You couldn't argue with logic. But guilt, fears, emotions, didn't come from a logical place. And even as Kakashi's head lowered slowly in acknowledgement, his gut roiled and whispered no.

Ninja in ANBU. But he'd been watching people fall long before that. He'd even given Ryouma the number once, listing off the facts scorched inside his skull without ever letting his voice break.

I've been a ninja for fifteen years, a jounin for seven, and an ANBU for five. I've run four-hundred and twenty-seven missions, lost one genin team, sixteen dogs, and eighty-seven genin, chuunin, jounin, and ANBU. One hundred and one teammates.

And one sensei

Four-hundred and thirty-one missions, now. One hundred and two teammates.

Don't act like such a fucking victim.

Exhaustion dragged at his bones. Ginta's hand rested lightly on his shoulder, scarred, calloused fingertips rasping gently over unburned skin. Kakashi shifted, turning sideways, and lifted his arm up onto the bed, laying it flat where fingers could touch rumpled blankets and feel the solid warmth of a living body beneath them. Without opening his eyes, he let his head drop until it rested on the cot, masked face turned towards Ginta. Scent drifted in the air, rippling over his senses with every inhale.

Candy-iron blood, the burned toast whisp of a serious adrenaline crash, pain, the fading edge of anger and jealousy, a sharp catch of caution. Unease, like the bite of oiled steel. Medicine and bandages and burns. A hundred other threads, too complicated to untangle.

Blond hair.

A twist of quiet, aching laughter caught in Kakashi's throat.

"I know," he said, agreeing to everything and nothing. Scraped clean by gut-feelings so old they barely had names, and logic that only shattered against them. "I know. I saw your scar. What did you do? Wrestle with a tiger?"