Kakashi reached up and caught Ryouma’s wrist. The bandage was sweat-streaked and grimy, frayed where tanuki claws had raked it. Ryouma’s arm went stiff.

Kakashi said, “Why did you do it?”

Ryouma didn’t pretend ignorance. He didn’t pull his arm back, either. He kept his eyes on the sky, and his throat moved as he swallowed once. “I owed him. You. All of you.”

“For what?”

“ANBU Trials. He was the medic who saved me.” Ryouma turned his head, meeting Kakashi’s eye. “You know what you did.”

“Akiyama,” Kakashi guessed. Ryouma gave a single, short nod. Kakashi sighed, breath trapped warm against his mouth by his mask, and tugged Ryouma’s arm down to rest on his knee. He tapped his fingers against the bandage one by one, counting out: “Stopped Fukuda cutting my head off. Gave me two — three? — chakra transfusions. Didn’t let me get killed by a rockfall in Kiri.”

“Three,” Ryouma said. “It’s not the same. I’m your teammate, now. I wasn’t anything to you then.”

“Ah,” Kakashi said understandingly. “So if our positions had been reversed, you’d have let Akiyama cut my hand off?”

“Of course not!” Ryouma lurched back upright. “That’s still different. I only went after him because he said you— Anyway, you’re basically the Hokage’s son, you’ll be a jounin commander, you’ll probably be the next Hokage yourself. It’d be my duty to save you!”

Kakashi didn’t let frustration make him stupid. This mattered; he wanted to understand. “You went after Akiyama in the first place because he told you I was in danger; that’s how he caught you. Because I’m more important than you?”

“Well, yeah,” Ryouma said, as if Kakashi was being kind of dense for not seeing the obvious. Then he stopped, and added hurriedly: “But I mean, it’s not just because of Minato-sama. I don’t— He said someone had cut you up, that you were still bleeding, you were holed up and needed help. I wasn’t just gonna hand him my med-kit and walk off. Not after I knew you.”

Kakashi frowned. “But you didn’t know me. You’d just met me. And you punched me when you met me.”

“Well, you were being an asshole when I first met you,” Ryouma said reflexively. “But you stopped. You listened to me. You probably thought I was getting all worked up over nothing, even Shibata-sama thinks I should share my jutsu, but you listened. And you came back and talked to me afterward.”

And the next time they’d met, Ryouma had thrown all his ANBU dreams sideways because Akiyama had said Kakashi was bleeding in a hole. Ryouma might call it duty, but Kakashi was certain Ryouma just didn’t think his own survival mattered that much. Akiyama had used Kakashi’s name, but he probably would have gotten the same results no matter what he’d said.

“Why is your life worth less?” Kakashi asked.