It probably wasn't healthy for Ginta to spend more time unconscious than absolutely necessary, but Kakashi was starting to miss the uncritical silence. He swallowed hard, pulling air through a blistered-bone throat before he answered.

"In my next life." Confusion darkened Ginta's gem-cut eyes. "I'll take a break--in my next life."

Ginta's inarticulate look suggested that particular event was a lot closer than either one of them wanted, but Kakashi ignored him. They didn't have time to rest. The afternoon was already beginning to shade towards evening, shadows lengthening and edged with velvet; the perfect near-twilight time for an attack. And he was moving far too slow.

The last clone had only been gone a few minutes, but he missed it. Ginta was heavy. Even half-starved, injured and traumatized, he was still a ninja; still corded with solid muscle and hardened, well-trained bone. And Kakashi was losing track of the miles he'd run.

An eighteen-hours run to Komatsuyama, twenty miles to an hour, a translocation whenever he could afford one, Minato's flicker--

Running back, slower and wearier and twice as determined not to stop, burning up false chakra and too many clones. Trying not to feel the sting of his chidori-burned palm.

He spun the math through mental pathways, divided wrong somewhere between one step and the next, and came up with an answer that was definitely impossible.

But the river had cooled his shoulders and numbed his kunai-slashed hip. And drenching his mask had drained some of the blood-stench from it. He could smell Ginta, shocked and wounded and chemical-stained, scorched with the undercut of carrion and flame. Dulled by the lead weight of grief. But still Ginta, beneath that. Still carrying the touch of expensive wood and sweet things. Blond hair.

Still wrenching Kakashi's arms out of the sockets, because painfully thin didn't mean light when they'd run this far.

"You have the most annoying hair," he gasped, as the wind whipped a flail of blood-stained strands against his masked jaw. In the distance, the trees knotted together in dense clusters; better concealment, harder going. Kakashi lunged onwards, panting dogs flying at his heels. The last hawk circled high overhead, waiting for his call. "Another--hour to go, I think. Maybe two." Maybe three. "If you're going to stay awake, you could--be useful. Talk about something--interesting."