These people were out of their fucking minds.

Haruichi had needed all of ten minutes in ANBU to realize this, and once he had done the fact just circled in his head like a mantra. Like the band of green sealed over his forehead, utterly inescapable. These people were all, without exception or reprieve, out of their fucking minds. Nearly every single person Haruichi had encountered in the building in the forty or so hours he'd been there had left him with the impression that he had boarded the ship of the damned... and not one individual aboard had realized they had not only begun to sink, but that the sharks were making off with their limbs.

Still, it was better than home. Haruichi had been the only one to really see what was going on there too (and now had the screaming migraines, sealed forehead and exiled-on-pain-of-death status to prove it) and he had decided around hour two of this journey down the rabbit hole that he was going to be as vocal in his malcontent here as he had been there. These people were utter lunatics, but now they had a medic on the scene and he'd be damned if their traumatized, injured, routinely suicidal and/or psychotic elite asses weren't being medically seen to.

Haruichi was walking along, musing hard on this and cursing fluently as a fifteen-year-old boy knows how to, when he spotted a set of faint but bloodied shoe prints leading along to the stairwell. His white eyes narrowed accusingly at them, his teeth gritted slightly and a hiss of pure disapproval and incredulity left him. He checked he was armed, ditched the bandages he'd been carrying at the side of the corridor, and slammed open the door of the stairwell with all the charm, volume and grace of a crocodile with a fuuma shuriken in its eye.

He spotted one of the agents making a valiant attempt at scaling the stairs, holding his arm and looking the very picture of a noble, uncomplaining, and self-sacrificing ANBU. Oh, yes indeed - Haruichi had had just about enough of this!

"What the hell is going on here?" Haruichi demanded, arms crossed and voice plenty loud enough to carry in the confined stairwell. "Do you have any idea how much blood you've tracked all over the floor?"

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Kakashi jerked as a voice shattered the peaceful calm of his Everest stairwell, and winced as that jolted his arm. He glanced over his shoulder and discovered his accuser was a short, barefoot Hyuuga with a chip on his shoulder. He was young looking, and had no armour to compliment his lack of shoes. The naked, raw-looking tattoo on his forehead, set squarely between arched eyebrows, marked him out as a member of the branch family.

None of which explained why the hell he was yelling at Kakashi.

"It's not mine," he said finally, which was mostly true. "And it adds some colour to the place. I didn't know Hyuuga were stooping to custodial roles now, but if it really bothers you there's probably a mop somewhere. Have fun." Kakashi turned his back on the man--teenager? Boy?--and resumed his attack on the stairs. Two and a half flights to go.

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Haruichi's arched left eyebrow twitched. The way the tails of tigers about to pounce twitch. He was sure there was a mop around somewhere too, and he had a good mind to go fetch it and then return and use it to beat some common sense into this other boy's ANBU's skull - then he'd be having some fun. But somehow, incredibly, self-control of some degree got its claws into him and instead he stalked up the stairs to stand a step down from the landing the silver-haired ninja was pathetically clambering up to.

"Yes, the colour you're dripping is a particularly startling shade of Suicidal Idiocy, I believe it's the tone of the season next to hints of Brainless Incompetence."

Toes tapping silently on the stair in annoyance, he continued to glare in assessment at his patient (whether he thought he was or not) and determined with one look that not only was his arm broken (if not fractured), but he had at least one burn on him (the smell was there) and was about to fall down comatose or close to it in a stimulant crash.

"Come with me down to the Infirmary. It turns out I did indeed stoop to the job of mopping up your sorry hide."

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Kakashi let go of his arm to grab onto the steel banister and steady himself, upward progress arrested now the Hyuuga brat was blocking the way. His hound mask was pushed to one side of his head, which meant the apparently insane ninja--he had to be a ninja, most Hyuuga were, and only ninja ever got this stupid around other ninja--could really appreciate the one-eyed glare Kakashi was giving him. "It goes stunningly with the Unwanted Interference you're oozing all over the stairs, then. Well done us."

If he really focused he could drag up some actual killing intent and hope it was enough to make the Hyuuga drop down dead. Or at least fall over for a bit. Kakashi wasn't entirely sure he was currently capable of delivering a blow that was up to accomplishing the task.

"There's no medic in the Infirmary," he drawled, letting his words lengthen into something entirely more irritating then a simple snap would be. "Which is unfortunate, because if you don't get out of my way you're going to need one."

Fuck the fact that the world was blurring, he was an ANBU now. ANBU could fight under any conditions.

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For the sake of that grating little drawl, Haruichi oh-so-quietly scowled and didn't for a second bat an eye for the death-glare being hurled at him from the other ANBU's dark eyed depths. There was a moment to wonder why his other eye was covered (because chances were astronomically against him being allowed in ANBU with only one working eye... surely) or why his face was mostly hidden by a mask but Haruichi, with the triage instinct of a pragmatic bastard, decided that if he was going to ponder anything, it'd damn well be what mattered.

"You're bloody right there's no medic in the Infirmary. He's standing in Stairwell Two inbetween the first and ground floors being pathetically bitched at by a patient who can barely stand," Haruichi snapped authoritatively, his impatience showing - pale as this one probably usually was, nobody should be as white as the small patch of skin he could see was. "And unless you want me to kick you down these stairs and have even more injuries to practice my healing arts on, you'll stop climbing and come and get some proper medical attention right now."

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Kakashi studied the supposed medic and his identical double, blinking hard until the two resolved into one person. He'd already noticed the Hyuuga was short, young, and barefoot, but now he was picking out other details. A white t-shirt and black combats did not a medic's uniform make. Nor did he see a hitai-ate or scarlet spiral tattoo, or even a set of dogtags to declare the teenager's claim to be a medic as true. The attitude gave him a point in that regard, but for all Kakashi knew he could be a snotty, suicidal civilian that had gotten horribly lost and wanted to pick a fight. Civilians were insane, you never knew what they could do.

"Been to the hospital already," he said with perfect honesty and a scowl. "If you're really a medic you should go there and help people who actually need it." Stopping had been a mistake. Stopping mid-staircase had definitely been a critical error in judgement. Kakashi renewed his hold on the railing and steadied himself. Either the Hyuuga was screaming or there was a roar in his ears, and that was never good. He jerked his head hard enough to crack his neck and locked his knees before he carried out the Hyuuga's threat for him and pitched his own way down the steps. "You can try kicking me," he added, raising his voice to speak over the noise. "Just as long as you don't mind losing a foot."

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Despite himself, Haruichi glanced left and right and up in an effort to locate the reason this half-dead moron had suddenly felt the need to make himself even more loudly heard. As if anyone with an ounce of common sense would broadcast their idiocy on all frequencies like he was doing. "I get the feeling dealing with you people is going to mean taking that risk," Haruichi snarled, his temper finally flaring up in indignant frustration - how the hell was he supposed to take care of any of these lunatics if this was what came of it? "Because like it or not, this perpetual self-sacrificing pity-party you twats in black have going on here has been crashed. Your old medic is dead, I'm here now. Unfortunate as you may find it, life goes on. Now turn around and get moving unless you want me to try and treat you right here."

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Kakashi knew the old medic was dead, that was why he'd made the--unnecessary--trip to the hospital. When he'd joined ANBU a fortnight back, he hadn't been surprised to learn their health plan was fucked. It made sense. Everyone was dead. Only fitting the medic was, too.

Kakashi didn't like where that train of thought led him, so he kicked it aside.

"Do you normally find it so hard to take no for an answer?" he demanded, still managing to drawl. The world was starting to slip sideways. He couldn't hear over the roar in his ears. "Because that speaks of a serious character flaw. You should go away and deal with that." There were three steps to the landing, and then another two flights of stairs. He could make that. He could definitely make that. "Now for preference."

Kakashi pushed himself away from the railing, wavered, caught his balance and took a step. Then another. That put him on eye level with the Hyuuga. Two white eyes delivered a glare that was almost as effective as Kakashi's one-eyed dark one. The Hyuuga was still blocking the way. Kakashi grabbed for the railing again and missed, lurching sideways until his hip cracked against iron. For a second he found a wincing moment of stability, fall arrested by the railing and the precise angle of his lean. Kakashi used that second to say the most important thing, glaring up with one pain-glazed eye through a fall of dirty hair. "You don't... you aren't Rin."

The roar was a thunder-crack through his head, drowning everything else out. Black crowded Kakashi's vision, then the world went away.

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Though he'd seen it coming, Haruichi still blinked in surprise when the ANBU in front of him fell unconscious. Well, tried to fall - because Haruichi's hands snatched out and grabbed the taller boy by the shoulder and elbow, pushed him securely against the wall and there was absolutely no more falling to be done now that idiot-brains wasn't in charge of himself anymore.

Not that Haruichi thought he had been when he snarled that last part out loud. Because now he had the sinking sensation he knew who this was, and what might be going on.

Scowling, he took a half-second to work out how to do this right, then levered the rest of the unconscious agent's weight into his care, shifted him around so his feet dragged on the ground but the rest was heaved up in front of the medic's chest and Haruichi managed to awkwardly drag him down the stairs backwards, with only his booted heels thumping one by one down the steps.

Hell, that was what you got for passing out on a flight of stairs. And this was Haruichi being nice, because even now he was severely tempted to drag him all the way to the Infirmary by his thatchy silver hair.

But no, he thought as he elbowed open the door to the stairwell and started dragging his patient through the hall and past the highly bemused stare of the chuunin at the desk, not this one - even if he royally deserved it. Haruichi managed to shove open the door to the stairs for the basements and kept going until he was back in the familiar and safe surroundings of the Infirmary. Another heave of effort and he had him up on the metal exam table, even managing to nudge a pillow under his head before it thumped off the hard metal.

The door was shut. The lights all turned on and the kit-cart he'd spent two hours yesterday re-assembling and stocking wheeled over. Haruichi looked at the unconscious and bleeding scrap of life on his exam table and gritted his back teeth fiercely. Idiot. Then he let the few memories he had of Rin-sensei flit through his mind and sighed. Idiot with a reason, he supposed. Not that he'd admit it ever.

"The infamous Hatake Kakashi," he muttered, getting his surgical tools out and wondering how long this kind of surgery was supposed to take. Haruichi had dealt broken bones before, during the Kyuubi attack, but that'd been pre-amble until they got to the hospital. Plus Kakashi had more than just the broken arm to worry about. Burnt hand, chakra exhaustion, plenty of deep tissue bruising and what looked like dehydration to some degree.

Well, he'd needed the practice hadn't he? Haruichi got to work.

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Kakashi woke up on his side on what felt like a morgue table. For a confused moment he wondered if he'd died on the staircase and there'd been some sort of celestial mix up, then he remembered he didn't believe in that sort of thing. Plus there was a pillow. And a blanket. Morgue tables generally came with neither. Kakashi opened his eyes a crack and realized he could see with both of them, he closed the left hurriedly before the sting could bite into his face.

It was hard to think. He was tired enough that it hurt, but he didn't know where he was. That was never a good state to wake up in. He needed to figure it out before he could decide if it was safe enough to go back to sleep. The last thing he remembered was fighting a losing battle up a staircase and getting taken down because... his eyebrows drew down. Because there had been a someone that wouldn't move. A medic...

Which was about the time Kakashi realized that while his left arm still ached, it wasn't the grating, ugly pain of before. It was a dull feeling, easily tolerable. He looked down carefully to see a light splint stretched from elbow to wrist. His right hand felt perfectly fine, even when he clenched his fingers into a fist. A little flare on the back of that same hand announced the presence of an IV needle. He followed the slender, transparent tube with up to an IV stand. Intravenous fluids mostly. Dextrose to raise his blood sugar, something that was probably a mild sedative--which explained the cotton fluff feeling in his head--and a third bag of what might be painkillers.

That seemed like overkill.

His armour was gone, and his hitai-ate along with it, but his mask was still in place, drawn firmly up to the bridge of his nose. He couldn't smell the scent of anyone but himself on it, which meant it hadn't been touched. There was a blanket. And a pillow. Every single one of his bruises had been healed with the care he only knew one person possessed.

Kakashi turned his head slightly, searching, and felt a hope so savage it burned him when he found what he wanted to see. A small, slim, dark-haired person seated on the floor, surrounded by medical files.

It hadn't been true, the last three weeks. It hadn't been true.

His voice broke from a very long way away. "Rin?"

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Though he'd been sitting in silence with only the shuffling of paper and the scratch of a pen for company for over six hours, Haruichi didn't for an instant think he'd misheard Kakashi's first word on waking. He refrained from looking up for as long as it took to complete the cross against a deceased agent's name and then tilted his face up so he could look at his patient and be recognized in return.

"No," he replied. It felt like he'd just punched him. "Hyuuga Haruichi. Don't move, you've taken a lot of stress lately and you need to stay still."

Haruichi looked down again, giving Kakashi a moment to compose himself if he wanted it. He'd long been familiar with the tricks grief played on the mind and heart, and though there were times he still expected to hear his parents' voices when he woke up he'd had the luck to never slip like that over Hinaji.

His heart seemed to give a twist in his chest and he rubbed it with the heel of his hand, of course that was why. He couldn't forget his cousin was gone because that was the reason he was still here. Carrying on her work. Speaking of which, he got to his feet and paced over to the sink - quite deliberately emmanating coldness in the way he didn't look at the room's other occupant. He fetched a straw and a small glass of water and paused about a foot from the bed on the side Kakashi faced. It would make it easier to keep distance in some way, somehow Haruichi just knew this. You were supposed to stay detached as you could. "Can you move all your fingers and toes?"

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Kakashi's hope turned on him like a blade, and gouged a fresh piece from the black hole lurking beneath his ribcage. He endured the bright new hurt, waiting for it to fold back in on itself and become a shadow of the real thing. Waiting for it to become bearable again. It was a foolish hope, but there wasn't any alternative he was willing to take. He missed her--them--with every shattered beat of his very stupid heart, but he wasn't willing to join them yet. Not yet.

He wasn't willing to be here, either. Stuck in this tiny room with a teenage Hyuuga who didn't listen and wasn't her. Who did her job because she wasn't here to do it. Whose ice struck sparks off Kakashi's grief and spun it into rage because that was easier to deal with.

Shoving himself up one-handed on the table was an exercise in solid willpower. Kakashi curled his left hand close to his chest as he did so, and made it upright with a faint gasp. His expression stayed perfectly neutral. Turning to swing his legs off the frozen metal almost overbalanced him, he checked himself and tried again. "Where's my armour?"

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Haruichi was somewhat amazed with himself. He'd actually known Kakashi wouldn't sit still before he'd even thought about it - hence the glass of water. For the first time he had a sudden uneasy feeling he more than thought he knew what he was doing, he actually did know what he was doing. Pushing that away to focus on what was at hand, he gave Kakashi a look that expressed the purest malcontent in his white eyes and kept a hold on the glass with one hand. "The more pressing question is where's your common sense, Hatake," he said evenly, not making a move to stop him. If he managed to get off the table he was going to find walking... hm... problematic. "I told you to stay still, and not because I'm enjoying your sterling company."

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"And I told you to leave me the hell alone," Kakashi said, just as evenly. "For pretty much exactly the same reason." The floor looked a disturbingly long distance away. A two foot drop was nothing for a ninja that could fling himself a dozen times that distance to land neatly on a wire, but suddenly the gulf between metal table and grey carpet seemed a whole lot more difficult. Kakashi used the time spent steeling himself for the drop to pull the IV out of his hand with a little jerk. The rip of tape tearing free from skin was oddly loud in the small room, as was the clatter when he let the needle fall.

Now he just needed to stand up.

Kakashi eyed the Hyuuga, weighing the likelihood of an attempted braining with the glass he was holding, and pushed himself up with his right hand, lifting his hips to slide off the table. His feet hit the floor with a gentle slap of bruised skin against rug and Kakashi let out a sharp breath. That relief lasted right up until his knees buckled. He fell, twisted, caught the edge of the table with his elbow and added a nice bruise to his arm before he hit the floor.

Then the table tipped over.

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Haruichi's free hand shot out, catching the table before it could crush Kakashi flat and not moving it back as he looked down at the ANBU crumpled on the floor. Out of their fucking minds. There it was again. Proof positive of the motto for this abode of the damned; Haruichi was going to have it painted over the front door. Once he'd slept, which he was going to have to do at some point - but not until he'd seen to his first and only patient.

"Clearly I need to bolt this down and fit it with restraints," he remarked idly enough, glass of water undisturbed in his hand. He glanced to Kakashi, then to the water. Well, the straw had apparently been wishful thinking. Lucky thing Haruichi was a practical creature and knew more than one use for just about anything.

Kakashi was sprawled there on his back, looking utterly incensed and mournfully woebegotten. Haruichi shoved the table upright so there was no more danger of it squishing Kakashi, then removed the straw and quite deliberately tipped the contents of the glass right upon Kakashi's head.

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For shock value, nothing quite compared to an icy splash of water in the face you weren't expecting. Kakashi didn't yelp, he was too busy gathering his wits from the fall and twisting to one side to bother hissing like a startled cat. Most of the water caught him directly in the face, despite his--maddeningly slow, damn those sedatives--twist, and soaked his mask and hair both before dripping away to form a small, dirty puddle on the carpet.

There is a shinobi code that translates, in its roughest form, to: do not kill the medics, dumbass. But for an echoing moment of fury, Kakashi was sorely tempted. He did the next best thing by shoving himself around quick enough to hook Haruichi's--he was going to remember that name--right ankle with his healed hand, and yank the medic off his feet. The little push of chakra into his fingertips helped his grip, even if it made Kakashi's head ache fiercely. He considered it a fair trade off.

He made damn sure Haruichi landed in that puddle.

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Sure enough, Haruichi did land in that puddle. Mostly because he was too surprised by Kakashi's little counter-attack in the first moment, and spent the second moment tossing the glass across the room so he didn't smash it when he landed and take somebody's eye out. An ickly squelch sounded under the thud of Haruichi hitting the floor, knee, tailbone, shoulder, head - the last of those being the more problematic, given what had been done to his head since he'd last slept.

The impact of his skull on the carpet cracked around his temples to drive right into his forehead, where his seal gave a furious screech of pain at the disturbance. Haruichi bit the inside of his cheek to not let a sound out, trying to deaden the pain, and forced himself to sit up - because he was in the middle of something and he could be crippled with brain damage later once this little prick was seen to. It was with all that ferocity in mind that he forced himself to sit and glare at him, save that...

...well, his vision jarred and his expression was most certainly one of anger, but when Haruichi sat up and found himself looking at a half-dead ANBU, still clutching his ankle, glaring like fury, and having managed a feat like that - Haruichi wound up dizzily smirking. Impressed as all hell, and it must've been evident even though his hand was clutching hard at his throbbing forehead and he was having to look around his wrist at Kakashi's face.

"Damn, I'm good at my job," he observed, wavering slightly and soaking wet and utterly self-satisfied.

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That clinched it; Haruichi was insane. Which probably meant he was ANBU's new medic. "Good for you," Kakashi spat, releasing his ankle, and pushing himself stiffly back out of range, "Because you can't dodge or break-fall worth a damn." The Hyuuga looked like he was in pain. Pale--well, paler--and wincing around his smirk, holding his head with one hand. That either had something to do with the inflamed looking mark branded into his forehead, or the ugly sound his skull had made when it had connected with the floor. Or both.

Good. That gave Kakashi the opportunity to get the hell out of here. Once he sorted out this walking thing, anyway.

Standing up was the first--literal--step. And he needed to find his armour. He needed to hand his report in, too, which was half completed and stowed away in his armour. That had been his plan after sorting out his injuries, but the medic had apparently taken care of that for him. Kakashi felt his insides twist a little. That wasn't right. It was Rin's job--

She's dead, Kakashi told himself savagely, and pressed both palms flat against the floor. He locked his elbows, shifted most of his weight to his right hand--the left still felt miserably tender--and began to lever himself up.

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Slowly pushing himself up to his feet, Haruichi knocked his hair off his shoulder and watched Kakashi's struggling progress across the floor. "At least I can stand up," he remarked, turning his back on Kakashi as he reached up with one hand to fix the IV rig the idiot had so carelessly ruined. His other hand was still pressed against his aching forehead, but the pain was slowly dying back and Haruichi wondered if he should or shouldn't care so much about it since it was nowhere near as excruciating as having the seal activated.

For not the first time, and certainly not the last, he forced thoughts of his family and the seal away and threw himself into his work instead - once the IV rig was righted and the tubes capped, ready for new inserts to be fitted, he deigned to look back at Kakashi - who was guaranteed to spend the next few minutes flailing around like a moron either looking for his armour or an escape route while trying and failing to stand properly. He'd fail on all three counts, of course, because Haruichi had locked his armour in the closet and locked the door to the Infirmary, and standing was going to be a problem for a guy with bruises the size of coffee-rings on his heels. Haruichi might have fixed everything that the enemy had done to him, but there'd been no way in hell he was fixing the injuries Kakashi had inflicted upon himself. He had to draw the line somewhere

It was vaguely entertaining, though, watching him tire himself out even more - even if Haruichi was feeling an angry buzz at the way all his good work in making Kakashi healthy, healed and comfortable was being torn apart. He wondered if this idiot had learned a single thing from Rin-sensei in the years they'd been together, because he was most certainly disrespecting just about everything she'd ever have done with her life acting like this. Not that Haruichi would be bringing up her name, viewing it as a line ill-judged to cross. He wasn't going to kill himself with idiocy so long as he was in the Infirmary, Haruichi could be patient. To a point. The young Hyuuga sighed internally, glancing up to the clock on the wall (three a.m.? joy.) and then wringing water out his shirt before going back to sit and file the medical reports. "Once you've finished being a moron let me know," he called over a folder. "Should the day ever come, that is."

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The door was locked. Not something that would ordinarily prove much of a challenge for a ninja of Kakashi's level, but an ANBU lock tended to include seals, traps, and a whole host of other nasty surprises. None of which Kakashi could currently determine, because he was still on the damn floor, he didn't have his damn lock picks, and he possessed about enough chakra to fill a sneeze. A small sneeze. Haruichi could have blocked the door with a cardboard box and he still wouldn't have been able to get around it.

Well, maybe if it was a small cardboard box...

When he'd finally given up the fight against exhaustion, gravity, and common sense, Kakashi found himself propped with his back against the immovable door, both hands curled close and resting in his lap, and eyes that were too busy closing to be focused on glaring. Between the ugly headache still crouching behind his temples, the dull ache wrapped around his left arm, and the sickening cold that spoke of low chakra, he was starting to regret ripping out the IV. Just a little.

It was four flights of stairs up to his room. He'd run a hundred times that distance and more to get home, it was utterly infuriating not to be able to make it that last little bit...

Kakashi wrenched his eyes open again with a little full-body jerk, shocked to realize he'd fallen asleep. The room snapped back into focus, and Haruichi's face along with it. Kakashi gave him a dirty look on principle, trying to work out who the hell he was again.

Medic. Right. Just the wrong one.

"What do you want?" Kakashi rasped finally.

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The exact same thing as you, thought Haruichi. And neither of us is going to get them back so get up off the goddamned floor.

At least he didn't say it outloud, though he wondered where on earth he was getting this self-control. Instead Haruichi set the papers he'd been reading aside and got back up to his feet, padding barefoot across the floor and picking his way gracefully around the puddles and dirt without thinking about it. His forehead was still stinging, but it was manageable, so as he crouched down on the balls of his feet and tipped his head to examine Kakashi's masked, pallid face there wasn't a sign of pain on his own.

"None of your business," he replied, taking in the state of his hands and the blood oozing quietly from the torn out IV before glancing back up to Kakashi's face. "Though I'd appreciate it if you came to your bloody senses, Hatake Kakashi. Fun as it is throwing water at you and watching you flounder pathetically in your own misery and misguided pride I have about a hundred other agents left alive to concern myself with as well - plus I need to find my own apartment in this cheery abode of the damned."

He rocked back slightly on his heels and raised an eyebrow slightly. "Are you ready to behave yourself? Because I'm dragging you back to the exam table by the hair this time if not."

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"You'd break something trying," Kakashi informed him levelly. Haruichi smelled like iron-water and stress. Anger and the lingering edge of whatever hurt he'd sustained, wrapped around the clinical, hard-edged scent of medical supplies. That particular cocktail was doing nothing to ease Kakashi's headache. Neither was the way Haruichi had closed in suddenly, getting right up in his face. Kakashi couldn't help tensing, forcing weary muscles to work.

"Now that we've established that I don't like you and you don't like me," he could sit up, he really, really could, "and neither one of us wants me to be here, can you give me my damn armour back so I can take a soldier pill and leave?" He could almost sit up. A soldier pill would be enough to get him up the stairs. More then enough. He could sleep off the crash in the privacy of his own room. "Then you can go apartment hunting. I recommend the first floor." He didn't want Haruichi anywhere near the third.

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Eyeing Kakashi, Haruichi had to agree with the first part of that - if he had to haul Kakashi back to the exam table he'd definitely break something trying, nominally Hatake's face. "If I could be shot of you, rest assured that you would have been out on your ear with a foot up your ass hours ago, idiot," Haruichi snapped - his minimal patience finally failing in the face of Kakashi's utter disrespect. "However my new job involves refraining from such behaviour in lieu of keeping you fit and healthy. You have to stay here with an IV in your arm for five more hours. You can spend the time on the floor or you can spend it on the table, I don't give a damn which, but you will spend it being treated."

Haruichi's white eyes were focussed furiously on Kakashi's, not backing down for hell nor high water. He had had it with this nonsense. Absolutely had it. As if Kakashi's need to bleed and screw around carelessly with his health was more important than his work as the medic. As if any medic's importance was to be pushed aside like that: Hinaji wouldn't have stood for it, Rin-sensei wouldn't have stood for it, and Haruichi wasn't going to stand for it.

The difference was Haruichi was in ANBU now, and ANBU were allowed to knock hell out of people who got in the way of completing their mission. Haruichi wondered if that was what it was going to take. That or a syringe of sedative... oh wait, that was right - he didn't have any yet. So knocking hell out of people it may just have to be. A fact he wasn't about to conceal as he glared at Kakashi and got up to his feet, temper clearly frayed and biting his tongue to keep from saying any of the hundred ugly things at his disposal.

"Think about it, Kakashi. Have you ever known a medic to take this shit from a patient?" he snapped, already having turned away.

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Definitely angry.

If Kakashi had been feeling better, he would have smiled. Anger was perfect. Anger was easy. You knew where you stood with anger, even if it was on the wrong side of a fist. Or a wit like a blade, which he could thoroughly appreciate. Haruichi had anger in spades, already colouring to rage, unless Kakashi missed his guess.

He spent an idle second wondering just how much it would take to push Haruichi far enough to snap.

Probably not much.

And then Haruichi said his last little piece and Kakashi found some anger of his own. It was riddled around the black hole in his chest, infested and rotten underneath his breastbone. He opened his mouth, furious enough to bite, and almost choked when nothing came out but laughter. Brittle and quiet, but definitely laughter. It felt like nausea given sound. "M-maybe you j-just need to work on your b-bedside manner," he managed, closing his eye so he didn't have to see the wrong person standing in front of him. "D-doorside manner. Whichever."

Suddenly he wanted Rin back so much it hurt, even while bitter humour tangled up in his mask.

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Haruichi managed not to roll his eyes or hurl something at Kakashi's backtalk, he was too busy focussing all the energy he had on cramming his temper back into a small box in the back of his head before he did something he'd regret. Tsunade-sensei always told Hinaji and the medical students that they had to keep their tempers no matter who they were dealing with or what was going on. But then, Haruichi had always thought that was rich coming from a woman who could and would punch down a building when somebody pissed her off.

Still, the trickle of hysteria he was hearing didn't sound like a good thing. Haruichi clenched his back teeth set about busying himself in getting the exam table braced up against the wall (lest Kakashi decide to try to crush himself with it during another escape attempt) and only deigned to answer after he'd managed that. "Manners are the preserve of people who give a damn what the patient thinks," Haruichi informed him, crossing back over and eyeing Kakashi with a view to hoisting him by the scruff of the neck and hauling him to the bed. "If I've learned anything from your glittering example it's most certainly not to take that into consideration." A pause, short and considering. "Which part of you hurts least so I can move you?"

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"Do you know the definition of persistence, sensei?" said Kakashi, without opening his eyes. "'Continuing in a course of action without regard to discouragement, opposition, or previous failure'." The laughter was still there, rippling under the surface of his words. He didn't know how to make it go away. "Which is basically a colourful way of saying if you touch me one more time, I'll break your hands off at the wrist."

There is a shinobi code that translates, in its roughest form, to do not kill the medics, dumbass. If Haruichi didn't heed the warning, Kakashi would feel more than justified in calling his death a suicide. Well, he probably wouldn't go that far--protect your teammates, you had to protect your teammates--but he wouldn't feel bad about inflicting a few bruises.

Probably.

He needed to get up. He needed to get up and get away before he broke something. Before he shattered all over the stupid wet grey carpet. Before he ended Haruichi's brand new career and his own in one move.

The door was the only thing in the way.

Kakashi didn't need to actually go through the door, he just needed to get past it. He opened both eyes, focusing on Haruichi with one weary blue-grey and one wrecked scarlet swirl, using up chakra he didn't really have to track the medic's intent. Tears dripped down the left side of his face as Kakashi wrenched his hands up and forced them through three very simple seals. "Give my armour to the quartermaster, I'll pick it up later." Energy gathered, chakra drew together with a violence that made his inner coils tremble, and the copy-nin translocated himself up one floor. He'd been aiming for three.

I really don't like this carpet, Kakashi thought as he collapsed on it. His stomach apparently agreed with the sentiment and threw up to prove it. Kakashi yanked his mask down just in time.

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Haruichi's eyes had narrowed to angry little slits at Kakashi's words (that's what you got for trying to be considerate around here, he supposed) and then widened in utter surprise when Kakashi was suddenly no longer there.

Alright. That was it. That was absolutely, unquestionably, inexorably it. Haruichi's temper snapped like the frayed rubber-band it was and he was back on his feet in a millisecond, and without a second's consideration for the face he'd just been sealed not two full days ago and certainly hadn't slept since, he activated his Byakugan and went looking for the little bastard. The selfish, ignorant, fucked-up little bastard that he was and wasn't it just as fucking well that Rin-sensei wasn't alive to see this. Hinaji too, since she'd have had more than a few choice words for what was about to happen and plenty of them would be aimed at her cousin.

He spotted a shape prone on the floor above, puke and angst all over the floor nearby. Yes. That'd be the one. Closing down his eyes and having to shove his palm against his aching forehead again, Haruichi unlocked and opened the closet door, dragged out Kakashi's armour by the strap, then unlatched and opened the Infirmary door before heading up the stairs.

Haruichi found Kakashi collapsed half on his side having thrown up on the floor. His immediate instinct was to re-break his arm and leave him there. He very, very, very nearly did it. Haruichi had been driven past caring if Arakaki-taichou threw him back onto the streets, or if his family caught and killed him; he was too tired and too angry to even think about anything except that he was drowning here. The grim, lunatic tides of ANBU were closing over his head and apparently he couldn't swim. He couldn't force the ANBU to be sensible, or to look after their health, or to let him treat them - not if he couldn't manage it with the first one he dealt with. And if he couldn't do that then it wouldn't be happening at all. Haruichi was a chuunin, he was a Hyuuga, and he'd been a soldier for a long time - but if Kakashi wasn't planning on accepting him for a medic then Haruichi would make sure he accepted for what else he was.

Pissed off.

Before Kakashi could say a word, not that he was likely to have had much to say, Haruichi had swung his armour right at his head and cracked him one for the ages. "That was for every medic who wasted their time and their energy on you," he snapped coldly and loudly. "And the next one will be for every person who took so much as a scratch for your sorry sake, and the rest will be because I fucking feel like it, Hatake! And what are you looking at?" Haruichi swivvelled his head to glare at the desk chuunin who'd been walking past the junction they were at and had stopped with his mouth quite agape. "Haven't you heard of doctor-patient confidentiality, get the hell on with your business!"

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That hurt.

In fact, that really hurt. Kakashi winced and bit back a yelp as his head met hard armour on one side and equally hard floor on the other. The fact that Haruichi had taken off his hitai-ate off earlier meant he lacked even that scant protection against minor concussion. The fact that he was too busy feeling like he'd ripped out all his chakra coils and braided them to block Haruichi's very basic hit was the most upsetting thing, though.

Well, that and the fact that it made him throw up again.

In the midst of all his dry-heaving, Kakashi decided he needed to stop thinking in facts. They weren't helping.

Neither was the chuunin staring at him, Haruichi, back at him, the mess he'd made on the carpet, Haruichi once again, and finally Kakashi's unmasked face, with wide green eyes. Kakashi growled. It hurt the acid-scorched mess that was now his throat, but it made the chuunin back up a hasty step. Then another when Kakashi dragged his hands underneath him and set them against the floor. In the time it took the copy-nin had realized there was absolutely no way he was getting up--about three seconds--the chuunin was a fast moving blur disappearing around the corner.

Kakashi slumped back down and considered what Haruichi had snarled at him. It took him less then three seconds to decide Haruichi no longer merited his Shit List. Haruichi deserved a brand new list all of his own. In fact, Haruichi deserved many things, including a throttling as soon as Kakashi could move.

Except he couldn't move.

He could, however, talk. Mostly. And Haruichi could damn well lip-read now if he couldn't hear Kakashi's voice clearly. "Every person who ever took a scratch on my account is dead, Hyuuga. They don't care how hard you hit me."

There was vomit on the floor. It was pretty much all Kakashi could smell. Obito's eye was still leaking salt-water down the left side of his face, even though he'd closed it. Stupid cry-baby Obito. At least he had Rin to keep him company. And Sensei. And half the damn village.

Everyone important.

Kakashi couldn't work his fingers with enough accuracy to drag his mask back up, but he could cover his lower face with one hand. It stopped Haruichi seeing the way his mouth twisted into an ugly broken line.

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"Then I guess this is purely for my benefit," Haruichi replied viciously, not about to plunge into self-pitying drivel along with Kakashi. Haruichi had loved people and he'd lost them, and he'd been left all alone - and irregardless of how much it tore him up inside and threatened to kill the better parts of his nature not one time had he ever ever felt sorry for himself for being the one left behind. Not once had he ever spat on the sacrifices his family had made in protecting and loving him by acting like it wasn't worth it. Like he wasn't worth it.

His forehead was aching now, straight through to his brain like little needles, so Haruichi snarled and clenched his fist around the strap of the armour, ready to swing again. And again. Until Kakashi wasn't able to keep him from healing him up.

Only... the blow didn't come. Haruichi's shoulder just wouldn't move. And in concentrating on the pain in his seal, Haruichi hadn't realized he'd been ignoring that Hinaji's heart didn't feel all that great either right now.

Hinaji always, always used to say he took things too strongly to heart. And here he was willing to beat a patient unconscious so he could treat him because he cared too much about the living and the dead. Hinaji used to say it was a good thing he didn't want to be a healer, because it took a different kind of heart to try and heal than it did to fight a war and she hadn't thought he knew how to be detached enough. Looking at Kakashi busy martyring himself on a carpet and half-seeing himself doing the same only hours ago back home on the compound's polished floor... Haruichi realized she'd been right.

Well, the girls always were. Haruichi listlessly ditched the armour, looked away down the hall where the other chuunin had vanished, and then reached down and grabbed Kakashi's unsplinted wrist, the one not hovering over his face. An exhausted and ugly sigh fell out of him and he started dragging Kakashi down the hall. "You're lucky I still care what they'd think. I already earned one slap from Rin-sensei, it strikes me as the height of poor behaviour to earn another when she's not around to deliver it."

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That also hurt.

Kakashi's snarl became a wince as Haruichi got a solid grip and dragged him by one wrist down the corridor. It struck him absurdly as something Sensei would have done. One of his very practical object lessons in actions and consequences and what happened when you did one without expecting the other. It also struck him that he couldn't do a damn thing about it. The translocation had wiped out most of his remaining chakra, draining it down to the very bare minimum that would just about keep him alive if he didn't get any smart jutsu ideas in the next few days. The sharingan would have to stay closed.

Kakashi had gotten used to living in a world where a blink at the wrong moment could kill him.

But the pain in his arm--shoulder, head, back, hip, anywhere you cared to name--and the nausea wrapped up with cold wasn't where Kakashi's current focus lay. Neither was it on the distressing fact that Haruichi had left the armour he'd just barely gotten broken in lying on the floor. His very tired mind had locked on one word and that was all he cared about. One blue-grey eye widened as he stared upside-down at Haruichi. "You kno--," Kakashi grimaced, "you knew Rin?" And there was something slightly more shocking. "She slapped you?"

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Dragging Kakashi around a corner at that moment neccessitated turning and checking he didn't haul the jounin's head into a skirting board, which was how Haruichi saw Kakashi looking up at him and Kakashi saw Haruichi's pink cheeks, which had coloured the instant he'd remembered the entirety of that episode with Rin-sensei. It wasn't the only thing that made him feel about five years old to recall, but it was one of the few that got itself to show without fail. Even now. Even now.

Ah bugger. Screw Kakashi's head, Haruichi turned right around again and kept tugging him along for the stairs. "She did. And as if you need to ask, of course I deserved it." Gritting his teeth, as much against this completely unexpected twist in his responses as for the sake of how heavy Kakashi suddenly seemed, Haruichi shouldered open the door that led to the stairs and managed to drag Kakashi in without letting the door swing shut on his fat head. There was a moment's deliberation where he considered the satisfaction that would come with tipping his superior officer down the stairwell in a manner akin to a slinky, but he banished it quickly.

Putting Kakashi's wrist down, Haruichi took a moment to breathe and calculate the angles, then finally glanced back to Kakashi's face. He was relieved that he wasn't capable of moving around anymore, and Haruichi reflected that it took a special kind of idiot to make their medic glad of that. "I'm picking you up now. If we fall to our deaths because I'm too tired the blame is squarely on you."

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Kakashi's vision was starting to tunnel again. The crack as his cheek hit the skirting didn't particularly help. He fought looming unconsciousness on the grounds that he actually wanted to hear the rest of that story. Haruichi's scent had changed, along with his skin tone, colouring from the lead-tones of anger and the bitter note of something that struck a chord with the black hole in Kakashi's chest, to a scent that was a whole lot warmer. A scent that was more him. A scent, Kakashi thought, that was definitely embarrassment.

That was a much better thing to focus on then anything else. Including the fact that he still couldn't move.

"Translocate?" he managed, forcing the word out of lips that felt numb. Riding along on someone else's translocation was always miserable, but it was a better thing then dying because a medic slipped on the stairs and dropped him on his head. Kakashi swallowed, too tired to pull a face at the taste of bile. "What'd y'do?"

Rin never slapped anyone. He'd known her five years and she'd never slapped him, even when he'd deserved it.

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Haruichi didn't much feel like confessing that he couldn't translocate to save his own life inside a building, not to mention the fact he didn't have the energy to try by this stage in the shenanigans. He felt even less like telling Kakashi how and why he'd earned a belt across the face from one of the most peaceable individuals the planet had ever known. Not least because if Rin-sensei had slapped him for it, he was more than sure Kakashi would find the motive to kill him.

"Ask Tsunade-sama if she ever comes back. I'm sure it's a tale she tells at parties." Haruichi replied shortly, but with no bite that his previous words had held, even though his cheeks went even redder. "And it's going to have to be carrying." With that he crouched down with bent knees and hauled Kakashi up much the same way he'd dragged him down in the first place, arms around his chest, back of his head against his breastbone, and started tugging him - bare, bruised heels dragging - down the stairwell. "This is going-" Breathe. Step. "-to be-" Breathe. Step. Step. "-absurdly sore-" Step. Step. Step. Breathe. Step. Step. "-and you deserve it."

Though Haruichi's focus was less on how un-fun it must be for Kakashi to be dragged with his heels thumping bruises upon bruises down the stairs and more on how much effort it was taking just to navigate the stairs backwards on the balls of his feet hefting a load like this. By the time they reached the Infirmary Haruichi was practically wobbly-kneed and the effort it took to elbow open the door, though his finest moment came when - upon levering Kakashi back onto the exam table at an entirely awkward angle he wound up slipping on a patient file he'd left on the floor and nearly fell on his face. Nearly, because he wound up catching himself on the exam table in possibly the most graceless save the world had ever seen. Haruichi yanked himself back up to his feet, hissing to himself about that, and got the IV into Kakashi's arm and taped it in this time and found the pillow for his grey-haired head again. "Go to sleep, Hatake," he muttered, too tired to think of much else to say.

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Haruichi was right about the absurdly sore. He was even, Kakashi conceded, probably right about the deserving it. That didn't make living through the experience of having bruises hammered into bruises and not being able to do anything about it any easier to take. Kakashi clenched his teeth hard enough to make his head ache, and forbid himself to whimper. He did swear quietly around the ninth step, and considered the possibility that he'd fractured both heels by the seventeenth, but he managed not to make a noise like a kicked dog, which was the thing that counted.

Kakashi might have been a genius, a ninja, a soldier, an ANBU, and the last survivor of far too many people, but he was also fifteen-years-old. Pride was not dead.

It did take another blow when Haruichi tossed him back on the table like a rag doll and put the damn needle back in his arm. But with the needle came painkillers that would make the world a little more liveable, and sedatives that would make sleep a little more survivable. Haruichi's semi-spectacular fall also prompted a half-smile to flicker over Kakashi's unmasked face for a second. For once it wasn't spiteful. It was just... funny.

Maybe the drugs were getting to him.

Kakashi exercised every scrap of willpower he had left and managed to turn on his side, putting his back to the wall and his face half into the pillow. If he opened his eyes he could see all of the medic bay. No one could sneak up on him. Not that he could do a great deal about it if they did, but at least he'd know about it. His new view gave Kakashi a fairly decent look at Haruichi's face. The curse seal looked blistered, red raw and painful. Between that, the shadows under his eyes, and the parchment pallor of his skin, Haruichi looked years older then the boy Kakashi had met on the stairway.

Welcome to ANBU.

Kakashi didn't realize his eyes had flickered closed, nor did he realize he'd said the last thought out loud. The last thing he remembered before the black rose up and swallowed him whole was mumbling, "Y'u, too... medics need it more..."

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Oh, would that Haruichi was prone to moments of cammaraderie in the face of unimaginable oppressive odds and ungodly situations the likes of which his father's fathers had never imagined; Kakashi might have caught a break there and made a pal. But he wasn't. As Kakashi had so surely and glaringly confirmed there really was nobody left who gave a damn about him and Haruichi had decided upon his example that the only way he was going to keep his own sanity intact while he hid here (which might be for the rest of his life) was to not give these people an inch of slack. He wouldn't be able to psychologically bitchslap all of them to their senses, and it'd barely worked here even though it'd come at a price to himself. The fact was that whether he was proud of it or not, it had taken a blow to the head to get Kakashi back to the Infirmary, and if that was going to be a regular occurrance then Haruichi was going to have to silence his qualms and his memories. He'd do his job like any shinobi on a mission and that would be that. He would. He could.

Welcome to ANBU in-bloody-deed.

Haruichi pushed Kakashi onto his back once he was sure he was out, and straightened his arms. His feet would be sore, but fine, same with the large corner-shaped bruise on the side of his face. Not that Haruichi felt up to trying any more healing jutsu on him anyway. After getting a warm flannel and sticking it on Kakashi's bare forehead, Haruichi checked his IVs (the sedative in particular) and pulse one more time before closing the Infirmary door and going back to his paperwork.

He'd sleep later, there was work to do. Files to organize and read up on. Requsitions to draft. Floors to clean. People to save whether they liked it or not. That sort of stupid thing.

He'd get the hang of it. Or they'd get the hang on him.

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