| [May. 22nd, 2014|04:44 am] |
When he drifted back, the bandage-mask was firmly re-wrapped, Katsuko hadn’t raised her head from his neck, and Genma was finishing up with ointment and new bandages on the shallower cuts. They weren’t worth wasting chakra on, and judging by how Katsuko and Raidou looked, Genma needed to save as much energy as he could.
Kakashi sighed softly, breath curling back against his face. “Need ‘nother medic.”
“Yeah,” Genma said, sounding weary. “We do. I’ll work on that.” He stuck tape over the sunken needles, pinning the little cross-bars down against Kakashi’s skin, and marked each piece with a timestamp in medic’s purple pen. Then he tapped Katsuko’s outflung hand. “Your turn, Ueno.”
She made a grumbling sound against the side of Kakashi’s neck, and Kakashi realized she was more than half-asleep.
Genma’s mouth twitched. “Okay,” he said, and gestured at his clone. It hauled him up, helped him around to Katsuko’s side. Genma’s bad leg folded when he was halfway seated; he lurched, swearing, but managed to right himself before he fell off the edge of the platform.
When he settled into a comfortable position, his clone shivered once with a ripple of collapsing chakra, and vanished. Finally used up.
“Turn towards me, Ueno,” Genma said quietly.
She made various sounds of protest, but pulled away from Kakashi when Genma insisted. Genma leaned over her and tugged the blankets back into place, trapping the remaining chakra-heat before it dissipated. The cold wasn’t quite so bad now. Kakashi burrowed himself down until musty-smelling blankets covered the bandaged half of his face, and watched sleepily as Genma did medical things to his unwilling patient.
Morphine, bandages, chakra-healing, what looked like the beginnings of a splint…
A twilight drowse pulled Kakashi under, spiralling everything distant and shadowy. People moved around him. Voices murmured. Ryouma still wasn’t back, but the captain was close, and the air was warmer.
Bone snapped.
Katsuko yelled.
Kakashi jerked awake in a shattering of dream fragments, tight panic, and enough adrenaline for one violent movement. Everything blurred. Then it stopped, crystallizing around a picture that slowly made sense.
His hand, a half-inch away from Genma's breakable fingers. And Raidou's hand, broad and bandaged, wrapped around Kakashi's wrist.
“Easy, Hatake,” Raidou murmured. “He’s supposed to do that.”
Kakashi swallowed his hammering heartbeat down. “Don’ make her scream,” he managed, as the world folded in on itself.
Raidou caught him before he hit the mattress. |
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