Ginta’s right, where the floor was covered in shards of broken tile.

When Kakashi got his first look at Ginta’s face, his breath stopped.

A lancing cut had gouged Ginta’s cheek almost to the bone. Clotted blood and parted flesh glistened darkly, powdered white at the edges with clinging rock dust. His nose was obviously broken, still trickling a thin stream of red over cut lips and a raw-looking mouth. His left eye was black, swollen half-closed. The whole lower half of Ginta’s face looked like a carnival mask, painted in gore, flaking with old blood and grime. There were clean tracks cut by tears.

Behind him, Baiji’s dark eyes glittered in the glo-stick light. The dog’s massive body was curled around Ginta, acting as a back-rest and the only source of warmth. He didn’t react when Kakashi looked at him; his breathing was slow and steady, trance-like.

Kakashi bit his lip and tasted blood -- his mask was soaked in it. His face was covered in it, he realized with mounting horror, and very little of it smelled like his.

He raked his mask down. “Take a blood pill,” he said, voice so sharp it cracked. “I need your med-kit. Do you have it?”