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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