| [Jun. 3rd, 2009|08:24 pm] |
Kakashi, the real Kakashi, was gone. A clone, looking just like the real thing, but with a fraction of the chakra presence and no trace of the weary emotion that had been in the real man's face, knelt in his place, mutely offering a canteen. When it reached out to swipe Ginta's hair from his eyes without saying a word, Ginta winced and pulled away.
You have the most annoying hair. That's what Kakashi should have said. Would have said, if everything hadn't gone to hell a month and more ago. That birthday kiss was six weeks and several lifetimes in the past. That hospital hallway fight should have been the end of it. I don't want your blood on my hands... Then why was Kakashi even here?
He'd been sure Ginta was going to die, and just now Ginta'd nearly proved him right. Why in fuck's name was Kakashi here hauling his ass out of the fire?
Next to him, Tsuyako coughed.
That was why.
Ginta jerked away from the clone and towards his teammate. Her bandaged, battered face was barely recognizable. Her shallow, rasping breaths spoke more of death than life. Their mission had been a failure from the moment she'd been captured. From the moment Ginta had found himself out numbered, out jutsued... out smarted. They'd captured her while she crept inside the factory overseer's office. They'd captured her, because Ginta had missed one guard, and Tsuyako had used a weak concealment jutsu, and their opponents had been good.
They'd captured Ginta because he'd let them, so that he could find her, and break them out.
But their breakout had failed, and they'd caught her again and this time they'd had reinforcements. An interrogator and his team brought in from Takigakure. They'd had her at their mercy for hours, knowing there was another Konoha ANBU on the loose. They'd been desperate to get what information they could from her.
He looked at her fingerless hand, wrapped in blood-stained bandages. He looked at the tiny, parallel lines of raw flesh striping her cheek, where skin had been razored away a millimeter at a time. She groaned, and her eyes, barely slits in blackened, swollen bruises, fluttered open.
"Ginta..." Her voice was as broken as her body.
"It's okay, we're out," Ginta told her. He reached for her shoulder and hesitated, not sure where he dared touch her.
Her eyes welled with tears.
"Give her some more fucking morphine," Ginta rasped at the clone nearest her.
"I broke," she whispered. "I'm sorry." She choked, coughed weakly, and started to shake.
"Morphine, dammit! Tsuyako, look at me!"
Her eyes rolled back, as her whole body stiffened, then started to seize.
"Tsuyako! Fuck, Kakashi!"
She kicked Ginta's legs.
The clones jumped in, holding her still. Hoshika grabbed the loose cloth of Ginta's shirt, dragging him away from the flailing woman. |
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