Breathe.

If he breathed any more, he'd hyperventilate and pass straight back out. Instead, Kakashi wrapped his aching arms around slender, hard-muscled shoulders, tightening his grip to a point far shy of grinding bones--he wasn't strong enough yet--and pressed his face against the side of Ginta's neck. His mouth and nose were bare; there was nothing to stop scent burning right into his brain.

No expensive wood, no sweet fruit. The reek of a long hospital stay overlaid everything, replacing the familiar with medicine and sharp sterility. There was pain like a rusted weapon, old enough the edges had blunted. Beneath that, salt and sadness and worry. And under that, Ginta's own scent, twisting and indefinable, backed by chakra and a heartbeat Kakashi could feel.

You couldn't fake that.

But he'd seen Ginta fall. Had felt him drop half a staggering step before Kakashi had dropped, too wrecked to stand anymore. Because two-hundred miles of running-jumping-falling had been too much for a man with a fever hot enough to boil a river, and Kakashi shouldn't have tried it, and Ginta had died.

There was a sound. This time, even broken and rasping and muffled by skin, Kakashi recognized it. It was his own voice.

"I'm sorry--I'm so sorry."

It wasn't nearly good enough.