| [Oct. 1st, 2010|11:13 pm] |
For once, it wasn't a kick to the back of the skull. Instead, the jutsu simply wrapped insistent hands around Kakashi's exhausted mind and shoved him out of sleep. Like a low jolt of adrenaline, without the belly-clench.
He blinked once, and got a one-sided worldview made up entirely of hands. Fingers pressed to his temple -- both temples, by the feel of it -- and glowing faintly green.
"Shiranui? What--?" he growled, reaching to bat them away, and froze. No scars on those hands. The scent was all wrong.
"Now, Hatake-san..." began a low warning voice, but Kakashi had already grabbed both wrists in the most painful lock he knew. Twisting the medic's thumbs back to kiss their own tendons, a heartbeat from dislocating. The medic's breath hissed out in a painful stutter.
"Don't move," Kakashi snapped, not looking away from the man's agonized eyes. "Genma? You okay?"
"I'm okay." Genma's voice sounded shaky, but clear. "Got an invitation to dinner at the Hokage palace. Are you okay?"
"I've had better mornings," Kakashi said, then realized that, actually, lately, he hadn't, because that was the code phrase and ohthankgod. He yanked himself awkwardly up, using his double-hold on the medic for balance, and took in the room. The white-faced medic's assistant; Genma flat on his back; the woman in Konoha colours with her hands clenched tight around Genma's shoulders.
Kakashi's eye narrowed, then widened. "I know you," he said. "You were at that mess in Aomori, with the kids."
The woman raised one startled eyebrow. "That was two years ago."
Kakashi shrugged, making the medic groan. "It was memorable. You want to get your hands off my teammate?"
The woman's hands fell carefully away from Genma's shoulders. He surged upright like someone had jabbed a bolt of lightning through his spine, but halted abruptly when the woman grabbed him again. Kakashi's jaw set, but the woman simply said, "Stay where you are, Shiranui-san," before releasing him a second time.
"Well, this is touching," said the medic in a thin, high voice. "But absolutely no one is getting out of here without a medical sign off, and for that I require the use of my thumbs."
"There are other medics," Kakashi said pleasantly, but he let his grip slacken slightly, backing down from excruciating to merely agonizing. The Konoha woman -- what was her name? -- was on her feet, crossing the strip of floor between them. Kakashi looked beyond her to the medic's assistant. "You, girl, get over to the wall."
She scrambled to obey.
The Konoha woman -- Sugi-something, he was sure, and aa first name that began with M -- crouched down just out of Kakashi's reach, putting herself on eye-level. "Hatake-san," she greeted.
"You're late," he told her. "When's Genma getting out?"
"In just a moment, provided you don't create another political tangle for us." She glanced once at the medic, entirely unsympathetic. "Let him go, please. We need his hands."
Around the exhaustion, the dull elation, and the lazy swirl of what felt like new painkillers in his bloodstream, Kakashi felt the barest ghost of a smirk catch the corner of his mouth. "Pretty sure he owes them to Genma," he said. "Shiranui's not saying, but I'll bet you anything you like this is the idiot who botched his patch-up the first time round."
"Oh," said the woman softly, "we know it is."
Kakashi felt a quick, subtle tremor ripple through the flesh-and-bone in his grip. He glanced sideways, straight at Genma. "You're getting out, Shiranui. Want some payback before you go?" |
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