"Friday," said Kakashi, after a too-long pause. "The twenty-eighth."

The thinnest pin-scratch drew itself between Ginta's normally expressive eyebrows, but no surprise crossed his face. It was unsettling to see so little animation in that whip-cord body; no spark in smoke-reddened blue eyes. To hear one word answers, clipped sentences.

Ironic, Kakashi thought bitterly. Two weeks ago he would have given the world to have Ginta never speak to him again.

He crushed the thought. Freed one hand to dig a ration bar from his hip pouch and flick it at the clone. Effortlessly, his lookalike snatched the foil-covered bar out of the air, shucked it of its wrapper, and pressed it into Ginta's hand. Kakashi tossed over his half-empty canteen to help wash it down.

And they ran.

Food didn't sit well with Ginta. He tried his best, picking at the sticky-sweetness of some protein-fruit combination with bloodless, shaking fingers. But pale cheeks turned grey before the bar was even half gone, and sweat beaded like wax drops over his forehead. Even through a nose filled with copper, Kakashi still caught the twist of nausea in the air. He sighed on a rasping breath.

Ginta heard him, coloured in a way that was more agonized, self-directed frustration than real anger, and tossed back a reckless gulp of canteen water. It didn't help. He dropped the canteen--Kakashi's clone caught it--and braced his head against the sharp wing of an unreal collarbone, drawing each breath slowly, carefully through his nose.

When even Ginta's lips turned grey, bitten white where teeth had sunk in, and hollow-bruised eyes creased with the effort of trying not to retch or faint or--presumably--elbow the clone in the throat, Kakashi gave up trying not to notice. At this rate, Ginta wasn't going to make it to the river, let alone a safehouse.

A flicker of chakra was all it took.

The clone lifted its hand, slid its fingers around the nape of Ginta's neck, and hit a small but crucial cluster of nerves, slicing energy through them. Ginta went limp.

Kakashi nodded, clenched his teeth, and forced himself to run faster.