| [Jun. 5th, 2009|03:13 am] |
Ginta was determined to break his own neck. Kakashi lifted the hand still pressed against that fine-boned shoulder, and flattened it over Ginta's too-hot forehead, forcing his head still.
"I know," he said. It was a lie. He didn't know anything, beyond two cold facts: Tsuyako had broken; Tsuyako was dead.
Tsuyako's sister was getting married next month.
Ginta's pulse beat in his temples, thready and fast. High colour burned across his cheeks, the flush of anger or fever--or both. Fragile bone, protected only by a thin sheath of skin, curved beneath Kakashi's ungloved palm. The unwanted memory of Tsyuako's neck snapping like a stick of rock-candy rose up. He jerked his hand away.
"I didn't know her," he muttered, nose filled with the broken iron scent of guilt. His or Ginta's, he couldn't tell. "But she broke and you didn't, and that's the thing that matters. Wherever she is now, she's not hurting anymore."
Unlike Ginta.
He glanced at the clone, still silent in the corner. Its edges were almost transparent. It caught his look, waited for meaning to ripple down the fraying bond between them, and began to move. Cupboards banged gently as it rifled through them.
"I need food," Kakashi told Ginta, snapping the conversation through a 180-turn. "So do you. If no one catches up to us, it'll be at least eighteen hours before a pick-up team gets here. Let's just... try not to kill each other before then, okay?"
His voice should have been wry, it came out flat. |
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