The last time Kakashi had snapped out of black, dreamless sleep, it had been on the receiving end of a shot of chakra directly to his brain. This time, with six more hours of empty nothingness under his belt, a grip like a weak brand was enough to register. Slender eyebrows drew together. Steady, quiet breaths broke their rhythm. He shifted, achingly slow for a half-healthy jounin, and groped for the source of heat bleeding into his forearm.

His fingers touched something that felt like skin on fire. Instinct snapped awake, yanking his right arm away from the threat, pulling his chidori-burned palm free before anything touched it. His left hand tightened, catching and pinning whatever it was to sweat-soaked sheets.

Somewhere in the movement, he sat up straight, and almost overbalanced. His free hand slapped against the floor, bringing bandaged, blistered scars directly into contact with well-sanded wood.

Then he woke up.

A yelp broke off between teeth that snapped it in half. He yanked his hand off the floor, steadied a bandaged shoulder against the nearest solid object--the bed-frame--and twisted to sweep a wide-eyed (one-eyed) glance around the room. Bright sunlight, rumpled bedclothes, tangled IV's--

Ginta's hand crushed beneath his own.

If he'd let go any faster, Kakashi would have broken his own fingers. He stared up the bed, trying to kick thoughts into moving, and felt his heart sink. Sweat-drenched blond hair caught his gaze first, then skin turned waxen and pale around flushed cheeks. The bright, wild glitter in cornflower blue eyes. The air stank of acid and sweet grapes, sickly pus.

Infection.

"Oh, shit," he said softly.

"You're alive," Ginta breathed, full of wonder. He could still see the skull grinning beneath the mask. "Thought they'd got you. How can you be alive?" Kakashi's skin clung to him like the mummy's had, tight and shiny and tanned almost black. It was peeling away from his nose, covering his mouth in a broad swath...

No. No, Kakashi had a mask on.

It was so hot. So painfully hot. Ginta's head swiveled, and a flare of sunlight caught his eye. Fire. It wasn't sun that had burned the flesh from Kakashi's skull, but flame. The fire in the factory. Fires the Kyuubi had lit with sweeps of its nine tails. Fires set by Iwa ninja during the war. And Kakashi was right in the middle of it. "Kakashi, get out of there!" Ginta jerked back, raising his hands for a water jutsu. Pain stopped him up short. He curled over himself, hands clenched in useless claws, grabbing for his legs.

Kakashi got there first. Both hands caught Ginta's fine-boned wrists, stopping him short before he wrenched at sloughing wounds or shattered limbs. Kakashi tightened his grip as much as he dared. Heat radiated through his fingers, searing one burned palm and one whole one. The infection-reek billowed up as blankets tangled and slipped aside, as Ginta moved, yanking on his hands, trying to huddle over himself. Sweat streaked his face.

"I'm fine," Kakashi told him hurriedly. "Look at me. I'm completely fine. You're just delirious."

Again. Was every mission with Ginta destined to end in fevered nightmares? Rain had been bad enough, even with a trained medic around. But now...

Now there was just Kakashi, and he had a job to do. Achingly stiff muscles clenched and cramped as he bullied them into working order, forcing himself off his knees and into a crouch. His slashed hip stung a protest. Ginta's wrists stayed firmly locked in his hands. He stood up, easing Ginta back--or trying to. Ginta fought to curl forwards, breathing heavily through clenched teeth, tensed muscles shivering fitfully. Tendons stood out at his throat and wrists. Heat rolled away from his skin.

He'd been trying to work a water justu.

"Don't grab yourself," Kakashi ordered, shifting to block him with an arm if he tried to lunge forwards, and released him, fingers already dancing through seals. Copying. The barest thread of chakra tore through weary pathways; Kakashi hissed and released the jutsu.

Lukewarm rain showered down, soaking them both.

It felt like ice water sleeting against his burning skin. Ginta gasped and huddled tighter, shivering in earnest now under the cascade. Water washed sweat into his eyes and mouth, salty and acrid. A scent of damp linen, blood, and something nauseatingly foul rose up from the wet bedding, and he twitched his head to the side. He wanted to tear the blankets and bandages off, tear the flesh open and let out the poison.

Scorpion venom?

No. Kakashi's hands on his, holding him back. Kakashi's voice, low and just a little frantic, insisting that he stop. Stop. Be still. Breathe.

He could breathe. Hot air seared in on the choking scent. The shivers subsided with the falling water, until it was a fine mist and his shaking was a subtle tremor.

He lifted his head and found Kakashi's eye. "That's c-c-cold." His breath came in shallow little pants. "And now you're wet." He caught a breath, glancing down to see red streaks racing up and down his bared leg, spreading out from under the sticky, fouled bandage. "I think that's looking... Little worse."

Kakashi raked dripping silver hair out of his face. "But your talent for understatement is still healthy," he drawled, locking panic away in a cast iron box. A fever was just a fever, the body's defences kicking into overdrive. Everyone got them. Everyone could recover. He just needed to be smart. "Lie back for me, okay? Breathe a minute. Think about something shiny."

Even through his haze, Ginta managed a remarkably dry look. Kakashi slashed a quick smile at him, trying to make himself think. They had supplies. Bottles of sealed water,IVs of antibiotics, clean bed linen, recently stocked medi-kits...

Food. Tea. Painkillers. Help on the way. Ginta would be fine.

He'd be a lot damn better if Kakashi hadn't fallen asleep for six hours while his fever had soared--

But that wasn't a helpful thought.

"I'll be right back," Kakashi said, kicking himself into the present, and turned for the kitchen. His bones felt like brittle rock-candy wrapped up in dessicated muscle; he made himself move anyway. Cupboards yielded ration bars, a med kit, towels, and bottled water with seals for freshness still glowing faintly in the clear plastic. He grabbed everything and limped back towards the cot, splashing through puddles. The jutsu had yanked all the moisture out of the air; the safehouse felt hotter, now, in the bright sunlight.

Ice jutsu, Kakashi thought, and dropped everything but the med-kit when he crouched back down. He ripped the kit open, grabbed the little metal box that rattled with soldier pills, and swallowed two. Then he tore three towels in half, froze half the available water with the first cold-snap jutsu he could think of, and wadded the chunks up in fluffy terry-cloth, packing them against Ginta's sides and down his flanks. He twisted the cap off a water bottle, and chilled it with a sparkle of ice created from glowing fingertips.

"Drink this. As much as you can." He pressed the bottle into Ginta's shaking hand--the one not attached to a wounded arm--and lurched back to his feet. Both of Ginta's IV bags were empty, which was probably how his infection had taken hold. Kakashi sank his teeth into his lower lip, found new bags of antibiotics and fluids, and reconnected the lines.

Then he had to stop and stand for three painful heartbeats, processing. It shouldn't have been necessary--but these weren't exactly normal circumstances. His mind was taxed, stressed.

Kakashi snorted a disgusted breath at himself, and sank back down to his knees at Ginta's side. Water soaked into his pants. He stripped the sodden, rancid covers carefully free of Ginta's legs, tossing them to the floor, and stared at the revealed mess. The smell rose like a wave, coating the back of his throat. He breathed through his mouth, grateful of his mask, and glanced at Ginta's pale, tensed face, trying to find coherence in glazed blue eyes.

"I need to clean your legs. Can you swallow painkillers?"

"Probably," Ginta answered, through chattering teeth. The ice Kakashi had packed in next to him was a torture all its own, and he tried to shift away from it. Kakashi patiently pushed it back. It was a brutal but effective method of lowering his soaring temperature. That plus the water Kakashi urged him to drink, that congealed into a lead weight in his stomach. But it cooled him. With cooling came rationality.

He stared at his legs, right one encased in a splint, black with bruises at knee and ankle. The ragged tears an enemy claw had raked down his shin were hidden under sopping bandages. The left was bright red, streaked with yellow. The flesh ballooned against the bandages until they were almost a tourniquet, stained with faded red and sickly yellow-green.

"Maybe I should do it." A stupid suggestion. "Maybe you should just leave it. Medics will come. Just loosen the bandages and leave it." There was a note of pleading in Ginta's voice that he tried to hold back. A chill raced up his spine. "Maybe we should wait. Make sure I don't puke the painkillers up."

They didn't even look like legs. It was hard to think of them as his. They were hideously injured things, looking like wounds he'd seen on other men when war had raged. Smelling like a battlefield.

"You're tired." It was true. Kakashi looked exhausted, despite his sleep. He moved as if every muscle hurt. His back was bandaged, his hip bound up in stained linen. His favored his right hand, hiding the palm. "We could wait. You could rest."

Kakashi exhaled once, slowly, and then tipped his head down to meet Ginta's gaze. "When has that ever worked?" he asked. He could see the infection brewing in Ginta's leg. Smell it on the air. Hear it in his voice, slurred and cracked with fear. Of every choice they had, doing nothing wasn't one of them.

But Ginta didn't have to watch.

Carefully, Kakashi pulled on his chakra, winding the violent new energy out like a thread. It glowed in his mind's eye, pulsing gently with a beat like living blood. He twisted it into Obito's one and only gift, and focused on the first pleasant thing he could think of.

Think of something shiny.

When the scarred lid rose, and crimson glinted against black in the pale-bruised skin of Kakashi's face, it wheeled a memory straight into Ginta's mind. Of being four years old and happy, half crushed by an enthusiastic dog pack and wrestling furiously, rolling around in summer-soaked grass beneath the spreading shade of carefully tended trees. No pain, fresh scents, sweet breezes, a body that did exactly what he wanted. Solid reassurance in the deep, laughing voice that came from a silver-haired, middle aged, unmasked man who sat with his back braced against one tree trunk and called out advice. Whose pale grey eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled.

Kakashi felt his heart lurch in his chest, living the moment as much as Ginta was, but didn't break the jutsu. Instead, he picked up the med-kit, pulled out a scalpel, a bottle of stinging astringent, gauze pads, and a double handful of new bandage rolls, and sat seiza by Ginta's legs. Pus trickled over his fingers as he sliced through the first filthy bandages, running free from the deep puncture wound in Ginta's thigh--the locus of the suppurating mess. Kakashi breathed through his mouth, ignored the warm slide of tears down the left side of his face, and set to work.

He cleaned, doused, and debrided the wound as much as he dared. Fished around in weeping flesh until he extracted the very tip of the arrowhead he'd yanked out before, and flung it away. Scrubbed until warm, fresh blood ran, until Ginta's entire leg was free of anything but clean skin and ugly bruises, and re-bandaged the wound, casting a jutsu to dry off the cot beneath Ginta's body. Then he turned his attention to the next leg.

In Ginta's head, there was nothing but laughter.

Ginta's body registered pain. It shook, muscles tensed. His heart raced, his skin sweated, his breath came in pants. His consciousness took no notice, lost in a hallucination more real than a dream. He was happy. Full of happiness, surrounded by puppies, nipping and licking and tumbling together. He was giggling and squirming with them, secure and safe. His papa was there, laughing, too.

Some tiny part of Ginta's brain fought that. He had no father. Had never known his father. But in the logic of dreams, he skated on. Papa was there, with a thermos of tea and a lunch of rice balls filled with salmon.

"You're the alpha! Don't let them think they are," Papa called, and Ginta barked at the puppies, surging up to take the top position in the king of the mountain game. Then he tumbled down, laughing so hard he almost couldn't catch his breath--high-pitched squeals of delight blending with the yips and happy whines.

A surge of pain broke through for a moment, and he gasped, but then there were puppies smothering him, and he had to fight his way to the top of the pile again. His legs were whole and strong and not a concern at all. Pain was entirely alien to his existence.

The second leg was better than the first, but not by much. Kakashi stripped the stained bandages away, exposing scabs that had soaked through with jutsu-called water and serous fluid, and risked his gag-reflex by getting close enough to scent properly. Sweet grape made him jerk back quickly, but it was fainter, underscored by old blood and acrid sweat; not nearly as bad as the arrow-wound had been.

It was easier to think about the genjutsu than anything else when he bent back to scrubbing. He focused hard on the details, letting the whole take care of itself. The exact texture of soft puppy fur; the feeling of balmy sunlight against skin; the depth of Sakumo's laughter, spilling past lips that echoed the exact shape of Kakashi's own mouth...

It was a good thing Ginta was delirious, he thought wretchedly, because this whole exercise didn't so much cross the line into personal as set it on fire.

His focus wavered; Ginta arched up, a choked groan heaving out of his chest. Kakashi grabbed the mental threads of his jutsu, wound painfully through memory, and made them sing with chakra. Ginta collapsed back down, waxen face smoothing out again.

Up to his wrists in blood, Kakashi set his jaw grimly and kept going. Bone grated beneath his touch, crunching down deep in bruised flesh. He winced and tried to clean more gently, sluicing Ginta with water and astringent from foot to naked hip, cleansing every speck of skin and bleeding flesh before drying him off with another jutsu--difficult to do with one already demanding most of his attention, but not impossible. Then he re-bandaged and re-splinted the limb, hiding the horrific damage behind pristine linen.

Which left Ginta naked from the waist down, and dressed in Kakashi's spare ANBU turtleneck from the belt up. It was just long enough on his lean body to give him a modicum of privacy, but it was also sweat-drenched, water-soaked, and liberally splattered with grass and mud from their long run. Kakashi draped a spare towel over Ginta's waist and thighs, and stripped the shirt carefully off, briefly disconnecting the IV's. Then he gave Ginta the quickest sponge bath he could manage with a soaked towel and bottled water, cooling his flushed skin down further, washing long-dried blood from his hair.

The safehouse had spare jounin uniforms, and even underwear. He found another shirt that looked roughly Ginta's size, along with a black jockstrap, and manhandled Ginta quickly into them, feeling disturbingly like he was dressing a body for the wake. The raspy, steady breaths that lifted Ginta's narrow chest, and the unnatural heat that still seared beneath his skin, were the only evidence of life still burning.

Kakashi didn't have time to worry about it. His genjutsu was fast unravelling, coming apart under the weight of an ugly headache and the waning focus he couldn't keep hold of. Ginta stirred, fingers twitching, a low moan building in his throat. Kakashi bit his lip harder. There was still too much to do; burns that needed salve, a myriad of little cuts to check...

Painkillers to give.

He swore at himself, memories breaking up in his head like shattering glass, and lunged for the med-kit. He got the the closest syringe of pre-filled morphine into an IV line just as Ginta's eyelids began to flicker, and shifted to put himself directly in the waking man's line of sight, making sure to keep his red-drenched hands out of view.

"Welcome back." It was a low rasp, as calm as he could make it. "How d'you feel?"

Disoriented didn't even begin to cover it. Ginta stared hard at Kakashi, as if he could see through the reality in front of him to the shreds of illusion still dissipating. He choked on a breath, head swimming, stomach lurching. His legs felt brutalized, his whole body worn to the barest edge of functioning. A shocky tremor fluttered under his breastbone, as if he'd just been through a violent ordeal. The scent of blood and decay tanged the air.

Puppies. Laughing. Papa and his lunch.

Kakashi staring at him with one grey eye, heavy with pain and worry.

One grey eye, and one a red-black mirror spinning him away from consciousness.

"You... Sharinganed me?"

Morphine loosened the connections between gravity and down, sent Ginta's inner-ear into free-fall. He grabbed for the edge of the cot, surprised to find it dry. Where had the water gone? Why was there such a pervasive scent of blood?

"Did you... Already?"

Tight bandages holding broken bones in place. A steady pressure over his whole thigh, rather than that narrow strip cutting into swollen flesh like a tourniquet.

He swallowed and shut his eyes, but the whirling just got worse, his sense of what was real and what was illusion more tenuous. Blue eyes snapped open again, fixed on Kakashi's face.

Puppies. A child's laughter.

"Thank you," he whispered. "Think I might be sick now."

Two words, and Kakashi felt himself breathe again. No screaming, no anger; he was almost getting used to dealing with gratitude.

And nausea.

"Right, okay," he said, and scrubbed his hands quickly on his pants, getting the worst of the blood off his skin. It clung to his bandaged chidori burn, scabbing the gritty linen. "Just breathe." He hesitated for one uncertain heartbeat before he sat down on the cot next to Ginta's shoulder. "In and out, to the count of four."

Ginta's eyebrows arched.

"Seriously, it works." If only because you got so focused on numbers that you forgot to think about bile. Kakashi slid his hands carefully beneath Ginta's lean shoulders, getting the best grip he could that wouldn't jostle any injuries. "I'm going to prop you up and brace you. Keep breathing."

Ginta's narrow jaw tightened. His red-flushed cheeks had a faint green cast to them. Quickly, Kakashi boosted him up, sliding behind him to support Ginta's back against his own chest, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. Ginta's half-drunk bottle of water was still on the bed; Kakashi freed a hand to grab it, bringing it to Ginta's IV-tethered hands, and heard him swallow hard. Then again. Felt the shuddering spasm work its way through already trembling muscles.

"Left," he said, resigned to smelling stomach acid for the next hour, and steadied Ginta's hot forehead with a much cooler palm. "Aim left. You won't hit anything important."

Ginta counted four. Counted four. Counted four. Lost track at two, as his diaphragm convulsed. Groped for three... four... Another contraction, harder this time, flooding his mouth with saliva and a taste of acid. One... two... three... Holding his breath, eyes watering, throat working frantically. ...four... One... His ears blazed hot, ringing with a pitch only he could hear. Kakashi's voice was drowned out in the rushing noise, but his hand was there, cool and steadying. Guiding.

...two...

Too close to the edge. Too sick and exhausted to keep fighting it.

three

Left. Away from his broken leg, away from Kakashi. Nothing in him but half a bottle of water that was still cooler than his body temperature, rising into his mouth. He tried to stop it one last time, and only managed to choke himself, feeling acid sear his sinuses and trachea.

Water, stringy with saliva, flecked with something opaque. Ginta heaved again, bring up nothing more than a bitter taste and a wretched sound.

four... One... two...

He could stop it. He needed to stop it, because there was nothing else in him to vomit and no relief to be had now that the water was out, and every retch dragged fresh pain through his legs.

...three... four...

He sagged against Kakashi's hand, panting. His nose was running, his eyes blurred with reflexive tears. He sniffled and lifted his head, resting back against Kakashi's chest again.

"That... almost worked."

Kakashi surprised himself with a grating laugh, and dropped his head, resting his masked mouth against the sloping curve between Ginta's neck and shoulder. Inhaled deeply against skin that smelled like pain and exhaustion, and cloth that smelled of nothing. Both were better than sweet grape and stomach acid. He inhaled again, feeling his own stomach clench, caught between hunger and sympathy nausea.

"Story of my life," he said dryly, stretching the words out into a long drawl that swept his own breath back into his face. That smelled better, too.

Ginta was still far too hot, his forehead burning up beneath Kakashi's palm, too-lean body shaking in Kakashi's hold. Water he couldn't afford to lose splattered the floorboards, joining puddles Kakashi hadn't spared the energy to dry. But there was an IV spilling fluids into his veins; that had to be enough.

Kakashi just wished he could have that kind of faith in the antibiotics. They were broad-spectrum, uncomplicated, designed to attack the widest range of illnesses and target nothing. And Ginta had no reserves to call on.

He picked up one of the ice chunks wrapped in a towel--it was half-melted now, but still cold--and pressed it to the other side of Ginta's neck. Ginta jerked; Kakashi steadied him. Slippery numbness sank into his burned palm, easing some of the sting.

"Feeling any better?" he asked, knowing it was a stupid question but unable to stop himself.

"Lots," Ginta said, and was surprised to find he meant it. Morphine was finally winning out over pain, and the swirling nausea was muffled now, the calm after the storm, leaving him drained but clearer headed.

"Don't think I'm quite ready to go dancing yet, though." He laughed, because it was funny in a way nothing had ever quite been funny before. Dancing with Kakashi. Calm after the storm. They'd never go dancing, most likely, and that was fine. It was strange how easy it was to just let that go now. A week ago, maybe even a day ago, he couldn't have said that.

Now Kakashi was holding him in his arms, and all Ginta could think about was how glad he was it was Kakashi. It didn't make sense to be so relieved. He felt empty and light, like he might float away, if not for Kakashi keeping him here.

He glanced down to Kakashi's blood-stained hand resting across his chest. "That looks bad. Is that yours or mine?" Another laugh tickled up his throat, soft and dry. "You know, I swear it's not that I try to puke and bleed on you every time I see you. It's just on missions, because those are special."

It shouldn't be so funny. It really wasn't funny. He giggled and leaned back against Kakashi.

It was hilarious.

Kakashi's eyes squeezed closed, grey joining salt-stung crimson and black in self-inflicted blindness. Beneath his nose, desperate humour twisted back on itself in a way that was almost painful, choked with rising delirium. Ginta's laughter rasped, husky and chiming, like muffled bells. His weight pressed back against Kakashi's chest, not nearly heavy enough to make Kakashi actually move.

Melting ice water trickled across his fingers, dripping down his wrist. Even with his eyes closed, he knew the back of Ginta's neck was bright red and soaked, tendrils of wet blond hair sticking to his skin. When Kakashi turned the towel over, warmth met his palm, already bleeding through the torn cloth.

He groaned very softly. Ginta giggled, drowning out the sound.

Dancing, the promise Kakashi had made and hadn't kept. And that was what Ginta thought of when fever cooked his brain, when morphine swept through his blood and stripped his remaining inhibitions away.

"You are so damaged," Kakashi whispered against fire-torn skin, and meant it in every way possible. Plans whirled through his weary brain, shearing off into half-assed ideas and their few meagre options. There was far too little that he could actually do, beyond keeping Ginta cold and hoping his fever broke. Waiting until the rescue team brought them a functional medic.

He should move, he realized. He was colder than Ginta, but not nearly enough to help. Ice was better. Maybe a jutsu blown right along his skin...

But keeping Ginta grounded was nearly as important. If only for Kakashi's continued sanity.

"Talk to me," he rasped, opening his eye. He lifted his bloody hand from Ginta's chest, wrapping it further around the lean shoulders to twist his own fingers together, forming seals. Chakra flared; the air chilled and glittered, swirling around them like a blue-white cloak. Kakashi shivered, his still-wet clothes soaking up the cold. "Tell me what you did last week."

"Pretty... That's pretty," Ginta watched the air sparkle, smiling at it. "Smells like snow." He took a deep breath of the chilled air, then another, savoring it. "Is that a genjutsu? Feels real. If you're Sharinganing me to make me think it's winter, that's cheating. You're shivering, too. Good cheating. I don't think I'm shivering, though, so you missed a detail."

Icy water trickled down his neck, dampening the new shirt. It stung in his burns, but not in any way he really cared about. That was the brilliance of morphine, how it made you not care. Kakashi was tense, sitting behind him, holding him up. That was funny, too. Really funny. Ginta's laugh scraped dry from his chest, a burnt sound.

"Last week, I uh... I pissed Ryouma off. I always piss him off. He used to like me, you know, but now he doesn't. He'd probably think this was funny, you being the one here. It's funny, right?" More laughter, aching and bright, just a little unreal. "And I snooped around in Intel because a friend of mine was getting interrogated, but afterwards I took her and her partner out for drinks and we got seriously wasted. She's smaller than me, but she can totally drink me under the table."

He thought for a moment, letting his eyes drift closed. "I was really hung over the next day. Puked then, too, but you weren't there. Wasn't even thinking about you, actually. Did you know I think about you? Kept trying not to. If you could tell when someone was thinking about you, that would be pretty cool. Or it might be creepy. You think it would be creepy?"

Thoughts tumbled through Ginta's mind like brightly colored children's blocks; tumbled and fell, never holding a pattern long enough for him to quite be sure where they were going next. As Kakashi's icy air cocooned them, Ginta's body fought the falling temperature. "Oh. I'm shivering now. You fixed it," he croaked.

It was almost exactly like Ginta's regular babble, but without a single mental break in place, and it made Kakashi's chest ache. 'Tell me what you did last week,' was supposed to have been safe: a neutral laundry list of events that Ginta could have focused on. Not a reminder of Ryouma, who Kakashi would have given half his memorized jutsu to see right now. Or Kakashi's own name, spilled out in a rush of words that Ginta would have been horrified by, if he'd been even halfway coherent.

Kakashi wrenched his mind back to the ice-air jutsu, trying to distract himself before his memory caught the words and kept them, written down like a perfect little slice of hell inside his skull.

Genius. Sometimes he wished he'd been born brain dead.

"Yeah, I fixed it," he said, soft and calm as a snow drift, quiet enough to make Ginta really listen. "This isn't an illusion, Ginta. This is all real. But I'm going to keep fixing it. Stay with me one more day and you'll be home and safe, and you can take your friend out drinking again. Or whatever you want to do."

Chakra rippled through inflamed pathways, trickling slow and controlled between his fingers. The air shimmered, growing a few degrees colder. Ginta's colour faded a little, leeched to shivering pink. Beneath the drying blood, Kakashi's hands were dead white. A few more minutes, he judged, enough to freeze some ice crystals into Ginta's clothes and hair, and then he'd have to stop.

Ginta shivered, teeth clicking together.

"What do you want to do?" Kakashi demanded, trading past for future. Forcing them both to keep thinking. "If you could do anything in the world, what would you pick?"

"B-b-b-being warmmmm," Ginta chattered. He shuddered with the cold, eyes tearing at every jar through wrenched muscles and broken bones. "B-b-b-blankets. Go to a blanket factory. Somewhere tropical."

He glanced down at Kakashi's hands, reached one of his own up to touch. "You're gonna get frostbite. Need gloves. Need to fix that." He gestured at the stained bandage. "Better let me bandage that. It's hard to bandage your own hand. Good thing it's your right. Or are you a righty? Probably you are. Everyone is, mostly. Weird how much I think it's normal to be lefty when it's not."

The cold was it's own kind of pain, worse than hunger. Ginta huddled his arms in, shoulders rising tense towards his ears, and hugged his chest. "C-c-can you stop, p-p-please?" The contrast between the overheated breath in his chest and the miserable chill in his limbs was a strange, familiar sensation. "I think I have a fever."

Something Kakashi had said... Stay with me one more day...

"How c-c-come you keep thinking I'm about to die?"

Kakashi closed his eye again, mouth still pressed against the wing of Ginta's slim shoulder, and exhaled a pale cloud of breath that barely warmed his mask. Half a dozen answers crowded his brain--because I wasn't fast enough, because I couldn't stay awake, because I couldn't carry you straight home, because I ever got near you at all--but none that Ginta needed to hear.

"Because you have a very special talent for annoying people," he muttered, words catching in his throat. "And I have a bet riding on how long it takes for someone to push you off a bridge."

Ginta's giggle picked up again, brittle as frozen steel, and shattered under an onslaught of shaking. Both of them were wracked with cold--but that just meant the jutsu was working. Kakashi could feel the water in his clothes freezing, sliding like an arctic wind down his spine, crackling every time he breathed. It eased and worsened his headache all at once, soothing his skull and biting into his sinuses. Chakra slipped away.

Ginta had said please.

Kakashi counted off ten more seconds, clenching his teeth when they tried to chatter, and broke the jutsu. Hot as Ginta was, his body couldn't stand that much direct cold without cells dying. And Kakashi's own body wanted to take a flying leap into a sauna; he couldn't feel his hands at all, except for the one spot of warmth where Ginta's slender fingers had wrapped around his own.

Carefully, he pulled back. His shirt made a faint ripping sound as it peeled away from Ginta's, like velcro tearing free. His mask made the same noise. He loosened his hold around Ginta's shoulders, pulling away to one side and laying him down on the cot. Sunshine made ice particles sparkle. Kakashi shook his head, smiling grimly when his drenched, frozen hair flattened down over his eyes and half his face, silvering the world. He really needed to cut it.

He really needed to focus on Ginta.

Gently, he freed the tight hold on his hand, and stepped back, almost slipping in frozen puddles. A flash of chakra steadied him. Ginta's skin was much paler, almost back to his usual colour; his eyes blazed jewel-bright, as if Kakashi had managed to freeze them from the inside out.

He wrapped his arms around himself and shook off the image. Refocused.

"Food." It was a rasp. "Think you can eat something?"

"No," Ginta answered. "But you should. And p-put on dry clothes. A blanket." Thirty blankets. A fire. Anything to drive the chill away. If he could have done it without moving his legs, he would have curled up into a tight, shivering ball.

Kakashi gave him a dry, mulish look. Absolutely unrelenting.

"I can't eat," Ginta protested. "I just puked and that was water. Let me get my guts settled. And please give me a blanket?"

There was a flicker on Kakashi's face at that. A wince.

"Fine. I know. Fever. I got it. At least get yourself dry. It's stupid for us both to be miserable." He wrung out a dry laugh. "You can push me off a bridge later, or will you lose your bet if you do it?"

Kakashi's answer was to turn his back. Ginta closed his eyes. It seemed no time at all and then Kakashi was there, still soaked to the skin, holding out a cup of steaming broth in a badly-bandaged hand.

"Oh for fuck's sake, Kakashi." Ginta groaned. "I'm not, okay? Not dying. Go dry off."

A brief, tight smile sharpened Kakashi's masked face. Trust Ginta to reach a more coherent place and use it to argue with his rescuer. He raked dripping hair out of his eyes yet again, and crouched down, holding the steaming cup firmly in front of Ginta's hands, letting him feel the tempting heat. Bribing him into eating, if that's what it took.

"You say you know me," he reminded the only reason he was still here. "What do you think's going to work faster? You eating, or you trying to order me around?"

Ginta's eyes narrowed. "Bully," he said finally, and accepted the cup, sipping once. Clear broth shined his cracked lips. He gave Kakashi a pointed look. "You need a haircut."

Kakashi snorted softly. "Look who's talking." He dragged a quick hand over Ginta's head before he could stop himself, ruffling ice-stiffened blond hair until it stood up in a ragged echo of his own.

A ripple of expressions flickered over Ginta's pale-flushed face, ending somewhere in a wince. Then, quietly, he laughed. "At least mine's dry. Wet hair is way more annoying than dry."

"Yours is iced, genius," Kakashi told him, covering his own wince, one purely self-directed. What was he doing?

Keeping Ginta grounded. Even if it meant starting something he didn't mean to finish.

He cleared his throat, standing up and stepping back. "Keep drinking. It'll help your body fight."

Cooled, cleaned, bandaged, fed, and topped off with painkillers--for a few precious minutes, there was nothing else he could do for Ginta. Nothing at all. Kakashi tucked his frozen hands beneath his armpits, feeling a shiver work its way through a body that really didn't need the cold, and turned to hunt up some new clothes. Maybe some painkillers. There was still a cup's worth of broth on the camp-stove...

"Does that make you the jackass now, if I'm the genius?" Ginta chuckled. He wanted to reach up and smooth his hair. Wanted not to be reminded all of a sudden, when he'd just decided he was okay with everything, that maybe he wasn't. Wasn't he the one who'd told Kakashi not to start things? And then Ginta'd turned right around and started things himself, with that comment about Kakashi's hair.

Maybe there was just something about Ginta's hair that made people touch it. Tsume had, too. And Asuma. He shouldn't let Kakashi's touch mean anything, or that look on his face. That catch when he cleared his throat.

Gods, he was delirious.

He sipped the broth. "Look, I'm drinking. Get dry. If you pitch over on your face I'm not going to be able to catch you."

Kakashi gave him one last look, then finally turned away. Ginta watched him locate a fresh set of clothes, regular field uniform, not ANBU gear, since that was what this way station had. He watched Kakashi strip, peeling sodden cloth from shivering skin. Underneath there were bandages, equally soaked, which Kakashi pulled away. He was shockingly slim. Muscular, but there wasn't a lot of reserve there. The gash on his hip was scabbed, but it looked raw and painful. And his shoulders were red and blistered, showing the outline of the sleeveless shirt and vest of his uniform where it had protected him from the chemical splash.

There were older bruises, too, from his previous mission. Bruises on his hips, bruises on his sides, faint and fading to yellow, but still visible. With his back to Ginta, he looked achingly vulnerable.

"You want help with bandages?" Ginta asked.

"Soup," Kakashi answered, not even turning around. He bandaged himself. Dressed himself. Handed Ginta an empty bottle. "You said you needed this. I'll be right back."

It was obvious what the bottle was for. When Kakashi had disappeared into what passed for a bathroom--probably, as Kakashi had said, a closet with a sealed bucket--Ginta made use of the bottle. It was awkward and uncomfortable, and he jostled his legs in the process, stifling a whimper.

When Kakashi re-emerged, Ginta had his eyes closed. The bottle, half-full of deep yellow liquid, was capped and set on the floor, along with the empty soup cup.

He slept. He dreamed. Confused, fever-dreams full of demon foxes and dying men. Blazing infernos and crushed limbs. There was a moment of wakefulness, then a cold hand on his face.

You have the most annoying hair.

Ginta's coherence was a fleeting thing. Over the next few hours, he only caught a handful of peaceful moments in between tossing, thrashing, and talking brokenly in his sleep. Kakashi gave up trying to keep him more than semi-soothed, and focused on getting his temperature to stay down. Ice did most of the work, along with frequently checked IV lines, towels soaked with chilled water, and occasional returns to the ice-air jutsu, which made Ginta's flushed skin sparkle and glitter in the drifting sunshine. With each use of chakra, Kakashi's headache worsened. He drowned it with painkillers and as much water he could force down his own throat, making sure he stayed hydrated.

Whenever Ginta managed to settle down, he turned his attention to the safehouse, doing small, necessary chores to keep himself awake and active. He cleaned the water and vomit off the floor, scrubbing until he could smell nothing but bleach. Then he tidied the scattered medical supplies and dirty clothes away, cleaned the dirt-clotted blood off his armour, mourned the loss of his katana and ceramic wolf-mask at the collapsing factory--if only because the Quartermaster would give him hell for both--and made himself a more solid meal than bland broth, trying to build back some of the resources he'd burned off in the last forty hours.

The sun was long past its zenith when he glanced out of the window, but still high above the horizon. They were over two-hundred miles from Konoha; even at top speed, a rescue squad would still take more than twenty hours to reach them. And they'd only been here ten at the most--

Maybe twelve, he amended, trying to work out what a very scrambled internal clock was trying to tell him.

For the hundredth time, Ginta stirred, whimpering softly as he shifted and jarred his legs. Instantly at his side, Kakashi calmed him with gentle hands that didn't shake, and checked his IV lines. The melting ice. The temperature of his skin...

Still rising. Then lowering, dipping, lifting, fluctuating, changing minute by minute with no rhyme or reason. The antibiotics were doing nothing at all. His lips were cracked and bleeding, seared by heat and bitten by Ginta's own white teeth, now stained pink. His gums were starting to bleed.

Carefully, Kakashi eased water down his throat. Ginta half woke, coughed weakly, tried to prop himself dizzily up on his elbows, and collapsed back with the suddenness of a headshot victim. Kakashi lunged for his pulse and found it racing, thready and weak. Sweat beaded into the hollow of his pale throat, streaked his temples, dampened hair that still glittered with ice; from beneath bandages, the scent of sweet grape rose steadily, worsening with each passing minute. Angry red streaks raced up and down his left leg, spreading further towards his body, past his groin, edging his sharp-boned hip.

Kakashi dragged his hands over his face. He wasn't a medic, there were no jutsu he knew that could deal with this. If they were lucky, the real medics were less than seven hours away. If they were unlucky--if the enemy ninja were still out there--if the signal hadn't gotten through--

At top speed, Kakashi could make it back to Konoha in ten hours. Much less if he threw down a handful of soldier pills and ripped them through as many translocations as possible. Combined that with Minato's flicker...

Ginta moaned softly, stirring back into half consciousness. Agonized, Kakashi stared at him and tried to work out if he could even survive that.

No. Maybe. It was too much risk. They had to wait it out.

Less than an hour later, when Ginta's temperature soared, his broken chatter turned to raving delusions, and nothing Kakashi did brought his fever down, there was no choice left. He threw his armour back on, sealed up as much food, water, medicine and bandages as he could spare the chakra for, and slit the legs on a pair of jounin-blue pants until he could draw them gently up to Ginta's hips, over the bulky bandages and splint, hiding the screaming sign that said 'strike me here'. Then he called the hawk back from its far away perch with a burst of key chakra and scribbled a coded message to Konoha.

Agent Sakamoto gravely injured. Agent Kinjo dead. Enemy pursuit almost a certainty. Unable to wait for medical team--will attempt to meet them on-route. Estimated arrival: 2300-0100. Otherwise, rescue has failed.

The hawk's lethal beak pressed a cool line over the back of his wrist as he tied the thin scroll to its leg. Kakashi met its fierce yellow gaze for a flickering moment.

"Race you," he whispered.

Its head flung back; its wings bridled. With a silent scream, it launched itself into the bright blue sky, swiftly becoming nothing but a distant speck on the high winds. Kakashi ducked back into the safehouse.

There was only one thing left to do. He steeled himself, and tried to wake Ginta.

Consciousness came hard for him. A terrifying surge of unstable chakra, misfiring neurons, and clenching muscles brought Ginta gasping to the surface, flailing wildly, trying to protect his face. Kakashi caught his wrists and held him, calling to him sharply, insistently. Pleading. Ginta panted, eyes wide but not seeing for several long moments, before recognition sparked.

"Ka-- Genius?" His own question was drowned in a rushing sound. Kakashi's masked face hovered close. He looked grim.

Mission. Had they been caught? He'd been hiding from the bastards in the ductwork. Had to get Tsuyako out. Tsuyako's neck snapped under Kakashi's hands. Ginta tried to scramble backwards. Tried to use his legs for leverage.

The roaring wind drowned everything out.

In the cyclone's wake, Ginta groped for consciousness again. Kakashi was leaning over him, pinning him--no--lifting him. Telling him to hold on, just hold on. The air was syrup, weighing him down, pouring thick and cloying into his lungs. Hold on. That was all he had to do. All he had to do was lift his arms, push strength into his hands, and hold on.

There was a sling around his back, Kakashi's broad shoulders in front of his face. Hold on. He reached forward, let Kakashi pull him up, and fell into the whirlwind again.

Running. Running. Running away. He was five years old, tumbling with puppies and a father he'd never known. He was strapped to the back of a terrified genin, covered in his sensei's blood, choking on the musk-filled smoke of the Fox's breath. He was falling into a vat of flaming chemicals, light and heat flaring around him. His legs were already burned clean through.

There was shouting. Screaming. The sound of weapons tolling like funeral bells. A chakra flare like a volcano erupting.

Falling. Falling, falling, falling, into an eternal pit. Falling into hell.

Kakashi's chakra blossomed around him. Ginta laughed. Kakashi was here to save him even from damnation? It was almost enough to make him religious.

Two chakra pills poured raw fire through his veins, like hot wire and hammering energy. Kakashi felt his shoulders lift, his spine straighten against Ginta's nothing-weight. Speed and strength flooded into weary muscles, driving exhaustion through the floor. His heart picked up a rattle-fire beat, spilling much-needed oxygen into rushing blood.

He translocated the second he stepped out of the safehouse, immediately breaking the trail and losing five quick miles, and hit the ground running. The landscape was nothing but forest and fading sunlight, wildlife silenced by the crack of energy they could sense but not understand. Kakashi wove and dodged between trees, saving precious energy by keeping to the forest floor, running as many physical miles as possible while he still could.

Strapped to his back, supported by two careful hands braced beneath his upper thighs, Ginta wasn't silent. He talked, cracked and raspy, devolving into laughter that sounded nothing like a healthy sound, and raved to the back of Kakashi's head. But his arms stayed locked around Kakashi's shoulders, fingers twisted together with something like desperate strength, one bandaged forearm pressed tight against the side of Kakashi's neck. Letting every enemy within earshot know exactly where they were.

And Kakashi didn't dare knock him out. Even a simple nerve pinch put pressure on the body, shocking it with that sudden shutdown. And Ginta was already far too close to falling asleep and never waking up.

His voice, even rambling and shattered and entirely nonsensical, was the closest thing to comfort Kakashi had.

He ran. An hour bled away, taking twenty miles with it, eaten by muscle strength, years of brutal training, and determination you could have bent iron around. Ten hours of sleep, broken though it had been, was almost enough for a man used to working with none. He'd done more in the war.

At least, he was pretty sure.

A second hour. Seventeen miles. Kakashi pushed himself harder, drawing more energy. He didn't need to conserve it, he realized, forcing himself to believe it. He had enough soldier pills to rattle forever, and a body that would stand them.

A third hour. Twenty-two miles.

He hit a wall, reached the edge of the thinning forest, broke into plains, and swallowed another soldier pill. The energy boost carried him through the next ten miles, arrowing straight across the countryside, dust dancing in the wind that followed at his heels. Pressed against his shoulders, Ginta was a blaze wrapped in human skin, just coherent enough to force down the water Kakashi kept pressing into his hands--provided Kakashi ordered him through every painful step. Bullied him, even when he dissolved into agonized, tearless weeping, wracked by a body pushed to the edge and over it. Morphine helped, even quieted him for long stretches of time. Unconsciousness did the rest; Ginta drifted in and out, barely sensate, barely there.

Kakashi filled the aching silence, rasping out any thought that crossed his mind. Talking just to hear his own voice, any voice.

Every second mile, he chilled them both as much as he could, casting ice and water. Soaking and freezing them. Trying to avoid Ginta's bandaged legs, his own slashed hip and acid-drenched shoulders. Every third mile. Every sixth mile. Ginta's weight grew heavier, dragging at his back, slowing his steps.

Another soldier pill. Then two more.

At eighty-three miles, the sun was long set, Kakashi couldn't breathe, and the first flicker of leashed enemy chakra scoured the edge of his senses. He stumbled, jarring a scream from Ginta's long-silent throat, and translocated before they hit the ground.

Eighty-eight miles. Not nearly far enough.

There is a widely held misconception that above a certain level, pain simply becomes meaningless. That the human consciousness can't distinguish levels of pain past a certain point, just as human senses can't hear ultrasonic frequencies or see ultraviolet light. Ginta'd heard it before; he knew it was a lie. What the human mind was exceptionally good at was failing to remember the details of exquisite pain after it was over, but in the moment of experiencing it, every single cell of his being was alive to it. Screaming, like breathing, like his heart beating, was an automatic, unconscious, animal response.

Ginta hovered above it. He simply observed, as his body arched, as his broken leg twisted in its splint, as Kakashi's fingers dug into his thighs. He felt a whisper of lethal intent from behind them. Watched Kakashi fall, and the ground come rushing up.

Kakashi let go; Ginta's feet dragged on the ground, right first, then left. He felt tendons stretch and his ankle bend where a joint shouldn't be. Watched muscles in Kakashi's back flex and ripple under cloth and bandages. Felt something far worse than gravity tugging on him; and Kakashi's chakra like platinum flames rising all around.

They hit the ground.

Damp, sandy soil was cold on his hot face. Kakashi was under him, choking on a cry, already struggling to rise again. Adrenaline still screamed they were under attack, though the alien chakra was gone.

Kakashi was on his feet, shoving pills into his mouth, shaping chakra again. The rope around his shoulders was all that kept Ginta from sliding to the grassy earth.

Hold on.

Ginta tightened his grip once more. Kakashi's chakra bloomed again. Ginta's blood boiled. His flesh dissolved. He was blinded by a phosphorous flare. Turning inside out, crushed and torn to pieces. Dying.

They hit the ground again.

Kakashi's breath scorched in his lungs. He staggered, catching himself, catching Ginta, and lurched into the next translocation. The enemy chakra was long behind them, fifteen miles and fading, but that meant nothing to a determined jounin. And fighting wasn't an option. Falling--indefinitely suspended--was the only option. All Kakashi had left was speed. Enough strength to make his legs move. The desperate, unreal hope that there was enough life left in Ginta to last him all the way home, and just a little further.

Everything became movement.

He flung himself forwards, hands hooking back and up to tangle beneath Ginta's seat, bracing him up, locking his own fingers together in the permanent shape of seals. It helped that translocations were easy, comparatively: three quick moves, a rush of chakra, a wrenching pull like the landscape twisting upside down and inside out, and the landing. Most decent jounin could manage four in an hour before they fell over, trading the ability to stand for twenty hard-won miles.

Kakashi wanted a lot more. Needed more.

Minato's body flicker was harder, a bastardized version of a translocation in and of itself, ramped up with chakra and complex seals, mastered by one dead hero and one living genius who only risked it when no other option presented itself.

He'd never tried it with a translocation before.

Ginta was a dead weight on his back, head lolling loose against Kakashi's shoulder, body temperature rising wildly out of control. Ice didn't slow it, water hadn't brought it down, antibiotics couldn't even touch it. He was septic, rotting from the inside out, completely out of time.

Kakashi refused to let him go.

"Breathe," he snarled, feeling Ginta's chest hitch against his back, his hands spasm and loosen. He grabbed every single reserve he had left, fully aware they were on the very border of sanity--of simple human endurance--and beyond not caring. "Don't you dare let go."

There was half a breaking heartbeat for one last thought--

Ryouma would never forgive him.

--and Kakashi shaped eight seals, kicked his body into a whole new gear, and ran.

Then he translocated.

Konoha's main gate was the one to the south. It was the face of the village, the one by which most traffic entered and exited. There were gates at the east and west, too, with minor roads leading in from the plains and forests. The north entrance to the village was the most protected, and least used. The cliff face into which the Hokage's faces were carved was a natural barrier, and the wooded plateau above was largely uninhabited. Commerce coming from the north always diverted to the east or west. The chuunin who staffed the northern gate logged many fewer civilians, and many more of their fellow Leaf ninja passing through.

A flash of light on the road drew Setsumi's eye. Through binoculars, she could see the dissipating swirl of a jutsu, and a hunched, moonlit figure staggering under a burden. A hunched, moonlit figure in a distinctive white vest. "We've got inbound ANBU with casualties," she said, instantly on alert. Her right hand groped for a button mounted under the ledge of her watchtower desk, while the left held the binoculars tight to her face.

The ANBU staggered again, and went down on one knee. His burden tumbled off, another body, to lie unmoving, with one arm outflung, and one leg at a hideous angle. The ANBU lurched towards the fallen body, and fell himself.

"Get someone out there now!" There was already a shimmer on the path. "He's down. They're down. There are two." White-hooded medics materialized near the fallen figures, one at each body, checking pulses and dogtags. More medics and a pair of masked ANBU ran out from the gate, carrying stretchers, racing towards their colleagues.

A tinny voice crackled in her ear. "Confirm two. 09720, 10061. ANBU class. Both living. Both critical." She wrote the numbers down in her logbook, and the designations.

"We're losing this one!" she heard a voice in the background, overlapping with the first voice asking her to confirm.

"Acknowledged," she said. "09720, 10061. Critical. ANBU. You sure about that?"

"Log it," the voice snapped, and cut off. Runners were already racing back for the gate. Racing for the hospital.

She put her pencil down, then picked it up again, and wrote a little spiral next to both numbers. A sort of magic talisman. "09720-san, 10061-san... Gods keep you."

There was no deity Kakashi could have cared about so much as the pale, wind-whipped face he couldn't see. Hands touched his neck, warm fingers pressing against his jugular pulse. Another hand settled on his shoulder, limned by pale green chakra. He choked and shoved himself up, rising onto shaking forearms, heaving himself back onto his hands and knees. Blood splattered the dusty pathway, cast off from--

Everywhere.

He couldn't see. Crimson filled his vision, streamed out of his nose, trickled from his ears. The beds of his nails were bloody; the back of his throat tasted like a slaughter house. Someone yanked his mask down. He retched and vomited copper-crushed stomach acid, splashing it over his own hands.

Dull sound crashed against his roaring ears. Calloused fingers tightened around his shoulders, steadying and shaking him all at once. He jerked around, red-drenched hair plastered over his face.

"--poison? Can you hear--"

"No," he gasped, and retched again. "Not--poison. Crashing. Soldier pills--"

Faintly, he heard someone swear.

"Jutsu," he managed to add, and wrapped his hands around the wrists holding him up, fingers tightening over bone and flesh and a steadily hammering pulse. His heart pounded in his chest, far too fast. He couldn't catch a breath. "Ginta?"

Something like cloth dragged over his eyes, briefly clearing his vision. He focused on the first face that swam out of tunneling red-black darkness, lip-reading the answer.

No pulse. What happened?

Bright blood welled out of his tear ducts, a lifetime away from clean salt-water, and drowned the world again. He held onto the man's wrists, shaking hard enough to break apart, and tried to keep breathing.

"Captured." His lips were numb. "Tortured. Arrow wound--left thigh. Broken leg. Infected. Everything's--infected. Septic--"

Pain blazed down his left arm, tightened in his chest. He gasped, hunching forwards, and threw up another throatful of searing scarlet. Hands grabbed at him, steadying him, pulling him onto his side. Chakra washed into him, connected at four different points--by four different hands. Shoulder, ribcage, belly, hip. A flood of energy that couldn't even begin to scrape the bottom of what he'd used. He shuddered, teeth grinding together, every muscle clenching tight. Pressure building along nerves stretched far beyond the point of endurance.

And none of it mattered, because as his eyes flew open, head arched back, the sharingan caught a familiar, fading pattern of chakra, reading it even through the wash of blood, and wrote the meaning right across the red-drenched shell of his skull.

Ginta, unmoving, unbreathing. Limp beneath the hands of frantic medics jolting chakra into his chest.

One-hundred and three.

When the first seizure tore him apart, bringing darkness and nothing, Kakashi welcomed it.