"Bite me," Kakashi spat, and jerked his ANBU mask back down. A little sleight of hand and a twist of chakra was all he needed to slide the cloth mask off from underneath without disturbing anything else. Genma's eyebrows twitched up to his hairline. Kakashi snapped a growl at him, entirely disturbed by the cold touch of porcelain against the lower half of his face.

Genma made a show of turning his head away, picking up the pace slightly so that he drew ahead.

"Smartass," Kakashi muttered to himself, and splashed canteen water over his mask. The cloth was limp and stained, marked with three or four poison-cloud colours and a faded dusting of grey-brown spores. He wrinkled his nose at the dried patches of foam. Water alone wasn't going to get that off.

A thought occurred. Technically, the cloth was fireproof...

To Genma's credit, he barely missed a step when Kakashi created a small whoosh of flame between his palms that made the shadows dance; it burned blue, then green, and licked briefly against his chestplate. He extinguished it after a few seconds, leaving his mask smoking and soot-stained, but cleaner.

"Good," said Genma, with no trace of irony. "Thank you."

Kakashi debated flinging a branch at the back of his head. Instead he yanked the mask on again, another bit of clever hand-movement, and adjusted it beneath the ANBU wolf-face. Then he sneezed violently as the soot got up his nose.

Genma smothered a sound in the back of his throat. Kakashi glared at him. "Three points North up ahead," he said, quelling the urge to snap. "You should be able to see the river soon. Try not to fall in."

A grin crossed Genma's face, and he clenched his hand into a brief fist. Won that round, anyway. That fire jutsu had been a smart move, he had to admit. He supposed it shouldn't have surprised him; Kakashi was widely regarded as a genius, after all.

Like most geniuses Genma had been acquainted with, Kakashi tended to be rather full of himself. Seeing him taken down a peg every now and again... Well. There was pure pleasure to be had in that.

"When we get there, I'll mix you up another dose," Genma told him. "Quarter dose. Should be a lot easier on you this time, since it's just insurance."

And then, as they came around a stand of yellow-leaved beeches, there was the river, shining like an orange ribbon, reflecting the setting sun as it wound through deep purple banks. It was breathtakingly beautiful.

What seemed like an eyeblink later, Genma was still facing the river, but now Kakashi was in front of him, blocking his view, waving bare hands in Genma's face... Reaching for Genma's mask.

Genma shied back, snapping his arms up defensively. "Don't even say it. Don't say a fucking thing," he warned.

"Your antidote isn't working," said Kakashi flatly, ignoring him. "What the hell's going on?"

"It's working," Genma protested, backing up another step. "There's some kind of weirdness because of the whole slowed reaction. I'll take a soldier pill. Maybe it's a chakra thing."

Kakashi couldn't see how taking a chakra pill would help, unless Genma just meant he was low on chakra? But he didn't feel low on chakra. He just felt... strange. Kakashi spread out a few tendrils of energy and brushed the edge of Genma's chakra, frowning. The golden-honey coils felt thick and sluggish, moving far too slowly. But that could be stress...

Kakashi pulled his chakra back and sighed. This wasn't his arena; he was about as useful as a civilian trying to read complex seal-work. General intelligence didn't make up for a lack of knowledge, not with this.

But there were other things he could do.

"Sit down and eat something," he ordered, pulling out a few of his scrolls. They both carried single-man tents, sealed away, not to mention the makings for a swift, shielded campfire and hunting tools. Kakashi unsealed his tent, abandoned the tough canvass in a neat bundle to one side, and dropped the sleeping bag down in the sheltered lee of a heavy tree. "There. You can set up a fire, too, if it won't make you faint. And do your antidote things."

He couldn't see Genma's face behind the mask, but it was easy to imagine the outraged, mulish look just from the set of his shoulders.

Kakashi smiled sharply. "I'm going hunting. Try not to break yourself while I'm gone."

Fifteen minutes, he promised himself, and vanished back into the undergrowth.

Genma shuddered, a visceral roll of dislike for Kakashi sliding up his spine and across already tense shoulders like a wave. Bastard was far too polite a word for the man. Far too polite. He shoved his mask off his face and massaged his temples, where a headache as heavy as a blacksmith's anvil was blossoming into being like thunderheads on a muggy summer afternoon.

Fine. Fine, Kakashi could hunt, and Genma would set up a perimeter. Rig a few traps. He inspected the campsite, and found it was at least as safe as he'd hoped, sheltered by steeply angled banks that would one day be canyons, nestled under birches and beeches whose leaves would rustle at the slightest disturbance to warn of any intruders. Satisfied, he pulled out his own tent scroll and thumbed the seal. The chakra jolt it called from him made his head pound and his stomach heave.

It took a moment of dizzy, head-down panting to regain his composure before he could even attempt to set up the tent. Maybe it was chakra exhaustion. He certainly felt drained. The chakra pill he crunched down tasted as salt-bitter-foul as ever, but the hot bloom it spread under his skin was new. Almost like an overdose might feel. He frowned, exasperated, rubbed his temples again, and set to work assembling the second-round of antidote for both of them.

While he worked, he ran through every poison he knew, every toxin, trying to find some explanation for his symptoms. For the headache: dehydration? The stiff, throbbing hands and difficulty drawing a deep breath were both easily attributable to the poison spores. The raw ache at the back of his neck that flared into a muscle-consuming inferno if he brushed a fingertip over the cut could be infection, could be nerve irritation. The heavy, dead feeling in his chakra coils, even with the chakra pill boosting the flow, could be simple fatigue. But the little lapses in consciousness he couldn't account for.

He tipped his portion of the antidote down an unwilling throat, and set Kakashi's on top of his sleeping bag, drank half a canteen of water, and then turned to fire-making. That meant opening a second scroll, Genma thought with dread. When he did it, though, it seemed the chakra pill had been a success. The action dragged another sick wave of pain over him, but it didn't last, and it wasn't nearly as deep this time.

He was just finishing setting the fuel into the shielded fire pit when he caught sight of Kakashi returning with a pair of limp rabbits dangling from one hand. The idea of eating was neither appealing nor nauseating, but maybe the smell of roasting rabbit would rouse his appetite.

Genma raised his hands for the simplest of fire jutsu. Tiger-Snake-Tiger. He pushed chakra ruthlessly through channels that resisted it, and felt the flame catch.

Felt the whole world lurch.

His vision went first, a sudden narrowing and yellowing, with showers of black sparks cascading past his eyes. His skull imploded. His back arched so hard he was thrown off his feet. Fire danced over every limb, through every chakra channel, down every nerve, scorching him from the inside. He could feel his legs thrashing, his arms drawn tight, his head jerking back again and again against that damned scratch, which was the source of all pain now.

His chest was crushed, but there wasn't any air to be had. The atmosphere rushed away into a vacuum. The sun and stars went dark.

Kakashi dropped the rabbits and sprinted down to the make-shift camp, far too late to catch Genma before he hit the ground.

A flash-flood of chakra revealed no enemies, no reason for Genma to shake like he had lightning in his bones. Kakashi threw himself on his knees next to the spasming, thrashing body and tried to figure out what the hell it was. Heart attack? Stroke?

Seizure.

Genma was bent back like a bow, every single tendon in his neck standing out like thick cables. His muscles clenched and quivered, writhing beneath the ANBU blacks. His teeth ground together so hard Kakashi almost expected them to shatter. Beneath half-lowered lids, the whites of rolled-back eyes gleamed like wet bone.

"Hell," Kakashi whispered.

There wasn't anything you could do for a seizure, that much he knew. Shoving something into Genma's mouth would likely choke him, or cause Kakashi to lose a finger. Pinning him down would just bruise them both. CPR was completely useless, at least until that tight-drawn body relaxed.

Genma's lips were white, turning blue at the edges. He wasn't getting enough air.

Kakashi grabbed him by the front of his armour, ducking to avoid a glancing blow from one flailing hand, and yanked Genma away from the guttering fire before he accidentally rolled into it. Then Kakashi snatched his abandoned sleeping bag up and rolled it into a tight bundle he could shove beneath Genma's head. Something fine and delicate tinkled away into the gloom, landing with a breaking-glass sound, but Kakashi didn't pay any attention.

How long had it been? One minute? Two? Genma wasn't breathing.

"You bastard," Kakashi hissed, staring helplessly at those long thrashing limbs. "Don't you dare do this to me. I'm not carrying your body all the way home, Shiranui!"

Another minute ticked by. Genma made an eerie, drawn-out groaning sound in the back of his throat, then finally, thankfully, he collapsed. Kakashi almost bit his lower lip in two before the first raspy breath rattled back into Genma's lungs, followed by another. And another. The dark blue tinge faded away, replaced by dead white and only the barest hint of pink.

Kakashi sat down hard, lungs aching inside his chest. "Fucking hell," he muttered quietly.

Genma didn't answer.

After another moment, Kakashi pulled himself back up, arranged Genma's dead-weight limbs into the recovery position, put a canteen of water next to one gloved hand, and trekked back up the hill to retrieve his rabbits.

The first fifteen times Kakashi checked Genma's pulse with a pair of fingertips snugged under the angle of Genma's jaw, Genma didn't feel it. He didn't move beyond the slow labored rise and fall of his chest. Made no noise other than the sibilant hiss of breath through congested airways. The sixteenth time, nearly three hours on, with stars wheeling overhead and a campfire crackling warmly under a half-eaten pot of rabbit stew, he opened his eyes.

They didn't focus easily.

He swallowed and felt the fingers pressing his throat. Felt a chakra presence that was alien but unthreatening. Heard a low, gruff voice laced with some strange combination of annoyance and relief say, "I told you not to break yourself, idiot."

Recognition evaded him, darting away like minnows in a pool. He knew that voice. That chakra presence. But he couldn't quite get sense out of it.

Every muscle ached, and he felt as weak as water. He was warm, at least, lying on a thick bedroll and covered by another. Outdoors. On a mission. He remembered that. A mission.

It took a supreme effort to force breath past vocal cords, to shape his mouth around a pair of sluggish words: "What... happened?" It didn't even begin to cover the questions he wanted to ask.

"Beats the hell out of me," Kakashi admitted, with a fervent sigh of relief when Genma finally spoke. At least he wasn't brain damaged -- well, no more so than usual. "You had some kind of seizure. Stopped breathing for a few minutes, then you just crashed out."

For three hours. Kakashi had been about ready to summon a dog, tie Genma to its back, and sprint for home. Or have some kind of worry-induced heart attack. One of the two.

Yellow-gold eyes blinked slowly at him, filled with no kind of recognition. Kakashi felt his heart sink. "Tell me you know who I am."

There was a long, painful pause. Genma's blank gaze flicked down over Kakashi's armour. "ANBU?" he guessed.

It took everything Kakashi had not to grab him and shake him. Was this normal for seizures? Genma was the damn medic. The poisoned medic. What the hell was Kakashi supposed to do if Genma didn't remember his training?

He let out a long, slow breath.

"Hatake Kakashi," he said carefully. "I'm Hatake Kakashi. You're Shiranui Genma. We're Konoha ANBU in the middle of a mission. We've both been recently poisoned. And I really, really need you to remember everything, okay?"

Genma just stared at him, eyes far too wide. Kakashi raked both hands through his hair, dragged them down his face, and grabbed for the next available straw.

"Do you want something to eat?"

Genma swallowed and blinked, trying to still the caged-bird beating its wings against the bars in his chest. He knew who he was. He knew who Kakashi was. If the man in front of him looked completely unfamiliar and swore he was Kakashi, there were two obvious possibilities: the stranger was lying, and Genma was a prisoner; or he was telling the truth, and Genma's brains were scrambled from poison.

Either way, he told himself, panic will kill you. Panic was the emotion Rule Twenty-five was really written about. Panic and hopelessness. If you gave in to panic, you acted rashly. If you gave in to hopelessness, you gave up. Other emotions were dangerous--anger, fear, sadness, even joy, could all, at the wrong moment, trip you up, lead you to mission failure, to death. But panic and despair were the worst.

"Prove... it." The words came out like paste squeezed from the bottom of the tube, slow and sticky. He tried to sit up, drawing aching knees up, pushing off with arms that barely held his weight, but collapsed again.

Gods. if he could just get through the fog in his own head. Get something other than blank grey haze where memory should be. The flutter of his heart raced ungoverned.

You're a dick, was the first response that came to mind, but one look at the leaping pulse in Genma's throat was enough to know that wouldn't fly. Kakashi sat back on his haunches, a little non-plussed. Prove it. Like the mask and hair and covered eye weren't clue enough? What the hell was going on in Genma's brain?

Stalling for time, he picked up the water canteen still sitting by Genma's hand and took an obvious swallow through his mask. Not poisoned, see? Then handed it over. Or tried to. Genma refused to even close his fingers around it.

Well, yes, if Kakashi didn't recognise the source he wouldn't drink the water either. Go figure Genma had retained just enough memory to know he was paranoid.

"Look," said Kakashi finally, tapping the swirling cut of crimson ink on his left biceps. "ANBU tattoo. And here." He hooked his battered dogtags off his neck and dropped them onto Genma's chest. "Name, number and birthday."

Genma didn't look even remotely convinced.

"ANBU's operations director is Arakaki Hisoka," Kakashi went on, grabbing facts at random. "The Intel directer is Oita Gennosuke, except on weekends when he goes home to see his kids. Shida Akumaru heads T & I, and you wouldn't ever want to meet him in a dark alley. Morimoto's the canteen's head chef and he makes the most lousy sukiyaki." Kakashi pulled a face. "He always over-sweetens it. And--"

"Too many onions." The words came out much clearer now. Vast swathes of gauze ripped away, as whatever circuit in Genma's brain that had been failing finally clicked together again. He recognized Kakashi. Remembered. "Too sweet and too many onions." His head ached with a dull echo of the explosion his jutsu had unleashed; every muscle and bone felt battered and bruised. His tongue was swollen where he'd bitten it, and his jaw...

No, that was Kakashi's fault. Genma remembered more, saw crystalline moments of memory jumbled together, out of proper sequence. Kakashi bashing Genma in the face with his own mask. The desperate struggle to get the antidote into Kakashi before time ran out. Suguru hurling a kunai...

He made another attempt to sit up, more successful this time, but the motion made him aware of cold dampness at his crotch.

Fuck

"I had a seizure." Which explained a lot of things, including this particular indignity.

Wait, did Kakashi tell him that already. Yes? Maybe?

Genma's fingers closed around something sharp edged and metallic. He opened his fist to find Kakashi's dogtags. Squinting at them in the firelight, he focused on the date.

Today's date.

"It's your birthday?"

Kakashi blinked. "What?"

Distracted from his renewed relief he leaned across and lifted his tags back from Genma's hands, glancing at the date before he slung them back around his neck. September 15th. A riffle back through his memory informed him that, yes, their mission had started late on the 13th. Add a few-dozen hours of running...

Huh. Well, there you go. He'd made it to nineteen.

Genma was staring at him, eyebrows pinched together with something that wasn't entirely pain. As Kakashi watched, he scowled, glanced away, and shifted just a little uncomfortably. Probably discovering his wet pants. Kakashi hadn't minded setting up the campsite, sorting Genma out between both their bedrolls (with Genma's on the bottom), and erecting a tent around his unconscious teammate and stripping off Genma's armour, but he'd drawn the line at playing that kind of nurse. If Genma wanted a change of underwear, he'd have to do it himself.

Which, thank god, he'd be able to do, because he'd finally gotten his brain back.

"I can get you some warm water," Kakashi informed him, tone perfectly serious; there were some things you just didn't mock people about. Well, mostly. "Your medkit's just there," he nodded at Genma's elbow, "along with your scrolls; I'm hoping one of them has clothes. I can unseal them if you tell me your sequence. And there's rabbit stew if you're hungry."

He settled down with his legs crossed, absently fiddling with his dogtags.

"Now what the hell do we do about this seizure?"

Genma's cheeks flushed dull red at Kakashi's offer. "Yeah. Warm water'd be good." His words still felt thick and indistinct, speaking was still an effort. But thinking was rapidly returning to normal, thank every mercy. He struggled up into a crouch, shivering as the blanket fell away from bare shoulders. "I've got... change... Change of clothes."

And where was his armour?

He reached for his medkit, fumbled it with fingers still awkward and tingling, let it go. Why had he had a seizure? Poisoned, obviously. It had to be poisoning, but the mycotoxin that had felled Kakashi, that he'd assumed was responsible for his own difficulties, didn't cause seizures. It didn't affect the central nervous system at all.

Standing seemed impossible, with muscles still tremblingly weak. He crawled off the bedroll and picked up the scroll holding his clothes. "What was I doing? Did you see... See it hit?"

"Lighting the fire," Kakashi answered. He reached over with a slow, obvious motion and tried to take the scroll from Genma's hands. "I don't think you should leap into any more jutsu for a while."

Genma stiffened and snatched the scroll back back, folding his hands close to his body with a sharp breath.

"Or, sure, you can freak out and mess with chakra and knock yourself cold again," Kakashi said with undisguised disdain. "Whatever works for you." He picked up a small basin and stood, heading down to the river, presumably to get the water he'd offered to warm for Genma."I'm not lending you any of my clothes, though."

"It doesn't take a jutsu to open a simple scroll... Asshole." There, words were coming almost normally now. That pause before the epithet hadn't been by choice, but everything else had flowed easily enough.

And Kakashi hadn't said anything too pointed about Genma's hands. Thank gods, because that was not a conversation he wanted to have with the man.

He tried to understand how a fire jutsu could possibly precipitate a seizure, but there were no poisons he knew of that worked exactly like that. Maybe it was just a nerve agent, and the jutsu had been incidental, in which case he ought to take some kind of sedative. What did he have in his field kit that was any good for seizures? Nothing. Because seizures weren't the sorts of problems you expected in the field, and unless they were epilepsy--which this certainly wasn't--they were just symptoms. Usually of head injury.

It would be easier to puzzle this out once he had on dry clothes, he decided, and pressed his thumb to the seal on the scroll. Chakra oozed through his coils at a glacial pace. His hand on the scroll started to shake. In his peripheral vision, Genma saw flashes of yellow-green, as the pounding in his head peaked. He stumbled out of the tent and away from the fire, and retched into the dry grass.

Crouched down by the river, Kakashi rolled his eyes. "Told you," he muttered, and finished casting the simple jutsu that made steam roll away from the basin in his hands. Warm water, check. And now he just hoped Genma had remembered to pack a toothbrush.

At least Genma was standing again. Sort of. Kakashi made his swift way back to camp, left the water in Genma's abandoned tent, and hesitated five feet away from his retching, spitting teammate.

As he understood it, normal vomiting protocol dictated that you offered support, maybe a soothing backrub, and pulled any overly long hair out of the way. But Genma was holding his own hair back just fine, and Kakashi had never been inclined to give anyone a backrub, ever. Plus, if he rewarded Genma's stupid self-induced sick-making with any kind of support, the man would likely just do it again.

Genma made a particularly painful sound, coughed deeply, and spat of glob of something that glistened dark and wet in the firelight.

"Excellent," Kakashi muttered, sub-vocally, and went back to the tent. He neatened up the sleeping bags, stacked Genma's stained armour on top, and pulled out the water canteen and medkit. Genma probably carried some kind of anti-nausea something, with luck. Most medics did.

By the time Kakashi got back to him, Genma was hunkered miserably down and breathing hard, but at least he'd stopped vomiting. He dashed one shaking hand over his mouth. Kakashi offered the canteen.

"So," he repeated, "I'll say again. What do we do about this?"

Genma took the canteen with an exhausted, exasperated sigh, and didn't answer right away. He rinsed, spat, rinsed and spat again, and finally took a slow, cautious swallow of the water. It blazed a chilly trail down his raw esophagus, and outlined the edges of his more-than-empty stomach.

What the hell did they do about this? It was a damn good question.

"I don't know."

The look on Kakashi's face was, even with his mask, jolting. He looked--had looked before his expression recomposed into its usual mild scorn--uncertain. Frightened. Young. Genma had looked at that birth date--Kakashi was just nineteen. Two years and two months younger than Genma. Genma needed to pull himself together here, and figure this out, because Kakashi, for all his genius, was a kid who was out of his depth, especially when it came to poison.

"The first thing is yeah, I don't use my chakra. It's... It's not right. It feels weird." That was as much of an acknowledgment that Kakashi had been right to try to stop him opening that scroll as he was going to get. He headed back to the tent, knowing Kakashi would follow. Strength was returning, though his hands still shook, his thighs still trembled.

His clothes lay in a heap where the scroll had disgorged them. He picked through the pile extracting clean briefs, fresh trousers. "You don't have to watch, I can change without using chakra," he said, and started unfastening his belt.

Kakashi just snorted, tossed Genma's medkit so that it landed next to the basin of warm water still gently steaming on his bedroll, and went back out to the fire.

Genma peeled out of damp, urine-soaked pants and underwear at last. His athletic cup was hard plastic, easily cleaned, and definitely not something he was doing without. He fished it free from the pocket that held it in place in the soiled briefs, and dropped it into the water. A fresh handkerchief became a washcloth. And thank god he'd only wet himself and not done worse.

When he was dressed again, he redonned armour, slung his medkit over one arm, bundled the wet clothes carefully together, and went to join Kakashi. He tossed the dirty water into the same grass he'd been sick in, handed Kakashi the empty basin, and lowered himself to the ground, sitting rather than crouching, Anything to take the load off of aching, twitching muscles.

"Can you look at my neck again? See if there's any change. See if you see anything? You can't see chakra the same way a Hyuuga can, with that Sharingan, can you?"

Behind his mask, Kakashi wet chapped lips. "Sort of," he admitted cautiously. Deep in enemy territory was not the best place to reveal close-guarded secrets, especially not to a man he didn't precisely trust not to use them against him. "Not in that level of detail, but I can see how it moves."

Apparently that was good enough, as Genma nodded, eyes turned thoughtful. Kakashi dropped a bowl filled with the remaining rabbit stew--now overcooked and a little gummy around the edges, where it wasn't crisped--into Genma's hands, and scooted around to look at the back of his neck.

The third sharingan use today, however brief, twinged a brief flicker of pain in Kakashi's temples. He ignored it and studied that weird blue-edged gash; the chakra that coiled sluggishly beneath, moving less and less like chakra should. Pale blood-vein tendrils curled all the way up to Genma's hairline, now, branching towards his skull in a way Kakashi really didn't like.

When he'd looked for long enough, making sure to get a clear view in the dancing reflected firelight, he moved back around to Genma's eyeline.

"Don't you dare throw up on me," Kakashi warned, and caught Genma's full attention in a spin of black and crimson. Showed him both the last few minutes, complete with moving chakra, and the thirty seconds Kakashi had snatched before, back in that tree.

There was the same disorienting switch in perspective as before, and there was the clone again. No, himself. The switch from darkness around a campfire to sunlit treetops was especially dizzying. There was his -- no, Kakashi's -- hand, sweeping long hair aside, revealing a wound unremarkable but for the bluish edges Powder-burn streaks radiated faintly away from it. This time, because he was trying to understand what he was seeing, he was annoyed when the clone--himself--turned and threw that punch before he'd had a chance to really get a good look.

The image slid and swirled, and suddenly there was sensation as well as sight. Tight, stomach-knotting anxiety, and a feeling of just barely holding on to a thick lens of calm. His lungs burned, not the struggle for air of before, but a raw smoldering pain with every breath. A headache. A desperate need to deal with this. It was night, there was the campfire. The same straight-fingered calloused hands brushed long brown hair back from a neck that reason told Genma was his own, but experience said had to be a clone.

The wound looked far worse. Still a shallow scratch, hardly something of consequence, but the edges had curled and crisped, and the blue tinge from before had spread and deepened to an unnatural shade. Slender twisting lines radiated away up to his nape, down towards his shoulders, climbing around the knobs of his spine and diving under the skin. Following blood vessels. Following chakra coils.

The superimposed vision of the chakra movement was sickening to someone unused to seeing such things. It was impossible to tell what was natural--it all looked wrong. The movement, a pulse of honey-gold light tracing through meridians Genma had only ever imagined before, seemed ponderous. Nauseating.

The headache grew. Grew. Grew. Throbbed in time to the pulse of the chakra, then out of sync, then in again, until it was shaking his whole being. His neck ached, the burn in his chest winked out, replaced with an incessant squeeze. Vision dimmed to a pinprick.

Not messing with chakra, Kakashi realized with belated horror, went both ways. He snapped his genjutsu apart just as Genma's eyes rolled back, as twitching muscles danced obscenely beneath lightly tanned skin. Genma fell backwards, away from the fire; Kakashi lunged and caught him before his head cracked off the ground.

There was no groaning this time. No desperate struggle for air. Genma's teeth didn't clench, his spine didn't arch. He just shook and spasmed, a limp ragdoll in Kakashi's tight grip, fingers clenching convulsively. The molten lines of his chakra darkened, strangled by thin threads of blue even the sharingan could barely see.

What the hell was going on?

It ended abruptly, barely a minute after it had started. Genma shuddered and stilled, head lolling back, eyes half open. Refusing to panic, Kakashi checked his breathing and the pulse at his throat -- both there, both more shallow and thready than they should have been.

Okay, so, mini-seizure. Not nearly as bad as the other one had been.

No reason to panic at all.

Kakashi laid Genma down and slapped him on both cheeks, getting exactly no response. Grimly, he pinched one of Genma's earlobes hard, digging his nails in as deeply as he dared. Still nothing. Genma just wasn't there.

"Son of a bitch," Kakashi gritted through his teeth, casting around for something, anything, he could do. Genma's medkit was labled in Genma's own personal code, and Kakashi wouldn't have trusted himself with any of those slick vials anyway. His own medkit just had the basics--blood pills, soldier pills, painkillers, bandages--and nothing that would help here.

He didn't have time to hang around for another three hours while Genma clawed his way back to consciousness. That blue mark, whatever it was, was only getting worse.

As a last resort, Kakashi yanked Genma back into the recovery position, dumped a canteen of water onto Genma's head, re-covered the sharingan, and threw himself into packing their camp back up. He was mid-way through resealing their last tent when Genma coughed, spluttered, and lurched up onto his elbows.

"About time!" Kakashi yelled, and heroically didn't fell Genma with a tent pole for scaring the hell out of him.

Orientation came back a lot more quickly this time. The fact that their camp was all but gone was a little alarming. "Where are you going? How long... how long was I out?" Genma asked. "And what the hell, Kakashi?" His hair was dripping, his shirt soaked. The scrape on his neck throbbed like a sunburn, dug its fingers into muscle and sinew like it was trying to take root.

"We, Shiranui," Kakashi spat, talking too quickly and not looking at Genma. His focus remained riveted on the scroll he was sealing the tent into. "We are going home. Right fucking now."

"We can't. Not like this." Genma sat the rest of the way up, looking grave. The image of that poisoned wound spun through his memory as vividly as the toxic effect itself spun through his body. "Suguru was a fucking bastard. Put the tent back up, I need your help."

For a moment Kakashi looked like he was about to throw the scroll down in a temper-tantrum. Then he took a deep, rasping breath, straightened his shoulders and relaxed his spine, transforming from vexed child to battle-ready soldier before Genma's eyes. He looked at Genma coolly. "With what?"

"I need to take a different antidote, and then I need you to run a chakra sieve on me." He saw Kakashi's eye widen. "I know. It's an advanced medical jutsu, but..."

But that bastard, Suguru. Genma clenched an aching fist and ground it against his thigh. The thick leg muscle responded by trembling and twitching, spasming under the pressure.

"Suguru was working on a chakra poison tagged to a CNS agent that targets fast twitch nerves."

Kakashi's blank look said far too much. Fuck. Genma needed someone who at least understood the rudiments if he was going to survive to write the mission report. He sighed and held out a hand, not hiding the tremble.

"Chakra poisons are usually unstable. But they're nasty. He was experimenting on one that binds to a poison that targets the nerves that let your muscles move. See?" The shaking rippled up his arm to the shoulder when he tensed the muscle. "So I need to take an antidote for the nerve poison before I end up with nerve damage, and then I need to root out the chakra poison with a chakra sieve. And then seal the wound. And I can't do it on myself, because the whole point of a chakra poison is it makes it impossible to use your own chakra."

A sharp, bright sting was the first warning that Kakashi had bitten too deeply into his lower lip.

I don't have any medical training, he opened his mouth to say, and stopped, snapping it closed. Genma undoutedly knew that. All the ANBU field-medics--only a handful of people--kept tabs on each other. If Genma was suggesting Kakashi do some healing, it was because they were out of other options.

"How long do we have?" he asked instead, calm as he knew how.

Genma's voice was steady. "A few hours. Maybe as many as twelve, if we're lucky."

Which they never were. Kakashi cut that time limit in half to give them a conservative estimate. Six hours. Not even enough time to get through Waterfall, let alone back to Konoha. And he very much doubted that Waterfall's ninja would have the right medical equipment, anyway, even if they could be persuaded to help.

Stone was a bigger village, better stocked. But they had even less reason to help, despite the treaty.

And there were no decent safehouses Kakashi knew nearby; they were sitting right on the border's blindspot, where the war had swept through six years ago and everyone had been much too busy fighting and dying to build things.

Go figure.

He unsealed the scroll, snapping the damn tent back out. "Do your antidote. Let me know when you want me."

The treatment for an unknown nerve agent was Antidote-B: a thick, syrupy-looking orange mixture that was known amongst poison-lab workers as Liquid Hell. It wasn't used nearly as much as Anti-A and Anti-C, and not just because it treated less common poisonings. It was nasty. Lifesaving, but hard on the body.

Also the only choice. Genma pulled the tube free, consulted a small chart for dosage--at seventy kilos, if he was up to that weight, he'd need eight cc's. Two injections then, since he only had a five cc syringe. He attached a long intramuscular needle to the glass syringe, drew up the first dose, then gritted his teeth and stabbed himself in the thigh. Injecting the viscous liquid was a special torture all its own, and made willingness to administer the second dose hard to come by.

Then he waited for the stuff to start working. It hit like an inferno, as his skin caught fire and burned. First the ears, then the whole face, spreading down the arms and chest, reaching his feet last. Burning, itching, buzzing chaos as tiny capillaries dilated everywhere. A side effect, not even useful. Then the chills hit, as body temperature plunged. He curled miserably around himself and shook, waiting for it to subside. Waiting for it to work.

He watched Kakashi as a distraction. The other man went about his tasks in grim silence, setting up tents and bedrolls, doing another perimeter check. Kakashi stopped at one point to look flatly at Genma, then grabbed up both canteens and went down to the river. When he came back he put them both near Genma. One was wet with condensation, chilled, the other steaming slightly, full of tea-hot water. Then he stoked the fire, grabbed one of the blankets, and offered that to Genma, too. Almost. Put it where Genma could reach it, anyway.

"Thanks," Genma muttered. He took a long swallow of the warm water and wished it really were tea, then wrapped himself up in the blanket, and rode the antidote out.

The good thing about Anti-B was, it worked. It was painful, but it was reliable. And the side-effects didn't last forever. By the time an hour had passed. Genma could feel his muscles starting to relax at last.

"Okay," he said, calling Kakashi's attention. "You ever seen a chakra sieve done?"

"Sure," said Kakashi dryly, abandoning the snare trap he'd been keeping busy with. "In my last Hyuuga life."

"Fantastic," said Genma, but he just sounded tired. Kakashi watched him rub one finally unshaking hand over a face that hadn't been that lined this morning, and stare a little blankly into the fire. Then he began to talk.

By the time Kakashi had sat himself down on the other side of the small, sheltered flames, he knew more about chakra sieving than he'd ever wanted to, and he still thought this was a bad idea. But at least it wasn't impossible to understand. The basic principle seemed to work thus:

1) Form your chakra into a fine-graded mesh.
2) Slide that mesh gently through your patient's chakra, beginning at the feet, and work your way upwards and inwards, towards the delicate core.
4) Go through the entire body, collecting everything that feels out of place.
5) Yank it all out through the original wound, seal everything foreign inside a cage of your own chakra, and dispose of it as appropriate. Preferably with fire.
6) Under no circumstances try to move, model, tweak, or otherwise play around with your patient's coils, because it might kill them.

Yep, thought Kakashi, with something like numb-edged acceptance, easy as breathing. At least he had the sharingan to supply a road map. And a whole lot of practice at dealing with dead-man guilt.

He stripped off the black cloth covering, blinking hard as Obito's eye spun and the world changed colours, and offered out his hands. Spoke without thinking, because fear had clawed hard into his skull.

"Can you do it once through me, small-scale, so I can see what it's supposed to look like?"

Genma stared warily at Kakashi's bare hands. At long, slender, tapered fingers, straight and strong like a musician's or a surgeon's. A thick, plastic scar on Kakashi's right palm looked like the result of a not-too-recent burn. The scar obliterated Kakashi's heartline, distorted his headline, claimed half his lifeline, though that critical crease re-emerged from the lower edge of the scar to curl down towards Kakashi's wrist, splitting into tails at the end that a palmist would say spoke of life paths not yet walked, essential choices not yet made.

"I can. But..." Genma looked up, caught Kakashi's eyes with his own. The Sharingan was mesmerizing even when it wasn't being used as a weapon, the spinning tomoe marks barely visible in the dim firelight. The scar that bisected that eyelid added to the fearsome look. A ninja's tool begot of violence.

"I'll have to manipulate my chakra to do it. It might knock me out again. How bad was the last one? The last seizure. Did it last long? I didn't feel as out of it when I came around."

Kakashi winced as if he'd taken a blow to the face. Under the black mask, his lips twisted, and Genma thought he could see the outline of a sharp canine. "It wasn't as bad as--" Kakashi started, then interrupted himself. "Look, never mind. I can do it." He sat up straighter, pulled his hands back, and flashed Genma a warm smile. "Master of a thousand jutsu, right? I'm good at this."

"Yeah. You're a genius, right? This should be cake for you," Genma agreed, with no trace of irony: he was as eager to buy into the lie as Kakashi was to sell it. But there was one more thing he needed Kakashi to understand. "The thing is..." He hesitated. "The thing is, listen. Field medics don't even do this jutsu. It's a hospital jutsu. The only reason I know it is because my older sister taught it to me when she was learning how to do it. So... So you know."

"So don't fuck it up because your sister will kill me?"

"Yeah." Genma laughed. "Well, she'll haunt you, anyway. She died when the Fox..." He trailed off. Any ninja in Konoha could finish that sentence. Especially Kakashi.

"Ah," said Kakashi softly -- more softly than he intended. Inside he was busy kicking the hell out of himself; he'd asked Genma to do a jutsu. Where was his brain? It was relying too hard on the sharingan, that was his problem; seven years of using Obito's last gift to do all his learning for him had made Kakashi lazy. He hadn't even considered doing Genma's jutsu without a road map.

Stupid dog.

Well now he was considering it, in a place locked tightly behind teeth, and smile, and eyes that weren't wide enough to give any fear away. He didn't like the future Obito was showing him, coiled up tight in Genma's freezing chakra patterns.

But there was nothing else for it.

At least if he got this wrong, Genma already had one less family member to mourn him.

He got to his feet, moving around to sit with the fire at his side and Genma within reach of both hands. Genma's strange eyes watched him warily, raw gold in the bad light. Kakashi set himself to breathing slowly, carefully, and turned his focus inward. Blue-white chakra twined around his bones, spilling eagerly into his hands when he called it, well-trained lightning. He molded it through the nine required seals, feeling how it became thinner and harder, delicate and rigid all at once, a fragile lattice forming between his fingertips. Smaller than any jutsu he'd cast for years.

When he had something workable, it was spiderweb thin and smaller than a fingernail, held carefully in a matrix of chakra between his hands. He regarded it with narrowed eyes, searching for flaw or weakness.

"Looks kind of like a doily," he murmured to Genma, just to hear the cut-off choke of laughter.

"I always wondered if you could actually see it," Genma said quietly, "or if it was just a metaphor."

Kakashi quirked an eyebrow. "Looks real enough to me. Lift your pant's leg?"

Genma's ankle was as raw-boned as the rest of him, connected to lean calf muscles and a heavily scarred foot. Kakashi could see goosebumps racing over his skin. The atrophying coil of chakra beneath it, flowing far too slowly.

"Ready for this?"

"Yeah." Genma nodded tersely. Then his mouth lifted at the corner, twisting wry. "I trust you."

It was Kakashi's turn for a choked-off laugh. "Smartass," he said, and wrapped his right hand around Genma's ankle, releasing the jutsu.

It felt like his bones were being scraped clean, muscle and tendon and sinew peeled away by a hard-edged rasp. Genma gasped and reached instinctively for his ankle, but shook his head when Kakashi almost jerked away. "No. Keep going. I didn't... Ow, Fuck!" His voice guttered out and he squinted his eyes shut. "Shallower. Go shallower. You want to feel the chakra coils, not the other stuff. You have to--" Another hissing gasp. "Tune it finer. Like... Like water walking."

Kakashi's jaw clenched, rippling the fabric of his mask. "Right," he said. Tension ran down his arm and into the hand still gripping Genma's ankle. Kakashi stared with ferocious intensity, and in the firelight Genma watched the Sharingan whirling as Kakashi strained to see things Genma could only imagine.

The pain stopped as abruptly as it had started, transmuting into something altogether alien. Kakashi's hard-edged chakra wrapped around Genma's own with a flare like a welder's torch cutting steel.

"Yeah. Like that. Better," Genma instructed. He took a steadying breath. "Okay, try moving it a little. See if you can feel anything weird."

Kakashi's brow furrowed, his fingers flexed, and Genma could feel a ripple as the chakra sieve swayed back and forth through the coils in his lower leg. "It all feels weird," Kakashi complained with a rasp as he released a held breath. "What specific weirdness am I looking for -- wait." This time both men held their breaths. Kakashi leaned closer, eyes narrowed under scowling brows, squinting at the invisible. "I think I can see it. Don't move."

Genma complied, holding as exquisitely still as he was capable of with half-neutralized nerve toxins still seething in his muscles. He felt something catch in his leg. Felt warmth surge into his toes. "Yes," he breathed. "OK, I think you got it. Now start moving up my leg. The coils are like nerves, they get thicker the closer they get to the core, same way nerves get thick at the spinal cord."

"Are you going to nanny the entire way?" Kakashi asked. "Because that'll get old fast..."

"Better than letting you cripple me," Genma said, with as much seriousness as Kakashi had asked his question.

Kakashi snorted.

"OK, you need to split the field, now. Got to get it into both legs," Genma said. "It's kind of like making a shadow clone split into two clones."

"Except for how it's infinitesimally small and inside you," Kakashi said, through concentration-clenched teeth. He felt Genma's shoulder twitch in a barely-there shrug. He could feel everything of Genma, thousands of strands of information washing back through his own chakra like an ocean twisted around an electric current. Pure knowledge, interpreted down on a cellular level. Genma's heartbeat, running just a little too fast; the quickening breath in his lungs; the complex lightning-tangle of his brain; the aching, bone-deep hurt in his hands...

Were all medical-jutsu like this? Because it was damned distracting.

The sharingan was his saving grace, keeping everything visual. If he could see it, then he could follow it. And if he could follow it, he could rip it out. Genma's chakra glowed brighter wherever Kakashi dragged the chakra mesh, freed of thousands of nearly invisible blue threads, like leech roots.

He cleared Genma's left leg up to the knee, took a deep breath, and split the net in two. It ripped like glass-woven cloth, like something that should shatter instead of tearing. He sent the second piece up Genma's left leg, through the cradle of his pelvis -- and gods, that was weird -- and down his right leg. Genma gasped, muscles hitching; his heart double-thumped. Kakashi winced and tried to go slower. Shallower. Touching nothing but chakra coils.

Both legs. Hips. Pelvis and every sensitive part around it, which was entirely more intimate than he'd planned to get with Genma ever again. Lower belly. Internal organs. Every piece of internal architecture Kakashi had spent a lifetime learning how to break, and had never tried mending.

When he hit Genma's upper ribcage, sweat trickled into both eyes and blinded him. He hissed, blinking hard, and realized his mouth was hanging open, breath scraping in his throat. Fire kindling in his lungs.

Perfect.

He refocused, moving up. Genma's heart was next, where the chakra pathways thickened to the size of blood vessels; Kakashi slipped his nets carefully--so damn carefully--through the heavy, pounding flesh, anchoring the jutsu in a cage of blue-white energy that was absolutely nothing like a chidori. No birdsong, no blood spray, no quick death.

He hoped.

Arms next. And a problem at the end of each wrist, he realized abruptly.

"Don't you dare freak out when I get to your hands, Shiranui." His voice came out harsh, like someone had thrown liqueur down his throat and chased it with a match. "Not a twitch. Got it?"

Genma scrambled to pull an answer together from a brain and body entirely preoccupied with how alien and wrong everything that he was experiencing felt. It was excruciating to sit still while Kakashi's chakra raked through his coils, pulling out the poison like a magnet pulling iron filings from sand.

Every time Kakashi's hands moved, the chakra field wobbled, catching at the edges every now and again with a raw shock of pain that made Genma hiss and grit his teeth. But by some miracle, Kakashi was keeping it mostly steady. It was perhaps the most inexpertly done chakra sieve procedure in the history of medical jutsu, but it was working. The warmth that spread in its wake, that thrum of healthy chakra moving unimpeded, was enough to keep Genma focused.

It was working.

Still, the jutsu's passage through his pelvis had been something he didn't care to repeat so long as he lived--a sick marriage of arousal and the devastating agony of a kick in the balls. And Kakashi, with his hands right there, had to have felt it, which just made things that much worse.

The sensation of the chakra sieve moving through his core had been terrifying, especially when the jutsu cleared his kidneys and touched his adrenals, sending a cascade of fight-or-flight hormone through his already over-stressed body. And when Kakashi had eased the sieve through Genma's heart and lungs there had been another lightning bolt of pain that made his pulse skip and race twenty beats in a syncopated dance-club rhythm that left him breathless and lightheaded.

None of that, though, seemed to matter even slightly when Genma realized what was coming next.

Of course with the medical jutsu active, Kakashi had to have gathered already that Genma's hands were... Were going to be problematic. And he undoubtedly knew the story anyway, since he'd been part of ANBU then. When Genma's hands were first hurt.

Genma frowned unhappily. "Get it over with, then, and be--" Careful. Gentle. Fuck, don't touch my hands! "Be aware that the coils in my hands are a little-- A little scarred." He could hear how tight and dry his own voice was. "Concentrate on the palms, that's where the poison is probably collected," he added, trying to distance himself from what was coming by thinking of it as if it were someone else's hands entirely.

If Kakashi had had the energy or focus to spare, he would have cast a genjutsu the second Genma's voice cut wire-thin like that. Blanked Genma's mind with pretty images until the hard part was over, so that neither one of them had to feel it. But even if he had had the energy and focus, messing with Genma's uncleaned chakra would likely trigger another damn seizure, and then they'd both be screwed.

He nudged the tiny sieves past Genma's collarbones, over his shoulders, and into his triceps. It was getting harder to guide them, now, as the delicate process ate through chakra reserves already worn from running and fighting. An ugly headache pounded in Kakashi's temples. Sweat soaked long black V's into the chest and back of his ANBU shirt.

And Genma had spent half the process in agony, so it evened out.

Kakashi's teeth found his lower lip again as he moved the jutsu to Genma's elbows. Forearms. Wrists. Genma's heart picked up a jackhammer beat, dragging Kakashi's along with it. Somewhere along the way their breathing had fallen into sync, rough and ragged. Genma was dead white, hollow-eyed.

He didn't move when Kakashi's hands spread over his, long straight fingers over crooked-scarred ones -- he stopped breathing. Kakashi felt his own chest tighten and strangle. Poison threads knotted through Genma's palms like a tree root tapestry.

"Dammit, Shiranui," he groaned, trying to focus on eighteen different things at once while his attention split between two limbs. "Talk to me, you idiot. Tell me about--something. Anything. Pick a topic!"

Breathe, goddammit.

Somewhere in Genma's psyche, well-guarded, he was monitoring it all. He could feel himself panicking, watch the touch of Kakashi's fingers pull not just poison, but memories, straight out from the most important chakra coils in a ninja's body, if you didn't count brain and heart. He watched it, and he knew it was happening, in that distant, abstract, watching your friends get slaughtered on the battlefield, watching your own body bleeding out sort of way.

Wide amber irises showed whites all around when Genma flicked his gaze to Kakashi's face, and catalogued everything: the grim lines etched around Kakashi's mouth visible even through the mask, the slightly panicked look in red and grey eyes, the breathless voice grating out a demand that Genma talk.

He stared at Kakashi's face and said the first stupid thing that came to mind: "What did you do to your hand?"

Kakashi didn't look up, and the strain in his voice was clear when he answered through a clenched jaw. "The scar? Chidori."

"It shouldn't backlash on you like that," Genma said, in a voice just as haggard. And oh gods that hurt. Hurt in a stomach-twisting, soul-crushing way. He could see the ghost of a blank-masked Iwa interrogator hovering just behind Kakashi's shoulder.

"It's a completely original jutsu. It shouldn't do anything but what it does," Kakashi snapped. His hands guiding the jutsu remained rock-steady.

"Then it's a flawed design," Genma lashed back. He could feel the sieve coaxing the tangled threads of poison free. Just a little longer, just a little longer... "Your own jutsu shouldn't scar your hands."

"Everything has a drawback, like your damn antidotes." Kakashi was panting with effort, his voice more canine than human. Full of threat. "It's an assassination technique. It's not supposed to be pretty."

"Still shouldn't--" Genma broke off, head falling forward, eyes squinted tightly shut, breath stopped once again, as the sieve caught on a particularly sharp and scarred chakra nexus in Genma's right palm. "God dammit Kakashi, you fucking bastard! Get your hands away from my--"

The pain lifted. Genma panted, whey-faced in growing moonlight. He swallowed. "Yeah. Drawbacks. Sorry."

Kakashi's laugh shattered in the back of his throat. "No problem," he gasped, breathless. "It really helps my concentration when people yell. Carry on."

Genma made a muted unhappy sound, wrists flexing beneath Kakashi's firm but careful hold. But he was relaxing fractionally now that his hands had been released. Enough that Kakashi almost trusted him not to take a swing when this was done. In the same way that he almost trusted lightning not to strike the ground.

"Almost done," he managed, and swept the hateful jutsu nets back up to Genma's throat. They moved slower, now, packed down with thousands upon thousands of writhing blue threads. Like a fisherman's catch of venomous eels. He forced them onwards, aching to be done with this stupid jutsu. This nightmare plan. The sharingan was half blind with tears and sweat.

Thick chakra cords tangled like pipes with Genma's jugular veins, his carotid artery. Kakashi pulled through them as fast as he dared, trying not to feel every bodily reaction, every half-strangled flinch and shuddering heartbeat that made his own nerves flare and his chest catch fire.

He reached the base of Genma's skull, and felt a shiver catch and twist in the base of his lungs.

Oh, no.

No, no, no -- now was not the time for that. Not with Genma's brain almost literally in his hands and a web-work of delicate chakra coils to comb through, each one more clogged than the last. Kakashi pressed his lips together, breathing hard through his nose, and tried not to feel the cough rising up his ribcage. Shivering in the back of his throat.

His fingers slipped in Genma's hair, and Genma made a raw keening noise as chakra coils twisted in a way that was entirely unnatural.

"Sorry, sorry," Kakashi choked, hurriedly easing them back into place. "Hang on. We're almost there."

The two nets combined in the shelter of Genma's brain-stem, pulling the last clinging blue threads from his upper-most vertebrae, and with relief Kakashi crushed them together in a chakra cage, barely bigger than the last joint of his little finger. He gave Genma a second to breathe, holding his own breath in turn, and then ripped the jutsu out through the swollen scratch on the back of his neck.

Genma screamed. Kakashi jerked his hands away, flinging the horrible mesh of tainted chakra and writhing poison into the fire; it snapped free from the rest of his chakra, dissolving into flame with a crackling sizzle and a stink like burning chemicals.

"Ha," breathed Kakashi, with a flicker of triumph, before he clapped a hand over the sharingan and hunched over his own knees to cough himself raw.

It took far too long for Genma's vision to clear, for the throbbing, raw, scoured-out feeling that radiated from the back of his neck into all parts of him to settle down enough that he could think again. He curled over onto his knees, aching hands clenched close to his body, aching head bowed to the ground, and rocked back and forth, riding it out.

Focusing on the flow of chakra in his body, he performed the simplest sort of pre-genin chakra control exercise--something he'd learned from his parents before he'd even entered the academy--letting his breathing and heartbeat guide him to a sense of every coil, every meridian, every nexus of fire-bright life energy flowing through him. it was moving almost normally, a stark contrast to what it had been. Chakra flowed smoothly through reopened channels, roared painfully past the places where the sieve jutsu had scored the edges of Genma's coils. With the remaining muscle fatigue from the seizures, and the bruises the day's fighting (mostly with Kakashi, ironically) and falling had left, Genma just wanted to curl up on his bedroll and not move again. Just float on the tide of rising and falling breath, ebbing and flowing chakra.

But he had to move. Had to, because as his rocking stilled, as the pain receded, he heard Kakashi coughing like he was trying to invert his bronchial tree.

Genma shoved himself up, surprised to find Kakashi still close enough to touch. He recognized that wet, slick-sounding rattle in Kakashi's breathing. Remembered the painful burning lungs Kakashi's Sharingan had shown him. That damned mycotoxin... Had he given Kakashi the antidote? The second dose? He remembered thinking he needed to get a repeat dose administered. Remembered calculating out just how exactly to split one vial of antidote between two poisoned men of nearly equal size.

He didn't remember much after that. The fog of that first full seizure had eaten a penumbra of memory around itself.

He reached a hand out to hover above Kakashi's shaking shoulder, reached a cautious tendril of chakra out, and gritted his teach as it scorched its way down his spine and through his hand. The echo he got back told him all he needed to know, though. Definitely still the mycotoxin.

"Kakashi, try to slow your breathing." The coarse, rasping coughs continued, punctuated by ragged gasps. "Try to slow it down. Slow, okay? Slow. Did I give you your second dose of antidote before I got knocked out that first time?"

Kakashi found his scattered wits long enough to shake his head. Then another paroxysm of coughing took him over. He ground the heel of his palm against the sharingan, scattering little bolts of pain through his skull. It wasn't as bad as the poison had been, nothing was as bad as that. But the difference was like choosing between a building fire and a forest fire -- either way he was going to end up cooked.

Genma snapped something, voice torn between fighting-calm and urgent. Then he swore.

Well, hey, at least he could still swear.

If Kakashi had had the breath to spare, he would have pointed that out, maybe even with some gloating. But his lungs were on fire and his head was splitting, nails of agony-steel driven in at the temples, so he kept his attention on trying to get air.

His chest heaved. Something slick and choking and foul blew up from his ribcage into his mouth. He gagged, twisted away from Genma, and yanked down his mask. Spat something that glistened red in the firelight.

"Urgh." When they made it back from this mission, he was going to make it a personal pledge never to go within ten feet of a poison. Not even house-cleaners. Not even vinegar. Kakashi pulled his mask up, turned back to face the black-haloed, tear-blurry silhouette of Genma's face, and fought to breath evenly. "If you've ... got the antidote ... now would be ..."

A bright, hot moment of burning cut him off.

"A good time," he finished weakly, when it passed.

Genma swore even more colorfully, cursing Suguru and his thrice damned poisons, cursing the sun for having set, Kakashi for having no immunity, himself for having been so damned weak. For having no memory. He checked his medkit and found only the two empty vials from before, The third -- the one he'd been calculating how to split -- was just gone, and he had no recollection whatsoever of what could have happened to it.

"Okay, okay, just hang on," he told Kakashi. "I'm gonna help. You never saw me get out the antidote for your repeat dose?"

Kakashi shook his head, struggling so hard for breath that words were impossible. His sides heaved, his palms braced flat on his knees as he used every muscle in his torso in an effort to force air into his lungs. His Sharingan eye was open again, draining chakra.

Genma grabbed the thin kerchief Kakashi had covered his eye with before and forced it over Kakashi's head, covering the eye. Then he brought his hands together for a jutsu. Chakra came when he called it, and there was only an echo-pain--a fleeting moment of shaking dizziness as energy surged through his coils. He molded it into a broad, delicate, minutely focused net and wrapped it through the boggy, weeping tissue of Kakashi's lungs. It was a standard jutsu for burns or internal bleeding, a stop gap to get a lightning-scorched, gut-stabbed soldier safely from front lines to rear, where a real medic could help him. Genma wasn't even sure it would work, but it was better than nothing.

He could feel the tissue respond, feel struggling lungs inflate. He pushed more chakra into his jutsu, encouraging broken capillaries to mend, savaged lungs to pull oxygen from the air. He pulled away for a moment to add a five-seal sequence for pain control, and slapped his hands back against Kakashi's chest. It wasn't until that layered jutsu started to take effect that Kakashi finally flinched from the invasion of his space.

"Okay. Okay. Just keep breathing slowly," Genma told him. "Don't move around. Don't try to talk." His own head was throbbing from too much chakra used too quickly, after all his body had just been through, but fuck if he was going to let Kakashi die.

He needed another pair of hands, but he didn't trust his own barely recovering system to handle the chakra demands a shadow clone would place on it. He needed help. And that lost vial of antidote. "Stay there, don't move," He told Kakashi. Unnecessarily, since Kakashi was far too preoccupied with the struggle for air to go anywhere. He checked the tent, but there was no sign of the antidote vial anywhere. Checked the campsite, but Kakashi had cleared everything up once already. If the vial had been there, it was gone now.

What Genma needed was a miracle. He muttered a hasty prayer to Kannon, in case she was listening. Kakashi made a particularly painful sound, coughing until he was almost retching.

What they needed was a miracle, but what they had was contraband. Genma weighed the chances Kakashi would turn him in for saving his life with something illegal, versus the chances Kakashi would survive without it, then pulled a scroll out from his medkit and went back to face Kakashi. "It's gone. Wherever that antidote was, it's gone now. But I have something we can try. I've got a couple of experimental antidotes. Enhanced things that are supposed to be longer lasting, so you don't end up like this. I brought them because we were chasing fucking Suguru, and I was afraid he had enhanced poisons on him." Which, ironically, he had. Ironic because it was a standard-issue toxin that was killing Kakashi.

He activated the seal on the scroll, pulling it open and catching the trio of vials that spilled out before they hit the ground. The one he needed, yes - it was the same ugly green-yellow of the crystals he'd used before, but it was a much finer powder, and there were darker bits mixed throughout. It looked sinister in the firelight, as poisonous as the substance he was trying to counter.

It was untried.

"Can you get your mask down, or do you need me to help?" He shook the tube, setting the powder inside aswirl. "You need to breathe this in. I'll aerosolize it with a wind jutsu as soon as you tell me you're ready."

Of course he had to take his mask down. And breathe something else in. And let Genma see his face, again.

Konoha was only two days away. Maybe he could just walk home. Genma's double-jutsu had already done something, spreading numbness through acid-seared twitches, reducing full-body coughing down to naked, painful gasping. Kakashi even had enough control back to remove one hand from his knee and flatten it over his chest, where his heart thundered a beat that had nothing to do with panic. Nothing at all.

Genma mistook his silence for permission and reached out, one hand aiming for Kakashi's mask. Kakashi jerked back, and then winced when the world blackened around the edges. Tunnel vision; not enough air.

Genma's hand changed direction, catching him by the shoulder. "Slow breaths," he said, in that soothing-medic, I-am-so-very-calm voice. "Deep as you can."

Kakashi opened his mouth to swear, but Genma's other hand slipped through his guard like a knife and slid his mask down, smooth as silk. Kakashi choked on a snarl, both hands snapping up to grab Genma's arms, and then he just choked. Green-yellow dust glittered in the air, swirling around just like the grey-brown trap Suguru's corpse had released, and Kakashi was getting really tired of breathing in chemicals.

This one was a little different. It tasted warm in his mouth, syrupy in his throat, and then something like pure relief in his chest. Like air and breathing and forgetting anything stressful had ever happened, ever...

Almost exactly like a muscle relaxant, in fact.

Kakashi's grip loosened on Genma's arms, easing up from bruising to just holding. He felt himself blink once, slowly, and his pulse trickle down from adrenaline-soaked to a warm day in the sun. The world tilted a little, but didn't fade.

"What'd you..." he began, and dropped bonelessly into Genma's arms.

Three things kept Genma from panicking: training, simply being too exhausted to work up that much energy, and the fact that Kakashi's eye remained open and hazily focused, while color flooded back into his skin and his breathing lost its stridor. So Genma didn't panic, but he was certainly alarmed.

He held Kakashi, surprised at the limp weight of the man. For all Kakashi looked wiry and rangy, he was solid, dense muscle. "It's okay. Side effect, I think. And you're a little chakra drained." Another probe to gauge just how much increased Genma's alarm. "How the hell much chakra did you use on that jutsu? Damn, Kakashi. I want to give you a chakra pill, think you can chew and swallow?"

The faint, floppy nod of a head that passed for an answer didn't give Genma any confidence at all. The pointed look in Kakashi's eyes, still alive under the drugged haze, was equally disquieting. "Yeah, you know what?" Genma said, hazarding a guess. "You just fucked with my hands, you can cope with having your face uncovered for a few more minutes while I get you sorted."

A shadow of a scowl flickered over Kakashi's brow.

Good guess, then. This next part was unlikely to make Kakashi like him any more than he already did, but screw it. Kakashi was down for the count and he needed medical care and Genma was as good a medic as either of them were going to get right now. He leaned forward on his knees, wrapped his arms around Kakashi's torso in what could have passed for a lover's embrace, and hauled him up. It took several unsteady steps to half-carry, half-drag Kakashi to Genma's tent and settle him on the bedroll.

Genma made sure Kakashi was safely propped up, then rocked back on his knees and reached for his medkit to get a soldier pill. Goddammit, he was shaking again? The nerve poison still wasn't neutralized? He shook a chakra pill into one trembling hand, eyed Kakashi while he tried to decide just how likely it was the man was going to choke to death on the thing, and watched a complex parade of emotions pass in Kakashi's eye.

As soon as Kakashi could move again he was going to kill Genma. And eat him. And set his grave on fire and dance around it, picking his own teeth with a damn thigh bone. Then he was going to resurrect Genma and start all over again, with acid...

Genma was still staring at him. Kakashi spent a frustrating twenty seconds trying to force his mouth into the right shape for some truly vile swear words, but gave up when the best he could manage was a lip twitch. His body felt like a sack of warm honey wrapped up in skin; comfortable, painless, and completely useless. Gross to be in. If he'd been capable, he would have thrashed and screamed--

No, not screamed, bitten something.

But sitting with his back propped against the tree-trunk providing the main support for Genma's tent, doing nothing but breathing slowly, listening to his heart trip a lazy beat, was all he could do. Even his toes wouldn't move.

If only Genma would stop staring.

Then, suddenly, those exhausted golden eyes twitched away, and Genma busied himself doing something Kakashi couldn't quite see. There was a powdery crunch, a grinding sound, and then sloshing water. The exact timbre of splashing that came from swirling something around in a canteen.

Oh, crap, Kakashi thought, as Genma moved back over with canteen in hand, the scent of dissolving soldier pills in the air, and a determined look on his face. Don't even think about it, Shiranui. Don't you dare touch my face...

The malevolence in Kakashi's gaze could have detonated an exploding tag. Genma just sighed wearily and knelt next to Kakashi with his knees braced apart, as close to a guarded posture as he could manage. Possibly, if chakra depletion was as much the problem as the antidote's evident paralytic effect, then once the dissolved soldier pill hit Kakashi's bloodstream, Genma would get punched. Again. He almost couldn't bring himself to care.

One tremoring hand went under Kakashi's head, cradling the back of his skull. The other held the canteen to Kakashi's lips, eased just a few drops in. "It's just a soldier pill. I made it strong so you don't have to drink too much. Can you swallow, or do we need to do this slow enough you can absorb it through your mucous membranes?"

Kakashi's response was to press his lips together. His Adam's apple bobbed in his slender neck. Unshaven, Genma noticed abstractly. A sparse, pale stubble lined Kakashi's lip and jaw, edged down towards his throat. That was somehow surprising, as if despite his hair and eyebrows being pale pewter, his beard should have come in black.

"Good," Genma said quietly. He tipped another mouthful of soldier pill-laced water against Kakashi's closed lips. For a second it looked like Kakashi was going to refuse, but then his mouth opened and he accepted the drink. His eye remained utterly furious. "Good," Genma repeated.

After eight swallows, the mixture was gone, the pill in Kakashi. Genma could already feel Kakashi's chakra strength rising. Thank gods. He set the canteen aside, then reached very slowly out, hooked the edge of Kakashi's mask under shaky fingers, and pulled it back over a flat, angry mouth and shockingly ordinary nose.

With that slide of cloth and the rising curl of different, entirely welcome warmth in his stomach, Kakashi re-evaluated his rage. Made room for relief, just a little, and an unwilling kind of gratitude, even littler. Genma's crooked fingers lingered for the barest fraction of a heartbeat, as his eyes ticked over Kakashi's covered face. Searching for something.

Movement?

Suddenly fiercely hopeful, Kakashi tried drawing a deeper breath. That bright new energy, soldier-pill energy, branched through his chest, chasing away tendrils of clinging numbness. His ribcage expanded -- and kept expanding beyond the limits of a shallow gasp, making a full breath. Relief grew hot and excited when he realized it still didn't hurt.

Grey gaze flicking down, Kakashi focused on his fingertips. For a moment there was nothing, just syrupy relaxed warmth, useless. Then new heat. Then -- yes, a visible twitch. Slowly, achingly slowly, his fingers curled into a loose fist.

Kakashi's breath hissed out in a long, relieved sigh. It wasn't permanent. Just some weird, stupid side-effect from Genma's untested drug. Reversible now that he actually had some moving chakra in his veins.

His eye flicked back up. Genma was still watching him, leaning back now, an unreadable curve twitching at the edge of his mouth. He looked... hollowed out, beneath that not-quite-smile. Bone-dead exhausted and shocky white, with deep purple shadows smudged beneath his eyes. His face was a study of knife-blade angles, raw-boned edges. A nasty black bruise, the rough size and shape of Kakashi's knuckles, darkened one side of his jaw.

He was shaking like a leaf.

And dealing like a Leaf-ninja, hauling Kakashi's useless ass around and making sure he didn't choke on his own tongue. Or pass out from chakra exhaustion.

Emotions crashed and turned sharp-edged, anger twisting with guilt. Dislike, helplessness, loyalty for a teammate. Even if that teammate was Genma. They'd both almost died half a dozen times already, at least.

Kakashi focused on his chakra, winding it through his arms, up into his jaw. His hands flexed on the chilled bedroll. Genma's eyebrows arched, and Kakashi shoved.

Lurching happened, followed by falling as his back left the tree-trunk and found no support in his spine. But Genma reached out and grabbed, and Kakashi grabbed him back, fingers catching clumsily at dirty armour and sweat-soaked blacks. His forehead thumped against the hollow at the base of Genma's throat; he almost felt his teeth rattle as Genma's shivers hit his muscles. But at least he'd gotten Genma's attention.

"Shhh--" He swallowed hard, tried again. "Shhou-ld... eat. Sssleep. Shhak--shhaking."

It wasn't nearly a thank-you, but it wasn't nothing, either.

The blow Genma had been half-prepared for didn't come: probably because Kakashi was still too weak to deliver it. He slid his hands under Kakashi's arms and carefully eased him onto the bedroll with a heavy sigh. "As soon as you can sit up properly, you can eat. And we can both sleep. I can take first watch."

The idea of taking any kind of watch was painful, but what choice was there? And yes, he was shaking. Fucking shaking. And Kakashi was still half paralyzed, and every time Genma used his chakra it hurt and sent a shiver of nausea through him as the lingering effects of Kakashi's crudely executed chakra sieve and whatever little tendrils of poison he may have missed worked themselves out.

Kakashi was right about food. They both needed it, but hunger was the furthest thing from Genma's mind. Or had Kakashi eaten? There had been those rabbits, and he had a vague memory of a bowl of stew. "Did I eat before?"

Kakashi's face contorted with frustration. "Ngh--no." He took a deep breath, a breath that sounded almost clear, to Genma's great relief. "Eat. Ssleep. Shhaking. You."

Genma frowned, conceding the point. "I know. It's probably residual from the nerve poison. I still feel kinda sick." Belatedly the thought occurred to him that a chakra pill would help him at least as much as it had helped Kakashi. Had he taken one before? He could count the remaining pills, but... Too much effort, and he'd probably just spill the damn things with his unsteady hands. Even if he'd taken one before, he'd clearly burned through it having seizures. He opened the container and let one of the little magic boluses of energy fall into his waiting hand. It slipped away, and Genma swore and grabbed for it.

Kakashi lunged towards him again, with a little more coordination this time. His fingers wrapped around Genma's upper arm. "What--about jutssu?" he slurred.

"A jutsu? For what?" Genma asked. He found he couldn't quite manage to retrieve the pill with his still-gloved hands, and reluctantly stripped the gloves off, shrugging free from Kakashi's grip. Seeing his bare, scar-etched hands shaking like that was... Was all too familiar.

Kakashi took another breath and squared his shoulders. His hand reached out for Genma again, gripping harder this time. "Did I .. get it ... right?" he asked, enunciating each word with the careful deliberation a calligrapher would use to write a wedding invitation.

"Yeah. You sucked at it, but you got it right. Otherwise I'd be twitching on the ground--" Kakashi's fingers dug painfully into Genma's arm, and his eye stared meaningfully at Genma's hands.

"Not like that! I mean I'd be dead. This is just... It's just fatigue. Poison effects, maybe. It'll go away when I sleep." He hoped. Hoped he didn't need to repeat the Anti-B, since you got diminishing returns with every dose. Hoped the chakra pill would help. He swallowed it dry and waited for the explosion in his core coils. It bloomed almost immediately, rising like a fountain through his body.

Food next. He pulled a rat bar out of his pack and dropped it twice before he managed to peel it. And Kakashi was still staring at his hands, damn him.

In the ten long, slow, excruciating minutes it took Kakashi to get at least passable control of his mouth and limbs, Genma managed to make his way through a ration bar and a half, and two-thirds of a canteen of water. It wasn't much, but with Genma anything was something. Kakashi watched hawkishly as some of the colour filtered back into Genma's face, turning blanched-white into some semblance of human flesh, and finally, finally, the trembling in his hands eased a little. Enough that Genma stopped dropping every goddamned thing, at least.

It still wasn't much, but it gave Kakashi a little faith that he might not have done irreversible damage to a teammate, and that decent food and proper sleep would probably go a long way to fixing things. A point he made as loudly as he could, until Genma conceded that, yes, given that they were in a sheltered campsite in Waterfall--who shared a treaty with Konoha--it was probably worth the risk for both of them to catch a little shut-eye, just shut up, Kakashi.

There'd been a moment of silence, broken only by faint woodland noises, then Kakashi added another thought: They were both trashed, so any kind of fight right now would probably put them in the ground, correct? Therefore, if they were going to die in imminent battle, they could at least die rested.

Genma had quirked his not-quite-smile again, looking haunted with exhaustion. Kakashi reached across with an entirely ungraceful hand and stole the remaining half-ration from Genma's slackening grip. Genma let it go with a snort, and Kakashi sprawled gratefully--stiffly--down onto his side with his face towards the tent wall. Eased his mask down just a little, to follow his own advice.

The ration bar tasted like oversweet berries, and the bedroll was really only designed for one person. But it was late, and cold, and Kakashi had no real plans to let Genma out of his sight until he could at least hand the man off to a competent medic. Or a psychiatric professional.

The fire dimmed down, casting long shadows on the tent wall.

Kakashi hooked a still-shod foot back and kicked Genma, fairly gently, on his trembling ankle. "Grab a -- blanket. Try to ssleep. Don't poke me in the back with your armour."

Genma was tired, but not so tired he couldn't appreciate the irony of that request. He snorted a laugh while he pulled his gloves back on. "Don't worry, that's about the furthest thing from my mind," he told Kakashi's back.

Kakashi gave a breathy single laugh that was half yawn and all exhaustion. "Losing your touch? The bosses will be -- so unhappy."

"You have that effect on me. I'll make sure to include that in my mission report so I never get assigned you as an Eros handler."

"Happy birthday -- to -- me..." Kakashi mumbled, voice trickling away to nothing as sleep claimed him.

Genma sighed. "Yeah. Happy birthday." What a miserable way to spend it. Poisoned, sick, with a guy you hated who kept trying to die on you. It was actually kind of funny. Or maybe he was just getting punchy, because was he actually feeling sympathy for Kakashi? He rubbed his jaw, assessing the bruise Kakashi's fist had left, and thought about the matching one hidden under Kakashi's mask. Definitely kind of funny.

The blanket Kakashi had given him before, when he'd been shivering from the effects of the Anti-B, was still out by the fire, which had burned down to a few glowing embers. He crawled out of the tent and stood for a moment looking around. There were traps set, they were well concealed even with the wisps of smoke drifting up from their dying fire, this was the remotest part of a country where they had active treaties and good relationships with the local ninja. Kakashi was right, though every instinct warned that he should stand watch, or set a clone to guard, they were safe enough without that.

He slipped back into the tent to find Kakashi exactly where he'd left him. Still breathing slowly, and with almost no wheeze. Still with a pulse and chakra-flow buoyed by the soldier pill, but definitely within the safe zone. Genma wrapped the blanket around himself and lay down stiffly next to Kakashi. Fuck, those seizures had taken it out of him. And the ground was cold.

"Shove over," he told Kakashi, who barely responded. Genma groaned and scooted closer anyway. Even with both of them in armour, they could share body heat. Needed to, really. He adjusted the blanket so that it covered Kakashi a little as well, and put a hand on Kakashi's back to check his chakra flow one last reassuring time. Genma's own chakra jolted out, harsh, weak, and poorly-tuned, and another wave of mild nausea shuddered through him, shaking at the same frequency as his trembling, overtired muscles.

Kakashi twitched back, making a small protesting sound deep in his throat. "Sorry, sorry. Go back to sleep," Genma muttered. Yeah, this day, Kakashi's birthday, definitely sucked ass for both of them. Genma shut his eyes, curled his hands in close to his chest, and within moments was dead to the world.