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Kimiho looked from one agent to the other, the first slumped over as if he simply didn't have the strength to remain upright, the second slouched and held carefully still in his chair, and made another note on her pad. Between them they'd accounted for all the enemy shinobi reported present--
Fifteen total. Fourteen killed in combat. One escaped.
-- as well as the deaths of both teammates --
Oda Ayako: fatal injuries sustained; terminated by comrade. Ishida Nobuki: killed in combat.
-- the reasons behind their own reasonably unharmed status --
ANBU veterans. Luck.
-- and the failure of the mission--
Greater enemy force than anticipated. Casualties sustained. Retreat recommended as the most advisable option; two agents still retrieved.
She glanced up again, neutral gaze moving from one only partially visible face to one she couldn't see at all. "Very well, is there anything either of you would like to add?" She paused as a flicker of killing intent uncurled. The sentries stiffened. "Hatake-san?"
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."
Genma came alive in a heartbeat. Came alive, shoving back from the table, away from Kakashi. Knocking over the wastebasket, the chair he'd been sitting in, the pair of crutches he'd limped into this room on. Backing up, reaching for a katana that wasn't strapped to his back, and at the same moment realizing that if he'd found it there, and used it, he'd be exactly what Kakashi accused him of being.
"I had to," he rasped, staring in horror at the Intel agent as she rose to her feet. At the sentries as they moved back into combat readiness. "I had to, she couldn't survive. You saw her face! You saw her! She was in agony!" His appeal fell on deaf ears. Just as his own had been deafened on that blood-soaked battlefield.
It wasn't Ayako's agony that Kakashi cared about, not then and not now. The sounds had been muffled and wrong, distorted by a horrible wind that had rushed past Genma's ruined ear drums. Ayako's dying gurgles, and Nobuki's anguished screams, and Kakashi keening for his dog.
"Nobuki was... I.. He was alive, dammit. I had to try to save him. I didn't know about the poison. He was alive, and I could have saved him. You know medical protocol, damnit." He was staring at Kakashi now, shouting--no whispering. Whispering his defense. There was no defense. He'd killed Ayako, and he'd failed to save Nobuki. He'd felt Nobuki's life pulsing out between his fingers, felt his own chakra draining away to nothing as he worked frantically to bring his comrade--his friend--back from a death he'd refused to accept was inevitable.
Kakashi had been screaming at him that Nobuki was already dead, which Genma had known was a lie. It had been a lie. A crazed, desperate lie, because Kakashi's dog was dying, too, and Kakashi wanted that dog to live even more than Nobuki. It hadn't mattered what Kakashi wanted. Humans came first. Human comrades always came first. Summoned animals were lower priority, and if there were two catastrophic injuries, one to a human and one to a dog, and only one medic, the medic worked on the human. Always. No exceptions.
The medic worked on the human.
Genma had worked, frantically, desperately, shouting to Kakashi to just hold on a little longer. To keep his dog stable with chakra support, and he'd get there as soon as he had Nobuki stabilized. As soon as he had Nobuki's heart back. As soon as he had the bleeding under control. But the bleeding had been uncontrollable, and Nobuki had died and by the time Genma turned to try to help Kakashi, it had been too late. Too late for Nobuki, too late for Ayako. Too late for the dog.
He'd stared at Kakashi, and Kakashi had stared at him, mouthing words Genma couldn't hear. All he could hear was the rushing wind silence of damaged eardrums and the frantic hammering of his own heart.
What ever had happened on that mission, it clearly wasn't over. Not by a long shot. There had been three sentries in the room, now there were five. Two flanking Genma, taking him by the arms, holding him up in place of the crutches he'd knocked aside. Restraining him with a steady flow of chakra that easily overpowered his drained flicker.
Two more flanked Kakashi, who was also on his feet. Holding him in place, lest he make a lunge for his teammate. The fifth stood at Kimiho's side, sturdy, calm. In command.
These sorts of debriefings always went one of two ways: either the survivors clung to each other like frightened children, or they did this. Turned on each other in their rage and their grief. Violent men pushed pass the point of tolerance. Kimiho turned to the sentry commander at her side and nodded. She had finished her interview, but she still had a job to do. They both did. They all did.
"Hatake-san, Shiranui-san," she said, looking from one to the other. "My finding is that the actions taken on this mission were justifiable. There was no way to achieve a satisfactory outcome beyond your own survival. You will," she said, and her voice took on a steely tone, "stand down. Immediately. Or be confined on a psychiatric hold."
It was no idle threat. And it would hurt them, to have that in their records. It wouldn't be the first such hold for either man, she knew. Perhaps it had been too soon to send Shiranui out. Perhaps Hatake's antisocial bent had grown pathological since his last evaluation. She would make a recommendation that he be assigned exclusively solo missions for several months at least.
Kakashi leashed his chakra back, pulling it once more into exhausted pathways. It flooded back from his hands, released now that he hadn't called on it for a jutsu, and threaded back through his body, settling down to a tired pulse. The sentries didn't let go.
The woman was threatening them. He tilted his head slightly, sliding her a look. She was, technically, a senior agent. An Intel personnel assigned to review their case and determine just how much they'd messed up by bringing back dogtags instead of people. She had her own story, her own mistakes. Her own dead people that meant she was the best person to get them to talk. To stop them killing each other.
He still hated her. She might have been a senior agent, but she wasn't the Hokage. ANBU swore an oath of loyalty when they joined, and 'senior agents' wasn't on it. Honor, village, Hokage, teammates.
It didn't list summons.
His mouth fractured into a raw smile. Genma hadn't broken the rules, but Kakashi had still lost anyway. He looked back at Genma, held between his own guards, and tried to remember what detachment felt like. What numbness was. He still couldn't catch a full breath.
Could have saved him, Genma had said. Whispered. Looked at Kakashi's face and lied to him while they both still had blood on their hands. On their swords. He'd granted one mercy stroke and refused the other. Instead he'd kept his fingers around Nobuki's failing heart just long enough to make his death truly agonizing, while Kakashi's dog had paid for doing his job right. While he'd bled out in a hot rush of red that hadn't stopped no matter how hard Kakashi had tightened his grip. While he'd died pointlessly, needlessly, because Genma had made the wrong choice and family didn't mean the same as people.
"If you could have saved him," he said, granting himself words as the only weapon he'd use against a teammate, "then you would have. You failed. Arihiro paid for it." His chakra rippled again. The sentries' hold tightened. "If you ever get the nerve to defect, Shiranui, you better run a whole lot further than Stone. You owe me a life, and I don't mind it being yours." | |
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