| [Apr. 20th, 2008|04:03 am] |
Kakashi's focus wasn't on the woman calling his name. His attention was on the teammate to his left. On Genma, laid down with his head against the table and his scent curdling with nausea and misery. On the man he could finally see because he'd turned to look.
Genma wasn't much older than Kakashi. They were both built about the same; tall and long-limbed. He wasn't any stronger. Certainly not smarter. Definitely no wiser. He was just an ANBU, like Kakashi was an ANBU. Different masks, same armour. Same mission.
Except Kakashi had killed five Rock-nin, while Genma had let two teammates die. Killed one with his own hands, in fact, and ignored the other. Refused to heal the other because he'd been too busy shoving his chakra into a dead man's ribcage and a corpse was more important than a canine.
More important than one of his pack.
The careful numbness wrapped around Kakashi's chest shattered, splintering into jagged shards of raw grief. His focus dissolved. Another one. He'd lost another one. Thirteen now, of the closest thing he had left to a family. Thirteen dogs and Arihiro shouldn't have been one of them. He'd been wounded, but not gone. Hurt enough to scream, but alive enough to save.
And Genma hadn't, even when Kakashi had begged.
His fists clenched again, fingers digging into bandages and skin. Pain spiked a nasty little corkscrew. He didn't feel it. He was too busy looking at the man who'd cost him a life, a family member, by refusing to do his job. Too busy watching the image playing through his own head, written in sharingan red. To busy feeling blood run under his hands and harden in the cracks, feeling a heartbeat flicker and stutter against his palm, feeling his chakra run away like water, because he'd put as much as he could into his friend, given away as much as he had. Watched it make no difference because he didn't know enough medical jutsu to shape it right.
What he had left rippled now, coiling under his skin with a slippery red pulse. "It's a good thing," he rasped into the quiet room, trying to find the right words to hurt, "that you don't care about your teammates, Shiranui. It must make it so much easier when you kill them." |
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