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Chapter Text

Infatuated is not a term that Kakashi has ever considered might describe himself, at least not under any circumstances he could easily invent. Though lately the descriptor hasn't been too unbecoming of him. It probably doesn't help that he's currently standing on the corner of the street watching Iruka pick through a stand of vegetables.

"Just go talk to him," Genma says with a weary sigh. 

"I'd love to hear what you think I'm supposed to say." 

"Start with 'Hello, Iruka,'" Genma answers mockingly. "'How's your day going?' And then you can move onto something like, 'Would you like to get dinner later? My treat. You would? That's great, I'll come get you at seven.'"  

Then he gestures down the street to where Iruka is currently putting a few potatoes into his bag, as if to usher Kakashi forward to repeat this spiel. 

"Pass." 

"So you've been sleeping together for years, but you can't have a ten sentence conversation with him?" Genma asks, pointing out a fact Kakashi is already well aware of. "That's pitiful, even for you." 

"Sex is different," Kakashi argues. "Sex is a lot easier. It's the only reason I still put up with you." 

"Only you would think that," Genma says harshly, and then turns down the street and cups a hand around his mouth to let his voice carry when he shouts Iruka's name over the crowd. Kakashi manages to body flicker behind an empty stall just as Iruka turns at the call for attention and meets Genma a few feet away. 

"Oh, hey. When did you get back?" Iruka asks. 

"Yesterday," Genma says. "I've been meaning to catch up but you can be hard to find." 

"Yeah, sorry," Iruka says with a weary sigh. "I've been staying after hours at the Academy every day this week."

"You work too hard, Iruka."

"I don't have much of a choice. Graduation exams are happening soon. I got a brand new box of headbands delivered this morning." 

"Ah... Academy graduation," Genma says, as if overcome with nostalgia. "Hah. That sucks for you."

"It doesn't suck," Iruka corrects. "It's just stressful." 

"You're a glorified babysitter, how hard can your job really be?" 

Never in his life would Kakashi get away with that sort of comment, but Genma seems to do so easily. Kakashi can hear Iruka sock Genma in the arm with something. Maybe the bag of potatoes. 

"You wouldn't last a single day in charge of a genin team," he argues. "I should nominate you just to give you a taste of it. Tsunade-sama would do it if I asked." 

"Oh yeah, I'm sure you want another jounin who fails all of his genin without a backwards glance." Kakashi silently takes the ribbing and he hears Iruka huff in amusement at his expense. "But listen, complain about it later. Let's get dinner. Your favorite jounin-sensei and I are going to Yakiniku-Q tonight."

They most certainly weren't doing anything of the sort, but he supposes they are now. 

"You've been back in the village for one day and you've already made plans with Kakashi, and not with me?" Iruka puts mock offense into his tone at the accusation. "I'm hurt, Genma. I thought you liked me more than that."

"I figured you'd be too busy to hang out with little ol' me." 

"Well you know how much I love to third wheel you guys." Kakashi can almost hear Iruka rolling his eyes. "Fine, let's all do dinner. What time?"

"Seven?" 

"'Kay, I'll see you there," Iruka agrees. And then, to Kakashi's absolute mortification, Iruka ducks his head behind the empty stall and speaks to the general area where he's currently concealing his presence. 

"Hello, Kakashi," he says plainly, unimpressed. "I'll see you tonight. Don't be late." 

Then he waves goodbye to Genma, and continues down the street. 

"Wow," Genma says once Iruka is out of earshot. Kakashi steps out from behind the stall and starts walking in the opposite direction. "You are never living that one down."

"Barbecue?" He asks. Genma shrugs and trails after him. 

"It was the first place I thought of," he says. "You're welcome, by the way." 

"I don't need you to wingman for me."

"I beg to differ." 

"Well nice going. Now he thinks you invited him on our date." 

"He so doesn't think that," Genma says with a laugh. "I'm way out of your league." 

Kakashi has no rebuttal to this, nor does he have anything particularly useful to say when Genma throws together an outfit for him with an insistence that he not wear his uniform twenty-four seven. 

"Makes you seem unapproachable," Genma says. "More so than normal. You can put on civilian clothes while you're off-duty, it won't kill you." 

"It might," Kakashi argues, but Genma ignores him and drags him out of the house. They make it to the restaurant a few minutes early, and Iruka is already waiting outside the building for them to arrive. He's also wearing civilian clothes, but they look much better on him. The uniform always adds a few years, especially to him. He greets them both with a smile and a small wave and goes to head inside, but Genma stops at the door. 

"I've actually gotta run, but I'll see you guys later," he says. Kakashi glares daggers in his direction and Iruka raises a brow. 

"What the hell." Iruka frowns and pins a finger to his chest. "You're such a flake." 

"Yeah, you'll get over it," he says. "You two have fun though." 

And without further ado, he turns and heads back down the road. Iruka watches him go with a look of confusion.

"Geez. What was that about?" 

Kakashi suppresses a sigh. 

"Genma is convinced he's my wingman," he says.

Iruka turns to give him a bit of a sly grin. "Wouldn't have guessed you'd be the type to need one. Are you shy?" 

"I'm not," Kakashi says, though he's suddenly and traitorously glad for the mask covering his face. 

"Hah. I know that," Iruka says knowingly. "We don't actually have to eat if you don't want to." 

The alternative being that they leave here and go back to Iruka's apartment. Which Kakashi isn't in any way opposed to, but they are already at the restaurant. He shrugs. 

"I could eat," he says. Iruka pats him on the back, and Kakashi follows him inside. 

They do absolutely go back to Iruka's apartment afterwards. Perceptions of introversion or not, Kakashi is never going to be swayed from the idea that Iruka is the best lay he's ever had, and he's pretty sure that Iruka knows this. He's actually pretty sure that Iruka not only knows this but is proud of the fact, because Kakashi is face down on Iruka's threadbare comforter with a hand on his back to hold him against the mattress, and he doesn't let just anyone shove him around like this. Iruka definitely knows that for a fact as well. And civilian clothes really do come off easier than any single piece of his standard issue uniform. For once he's glad he took Genma's advice to dress down - even if he feels more bare going without the stash of weapons in his flak vest than he does now, legs spread wide with all of the lights on, because for some reason Iruka doesn't like to fuck in the dark. 

"You know something?" Kakashi's composure is quickly fraying at the edges as Iruka roughly works him open. "One of these days I might get tired of you being so aggressive." 

Iruka pulls his hand away entirely and Kakashi huffs at being so suddenly bereft. He doesn't even pretend to entertain the bluff, and his own composure is still wholly and unfairly intact.

"I assume you'd tell me."

"I would," Kakashi assures. The palm on his back moves to grasp around his neck as Iruka lines himself up.

"By all means," he says. Then he snaps his hips, and Kakashi chokes on whatever smart quip he was about to come up with next. "Say when."

All of this really started years ago. Before Team 7, before Iruka was a sensei, and before Kakashi had made any progress towards getting over what he will now admit was called his Era of Debilitating Depression. Back on that very first mission they ever took together, when the only things he knew about Iruka were that he was young, steadfast, and had a big bleeding heart, a trait Kakashi still considers inconvenient if very endearing all these years later. Iruka felt so horrible about killing their enemies that Kakashi really had to wonder how he even made it to chuunin when he hesitated at the draw badly enough to get himself hurt. Despite this, Kakashi knew that what he lacked in ruthlessness, Iruka easily made up for tenfold in tenacity. He knew his own perceived shortcomings but was confident in them, not the slightest bit apologetic about what direction he wanted to take his career following the revelation of his preference for pacifism. Just from that short mission together, Kakashi gathered that Iruka was courageous, empathetic, insightful, intelligent, bold - and of course, stupidly hot. 

After that, once Iruka left field work and moved on to the Academy, Kakashi assumed this is where their interactions would unfortunately end. A very brief but interesting acquaintanceship that lasted only as long as it took to start. But maybe somehow Iruka knew that Kakashi was drawn to the idea of them in a way that he himself didn't even understand at the time, not when every emotion that came out of him was filtered through the glassy haze of his very bleak disposition. He still doesn't know where the attraction stemmed from or when it started, aside from the fact that he has almost always found Iruka desirable as a person, in both personality and good gods in looks as well. But it's always been heady. He wanted Iruka like you might the overwhelming compulsion to scratch at a blistering sunburn, or the furious need to destroy something easily breakable during bouts of extreme anger, or the urge to trudge through an untouched field of snow and be the first to break the pristine surface, or the addicting taste of adrenaline when walking away from a fight. But he also wanted Iruka like you might want to run your palms across something you know is velvety soft. Like the way the warmth of the sun feels on bare skin in the spring. Like how the heart wants to clench while holding a newborn pup in your hands. Or like the relief of returning from a long mission knowing there's someone waiting at home to welcome you back. 

He was running out of metaphors, but he wanted it. 

Clearly Iruka wanted it too, and maybe not to the same sort of insatiable degree that Kakashi did but definitely more than a simple flippancy. Regardless of what either of their intentions were, it took only a few short weeks and a handful of further fleeting conversations, or arguments, at the desk or around the village for the growing seed of sexual tension to become palpably unbearable. But Iruka would give him these looks, like he was imagining exactly what he would do if they were alone together instead of in a room full of people, with a hungry and obvious desire burning in his eyes every time he threw glances in Kakashi's direction when heads were turned the other way - Kakashi always felt like Iruka was undressing him in his head. The tension finally broke one night in the middle of the summer, when Kakashi was in a long period of forceful self-imposed social interaction. He didn't go to the festival because he particularly wanted to, but Tenzo had threatened him with bodily harm if he didn't leave his apartment for something other than a mission. Kakashi considered it counterintuitive, but it did work. He wandered around the stalls for a while and watched a few kids at the game booths. Putting carnival games which generally require only a steady hand and a precise eye into a fair in the middle of a village full of shinobi is also pretty counterintuitive, but hey, whatever draws a crowd. 

So while he was figuring out how long he needed to be here for Tenzo to be satisfied that he'd come and gone, he saw Iruka down the street. Iruka didn't see him at first, and Kakashi had about twenty uninterrupted seconds to stop and stare at him in the distance. It had definitely occurred to him plenty of times that Iruka was - and of course still is - insanely attractive, but really, putting on a yukata in that shade of red with his skin tone should be criminal. Konoha's scorching summertime temperatures will never stop the Academy from field training with their students, and at that time of year Iruka's skin was darkly tanned, his face and arms a little burned from all his time outdoors, his long brown hair streaked with blonde on the ends as the sun reached down and bleached away a little more color every afternoon. He wore no excessive jewelry or embellishments of any sort, the simplicity of his attire drawing the entirety of one's attention directly to the way his yukata was open in the front and at the legs just a bit, enough to be improper, to give a little window between the folds of fabric to show off his chest or the curve of his ankles before they disappeared under his clothes. A simple hairstick held a thick bun against the back of his head, but throughout the night the shorter bangs he usually tamed with his hitai-ate had fallen away from their updo and instead perfectly framed the sides of face. 

Kakashi watched him tip up a nearly empty glass to down the last few dregs of his drink, and a drop of liquid escaped from between his lips and rolled down his chin, down his jaw and the curve of his neck, catching in the fold of fabric by his collar. He laughed, and he trashed the empty cup and wiped his face with the back of his palm. Kakashi had never wanted to put his hands on someone more than he did the diabolically tantalizing individual just a hundred feet in front of him. But then Iruka caught him staring, not that he was doing so subtly, and sauntered over to where Kakashi stood at the mouth of an alley nursing a half finished beer. Iruka saddled up next to him, slipping an arm around his middle to unabashedly grope under the waist of his slacks and squeeze his bare ass, with a bold and playful little 'hey, baby' as he did so, like it was something they'd already done a million times. Kakashi can't even remember what he said in response but Iruka laughed, a sound that went straight to Kakashi's head and dick alike. 

The journey from A to B is still lost on him to this day, but he knows they quickly wound up back at Iruka's apartment, and he finally had his first introduction to how handsy and how pushy Iruka could be. Far be it for him to complain, certainty. Not when that dark red yukata was finally on the ground to bare the lean planes of Iruka's chest and the soft skin of his thighs and the thick curtain of his hair around his shoulders. Iruka had him pinned down on the bed and Kakashi hadn't even considered that he might be okay with being manhandled but Iruka didn't take no for an answer and he found he liked it, liked the way that Iruka so effortlessly held him down and moved him where he was needed, singlemindedly determined to wring at least one torturously delayed orgasm out of him. 'Just this once,' Kakashi thought, because back then his self worth was actually rather pitiful and he thought Iruka's time and body didn't deserve to be intruded upon by his presence. But he got over himself and realized Iruka liked the 'just once' as much as he did, and  once turned into twice. Then twice became a dangerous habit.

Attachment is not a good trait to have for a shinobi. Infatuation is an even worse one, a miniscule but potentially fatal character flaw that has the slim but not-inexistant opportunity to get in the way of duty one day in a manner that cannot be undone. Lucky for Iruka, who doesn't seem to have this problem, all this is or has ever been is just really phenomenal sex. Obviously. Shinobi life is hard. Healthy, constructive outlets are difficult to come by. Fraternization is technically impermissible without a written declaration of relationship to someone's higher-up, and not even for the vast difference in ranks between most of them, but generally just because it - or attachment, or infatuation, or whatever you want to call this - can be considered a liability to the right person. This is how people like Iruka get added to the 'known relations' section of the bingo book. It's never stopped almost anyone from taking comfort or pleasure in their fellow shinobi, Kakashi included. Though he only really preferred taking pleasure from one person these days, which, okay, he'll admit is maybe a little sad. 

So after their impromptu barbecue dinner, after he's been taken apart and put back together just by Iruka's deft hands and talented mouth, Kakashi lies in bed while Iruka stands outside the open balcony doors smoking a cigarette into the cool spring air, and he considers that maybe they should stop doing this. It's not fair, really, to either of them. It's not fair to Iruka, to entertain this habit while so entirely unaware of the fact that Kakashi wants him so badly, way more than just physically, wants him with an ache that he can feel, wants to really understand him as an individual outside of the bedroom, wants to come home to Iruka at the end of the day and have it be proudly known to others who Kakashi belongs to. And it's not fair to Kakashi, either, to keep doing this to himself knowing that Iruka is forever going to be an unattainable goal he may never reach, or even make the attempt to reach for in the first place. Sex is just a lot easier than anything else. Friendship included, somehow. So if Iruka is willing to continue with what he believes is Kakashi's casual indifference, then Kakashi will play into his ignorance and try his hardest to pretend he doesn't feel stupid when he leaves while Iruka sleeps later that night, or any other night, thoroughly wrung out and harboring a strange mix of self-satisfaction underneath the familiar companion of pity. 

He does try, to a degree. Or at least he tells himself he's trying. He doesn't have that much else to do in his day-to-day. Naruto's been gone over two years with only vague plans to return within the next six months. Sakura's still training under Tsunade, and Kakashi has only heard good things about how that's going. He'll admit to a little pride on her behalf, despite having very little to do with any of her recent progress. Tenzo stays busy in ANBU, and likes it for some reason. Genma is almost always glued to Tsunade's side as part of her personal guard, and Kakashi actually sees relatively little of him these days. And of course, Gai, Asuma, and Kurenai are almost always preoccupied with their teams, which is about where Kakashi's list of what you might call good friends comes to an end. Tsunade made him go back to leading genin before Naruto's shadow was even done cresting over the horizon, but after he failed two more genin teams in a row she pulled him from the roster. Her patience and willingness to let him do as he pleases is much more limited than Hiruzen's ever was. He went back to regular A-ranks, most of them solo, and occasionally led the squad of a group of chuunin when they needed an extra hand doing something a little more difficult. 

Iruka was on one of those hodge-podge teams twice in the span of eight months. It's weird to be in charge of him, because as far as Kakashi has ever known, no one really tells Iruka what to do. But he's by no means a bad shinobi, far from it. Kakashi is always impressed by his skill, just as he was on their first mission together, but in later interactions out in the field he always walks away with the feeling that Iruka is holding himself back for some reason. He does what's asked of him and he knows how to follow orders, but that's about where his ambition suspiciously ends. He's the type of person who could be given an instruction, and when they said to consider it done you wholeheartedly believed them. Kakashi never said anything about Iruka's intentionally-hidden potential to Tsunade because it wasn't his business whether Iruka cared enough to work towards his promotion. Though considering they'd already slept together a few times when these missions happened he's pretty sure Iruka called him 'taichou' just to fuck with him. 

Outside of this, though, they don't even speak all that often. Pleasantries at the desk don't count because that's his favorite place to antagonize Iruka publicly. Iruka always gets this little scrunch in his brow when Kakashi says something particularly slow on purpose, and if he's really annoying about it he can get Iruka to stand up and yell at him over something trivial. It becomes a very one-sided game, though he's never sure who wins. On the very, very rare occasion, they wind up together at the same bar as their small friend groups overlap. Iruka actually knows almost the entire village including many of its jounin, and he's no stranger to hanging out with people outside of what you might consider his normal social circle. Shinobi can be very cliquey. But every so often Kakashi will go out with Tenzo or Gai or maybe Asuma, and Iruka will already be there or will show up later, occasionally with Anko or Genma, or one of his other chuunin friends from the desk or the Academy. And Kakashi never makes any kind of point to single him out in instances like these because he's frankly not brave enough to do so. But if Iruka wanders over to talk to him then that's just as well, and sometimes if Iruka gets particularly drunk or is feeling maybe a little too keyed up after a mission and looking for a way to let off some steam, then he'll drag Kakashi back to his place and find a new flat surface to bend him over.

So, maybe he hasn't been trying that hard after all. 

But he slowly finds that he's friends with some of Iruka's friends, and he likes to imagine that this has given him a foot in the door towards something other than the current situationship the two of them have going on. He's not yet sure how the venn-diagram of their social circles does him any favors but it's better than nothing. Though for all his efforts, the only decent fruit of his labor over the years came in the form of a pretty good friendship with Genma, who it turns out is the second best lay he's ever had. Which is really annoying, for some reason. 

"I think it's funny as hell," Genma tells him one evening, not too long after he flaked on getting barbecue. "You're like the most accomplished man on the planet and you can't tell Iruka you're in love with him." 

Genma is chatty after a good fuck. Kakashi has no idea where his boundless energy comes from but he's never been able to keep up with it. He's very similar to Iruka in that he knows exactly what he wants and is willing to take it. Kakashi might have a type.

"I regret ever confiding in you," he says with a sigh of defeat. "And I also never said that." 

Genma's bed isn't big enough to fit two grown men but they make it work, though it does mean that Kakashi is always rather squished against his side when they lie around afterwards. Genma doesn't practice the courtesy of smoking on the balcony and instead does so right in the middle of his room. One time Kakashi teased him that the accommodation admin is going to charge him extra to remove the smell when he moves out, and Genma simply stated that if he ever has a reason to no longer need this apartment it'll be because he's dead. His idea of a joke. 

"But you won't deny it?" 

Kakashi steals his cigarette from him and takes a deep pull before handing it back. He blows the mouthful of smoke into the air. 

"I certainly wouldn't tell you one way or the other," he says. Genma barks a laugh.

"You don't gotta. Doesn't take a master of perception to realize you're infatuated." 

Kakashi is starting to think that there might be allegations he isn't doing a good job of escaping.  

"I'm not infatuated with anyone." 

"Yes you are," Genma says dismissively. "You think no one knows you fuck around with him more than you do anyone else? Literally speaking. Which makes you an asshole, by the way."  

Kakashi is not going to comment on the fact that apparently his obsession with and preference for Iruka as a habitual sexual partner is known to more than no one. 

"What, why? I sleep with you all the time." 

"Yeah, but that's what I'm getting at." Genma says. Kakashi knows Genma only cares because he's been one of Iruka's closest friends since they were children. In other circumstances he might consider himself lucky that Genma didn't deck him when it became known that he was sleeping with both of them at the same time. Though, shinobi fraternization being what it is, of course, the rulebook is kind of unwritten. Iruka doesn't know Kakashi hooks up with Genma, which is a point that he will concede to in light of any inflammatory remarks, such as, "You sleep with someone you're in love with almost as often as you sleep with me. You're kind of a dick." 

"Well I promise I'm not in love with you," Kakashi says. Genma blows smoke into the room and Kakashi watches the shapes of the cloud until it dissipates and floats away. Genma pats him on the chest, and leaves a few flakes of the ashes from his cigarette in his wake.

"Stop it," he says. "You'll make me blush." 

But now that more than just himself and his inner monologue has decided to force this idea, he begins to wonder whether there's a little bit of truth in Genma's statement, or if the feeble attempts at wingmanning might work better if Kakashi wasn't in what he is refusing to call denial. Because, unfortunately, this infatuation manages to find him even hundreds of miles outside of the village, when he's more than half a day's trip from home as he returns from a mission and Pakkun decides to say that he's found Iruka's scent. 

"Boss, you really don't have the stamina or the chakra to go chasing after someone right now," he says. "Iruka is definitely just on a mission." 

"You don't smell that?" Kakashi asks, scenting the air. He's no ninken, but he knows the stench of blood. Pakkun rolls his eyes. 

"The blood is probably yours." 

"How fresh is his trail?" Kakashi asks. Pakkun huffs but puts his nose to the ground regardless.

"Fresh," he says. "Less than a few hours." He picks up his head and turns to follow where it leads, though his tone goes a little harder when he continues. "That blood isn't yours." 

"Maybe he needs help," Kakashi says. 

"You need help. You need a hospital," Pakkun argues. Kakashi puts a hand to his stomach. The hastily administered stitches have held so far, but he's got nothing to fight off infection and he knows such limited healing ninjutsu it's not even worth the effort of using it on himself. Injured or not, he's not going to ignore such a blatant sign that Iruka has been here recently, and that something might be wrong. The chances they'd run into each other on different missions isn't zero but it's close, and they're hours from the village. Kakashi isn't going to wonder whether he should have stayed to make sure Iruka is okay. The only way to know is to check. 

"We'll be quick," he tells Pakkun. "If I can't handle it alone we'll get backup to come help."

"From where?" Pakkun asks indignantly under his breath, but nevertheless, leads Kakashi further down the trail. An hour later Pakkun stops them in a large thicket of bushes, and sniffs around through the foliage until he calls for Kakashi's attention. 

"Look at this, Boss," he says. Kakashi pushes the shrubbery away until he sees what Pakkun has found - a Konoha issue flak vest and hip pouch, hidden beneath the underbrush like someone was trying to hide it. "This is Iruka's." 

The fact goes without being said. Kakashi would recognize his handiwork with a needle and thread anywhere, as Iruka is a bigger fan of fixing his worn clothes than he is of breaking in new ones, despite that Kakashi knows he never goes through his full allowance for uniforms. He also knows from experience that there's more than one seal tag sewn into the lining, though he's never asked what they do. The other thing that goes without being said is that there's blood, a lot of it, and it's most definitely Iruka's. 

"You think he was captured?" Pakkun asks. "It's like he was trying to hide his equipment. He must have left it here on purpose for some reason." 

The only thing that immediately comes to mind is that Iruka likely had something on him he knew the enemy - whoever they may be - would want, which he didn't want to fall into their hands. The thought doesn't sit well with Kakashi at all. He checks through the vest and the hip pouch for any obvious clues but finds little besides the typical supplies. There's a storage tag sewn into an inner pocket, which he notices only because he knows to look for it. Summoning its contents gives him a scroll, one sealed closed with a very intricate looking tag which Kakashi would definitely have no way of opening. He's not sure whether this is of Iruka's creation, but it's too obvious that this is what he was trying to hide. Pakkun's question of his capture is starting to sound more and more likely. He pockets the scroll and adds all of Iruka's supplies to his own kit, putting on the second hip pouch. 

"Where does the trail lead?" He asks. Pakkun sniffs around for a few moments before he points further in the same direction of travel. Kakashi wordlessly follows after him. Ten minutes later, Pakkun stops again when they reach obvious signs of a struggle. A few trees in the immediate area are missing limbs entirely, blackened scorch marks evidence of an explosion - likely Iruka's handiwork - and Kakashi spots more than one dark red stain against a patch of bark. He feels his stomach drop at the sight as his concern only gets worse. 

"There was a scuffle here," Pakkun says. "There's a lot of blood from lots of people. No bodies though. Not that I can tell. Blood's still fresh. And all the trails keep going, Iruka's too. He was definitely captured by someone." 

"Then let's go-" Kakashi starts to say, but Pakkun clamps down on his ankle to make him stop. 

"Boss, I got no clue how many people are waiting at the end of this trail outside of the-" he scents the air again. "-the five of 'em right here. You're injured, Iruka's injured, and all of us are outnumbered. We need to think before doing something stupid." 

"I can't turn around and walk away from this," Kakashi argues. 

"I'm not sayin' you should." Pakkun does whatever you might call a dog's approximation of a shrug. "But maybe we should send someone back to the village for help first." 

"We're twelve hours from Konoha-"

"Eight for Ūhei."

"And a human team would take another twelve to get back here," Kakashi continues. "Because you couldn't reverse summon both of us back to the village, only me. There's no time. Iruka might be dead by then."

"If he isn't now?" 

"Then I better make sure, shouldn't I?" Kakashi says pointedly, and ignores Pakkun's look of frustration as he follows Kakashi further down the trail. 

It takes them another hour of wordless travel for Pakkun to announce that they're close to whatever it is they're going to find. It's still the middle of the day but it's well past the time Kakashi planned to stop to take a break and make sure his stitches haven't ripped and eat a ration bar before he continues. His own mission was supposed to be a lot easier than it turned out to be and he's going to need several days to restore his reserves, time Iruka doesn't have right now, if Kakashi's instincts are correct. A mile away from the end of the trail Pakkun warns him to be ready, and they silently touch down in a nondescript section of the forest. A large and dilapidated building sits in an overgrown clearing near the edge of a cliff, with two shinobi standing guard out front. 

"Look at those headbands," Pakkun says. "Are those Rain shinobi? This might be bad. Why would Iruka's mission have anything to do with them, don't we normally steer clear of that whole country?" 

"I don't know," Kakashi says, starting to get frustrated that he's not sure how to proceed. He hasn't had much opportunity to meet many shinobi from Amegakure but he recognizes the standard issue one-shouldered flak vest they wear, similar to the style used in Suna, and the muted blacks and grays of their uniform meant to blend in with the weather and the dull landscape that surrounds their village. "We won't find out standing around out here. Come on."

"What, you're just gonna rush in?" Pakkin asks incredulously. "Just like that?" 

"What do you want me to do?" 

"Not get yourself killed, for starters. We don't even know if Iruka is alive." 

"That's exactly what I'm trying to figure out." Kakashi takes a deep breath to control his sudden frustration. "Wait here if you're so concerned."

"And let you go alone?" 

"Then be quiet and help me," Kakashi says sternly. Really, isn't he supposed to be in charge here? He uncovers his sharingan but keeps his eye closed to preserve as much chakra as he can. If he can do as much of this as possible without the use of his left eye he'll be glad to save himself the effort and the risk of further chakra exhaustion. "Go distract one of them. Draw him into the woods while I take the other."

Pakkun nods with a word of assent, and silently leaps down to the forest floor. He disappears into the underbrush and Kakashi momentarily loses track of him until he hears a rustle somewhere further into the trees, intentionally loud as he snaps a few twigs underfoot. Both shinobi calmly draw their weapons and turn their heads to the noise, but don't move. Kakashi silently urges him on until Pakkun makes a louder noise like a wild animal, and the two Ame nin glance at one another before one of them decides to investigate the noise. 

Kakashi lands next to the one still standing guard at the door in an instant, and catches the corpse as he slits open the man's throat. He drops it quietly and body flickers the fifteen feet that separate him from the second guard in less than a second, and similarly drops him to the ground. The adrenaline races under his skin and he knows his exhaustion is keying him up more than he should be after two easy kills. He glances around the woods but no one comes rushing after him just yet. For now he's undiscovered. Pakkun appears from the bushes and shakes off the loose leaves and twigs stuck in his fur, then approaches the body at Kakashi's feet and gives it a once over and a deep sniff. 

"Iruka's scent is all over these guys," he says. Which in no way calms Kakashi's nerves. "He's definitely here somewhere. How do we get in?" 

But Kakashi decides to make a judgement call. 

"Turn around and go back to the village. Get a team to come out here." 

"You said yourself it'll be tomorrow by the time anyone arrives," Pakkun arrives. "And I'm not as fast as Ūhei."

"I don't have enough chakra to summon anyone else," Kakashi says. "And if I die in the meantime then Konoha will want to retrieve my corpse. We need a team here regardless." 

"Yeesh, what an optimist you are," Pakkun says. "I'll head out then. Try not to die, by the way."

"I'll do my best," Kakashi says. And he watches Pakkun take to the trees and leap away. 

Chapter Text

Kakashi quickly surveys the building in front of him. It's huge, and most of it's falling apart. The windows on the front are boarded shut and the roof doesn't look stable enough to support its own weight, let alone any attempts to break in through the enormous hole in the thatching. He slinks around to the side of the building but finds no additional guards as he searches for another entrance. He could very well break down the front door, which would definitely be the easiest and fastest way to get in, but he doesn't have the strength to deal with an unknown number of enemies all at once if he's detected. The longer he can go unnoticed the better. He has to go all the way around to the opposite side of the building before he finds an entry in a window not quite boarded up all the way, with enough of a gap that he can easily climb through. 

With a quick peek inside he ensures the room is empty before ducking under the wooden boards and landing silently in the dark room, disturbing a thick layer of dust on the floor. The building might be abandoned but it isn't empty. It looks like a sort of storage facility, just from what he can tell of the inside of this single room. Large bookshelves line the walls and unmarked crates are stacked neatly in any empty space. There's a few writing desks in one corner and an enormous pile of scrolls spread across each of them. Kakashi knows that Konoha used to maintain a handful of waystations even at this distance, though in more recent years the majority of the shinobi presence is concentrated close to the village. Places like these are no longer in such frequent use, since these days the border patrols only go out to a fifty mile perimeter. He quietly tries the door only to find it locked, and takes a moment to wonder how to proceed without alerting the whole building to his presence. 

But he finds a stroke of luck when he glances up at the ceiling, because there isn't one - all of the rafters are entirely exposed under the vault of the roof, and the rooms are separated by their walls. He leaps up and keeps a cautious eye open for guards or for anyone else in the adjacent rooms. The one to his immediate right is empty, save for three corpses neatly lined against the wall. More Ame nin, dead. From the state of the one that looks like its legs were blown off in an explosion and the seal tag still plastered to the face of the one in the middle, it looks like more of Iruka's handiwork. 

The lack of a ceiling allows sound to travel clearly and makes the few sources of light easy to see. Kakashi can hear voices from not far away, and from the shine of an oil lamp he knows someone is nearby. Silently he tiptoes along until he's standing overtop of one of the not-so-empty rooms, and stumbles upon two more Ame shinobi on either side of a large desk which has been cleared of its layer of dust. 

"...supposed to do if we don't find it," one of them says, the younger of the two. He's dressed similarly to the guards outside with a short sword strapped to his hip.  

"I don't fucking know," the second man says. He wears gray fatigues but no vest, and notches his kunai into the wooden table-top over and over like a nervous habit. "But we've lost too many people to walk out of here without it."

"No way is that Konoha bastard gonna spill," the younger man says. "He's lasted this long." 

Kakashi's heart races. Pakkun's assurance that Iruka was present is one thing, but confirmation from the enemy themselves is another. There can't be any other Konoha shinobi they have in their hands right now. 

But before the older man has a chance to reply, from further into the building Kakashi hears a horrible, blood curdling scream of agony, in a voice that is all too familiar. His lungs seize in his chest and he nearly chokes on his heart when it leaps into his throat in panic, because that's Iruka's voice. 

"Not gonna matter if Tōshirō fucking kills the guy too quickly," the older man says in response the shrill sound of Iruka's screams. "Go tell him to lay off for a while. That shinobi is the only lead we have to get our intel back and we don't have a fucking medic anymore."

"C'mon, the guys not giving the scroll up." The younger man pushes away from the desk and stands with his hands on his hips. "Maybe we might as well kill him and cut our losses. We can get a tracking team back here to find where he hid it. No way is Konoha gonna bargain with us over one person." Iruka screams again, more muffled this time but no less horrible of a sound. Kakashi feels his whole body tense in alarm, and the Ame nin continue speaking like they don't even notice. "This guy isn't even in the bingo book. He's good, but he's probably not that important."

The older man grunts in frustration and throws his kunai into the opposite wall. 

"I'm not doing anything until I've made every attempt to wring an answer out of him," he says. "Konoha might have thorough interrogation training but no one's perfect. Go tell Tōshirō I said to give it an hour or two. Make sure our only informant doesn't die in the meantime." 

Kakashi can taste the dust that filters through his mask as he fights to slow down his somewhat rapid inhales. The younger of the two men turns in obvious displeasure at being given an order and slams the door behind him when he goes into the hallway, leaving the older man alone. Kakashi is directly above him. A drop of blood rolls off the cuff of his waist from the wound in his stomach - the stitches have definitely torn open - and it lands on the table below. The man looks up in question just as Kakashi leaps down and yanks his head to the side to break his neck. He's dead before his body quietly thumps to the ground. 

Kakashi drops hard onto the floor and sinks to one knee. He peels up his vest to inspect what remains of the stitches to his stomach, a feeble attempt to close the gash the length of his entire hand right next to his hip. As much as it's bleeding he fears the wound may be deeper than he thought, or nicked something important. His waist and the thigh of his slacks are soaked in blood, but he doesn't have time to do any more first aid. He pulls a length of fresh wrapping out of his med kit and shoves it under his waistband, hoping that with enough pressure he can stop the excessive bleeding if nothing else. This situation is bad, really bad and he knows it. There's at least two more shinobi in the building, and at least one of them is actively torturing Iruka right now. He's got limited chakra, next to no stamina, and a freely bleeding and very deep wound that is already slowing him down. But there's no way Iruka isn't killed before backup arrives, and no way in hell is Kakashi going to stand around and wait for help. He has no choice but to push forward, and hope that at least one of them is able to make it out of this alive. If nothing else he might be able to buy Iruka some time to escape. He leaps across the rafters and follows the younger man down the hall before he can get too far, silently landing behind him and covering the cry of surprise as he sinks a kunai right through his spine and kills him immediately.

Just as he's leaping back into the rafters, someone exits one of the rooms further down and shouts in alarm as he's spotted. 

"Oi, what the fuck? Hiroki, eyes up! Someone's here!" 

Kakashi body-flickers away with an inward curse and conceals his presence as much as possible but the damage is already done. Two more shinobi rush into the hallway at the sudden warning. 

"No one move," one of them says. "We have an intruder." 

"Another Konoha-nin?"

"How many are there?"  

"I can't tell. Stay close. Tōshirō, on my left. Satomi, at the rear." 

If Tōshirō is here that means he's not with Iruka. Kakashi takes the rafters two at a time across the empty rooms as quickly as he can while the enemy nin slowly head in the opposite direction in an attempt to flush him out. All the way at the end of the building is yet another nondescript room like the others, where Iruka is being held. Kakashi lands behind where he's laid out on his stomach atop a low table, his hands bound above his head to either of the wooden legs with a length of chakra wire which have cut deep furrows into his skin. One of his arms is mangled, bent at an angle it shouldn't be, and bloody lacerations cover the entire width of his back like marks from a whip. He's stripped down to his slacks, his shoes, vest, and shirt all discarded. He's conscious but doesn't immediately realize the presence behind him isn't an enemy, and struggles as Kakashi starts to remove the bindings. Kakashi puts a hand over his mouth and sees the relief in Iruka's expression when he finally recognizes who's in the room with him. 

"Can you stand?" Kakashi asks. He can still hear the other's voices from down the hall, and they seem to have discovered the fresh bodies of their fallen comrades as Kakashi can hear them speaking tersely in alarm. Iruka clutches at Kakashi's vest when he can't support his own weight and Kakashi holds him around his waist to help him down from the table and onto the floor. 

"My leg- broken," he says through his teeth. "Can't- I can't-"

"Be quiet, I have to pick you up," Kakashi warns, and Iruka nods as Kakashi prepares to sling him over his shoulder as painlessly as possible. He barely gets his arms under Iruka's knees when three sets of footsteps rush into the room and Kakashi has no time to react. He prepares to spend the very last bit of his chakra hauling ass in their escape before he's cornered any further, but he doesn't even manage to stand before Iruka suddenly gasps, one hand surging towards his own chest as he absolutely wails in agony. He claws at his sternum like he's trying to rip away his skin, and Kakashi sees a dark mark spreading out from the center of his chest until it solidifies into a small pattern of black lines - exactly like a curse seal. One of the enemies - Tōshirō, the interrogator - has his hands together in a sign Kakashi doesn't recognize, undoubtedly activating the mark on Iruka's chest, and he cries out in excruciating pain as it continues to spread across his ribs. One of the others strides across the room and points a katana right at Kakashi's face where he kneels on the ground with Iruka still thrashing around in his arms.

"For fucks sake," one of them says. "Shut him the hell up."

Process of elimination tells him that one is Hiroki, and the one with the knife at his throat is Satomi. Tōshirō drops his hands at the order, and Iruka's entire body goes slack as he collapses, taking ragged inhales through his mouth. 

"Back away slowly," Satomi says. "No sudden movements."  

Kakashi hesitates but ultimately he recognizes he has no leverage right now, and no choice but to lay Iruka down on the floor to stand and retreat until his back hits the wall behind him. 

"Nice and easy does it," Satomi says. He follows Kakashi across the room, stepping over where Iruka lies as he's effectively cornered with the end of a blade poised at his throat. Hiroki doesn't even look in his direction before he picks Iruka up by the wrist like he weighs nothing at all. Iruka bites back a shout and Kakashi foolishly tries to take a step forward. The katana presses against the fabric that hugs his throat until he feels it nick his skin in warning. He hasn't opened his sharingan a single time, he's not even sure if he has enough chakra to use it at the moment, but Satomi pointedly doesn't look anywhere near it. Iruki is dragged upright until he's suspended off the ground by his arm. 

"How did you call for help?" Hiroki asks, and shakes him hard when Iruka says nothing but a cry of agony as he dangles from his mangled arm. 

"Let him go," Kakashi says, fury making his lungs burn. He knows he needs to be extremely cautious how he handles this interaction but he can't watch Iruka be manhandled like this. Hiroki turns to give him a glare and drops Iruka into a heap on the ground. He cradles his arm against his heaving chest, his entire body visibly trembling. 

"Or what? Anything you were going to do you would have done already," Hiroki says dismissively. "Tell me now, are there more of you on the way?" 

Kakashi has the feeling that this man is in charge, or is at least the only seniority at the moment. No one else has joined them so he assumes there's only the three of them left after he killed the two guards outside and then the two in the other room. Seven people is a lot for a squad, not even counting the ones Iruka's already killed, and it begs the question of how long they've been here, how long Iruka has been here. Not long, if Pakkun's sense of smell can be trusted, which Kakashi knows it can. But his options are limited. These people are willing to torture and kill Iruka to get information out of him - information regarding the location of the scroll Kakashi has stashed in his vest right now, burning a hole in his pocket.

"No," he says. "It's only me." 

Hiroki turns his attention back to Iruka, kicking him in the ribs to push him flat onto his back. 

"Is he lying to me?" He asks harshly, and plants his foot on Iruka's face to turn his head to the side. Kakashi tries not to bristle. 

"Telling- the truth," Iruka chokes out. "Just me, I- I didn't know-" 

"You expect me to believe Konoha's favorite lapdog just happened to wander all the way out here to find you?" He pushes harder and Iruka stifles a sound of pain as his head is shoved against the dusty floorboards. 

"Yes- yes," Iruka insists. A trail of blood drips from his open mouth and gathers on the floor to join the rest, which seeps from the wounds on his back. "Didn't- I didn't call anyone- swear it-"

"Why don't I believe you?" 

"Let go of him," Kakashi says again. Blind rage courses through him and he can no longer keep his sharingan closed even if he knows it'll cost him too much to use it. Satomi doesn't quite retreat, but the blade against his throat backs away just enough that it no longer touches his skin. Hiroki huffs in frustration and finally lets go of Iruka to approach Kakashi instead.

"I don't give a fuck how you got here," he says. "He has information we need, and you clearly want him alive. Convince him to give it to us, or I'll kill him." 

"You'll kill him as soon as you get what you want," Kakashi points out. Hiroki shrugs.

"But maybe I let you live," he says. "You're high-profile enough that Konoha might care if you go missing. I'd rather not have your village knocking at my door tomorrow over this. My goal isn't to kill either of you, my goal is to get back what he stole from me." 

Kakashi pauses, and glances down at Iruka like he's considering what to do. Iruka catches his eye across the room, and just once, he weakly shakes his head. 

"What did he steal?" Kakashi asks. 

"A scroll," Hiroki answers. "A sealed one. He's hidden it somewhere." 

Iruka has already correctly guessed that Kakashi found the scroll on his way here. Whatever it contains is clearly important enough for Iruka to give his life to protect, though none of this makes any sense - chuunin don't get sent on solo missions to steal intel, especially not intel that seems this important. And if he had a squad, where are they? Pakkun didn't mention anything about anyone else, it seems like Iruka is entirely alone out here. Why was his mission to steal a single scroll from Ame shinobi while they're still inside the Land of Fire's borders? Iruka's missions are almost entirely B- and C-ranks, not this. There's something that doesn't add up and Kakashi despises the fact that he doesn't have all the information. If he knew what was going on maybe he'd have some leverage to play into. Right now the only thing he has is the very real possibility of Iruka's death on his hands. 

Hiroki exhales in clear frustration when Kakashi doesn't immediately answer. He simply turns around and steps directly onto Iruka's neck to hold him still. Iruka weakly tries to push him off but he has no leverage and no strength to use towards it anyway.    

Hiroki doesn't even look at him as he struggles. "You should make up your mind," he says. 

Every conclusion that Kakashi can foresee coming out of this leads to the same thing - Iruka's continued torture, and both of their deaths. Kakashi isn't positive that in his current state he can dispatch all three of these men and not die in the process, not with next to no chakra and a hostage situation to worry about. And if either of them continue to hold out about the scroll then Iruka is going to needlessly suffer further before being killed regardless. The only way that has a chance, even a horribly slight chance, of letting them walk away from this is if Kakashi gives up the scroll right now and hopes it's appeasement enough. Whatever it contains and whatever ramifications it's forfeit has for Iruka's mission can be worried about later. Kakashi isn't going to play all of his cards just yet, but neither is he going to stand here and watch Iruka die. The more time he can buy the better his chances are he can think of literally anything he can do.  

"An hour west of here," he says. "His vest and kit are stashed in the woods." 

"K-Kakashi," Iruka warns as he strains to even breathe around the boot still crushing his throat. "Kakashi- stop, you- you can't-!"

"You didn't see the scroll," Horiki clarifies, ignoring Iruka entirely. He steps down to silence him and Iruka chokes. "I'm supposed to assume that's where it is?" 

"I didn't know to look for it," Kakashi says. "This isn't my mission. I just caught his trail."

"I don't believe in coincidence enough to be convinced that you happened to be in the area," Hiroki counters. Kakashi tries not to tense, or to give away any tells that his lie was ruined so quickly. "Nor do I think you're stupid enough to not have searched through his supplies if you found them. You know what I think? I think you're bluffing. I think you picked it up, and you have it with you, right now. Give it to me."

"Don't- fucking help them-" Iruka grits out, but Hiroki turns to give Tōshirō, still standing sentry by the doorway, a curt nod. Tōshirō puts his palms together in the hand-sign to activate the curse seal, and Iruka immediately writhes and yells as it begins to activate. Kakashi feels his own heart thudding painfully in his chest and his breathing quickens having to watch this. Iruka isn't strong enough to move out from under the restraining pressure on his neck and he scrabbles against the floor, smearing the pools of blood into a mess around him as his hands search for purchase and he screams in agony. Hiroki yells over top of the sound in order to be heard. 

"Give me the scroll and I'll stop!"

Kakashi tries to step forward again and he's shoved back roughly against the wall. The katana slices deeper against his throat, and blood starts to bead against his skin. Iruka still hasn't stopped screaming. If they make it out of this, Kakashi is seriously going to have to submit himself to a repeat of Konoha's 'thorough' interrogation resistance training, because he lasts all of five seconds of watching Iruka get tortured before he can't take it anymore.

"Alright, enough." The breath leaves his lungs in short and somewhat panicked huffs. "I have it, I have the scroll. Just- just stop. Let him go." 

Hiroki holds up a hand and Tōshirō deactivates the curse seal. Iruka goes still and sobs around gasping, coughing inhales when Hiroki finally steps off of his throat. Kakashi is panting hard and can feel blood dripping down his neck under his uniform, seeping through the bandages around his waist to soak the leg of his slacks. 

"Fuck, was that so hard?" Hiroki asks. "Where is it?" 

"Inner pocket. Left side. It's still sealed, I didn't open it." 

Hiroki nods, and sighs a somewhat relieved exhale. 

"Satomi," he says. "Get it from him." 

Satomi doesn't look pleased with having to reach so close to Kakashi's person but moves to do as he's told. Kakashi is about to have his first and probably his only opening to strike, and if he had to pick one of the three to kill it wouldn't be this one, but right now he'll take what he can get. Satomi flips his blade to the side to press the flat edge against Kakashi's neck instead of the point, allowing him to step in close and reach for the inner pocket of Kakashi's flak vest. Kakashi has his hands down at his side, and Satomi has two kunai strapped to his thigh. 

As soon as he's within range Kakashi deftly removes one of the kunai and drives it into the closest target he can reach in the half-second he's got before he's disarmed, which is the side of the man's stomach. It plunges deep, and when Satomi immediately falters and begins to topple, the katana he stills holds against Kakashi's neck slices through his mask and into his skin. Kakashi nabs the second kunai before Satomi hits the ground or the other two are able to react. He throws it towards Tōshirō but it's deflected at the last second, and Hiroki reacts faster than Kakashi anticipated. One second he's there, standing between him and Iruka's now unconscious form on the ground, and the next second he feels a presence behind him and a hand closes around his throat. Then there's the telltale surge of chakra building right under his skin as an unknown jutsu is cast point-blank against his neck. 

He's very familiar with the burning ache of his own lightning affinity but electrocution is vastly different from the controlled chakra output of a chidori. Whatever it is that Hiroki releases directly into his spine is immediate and paralyzing. He would swear he can feel the moment the electricity stops his heart in his chest. He can feel the pulse of energy in every one of his teeth and behind his eyes, and his muscles contract involuntarily as the air is squeezed from his lungs. He hits the ground like a rock and isn't able to move or breathe. Hiroki kicks him in the ribs and he almost can't even feel it because his entire body is numb. His vision is entirely blacked out and he's not exactly sure that his eyes haven't been burned out of his head. Tōshirō's voice filters distantly from across the room but the ringing in his ears is hard to hear anything over. 

He's suddenly flipped onto his back and someone digs through the pockets in his vest, then he's left alone. After several tense and agonizing minutes, his muscles finally relax enough to let him draw a strained inhale, and sound returns enough for him to hear one of them curse in surprise over the noise of his dry-heaving. 

"...we supposed to do with him now?" 

"I guess we kill him."

"You really think he doesn't have back-up coming?" 

There's a beat of silence as both of them consider this before Hiroki finally replies. 

"I think he's shit out of luck either way," he says. Kakashi can't help but agree. He can't even do anything besides listen to them speak. "Not like they'd get here in time." 

"No, but I also don't want Konoha chasing us down over this."

"Don't see why they would if we clean up."

"They would if we take him with us," Tōshirō adds suddenly, and Hiroki scoffs. 

"Why the fuck would we do that?"

"Do you have any clue what he's worth?" 

Another beat of silence. Kakashi has almost managed to catch his breath but he still can't move, and his vision is spotty. Neither Hiroki or Tōshirō are within his direct line of sight, and the only thing he can see is the dusty rafters on the ceiling above him. He can't see where Iruka lies just a few feet away from him and has no idea whether he's even still alive. 

"Fuck, we don't have time for this, and I'm not carrying him all the way the bounty office," Hiroki says finally. "If we kill him now we can just come back when we're done and turn him in. If he was telling the truth about being alone then no one's gonna find him anyway, and if he was lying then his backup can have his corpse and leave us alone about it. If Konoha hasn't retrieved him by tomorrow then he's fair game for us to keep." 

"Alright, whatever," Tōshirō says, and then Hiroki kneels down at his side and his face swims in Kakashi's vision. 

"If I were you," he says, full of derision. "I think I'd be pretty embarrassed that this is how I got killed."

Kakashi doesn't have the strength to brace for what he knows is coming a second time. He closes his eyes, prepares to see the pure lands in his next few moments, and says a silent word of apology for his failure, no time to even mourn the fact that Iruka is going to die very soon if he's not already. Then the sharp pang of lightning shoots right through his neck and into his chest, and he's unconscious before his heart stops.

Chapter Text

Kakashi is extremely confused when he wakes up and he's most definitely not dead. Granted, he's really got no clue what the pure lands looks like, so maybe it's still up for debate. The rafters are familiar, though the room is a few shades darker than it was before. He puts a hand to his chest and is surprised he's able to move at all in order to do so. Beneath his palm his heart beats a little too fast, but nevertheless steady and present despite having the full force of two lightning jutsu cast directly through it. Maybe his affinity and familiarity with it is the only reason he's still alive. It's left him with a bitch of a migraine so bad he can barely see, and a large burn around the front and back of his neck that stings every time he moves. But he's not going to question a miracle. 

Through the gaps in the boarded up window nearby, a strip of light from the sunset has managed to work its way into the building and cast a long golden rectangle on the floor. Every one of the million particles of dust that floats around the room is momentarily a bright orange dot as it passes through the beam of sun. The light lands directly across Iruka's still form not four feet away, and is the only reason Kakashi can see the shallow rise and fall of his ribs around his lungs. Kakashi can also see the drying pools of blood underneath him, and the bruised and swollen skin of his broken arm. He allows himself a small moment of relief before coming to grips with the fact that they aren't out of the woods just because they're not dead. Though he's really surprised to be able to say so. Clearly, Hiroki had far too much confidence in the fatality of his jutsu. And Iruka is as good as dead if his injuries are left untreated. There was maybe no reason to waste the energy or dirty their blades finishing him off. Another miracle Kakashi isn't going to question. Based on the angle of the sun it's probably been about four hours since Pakkun turned around to go back to Konoha. There's still at least another fifteen before help is anywhere near where they are, and without medical intervention Iruka will die from his injuries. Kakashi will too, at this rate, and he knows he's undoubtedly suffered underlying damage from taking such a direct hit. But as long as he's able to breathe then he's going to put as much energy as he has into Iruka's safe return to the village. 

He takes a minute to gather his strength and crawls over to where Iruka lies on the ground. He's covered in cuts and bruises up to and including his face, which boasts a black eye and badly split lip. His hair hangs tangled around his shoulders, and a solid six inches of one side are burned away at the ends like he failed to dodge a fireball at some point. His wrists are sliced open from pulling against the chakra wire restraints, and he's filthy, covered in blood and the dust from being on the floor. The curse seal on his chest hasn't gone away. A small pattern of black lines in a circle remains dark against his sternum, underneath the grime and sweat coating his bare skin. Kakashi puts an ear to his chest and hears a thready, slow heartbeat and no obstructions in his lungs. Carefully he flips him onto his side to inspect the wounds to his back. They've started to clot over, but have left his entire upper body from scapula to pelvis with a weeping canvas of deep lacerations. If awoken now he'd be in excruciating pain, and there's no way he's going to be able to walk himself out of here. He's going to have to be carried. 

Thankfully, aside from the wound to his own stomach and being thoroughly electrocuted, Kakashi hasn't sustained any other debilitating injuries. He's able to push himself upright and takes a full minute to just sit and catch his breath before he makes an attempt to stand. Using one of the large crates as leverage he hauls himself onto his feet and tries to decide what to do. He's going to have to put Iruka around his shoulders to get him out of here and hope he's got enough strength to sustain it for long enough to take them as far away from this building as possible. The front door feels too much of a stretch and he's not even certain how to get there, so he rips the dry-rotted wooden boards out of the window. He squints against the bright sunset streaming in through the now much larger gap and gauges whether it's low enough for him to climb out of while carrying the weight of another person. Then he braces for the strain, and with quite a bit of effort and the tiniest push of chakra to his arms to hold on, he lifts Iruka around his shoulders and gets moving. 

He barely makes it fifteen minutes down the road when he feels a sudden tingling in his arms and legs and a horrible sense of anxiety before he abruptly blacks out, and wakes up on the ground. It's no darker than before so he can't have been unconscious for long. Something tugs on the collar of his vest, and he looks around blearily until realizing it's a hand - Iruka's hand. 

"-have to get up," he says, as Kakashi catches the tail end of his quiet plea. "Kakashi... wake up." 

Kakashi scrambles to his knees and crawls to Iruka's side. His head pounds furiously behind his eyes and every one of his muscles aches like they've spent the last day in a tight clench. He has no idea why he collapsed but at the moment it's not a mystery he's going to try and solve. Iruka clutches at the leg of his slacks, and it seems to take all of his energy to get the next few words out. 

"Where is-? Where's the scroll?" 

"Forget about the scroll," Kakashi says. He tucks his arms under Iruka's shoulders to try and get him off his back. "The mission doesn't matter." 

Iruka grabs the front of his vest as he's moved and grunts in pain. 

"Not the- the mission," he says through gritted teeth. "The scroll was- wasn't for the mission... needed it... as a bargain..."

"To bargain for what?" 

Iruka further loses his grasp on consciousness the longer he speaks, and before his sentence is even finished, he's out cold. His slack hand falls away from Kakashi's vest. Kakashi puts an ear to his chest to listen for his heartbeat and it's still there, just as weak as before. Whatever it is Iruka needed that scroll for is going to have to wait. Once again Kakashi manages to pull himself upright and hoist Iruka around his shoulders. He has no idea why he suddenly collapsed to the ground. He wouldn't be surprised if his brain is a bit frazzled from being electrocuted twice in quick succession but he can't do anything about it either way. If nothing else he's glad Iruka is once again unconscious, at least for now, so he doesn't suffer from his injuries. 

Kakashi isn't sure how long he manages to walk for but it's fully dark by the time he stops, which he only does because he finds running water. The stream he stumbles upon is small and very shallow, but it's fresh and moving, and at the moment it's a luxury. Iruka's wounds need to be cleaned and dressed before they become infected, and this break to rest likely has to last them the rest of their journey. He's not sure if they can afford to stop again. Pakkun is still hours away, and despite the small miracle it is that both of them are alive, they run the real risk of being found by additional enemies or succumbing to their wounds. 

The stream isn't deep enough to collect quickly in a flask and Iruka's injury is too large to clean with one palmful of water at a time, so Kakashi decides to simply sit in the shallow basin instead. He has one spare uniform in a storage scroll in his own kit, and so does Iruka, in the hip pouch that Kakashi took when picking up his discarded things. He strips both of them out of their bloody clothes and picks a flat rock to sit down on. It's barely two inches deep, so he props Iruka's torso against his lap and cups the clear water in his hands to rinse away the drying blood. The edges of the long cuts on his back are red and swollen, and his skin is too warm. Kakashi wouldn't be surprised if it's already infected, he was lying in a layer of dust in that building for hours. Once he's clean and no longer so bloody, Kakashi lays him out carefully on a bedroll and then sits down to inspect his own injuries. The wound to his neck from the katana wasn't too deep, but is almost entirely covered by the large burn to his throat and chest, one that stretches all the way up to his jaw. There's probably a matching one on his back, as the electric nature of the enemy's jutsu burned away at least a few layers of his skin. He could feel it when he took off his shirt, the way the fabric stuck to the oozing scab, and it stings fiercely but he's had worse before. He's more worried about why he suddenly collapsed, because paired with his extreme lethargy, and a general difficulty focusing and telling time, he has a feeling he really might have a bad concussion, at the very least. If not something worse. 

He puts the thought away as he tends to himself and changes into clean clothes. He redoes the stitches to his stomach just to be safe, though by now it's stopped bleeding. He finds what remains of his small container of healing salve and uses most of it on Iruka's back before wrapping him in the last of the clean gauze from the med-kit and dressing him in his spare uniform. He sets and splints his broken leg, which seems to be a clean snap at the shin, though he's not sure what to do for his arm. It's definitely much worse off. It's broken at the elbow, which is horribly swollen and bends at an angle it shouldn't. It can't be immobilized against his chest or it will be in the way when he's carried, so Kakashi decides to cut the clean pant leg off his soiled uniform and bind his arm straight to keep it still and put some mild compression on the injury. With luck they'll be in the presence of a real medic soon and someone will know better than him what to do. 

The temperature is dropping quickly but he doesn't want to risk starting a fire. It's rained too recently and any wood available will be wet enough to smoke. He also badly needs to sleep if he's going to keep walking, but he can't leave their camp undefended. His chakra reserves have barely had time to replenish over the last few hours, but he's probably got enough to pull off a single summon and not much else. He packs up his supplies to be ready to go at a moment's notice, and sits down at the base of a tall tree to lean against the trunk. Hoping he doesn't collapse from chakra exhaustion by doing this, he summons the smallest of his ninken second only to Pakkun. 

"Boss," Bisuke greets, and then takes in their surroundings. "Whoa, seems like I missed something. Where's Pakkun?" 

"Getting help. I need you to stand guard," Kakashi says, skipping the preamble. Bisuke steps up to Iruka's side and sniffs at his damp hair. 

"Is he okay? What happened?" 

"Long story," Kakashi says tiredly. He feels a small moment of regret that he used the last of his chakra for this but in all honestly his pitiful supply wouldn't have done much for him in a fight anyway. At least now he'll have warning if an enemy approaches and he can flee before they get caught. "Wake me in two hours. Or if Iruka wakes first." 

"'Kay," Bisuke agrees. "You want a perimeter or you want me to stay here?" 

"Stay here. Just keep an ear out." 

"Can do," Bisuke says. He sits down at Kakashi's feet in between him and Iruka. Kakashi pulls a kunai out of his holster, holds it in his lap, and lets himself nod off. He's awoken to a cold nose nudging his arm and jolts upright. 

"Boss, Iruka's awake," Bisuke says. 

Iruka has managed to pull himself onto his side as if he might be able to stand on his own, and groans as the attempt tugs at the healing skin of his back and jostles his broken bones. Kakashi kneels down next to him and tries to be careful as he guides him back to the ground. 

"Stop moving, you're going to hurt yourself-"

"Kakashi- the scroll," he says. "We have to- to go back."

"Forget about the fucking mission, Iruka, it doesn't matter-"

"No," Iruka insists. He grabs Kakashi's vest and clenches a fist in the rough fabric. He seems a bit more cognizant than before but Kakashi isn't sure how long it will last. "It's- it's not for the mission. The scroll- was a bargaining chip. My team- my team needs it- we were captured-"

"There wasn't anyone else in that building," Kakashi says. The Ame shinobi talked about Iruka like he was the only one they had, and no one else was being interrogated. Wherever Iruka's team was captured it wasn't there. But Iruka isn't satisfied with Kakashi's response, and finds his wrist in the dark to shake his arm and force him to listen.

"No, no, no, you don't understand," he says. "There was another group, and we- our mission- mission was to steal the scroll from them, but- the Ame nin had already taken it. If I could get that scroll b-back then they- the others, they'd let my team go. If I don't give it back by the end of the day, they'll- they'll kill them all. They'll die."

"Iruka..." Kakashi has no idea how to explain this. It's already past sunset. If there was a deadline to take that scroll back then by now it's long behind them. "Iruka, it's... it's too late."  

"You had it!" Iruka shouts at him. Angry tears slide down his face and catch in his burned hair. "You had it, didn't you? Did you give it to them?" 

"I didn't have a choice." Kakashi attempts to process the fact that Iruka's entire squad is now dead because he gave up the only thing that might have saved them. "You were going to die." 

"No, no, you didn't, you didn't," Iruka says in disbelief. "We needed that, Kakashi, I needed that scroll-"

"Iruka, it wasn't-"

"Genma is on my fucking team!" He shouts. Kakashi feels his heart drop into his stomach. "Is he dead? Is he dead now because of this? What did you do? I told you not to fucking help them!"

Kakashi knows that Iruka speaks only out of anger, and probably a mild amount of pain-induced delirium. There was no way to know or understand that these were the circumstances, and even if Kakashi'd managed to hang onto that scroll and not die to the Ame nin without handing it over, he'd never have been able to save both Iruka and his squad. And even prior to that there was clearly no way Iruka was in any position to be saving anyone - not even himself, let alone the rest of his team - regardless of Kakashi's presence or not. So maybe it shouldn't matter, because it isn't true, that right now Iruka blames him for his squad's death. But it might as well be true, and Iruka is too devastated to care otherwise. In his eyes if Kakashi had never intervened, maybe his squad wouldn't have died, despite that reality never having even the slimmest chance of coming to fruition. Truly, if Kakashi hadn't intervened then Iruka would have been tortured to death, the scroll would have been lost forever as the underbrush grew around the small pile of his discarded kit. And Genma would still be dead. 

"We have to go back," Iruka says. He lets go of Kakashi's vest and Kakashi lets him attempt to prop himself up on one arm, like he might crawl there if he needs to. "We have to- to do something-"

"Iruka, we... we can't ," Kakashi insists weakly. "Your injuries are too severe, you could still die before we-" 

"I don't care," he shouts. Kakashi bites back his next argument. He carefully grasps Iruka's arm to stop him before he exacerbates the damage to his broken bones. "Forget about me, just go on your own, then- just go back, you have to- you have to check- please, Kakashi, please, he can't, he can't be d-dead, I-" 

Iruka pushes his hand away but no longer makes attempts to escape. He simply collapses in a pile on the ground, and dissolves into heartbreaking sobs. Kakashi scrubs a hand over his face while he decides what to do, but he doesn't find anything resembling the resolve he'd need to attempt to comfort Iruka over this at the moment. He doesn't even know what to think. Shock can be a powerful sedative. Quite literally dozens of people in his life have died, everyone from close loved ones to comrades he's worked with only once or twice. The idea of Genma's death does not land anywhere near a comfortable middle ground of that range. For Iruka, who has already lost just as many people, this is probably not something that Kakashi's presence or bad attempts with kind words is going to soothe. So he lets him be. And Iruka eventually cries himself unconscious. 

Kakashi leans back against the tree trunk once Iruka's out again. Bisuke is still sitting next to him, wide eyes full of sympathy at this entire exchange. 

"How long has it been?" Kakashi asks. Bisuke keeps his eyes trained on Iruka's back when he replies. Sometimes he forgets that they've worked together enough times for the pack to have long since grown fond of Iruka's presence.  

"Forty-five minutes?" 

Kakashi sighs tiredly. As reluctant as he is to get up, they really need to keep moving. He packs up the bedroll and double checks Iruka's injuries before picking him up and hoping he doesn't wake. The clean wrappings on his back have bled through but not too badly. Bisuke stands at his side as Kakashi pulls Iruka over his shoulders again and thankfully he doesn't rouse. Kakashi decides it's better if he stays unconscious. If he has to, he'll put him out with his sharingan next time he wakes up, but he'd feel kind of bad about it. 

"How far from the village are we, Boss?" Bisuke asks as Kakashi starts walking. Kakashi does some quick guesstimation before he remembers they're on foot and not running through the trees. 

"At this rate probably an entire day," he says. "Pakkun will be back with help well before we make it there." 

"Then maybe you should find shelter and just hole up," Bisuke suggests. He trots after Kakashi's short strides, easily keeping pace. "You're not gonna make it back. Not even close." 

"It isn't safe all the way out here," Kakashi says. "I'd rather keep moving."

"Suit yourself, I suppose. But don't push too hard. Want me to stick around?" 

"...yes. As long as you can. I won't be able to summon you again." 

"Alright." 

A tense silence fills the space between the trees, and Kakashi pushes forward. He can't see the stars or moon enough to tell time by their movements and he's having a distinctly difficult time doing so without Bisuke's help. Every half hour Bisuke will chime in to note the ground they've covered, startling him out of the daze he'd since fallen into, and it's somewhat pitiful how much Kakashi's injuries are slowing him down. Iruka's dead weight isn't even too much of a burden, he's simply exhausted and sluggish, and there's a fog in his head dense enough he's sure he couldn't go any faster even if he was well rested and not carrying another person. They manage to make it about an hour and a half before the strange tingling comes back to his arms and legs and he starts to realize what's coming. He pauses mid stride to see if it goes away if he stands still, and unsurprisingly it doesn't. His vision swims nauseatingly and his ears start to ring. 

"Okay?" Bisuke asks him. Vaguely he considers he should sit before he falls over. Gently he lays Iruka down and then sits next to him right as the strength abruptly leaves his limbs and he blacks out. He comes to when a wet nose snuffles against his face. 

"Boss," Bisuke says. "You still with us?"

Kakashi grunts in acknowledgement and Bisuke huffs. He hauls himself upright with help of a nearby sapling to check on Iruka. He's still unconscious but he's breathing too hard, his inhales too shallow. Kakashi crawls over to his side and feels for his temperature. His skin is burning up. 

"He has a fever," Kakashi says, as Bisuke might be able to do something about it. 

"And you just collapsed for no good reason," Bisuke counters. "What happened to you?" 

"I got electrocuted," he says tiredly. "Badly, twice." 

"I think you should stay put for now. Just wait for help to get here." 

Kakashi wants to argue but doesn't have it in him. He's not fond of the idea of remaining stationary but they're barely covering any ground as it is, and he's expending all his energy going only a few miles at a time. The chance that any of the Ame nin coming back and finding their trail is slim - at least until the next day when they planned to retrieve Kakashi's corpse for the bounty. But Pakkun should be back before that becomes a problem. Most likely. 

"Maybe you're right," he concedes.

"Uh-huh." 

Kakashi has no further rebuttal to this. He lays out the bedroll for Iruka to sleep on and curls up next to him on the dirt to try and share warmth.

"Keep watch," he tells Bisuke, who only nods. Kakashi pulls out a kunai and holds it at his side just in case. He does sleep but it's fitful despite his heavy exhaustion. It's still dark when he wakes to someone touching his arm and saying his name quietly. Iruka's voice is rough.  

"...you still alive?" He asks quietly. Kakashi turns and his forehead rests against Iruka's arm. His skin is far too warm. Kakashi clears his throat and blearily sits up to put the back of his palm to Iruka's face. It's too dark to see how flush he is but Kakashi can imagine. 

"Help me up," Iruka says. "Not on my stomach." 

"You shouldn't lie on your back, you'll aggravate your-" 

"Figure it out," Iruka interrupts. Frustration begins to color his quiet tone. He's definitely in a lot of pain at the moment. Kakashi gives up and helps roll him onto his side, and then very carefully hauls him into a sitting position to sit facing sideways in between Kakashi's legs and lean against his chest. Iruka clenches his teeth until he's upright and stationary and he's breathing hard when he rests his head against Kakashi's collarbone, his warm breath puffing against Kakashi's neck. His fever is getting worse fast. Kakashi leans against the tree behind him and fishes around in the dark for the flask to open it and hand it to him when Iruka reaches for it. He's able to hold it with his non-mangled arm and takes a few swigs before he lets it rest in his lap. Bisuke approaches and puts his chin on Iruka's knee with a small whine, and Iruka rests a shaking hand between his ears. 

"I don't have anything for infection," Kakashi admits, speaking quietly as he thinks out loud. "You need antibiotics soon. Your fever is too high." 

"I do," Iruka says simply. "My kit."

Kakashi pulls Iruka's hip-pouch from off his own belt and digs around until he finds what remains of his med-kit, and retrieves half a blister pack of antipyretics and low-grade pain relievers. He pops them out of the foil and puts them in Iruka's open palm. He's able to put the pills in his mouth but doesn't manage to pick up the flask again, despite the fact that it's halfway to empty and must weigh next to nothing. Kakashi brushes his hand away and helps him take a drink to down the medication. He falls silent, and Kakashi listens to the sound of his in and exhales as he nears sleep once again. He's nearly nodded off when Iruka speaks.

"...how'd you find me?"  

Kakashi shakes his head roughly to force himself awake. 

"Pakkun," he says. "He scented your trail. I was on my way back from a mission."

"Are we close to the village at all?"

"No," Kakashi admits with a sigh. "We're a ways off. I sent him back hours ago and he probably hasn't made it there yet."

Iruka doesn't have a reply to this. The quiet stretches on for so long that Kakashi almost thinks he's fallen back asleep. 

"Are you injured?" He asks. 

"Not as badly," Kakashi says. Though he's not really sure. He can't stop passing out for no apparent reason, which is a moderately concerning development he's not going to mention. 

"Would your chances be better if you go without me?" Iruka asks. Kakashi fights an unconscious clench at this question, and tries to remain impartial. It's a necessary consideration in some cases but it's not an answer that he has any desire to find right now. 

"It doesn't matter." 

Iruka huffs a sigh, as if disappointed. 

"Don't be an idiot..." he says. Like they're back at the mission desk. Like Kakashi has just said something dumb on purpose and Iruka has decided to yell at him over it. Like they aren't hundreds of miles from safety with a percentage chance in the single digits of both living through the next twelve hours. 

"I wouldn't get far enough on my own to make a difference," Kakashi says. "But it doesn't matter. I'm not leaving you here." 

Another long pause. Iruka has gone very still. Kakashi has a seizing moment of slight panic as, paranoid, he fears the worst. But he finds a pulse, and puts a hand to Iruka's chest to feel the breath in his lungs. He breathes a small sigh of relief, clasps his arms around Iruka's middle, and relaxes against the tree behind his head.

Bisuke wakes him just before sunrise. He actually managed to sleep several hours undisturbed, though he doesn't feel that much better for it. His headache hasn't gone away and his vision is becoming increasingly blurry, but he pops a soldier pill and powers through it to walk another few miles as the forest slowly brightens around them with the rising sun. Iruka doesn't wake again, and there's been no obvious change, good or bad, in his temperature. He's still too warm, his breathing still too shallow, and his injuries look worse than they did the day prior. His arm became so badly swollen overnight that Kakashi had to loosen the makeshift bandage. The entire appendage is now purple and black as blood pools under his skin, and the gashes on his back have fully bled through the clean wrapping and his clothes. Kakashi is no longer able to pick him up over his shoulders and instead carries Iruka in his arms and tries not to trip over the underbrush. Bisuke trails ahead of him, pawing aside low branches so he doesn't stumble and warning him away from rocks and roots. 

By now Pakkun and an adept team of medics are just a few hours away. Hopefully Kakashi hasn't been walking in circles since they left the abandoned base, but it hasn't rained since then so Pakkun will have no problem finding his scent. Bisuke is probably following what's left of Pakkun's trail. Kakashi couldn't say where they are, he can't even focus enough to discern one tree from another. He's fully functioning on auto-pilot. If he stops again he knows for a fact he will be incapable of getting off the ground, and movement is the only thing keeping him conscious at the moment. His head hasn't stopped aching since he woke up the first time and has only gotten progressively worse. He can feel every single heartbeat in his teeth. He's done almost nothing for the burn on his chest and back, and his shirt chafes against the healing skin until it starts to stick to the growing scab and stings with every step. The stitches in his stomach have managed to hold, but he hasn't inspected the wound again since he sat down in the small stream the day before. At this point he doesn't want to know what it looks like. He doesn't notice the ringing in his ears until Bisuke's voice struggles to be heard around it. 

"... Kakashi," he says tersely. Kakashi has a feeling Bisuke has been trying to get his attention for a while. Bisuke paws at his legs and Kakashi slows but doesn't stop. The frustratingly familiar pins and needles in his arms and legs arrives not two seconds later. "Your heart rate just jumped out of nowhere. You need to sit down."

"Fuck... not again."

As quickly and carefully as possible he sets Iruka down on the ground. This time, he's able to lie flat on his back before his vision totally blacks out and Bisuke's words are drowned out by the blood rushing behind his ears. 

It feels like ages have passed when he can finally drag open his eyes. The abrupt change in the weather strikes him first, because a breeze rushes through his sweaty hair and cools his skin. But then a sudden jolt brings him back to full attention - as full as his attention can really be in the state he's in at the moment. The forest nonsensically whizzes by him until he realizes he's on someone's back as they leap through the trees. Consciousness is fleeting but he has enough wherewithal to know that he has never in his life been so glad to see the sun squinting off of that ridiculous happuri. 

"...Tenzo." 

"I've got you, senpai," Tenzo says simply. Kakashi has enough energy for a few more words and tries to choose them carefully. 

"Iruka?" 

"Alive," is Tenzo's quick answer. Relief is immediate and a little overwhelming. 

"Hey, I need you to hang on for me," Tenzo says firmly when he doesn't reply, and jostles him slightly to hold his attention. "We're in the home stretch, okay?"

The pull of sleep is strong and coming on fast and it's hard to fight it. They might be close to the village but there's no guarantee both of them live through the next few hours. 

"Tell Iruka I... I'm sorry I didn't..."

"Tell him yourself," Tenzo says. Kakashi is really trying but he just can't find the words. "You'll make it, senpai. Whatever's wrong in that big head of yours, I'm sure Tsunade-sama can figure it out." 

Kakashi's got a smart retort somewhere in him but at the moment full sentences effortlessly escape him. 

"...bite me," he manages to say. Then he closes his eyes, and falls asleep to the sound of Tenzo's quiet laughter. 

Chapter Text

It turns out that back to back electrocution is a really effective way of developing atonic seizures, which is a fancy way of saying that he's been afflicted with sudden bouts of complete loss of muscle control as he collapses in a heap on the ground. Tsunade is able to reduce their frequency from every few hours to every day and a half with a combination of a strict adherence to a regime of medication that makes him nauseas, a new diet he's going to have to go shopping for, and two separate seals placed directly onto his scalp - or maybe his brain - that leave his head pounding for several days afterwards. He's taken off active duty indefinitely. Until his episodes are resolved, his issue is considered a liability and he's a danger to himself without supervision. 

He'll continue to be a danger to himself if Tsunade can't get a handle on what she's avoiding calling permanent brain damage. The lingering symptoms otherwise - dizziness, headaches, occasional blurred vision, difficulty focusing, sudden bouts of forgetfulness, a 'fog' in his head, so to speak, and the like - they too, may continue to get worse if she can't find a solution. She has a Hyuuga medic come to take a peek at his tenketsu and no one is superbly pleased with how fried his chakra pathways and tenketsu are, especially around his head and spine. Tsunade says they should start to heal themselves soon, but he's simply not getting quite enough chakra to his brain for it to function properly. The first four days in the hospital aren't encouraging, to say the least. 

Iruka's fever breaks after forty-eight hours, but Kakashi doesn't go see him. He's not allowed to leave his bed because he's often hooked up to quite a lot of equipment meant to monitor his heart and his brainwaves, or something like that, and for once the nurses are taking the flight risk marker on his file seriously. As soon as he's self-aware enough to string more than a few sentences together, someone from Intelligence comes to take his statement for the report. They ask what happened to Iruka's squad, because the retrieval team found no immediate sign of them and didn't have time to look. Kakashi has to say that he doesn't know for certain because he wasn't there for most of the mission, but that it's most likely that they're all dead. He doesn't bother wasting breath to ask if they'll be retrieved. That's not a luxury afforded to anyone that doesn't harbor bodily secrets worth taking to the grave. Like a sharingan. Time and the elements will take care of those left behind, their bodies too invaluable to waste the effort needed to collect. He actually feels downright stupid for saying out loud that Konoha would undoubtedly come to get his corpse if he died. It makes him feel worse that he knows it's true for him and not too many other people. 

Iruka finally wakes after five days. Kakash still doesn't go check on him, not until Tenzo tells him flat out he needs to do so.

"His best friend is dead," Tenzo says harshly. "You should really go sit next to him for a while." 

Kakashi isn't even sure why he doesn't go, aside from the fact that he and Iruka don't have that kind of relationship and maybe he's still sitting with the guilt of it all, however misplaced, that some of this is his fault. He knows it isn't, and it really can't be. Factually speaking Iruka would be dead if Kakashi hadn't found him, and nothing else besides would have changed much if he hadn't. But he supposes Tenzo isn't entirely wrong. Relationship or not there's no need to give Iruka the cold shoulder just because Kakashi's hung up about... whatever he's yet to articulate his problem is, exactly. So he gets permission to leave his room, and he walks down the long hallway to the intensive care ward where Iruka is being kept. He knocks on the door and isn't too surprised to see who answers.

"Sensei."

"Sakura."  

Sakura steps out into the hall and closes the door. Kakashi very pointedly doesn't sneak any glances inside the room. 

"Now might not be a great time," she says. Her long bangs are pushed out of her face somewhat messily with her headband. She looks tired, and she frowns like Kakashi is a great inconvenience to her all of the sudden. 

"I can come back."

"No, I'll ask him," she says. "I'm just letting you know that he's been turning people away. Don't take it personally if he does."

"Of course."

"It's good to see you up and about, by the way," Sakura says. Ever the medic, she takes his hand and puts two fingers to the pulsepoint at his wrist while she talks. "How are you feeling?"

"Fine," Kakashi answers. "Mostly. Except for the part where once every thirty-six hours I wake up on the ground." 

She frowns in concern.

"Shishou has been working night and day to figure out what's wrong with you." There's an awkward pause when Kakashi has nothing constructive to reply to and Sakura sighs. "You know you aren't wearing a mask, right?" 

He does know, he just can't find it in him to care. They won't let him wear his usual sleeveless uniform shirt and he doesn't like the crinkly paper masks provided while he's here. Sakura has seen his face dozens of times by now. He simply shrugs. For some reason she presses her lips into a thin line, like she's displeased by his answer. 

"Let me go talk to Iruka-sensei and see if he's okay with a visitor," she says instead. "One second."

Kakashi tries very hard not to turn around and leave in her absence when she steps into the room. It takes less than a minute for her to come back. 

"You can go in," she says, but frowns. "Just be easy with him. He's... very distraught, and still in pain."

"I won't be a bother," Kakashi promises. Sakura only nods, and pats him on the arm before she leaves. Kakashi takes a deep and bracing inhale before he enters. The ICU is annoyingly familiar. Iruka's room looks the same as all the times Kakashi's ever been in one of these for himself, except that he's never seen so many bouquets of flowers or cards or stuffed animals outside of a graveyard. Every flat surface is occupied by someone's attempt at regards or wellwishes. Iruka may be turning away visitors but he's certainly had plenty of attempts. 

He's sitting upright and reclined against a small mountain of pillows behind his back. He looks phenomenally better than he did the last time Kakashi saw him. His split lip and black eye are entirely gone, and a good bit of color has returned to his face after almost a week of dense hospital food and medical ninjutsu multiple times a day. The most noticeable change otherwise is that his hair is much shorter. Someone has taken a pair of scissors to even out the parts that were burned off. It rests parallel to his chin instead of touching his shoulder blades, just long enough to tuck behind his ears but not long enough to put up behind his head, or undoubtedly he would have. He almost never even takes it down when they have sex, let alone outside of that. But it looks good. It suits the shape of his face. Kakashi feels a bit of a degenerate to walk into Iruka's hospital room with the intent to offer condolences and immediately start making commentary on his appearance. 

Especially when the second thing he notices is that Iruka is missing his left arm. Four inches below his shoulder, there's nothing. Just a stump sticking out of his sleeve, wrapped in clean white gauze. Kakashi sits down on the edge of the bed next to his knees. Iruka doesn't look up, nor do either of them immediately speak. He nervously fidgets his right hand, picking at his cuticles with his thumb. The silence grows until it's uncomfortable. 

"Well, go on," he says eventually. Kakashi isn't sure what to think, or say. It's relatively rare these days that field injuries are this debilitating. Usually an injury is either bad enough to kill you or not bad enough that it can't be helped by the modern medicine named Tsunade. 

"She couldn't fix it?" 

"No," Iruka says with a heavy sigh, like he's already annoyed by the conversation or is maybe tired of answering this question. Kakashi wouldn't usually consider himself a wordsmith but at the moment he feels especially bereft of the skill. He settles on what feels right. 

"I'm sorry," he says. But Iruka only frowns, and finally meets his eyes. 

"For what?"

"I'm not a medic. I didn't know how to deal with your injury, I might have made it worse-" 

"Stop it," Iruka interrupts harshly. "Tsunade-sama says there was no saving it. The muscle was already dead by the time we got back. I went more than twenty-four hours without medical attention. She's a miracle worker, not a god." 

He swallows thickly and brushes stray hairs away from his face with a shaking hand, like he hadn't meant to say nearly that much. 

"Are you being retired?" Kakashi asks. Iruka shakes his head. 

"I can still be a shinobi with one arm," he says, with a bit of disdain in his tone. "Are they making you retire? Sakura-chan told me you're having seizures. Because you got electrocuted?"  

"Yeah. I did," Kakashi answers plainly. "I don't know what the verdict is yet." 

Iruka's expression loosens and almost immediately the fight and the anger both go right out of him. His shoulders slump and he leans back against the pillows, visibly lowering whatever defenses he felt he needed until now. 

"I'm sorry," he says. It's Kakashi's turn to frown. 

"What are you sorry for?"

"Because you saved my life and it might have ruined yours." 

Kakashi tries not to sigh. "Iruka, you didn't ruin my life," he says, feeling a bit defeated. "Far from it."

Iruka huffs out a breath and blinks hard a few times when his eyes begin to shine. 

"I shouldn't have blamed you for what happened," he says. "I don't even remember what I said but I know I told you it was your fault, that was so cruel of me." He draws his legs up to his chest under the blanket. When he exhales it shudders in his chest, and fat tears escape the corners of his eyes. "My team was dead the second I got captured. It was never your- your fault. I should never have-... I should've known better than to hope I could pull off that kind of miracle. To buy back their lives." 

"It's no one's fault," Kakashi says carefully. No part of him can blame Iruka for his reaction. "Casualties-... happen. You had to try." 

Iruka sniffles and swipes at his face with the palm of his hand, but it doesn't do much to stem the tears.

"Well, I failed." 

Kakashi doesn't know what to say. Nothing anyone has ever told him about the death in his life has made him feel much better about it, so he doesn't even have any examples to emulate. He's not sure anything he says to Iruka right now will have better chances of putting him at ease by even the slightest. Kakashi hates that he's relieved when they're interrupted by a medi-nin who walks in with a tray in his hands. It's actually someone he recognizes, because the same nurse has been in and out of his room a few times.

"Hatake-san," he says, somewhat chiding. Kakashi can't remember his name, but he's young, like Sakura is. "You know you aren't supposed to be up and about without supervision."

Kakashi replies without looking away from Iruka's face. 

"The walls have ears," he says. Iruka dries his eyes with his sleeve and tries to compose himself. "I'm sure someone would find me quickly if I passed out." 

The young nurse sets his tray down on the small table next to Iruka's head. There's a few rolls of gauze, two syringes alongside a vial, a large container of healing salve, and several pairs of gloves. Whatever they're doing for his wounds clearly isn't finished. Kakashi wonders how badly the cuts on his back are going to scar. The fuma-shuriken left a nasty welt between his shoulder blades. Iruka would swat his hands away any time Kakashi tried to touch it, complaining that the skin is too sensitive. It may no longer even be visible, after this, not with how mangled his back was after being given what Kakashi still only assumes is a thorough lashing. The nurse sees Iruka crying and hands him a box of tissues before putting a comforting grasp on his knee through the blankets, something Kakashi didn't find the resolve to try. Iruka pats his arm in thanks and dabs at his eyes. 

"It's alright, Daigo-san," he says kindly, though his voice is a little watery. "Kakashi was just leaving."

Kakashi isn't sure if the dismissal is meant for his own benefit or if Iruka's is beginning to regret letting him in. Nevertheless Kakashi catches his eye and nods once before getting up, briefly touching his shoulder in farewell. 

Kakashi is discharged after a full week, though Tsunade has no plans to reinstate him to active duty any time soon. He isn't retired, technically. Just medically invalidated at the moment. Aside from the somewhat random occurrences of losing all consciousness and waking up feeling like he's been victimized by a stampede, he's... sort of fine. His chakra reserves are back to normal, the wound to his stomach is now a fresh pink scar, and the burns to his chest and back will take time to fade but don't restrict his movement at all. But all his other symptoms are still present. He's had a constant and very mild headache almost every day since he got back to the village. The medication he now takes to prevent his seizures make him tired and lethargic, and worsen his blurry vision if he doesn't space the dosage right. He still finds it hard to focus, similar to how he's felt when recovering from a particularly bad concussion but worse, and any attempts at multitasking seem to short-circuit his thoughts enough that he loses the train of them entirely. Tsunade says his chakra pathways are finally starting to heal, but that it's a delicate system that will take time to repair itself completely. 

The only reason she's comfortable with letting him out of the hospital at all is because she knows he's able to recognize the signs that he's about to have another seizure and can take measures to prevent injury because of it. That, and the fact he's able to keep one of his summons with him at all times, since they can sense changes in his heart rate much faster than he can. His pack doesn't usually hang out at his apartment but he starts rotating through them every day so someone is present to keep an eye on him. He also has blanket orders to come back to the hospital after he has any sort of seizure-like symptoms, or to have his ninken fetch Tsunade directly if he can't get there. It's a compromise, on her end. The medic in her probably doesn't love the idea of letting him go home unsupervised but she can recognize that he's starting to go stir crazy. The hospital windows unlock from the inside and climbing out of them grows more enticing by the day. So he promises he'll be on his best behavior, and take his medicine as directed and this, that, and the other, and she lets him go home. Once finally back at his apartment, he doesn't know what he expected to feel. Maybe relief. It's not there. 

A joint memorial is held one day later, nine days since he was brought back to the village. 

He dresses in the cleanest set of funeral attire he can find, and Bisuke trails after him as he goes early in the morning to the graveyard. Aside from Genma, Iruka's squad was a semi-retired middle-aged Academy sensei and a very young Nara. Both of them draw an enormous crowd for the service. Almost the entire Nara clan is in attendance for their members death, and students and teachers alike show to pay their respects for the sensei. Kakashi doesn't see Iruka, not yet. He stands at the edge of the field waiting for the service to start and wishing he'd dressed more warmly against the crisp morning air when he's approached. Shikamaru pulls a box of cigarettes out of his pocket, flips open the top, and holds it out. 

"You're far too young to have picked up that habit from Asuma," Kakashi says. 

Shikamaru gives him a somewhat unimpressed look. "Special occasion."

"You know I don't smoke," Kakashi tries. He takes a cigarette and sticks it in his pocket for later. Shikamaru puts the box away and taps his ashes on the ground at his feet. 

"Just don't let Sakura-chan see you," he replies blandly. Bisuke huffs his disapproval from the ground. Shikamaru pushes forward to arrive at his point. "Listen, Kakashi-san. I just wanted to give you a word of warning."

"Because the occasion's that special," Kakashi jokes, similarly bland. Shikamaru takes a very long pull of his cigarette before he continues. 

"I'm 'too young'-" he puts air quotes around the term. "-to have been around for most of the rumors about you. But not everyone here is. You know what I mean?"

Unfortunately Kakashi has enough of an idea. The gossip mill might be harsh, but it's not usually wrong. Probably something about how Iruka leaves with three other people and Kakashi somehow returns to the village with only one of the four, which, if Genma's word could be trusted, is the very same person that the underbelly of the gossip in this place knows to be Kakashi's current infatuation. Maybe some inventive rumors will talk about how he had a choice between who to save and made a biased decision, or how if he hadn't intervened then maybe things wouldn't have ended so badly. It's been a while since anyone has called him friend-killer to his face, but not so long that he's forgotten what it feels like.

Across the field, Kakashi sees Iruka arrive. He has a crutch under one arm and is bundled tightly against the cool weather. His empty sleeve hangs at his side, and the breeze blows it around when he walks. Asuma is next to him, a hand on his back to help him stay steady as they head towards a seat in the front row. Iruka sits down and Asuma props his crutch against the back of his chair and sits next to him. Maybe it's the dull lighting of such a gray afternoon, but he looks awful, even from afar. He looks like he's been crying all morning, or maybe never stopped. The service hasn't even started. Asuma looks over and catches Shikamaru's eye briefly, nodding once before looking away. Kakashi reads more than he'd like to from the interaction. 

A small group of chuunin arrives then, a few people Kakashi recognizes as Iruka's friends - and Genma's. He knows most of their names, a feat he might normally be pretty proud of. Right now it feels like he's tripped over the bar as he walked over it. The group goes and finds a row of seats, all except for one of them. Raidou - someone Kakashi has spoken to a handful of times but never worked with personally. Someone who, like Iruka, was very close with Genma. Best friends, or maybe even brothers. Raidou approaches where Iruka sits, and with obvious effort in doing so, Iruka stands to talk to him. Kakashi remembers he's been asked a question.

"I actually haven't been in public in eight days," Kakashi finally answers. "So I'm a little out of touch with whatever new nonsense is going around right now."

"Right," Shikamaru says. He decides to stop beating around the bush. Kakashi felt it coming but it doesn't make the blow easier to hear. "People are saying that you continue to live up to your reputation. That this is somehow your fault. And I wanted you to be forewarned. Because quite honestly you're getting torn to shreds over something they know nothing about." 

"It wouldn't be the first time," Kakashi says tiredly. He doesn't have the energy to be offended that the village once again thinks he had a hand in the death of someone he would much rather be alive at the moment. "It most certainly won't be the last. Though I'm curious how they're spinning it when I wasn't even there."

"I didn't press for the particulars."

"Some informant you are." 

Shikamaru sighs in slight annoyance. Sometimes it's hard talking to this kid when Kakashi is so used to the immaturity of the genin, particularly his own team, he's grown up around. Shikamaru is too perceptive for his own good. There's no way he doesn't know 'the particulars', which means he isn't comfortable with repeating them. He tries a somewhat obvious pivot in topics. 

"Will you go back to active duty soon?" He asks. But Kakashi only shrugs. "Alright. I'll leave you be. My condolences."

"Mine as well," Kakashi replies. He wonders if Shikamaru knew the Nara that died. They weren't all too similar in age but clans are often close knit like that. He stubs out his cigarette against the bottom of his shoe and tucks the paper butt into his pocket before he goes to stand next to Asuma, sharing a few words with Iruka after a small, respectful bow. 

If Kakashi was forced to guess how long it might be before the rumors come back to bite him he'd definitely have given it a number of days in the low double digits. Not a single hour. But that's all it takes, because when the service is over and Kakashi stands far away from the entrance watching the last of the stragglers leave, he sees Raidou approach Iruka again now that the crowd is much smaller, and an argument quickly unfolds. Kakashi could recognize Iruka's furious berating from a mile away. Despite the volume, his words don't carry this far, so Kakashi can't hear what's being said. Somehow, he thinks he knows. Decidedly he's not going to intervene - not until Iruka drops his crutch to the ground and cuffs Raidou right in the face. 

Raidou staggers but remains upright, though Iruka isn't steady on his feet and has nothing to lean against. Kakashi body-flickers next to him immediately, and isn't the only one. He's not sure where Asuma was hiding but he appears and takes Iruka's other side, opposite of where Kakashi stands with a hand behind his back. Izumo and Kotetsu were already on their way over once they realized the argument had gotten heated and arrive to stand behind Raidou. Iruka is breathing hard in his anger and tries to step out of the cage of both Kakashi and Asuma's steadying hands, but hasn't stopped yelling. 

"-and is the only fucking reason this funeral isn't also for me!" He takes a step forward but maybe forgets that he's unsteady and starts to wobble. He pushes both Kakashi and Asuma away when they try to help. Raidou holds his jaw and there's a very poignant pause where his eyes dart to both sides as he assesses the crowd that has gathered. Kakashi has a feeling he's debating on whether to continue this in front of him, considering there isn't a doubt in his mind that he's the current topic of gossip that's got Iruka so upset. 

By now Kakashi is familiar with the fact that Iruka cries when he's especially, truly angry, and at the moment he's livid. He hasn't bitched someone out this thoroughly since Kakashi was on the receiving end of it back before the chuunin exams when he told Iruka to butt out of the decision. That will forever be somewhere among his stupidest mistakes. 

"You'd be the expert on what happened since you were there, right?" Iruka continues. "You're telling me I don't know that Genma's death is on my head? Kakashi wasn't there and neither were you, so shut the fuck up about it. And if I find out these baseless rumors are coming from you-"

"Iruka," Asuma finally cuts in. He carefully grabs Iruka's good arm and manhandles him back two steps, taking advantage of the fact that Iruka has no choice but to follow as Asuma's grip is the only thing keeping him upright. "That's enough." 

Raidou works his jaw as he decides how to reply to any of this. He glances in Kakashi's direction one more time before he speaks. 

"I had to ask," he says tensely. Iruka scowls. 

"No you fucking didn't-" 

"Iruka, enough," Asuma says again, and then turns to Raidou. Raidou cows just slightly under Asuma's glare, maybe not aware that the man is more bark than bite. "Don't push your luck. Just walk away."  

Raidou looks very much like he'd love to continue whatever argument they were having, but not in front of a crowd. He huffs in frustration before he turns and leaves the graveyard without another word. Izumo and Kotetsu both give Iruka a somewhat apologetic glance, and follow behind him. Kakashi watches them go until Asuma picks Iruka's crutch off the ground and puts it under his arm. Iruka backs away from the helping hand and starts walking towards the opposite exit, the one on the far side of the yard, wiping silent tears from his face and limping slightly on his still-healing leg. Asuma doesn't go after him, not immediately. He watches Iruka's slowly retreating back before he turns and shares a look with Kakashi that almost word for word reads 'I don't even know what to say'. Kakashi would have to agree. He doesn't know what to say either. This doesn't feel like the right note to leave a memorial service on. He's more unsettled than he was before it began. But Asuma turns away and trails after Iruka, and Kakashi is left alone, save for Bisuke a few steps behind him. He decides that if he's going to be left to his own devices then he's going to take his pocketed cigarette, and he's going to enjoy it somewhere Sakura will never find him. 

"I'll meet you back at the house," he says, though Bisuke gives him a very pointed look. 

"Tsunade-sama says I'm not supposed to leave you alone," he argues. 

"Whose summon are you? Hers?"

"Alright, alright..." 

Bisuke concedes, and runs off with a backwards glance of concern. Kakashi turns and walks off the yard. He winds up at Genma's apartment. 

The door is locked, but Genma keeps, kept , a spare key under one of the houseplants on the rear balcony. The place is untouched. Not out of respect, no - protocol has demands in this sort of situation. Where death isn't or can't be confirmed. Efforts are required to ensure that the casualty's possessions and position are kept in place and open for them for anywhere from one to six months, depending on circumstances. Just in case a retrieval or a miracle happens, so they have some thing and some place to come back to. Once death is confirmed this is no longer necessary, of course, but that hasn't happened yet, nor will it. Tsunade isn't going to risk sending anyone on a two day trip that close to Ame's borders again to maybe not even find a corpse. In this case, the assumption is good enough. Good enough. They might as well spit on Genma's empty grave. 

Kakashi takes the cigarette out of his pocket and lights it with the gas stovetop, something he's seen Genma do a handful of times when he's misplaced his lighter. For someone who smokes - used to smoke - a pack of cigarettes every two days, you'd think he'd have more of them lying around. Genma's apartment is always kind of a mess. There's a half finished cup of tea on the counter and two empty takeout boxes piled next to the garbage can. Kakashi wonders who his company was. He heads down the hall, goes into Genma's room, rests an ashtray on his sternum as he lies down in the bed, and lets the air fill with thick smoke. 

It never fails to surprise him just how much posthumous humanity death can give to someone. Genma had an entire life. He had a career and he had friends and maybe a family, Kakashi really has no idea. He could tell you what flavor of cigarettes Genma liked and could name the days of the week by which one of the faded bandana's he'd put on that morning as he followed some unwritten routine. But Kakashi barely knew anything about his friends. Barely knew what bars he liked or his favorite meal. He knows the scent of laundry soap that Genma used on his bedsheets but didn't know the names of his parents. Doesn't know how he and Iruka met, when or how they became friends. Never even took the time to pick his brain about the time he spent as Minato's guard before he died, or what it was like learning the hiraishin technique from him. And he hasn't thought to ask after a single one of these things until now. Lying in Genma's bed when his body instead lies somewhere in the woods, hundreds of miles away. 

He stays there in the dark room with the curtains drawn for a long time after stubbing out the cigarette in the ashtray, so long that the acrid smell of smoke starts to make his lingering headache worse. He puts the key back where it was when he leaves, and on his slow walk home he comes to a decision. He shows up at Tenzo's place in uniform, Bisuke dutifully on his heel, with a dark cloak pulled around his shoulders to fend off the growing chill to the air. Tenzo does not look impressed with him as they both step inside.

"Why are you dressed like you're going somewhere?" He asks. 

"Because he's decidedly stubborn," Bisuke replies. Kakashi ignores him and keeps his answer simple. 

"I'm going back. The least we can do is find the bodies." 

"Tsunade hasn't approved any casualty retrieval missions that close to Amegakure," Tenzo counters. "Iruka has been asking every single day." 

"I didn't ask."

Tenzo crosses his arms with a small frown. "You can't leave the village," he says. 

"I can if you don't stop me."

"Then why'd you tell me?"

Because Tenzo isn't going to rat, and they both know that. 

"So someone knows where I am," Kakashi says. "If you won't go then it's me and the pack. I'll be back in twenty-four hours." 

And then he waits impatiently for the inevitable concession. Tenzo stands resolute and stares at him for a full thirty seconds of tense and uninterrupted silence before he groans loudly and unfolds his arms to go put on his uniform. Bisuke dismisses himself with a somewhat frustrated grumble, and wishes them luck. 

It takes them almost thirteen hours to reach the location where Iruka's squad was captured. Kakashi only knows where it is because he read through the report to get the coordinates. Apparently the original mission was to retrieve a scroll from what was supposed to be a two man cell of Iwa nin out in the middle of nowhere. Iruka was the squad leader despite others' seniority because it was part of his consideration for promotion to jounin, which Kakashi didn't even know he was aiming for. But it turned out their intel was bad. Two men were seven in reality, and while three of them were killed in the encounter and two badly wounded, Iruka's team was outnumbered enough to be defeated after a very lengthy and excessively bloody clash. The sensei was killed almost immediately in a fruitless attempt to give the others time to flee, which wound up with Genma and the Nara being taken hostage. Iruka was injured - his mangled arm - but managed to escape capture only to find out that the scroll they were there to retrieve wasn't even present. Which is when the bargaining began. The Iwa nin were down in their numbers and didn't want to risk any more lives with a frontal attack to retrieve what they wanted. So if Iruka could retake the scroll from the rogue Ame shinobi who'd stolen it, and give it back, then his team would be released. 

He actually came very close to succeeding. He managed to infiltrate the abandoned building where the Ame shinobi were hiding and take the scroll, but his injury slowed him down and he was captured as he made his escape. He killed three of the enemy but dumped his kit and vest in the woods when he realized he wasn't going to evade capture, hoping that despite his inevitable failure to save his squad's life, at the very least this scroll would hopefully avoid enemy hands. But the reality is that those Iwa nin were probably never going to honor their end of the bargain. Most likely they slit the throats of their captives the moment Iruka left, and planned to wait for him to return with their spoils. Everything that could have gone wrong, did. The circumstances were never favorable for anyone. 

Kakashi is not expecting what they find to be salvagable, or pretty. It's been over a week. Depending on where their bodies were left, the state of decay may be somewhat advanced. But they arrive at what turns out to be a small hideout with an underground shelter. The place has no signs of life. Tenzo waits outside while Kakashi goes in to search. He walks out with only two headbands, and only two sets of tags: the sensei, and the Nara. Because Genma's body isn't present.

Hope churns like bile in his stomach as he summons Pakkun and they're led in the opposite direction, following the dregs of a trail nearly blown away by the wind until they reach a tiny cottage tucked into the woods. Tenzo knocks on the door and greets the elderly woman who answers warily at two strangers darkening her doorstep. He asks if any Konoha shinobi happened to have been by in the last week, maybe seeking aid or shelter. She nods, and she leads them around the back of the house, in between the rows of her garden and past a small pond. And she shows them a freshly overturned mound of dirt between two trees. 

"I did what I could for the poor boy," she says, standing in front of the makeshift grave. "He was so badly injured. Made it through the night, but that was it. But at least he didn't suffer long." 

Tenzo quietly thanks her for her aid, and says they'll take whatever she didn't bury. She goes to the cottage and comes back with a bloody hitai-ate, and two dog-tags on a silver chain. Kakashi holds them in his palm, and stares down at the weeds poking through the dirt in horrible disbelief. 

Genma lived for an entire day after Kakashi gave up the scroll. Iruka had been right. 

If they'd have turned around and checked, if they'd been able to go back to make sure, they'd have found that Genma wasn't even captive any longer. They'd have found the two remaining Iwa nin already dead, and maybe could have followed the trail to this very cottage. Maybe Kakashi or Iruka could have done a better job patching Genma's injuries than the little old civilian lady, and maybe if not, they'd at least have been able to sit at his side while he died and give him a few moments of peace knowing Iruka survived even if no one else had. 

But there was no chance. By the time Kakashi even knew that Genma was present at all, he and Iruka were hours in the opposite direction. It wouldn't have been feasible or possible to backtrack. There was no reason to assume Genma wasn't already dead, like the others. The assumption was, again, good enough. And Genma was definitely not enough of an optimist to think that he might be found. Undoubtedly he spent his last few hours convinced that Iruka had already been killed or lay dying somewhere unreachable. To think that he probably died the very same morning of Kakashi and Iruka's timely rescue, and a window closed behind them without even knowing. It nearly makes him ill. 

"...we can't tell Iruka," he says, though when he speaks it feels like his lungs are choking on his heart. From the hard line of Tenzo's mouth it's clear he doesn't agree with this, but he doesn't argue. 

The trip home is silent. It takes an extra four hours because Kakashi has another episode and doesn't make it to the ground in time. Tenzo catches him before he can fall too far and forces him to lie still and catch his breath once he comes to. Tenzo sets an obscenely slow pace when they finally continue, and stays a lot closer on Kakashi's heel than what he'd consider necessary. He doesn't argue too hard against the delay, not when he's left so sore and tired that he could lie down and sleep right then if he had a flat surface underneath of him. Every time he blinks he's afraid he'll wake up on the ground again, and the last leg of the journey is completed on auto-pilot. The first thing he should do once he touches down inside the gates is to stop at the hospital. What he does instead is head to the Nara compound. 

He finds Shikaku, who summons the young Nara's older brother, and Kakashi hands over his possessions. Then he does the same for the sensei's family. His wife answers the door with a small child resting on her hip, and she sobs when Kakashi produces her husband's things from his vest. Kakashi is no stranger to grief. But this kind, this intensity, losing a spouse and a lover and the father of your children - he can only imagine. And when he's choked back the urge to be sick as he walks away from her home, he goes to the chuunin accommodation block. Raidou answers the door and turns a bit stone faced when he realizes who stands in the hall. Kakashi hands over Genma's headband, the blue fabric stained black with blood. 

"I'm sorry," Raidou says. "About the memorial. Those rumors aren't from me and I shouldn't have... it was wrong of me to entertain them. I know that isn't you."

"I understand," Kakashi says, because he does, and at this point he doesn't hold anything against anyone. Kakashi was a horrible menace for years after everyone he loved died. It would make him the world's worst hypocrite to be angry about or take real offense to a few wayward rumors. Raidou thanks him for the effort of making the trip back, and Kakashi leaves.

Then he goes to Iruka's apartment. He knocks on the front door, and it takes far too long for it to swing open. Iruka leans tiredly against the frame, half dressed like he'd been woken up from a nap. He doesn't invite Kakashi inside. They stand out in the hallway, and the setting sun plunges them both into deep shadows as it slides down towards the horizon between the buildings.  

"I went back," Kakashi says. Iruka's expression hardens in immediate understanding. Kakashi takes out Genma's tags, sets them down in Iruka's open hand, and closes his fingers around them. His mouth falls into a frown. 

"I've been asking for permission for this. For days." 

"I didn't ask," Kakashi says. "I suppose I'll go take her reprimand for being A-WOL after this."

Iruka runs his fingers over the embossed text of Genma's name.

"I found out who started those rumors," he says. "It won't be an issue anymore."

Kakashi isn't going to pry. Somehow despite them being about him he doesn't feel like it's really his business. Iruka didn't make efforts to quell gossip for his sake, he knows that. Iruka did it because the memory of his team's death deserves better than to be associated with something as stupidly petty and unoriginal as a blame game. 

"Did you know that mission was supposed to determine my promotion?" Iruka asks suddenly. His eyes are still trained on the tag in his open palm. "Some jounin I'd have been. Leading my whole team to their deaths."

Kakashi decides on a moment of honesty. 

"On my first mission as jounin, I got my best friend killed," he says. Iruka's hand clenches in a fist and he looks up to meet Kakashi's gaze with a glare in his eyes. 

"Don't," he says through his teeth. "Did anyone's pity ever help you? Three lives are over because of me."

Angry tears roll down his face as he speaks but he ignores them, still glaring Kakashi down as he berates himself for an outcome he never could have prevented. 

"Did you know that Daikoku-san had a baby girl last year? He was in the middle of trying to retire from the Academy to spend more time with his family. And Kasuga was going for tokubetsu soon. He was so good with kids, and Shikaku-san was going to recommend him for jounin-sensei for the next set of genin teams, he just needed to get his mission count up. And Genma- Genma is-"

Iruka doesn't even manage to finish his spiel, his entire body halts and he hunches forward like a physical recoil from speaking Genma's name aloud. He drops the tags out of his shaking hand onto the ground at his feet as the silent tears drip down his chin and land on his shirt.

"Oh, gods, I- he trusted me with his life, and I got him killed. What did I do?"

Kakashi can tell that Iruka has been haunted by this idea. No different than how Kakashi is to this day still haunted by Obito's death. He isn't sure which version of the truth is better - that all three of them died at the hands of the enemy thinking Iruka got himself killed trying to buy their lives, or that Genma alone survived long enough to stumble into a tiny chance to be saved with no one around to do so. Kakashi picks the tags up off the ground and puts them back in Iruka's palm, and doesn't let go. 

"He died with the knowledge that you willingly risked your life to save him," he says slowly. "All of them did." 

"Is that supposed to matter?" Iruka asks harshly. "Does that matter to the dead? Because it doesn't matter to me." 

"It has to," Kakashi says patiently. "You have to let it matter." 

Iruka jerks his hand away from Kakashi's grasp and holds the tags in his fist against his chest.

"Did you ever stop blaming yourself for getting your best friend killed?" 

Kakashi wants to lie to him, and can't.

"...no."

"Then don't say something you already know is stupidly unhelpful." Iruka takes a step back. He wipes his face with his arm and then shoves the dog tags in his pocket. He sounds no less angry when he speaks next even though it jars against his words. "Thank you for going back. Please just... leave me be." 

"Alright," Kakashi says, even though he doesn't move. "I'm sorry, Iruka."

Iruka shakes his head, and turns and goes inside his apartment without a backwards glance. Kakashi doesn't leave. He stands in the small dark hallway and listens to the thud against the door as Iruka leans against from the inside, and Kakashi hears the deep, aching sobs he no longer stifles only because he thinks he's alone. Then Kakashi leaves, and he goes to the hospital, and he takes Tsunade's thorough bitching out as well as Sakura's much milder one afterwards. 

"I appreciate you going back," she says. "But don't be that much of an idiot a second time."

There's a moment of irony that strikes him then, when he realizes that his common sense has been questioned only by those that he's made the painful decision to love, despite everything. Something about the emotion making you stupid, perhaps, a cliche he never really understood but might finally be forced to consider has a measure of truth to it. As it stands there's a very small and select handful of people in the world he'd willingly sacrifice any measure of his intelligence for. Recently, all but one of them are in the ground. 

Chapter Text

Tsunade tweaks an adjustment to the seals on his head after a few days, and it makes him so ridiculously tired that he sleeps fourteen hours every night for a week. He doesn't have an episode the entire time but he's not sure it's worth it. At his insistence that he'd rather be an invalid than sleep for fifty percent of his life, she undoes the change, and the very next day Pakkun warns him to lie down quickly while he's making dinner. Needless to say he's still not allowed to do anything of substance, not yet, and he's starting to go crazy from the inactivity. Woefully he considers that this sort of boredom is going to be his life for the next little while. Or forever, if Tsunade can't fix him. He can get a different job, as surely he can do whatever he wants inside the village. Intelligence or the barrier team or T&I or something similar, something behind a desk with strict hours and proximity to a medic at all times. But he can't leave the village, and he can't take missions, so he really doesn't see the point. 

Three more days go by in this sort of listless, in between fashion. Every day he gets up and makes a meal despite having little to no appetite, if only because his medication makes him sick on an empty stomach. Then he heads to the training grounds with one of his summons to babysit him, and he does as much of his regime as he can manage. He's far too exhausted to do the full scope of exercises that he knows he should be doing to keep himself fit, but he keeps losing count of his reps and it starts to get on his nerves. The headache isn't helping. In the middle of this three day span, Tsunade says his tenketsu aren't healing at the rate she'd like but there's very little he can do about it. He's warned against using ninjutsu and especially his sharingan, even during training, which he hadn't been doing much of anyway. Every other time he's dared to open his left eye it gives him a headache so bad he has to lie down for several hours until it calms. So he settles on a handful of rounds of taijutsu each day, and calls it good enough. Tenzo spars with him once, since he happens to be in the village again in between missions. Kakashi isn't in the best shape and it's obvious that Tenzo has to go easy on him, but he says nothing about it. Afterwards they don't bother getting lunch because Kakashi doesn't feel like eating, but they do lie in the grass on the side of the hill at the river embankment and watch people mill around the edge of the village. It's the tail end of spring, and the morning chill dissipates enough by the middle of the day that it's starting to get uncomfortably warm. Forecasts are already calling for yet another scorching summer. 

On the fourth day, he has one more episode with the usual warning signs - tingling in his arms and legs, a sudden and foreboding anxiety, an increase in heart rate, Pakkun's gruff bark of warning to drop what he's doing, et cetera. He lies down on the floor until it passes and he's lucid enough to stand up and haul himself back to the hospital. Sakura gives him a once over and Tsunade asks him a few more questions while she takes another somewhat fretful look at the seals she put on his head. But she has nothing substantial to say or do, and he's again sent home.

His other symptoms outside of his episodes don't get better. Even once Tsunade reverses the change she made and his sleep schedule returns to normal, he's lethargic in a way that's hard to shake. He finds himself sprawling on the couch for a nap every afternoon, and considering he used to be able to go days without proper rest it's unnerving to lose so much of his day because he's spending it asleep. His mind feels as if it's constantly enveloped in a thin haze that makes it hard to think at times. He's not forgetful per se, but he'll admit to a noticeable increase in the number of times he walks into a room and doesn't know why he entered it. Losing words mid-sentence sometimes, mistaking the names of places and having to be reminded of them, having less confidence than he'd like in people's names. His head nearly always hurts, anywhere from a very mild tension headache to a full blown, aura-inducing, debilitating migraine on the worst days. The latter isn't as common, but it's more than he really likes. And he would swear that his vision is no longer quite so sharp, not even in his left eye, on the very rare occasion he decides to use it. It's not promising, still having these lingering symptoms, and despite the frequency of his episodes being ultimately reduced his other issues only feel worse and not better. But there's really nothing he can do, besides wait for Tsunade to have better ideas. So as much as he hates the stagnant inactivity, he persists. 

On yet another countless, uneventful day that week where he hasn't left his house much except for trips to the hospital, late in the evening there's a knock on his front door. Kakashi is surprised to see who stands there when he answers. 

Iruka doesn't say hello. He doesn't say anything, he steps inside and Kakashi moves out of the way to let him in. He's no longer using a crutch, though he favors his right leg when he walks. The stub of his arm is hidden by the long sleeve of his shirt, and some of his short hair is pulled into a tiny ponytail to keep it away from his neck. His expression is the sort of neutral that's less impassive and more of an attempt to hide a frown when Kakashi shuts the front door after him. Iruka has never been in Kakashi's apartment. His eyes dart around the small room as he takes in the somewhat minimal furnishing and sparse decor. Every time they ever had sex it was at Iruka's place. He's had no reason to come here and he's never dropped by unannounced like this, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out what he wants.  

"Are you busy?" He asks. Kakashi shrugs.

"No," he says. Which is also, inversely, an answer to the question Iruka didn't ask. But the monosyllabic response is the only prompting needed.

Iruka puts a hand to his chest and walks them four steps into the room until he can sit on the couch and drag Kakashi down on top of him to make him straddle his lap. Briefly Kakashi considers that their usual positions might not work any longer because Iruka only has one arm. But his tenacity doesn't fail to impress, as it never has, and when Iruka leans in to press their mouths together it's with a force that lacks none of its usual heat. 

Iruka's hand tucks under Kakashi's shirt, tugging it off and tossing it to the floor. Kakashi takes Iruka's shirt by the hem and drags it over his head, exposing the planes of his chest and stomach, the line of his collarbone, the lingering curse seal atop his ribs that Tsunade was not able to remove, and his- his stub of an arm, wrapped in compression bandages to protect the undoubtedly sensitive skin of the wound closed over what remains of the bone. Kakashi pointedly doesn't stare, not that Iruka gives him a lot of time to do so between the hand that pinches his nipple or the hot mouth against his or the knee pressing between his legs. Under his tongue, Kakashi can feel the smallest of divots in Iruka's lower lip from the split that didn't heal quite so well, and beneath his hands, which he spreads carefully across Iruka's back, he can feel the patchwork scars that now litter the entire expanse between his shoulder blades. Kakashi keeps his touch light as he absently wanders, but Iruka makes a noise of frustration and then a sudden grab for his head to yank him back by his hair, baring his throat and pressing teeth against the sensitive skin. 

"Stop it. I don't need you to be gentle with me." As if to emphasize this point, or maybe goad him into returning the favor, he closes his fingers around Kakashi's throat. His thumb rests at the small hollow above Kakashi's sternum that would cut off his air if he were to press down just a little harder. "I want it to hurt."

The thing is that Kakashi gets it. Unflinchingly, transparently, he understands. Iruka doesn't really want anything right now, he needs to be distracted from his grief and the last few weeks of his life in general - and how convenient that Kakashi is willing to drop what he's doing and entertain a quick fuck at any given moment, right? But not usually like this. Iruka likes it rough, sure. Kakashi is no stranger to walking home with bruises on his thighs or a crescent row of teeth on his neck or a stiffness in his legs that makes it ache to climb stairs the following day. Iruka likes to be in control. Maybe not in every aspect of his life but definitely in the bedroom, and at this point Kakashi isn't ashamed to admit he likes to be tossed around by him. But Iruka is far from the only person Kakashi has ever slept with, and he understands that there are very few vices that work so thoroughly as a good hard fuck when you're so upset over something that you can no longer operate. It's way easier to power through your day with an array of bruises and sore muscles than it is with a hangover, which is why sex is more popular as a coping mechanism than alcohol or recreational drugs, the latter of which is barely even allowed to shinobi at all. 

Iruka has just never asked for it to hurt. If this were anyone else, Kakashi wouldn't have whatever this reservation is. If he were anyone else then they'd have no problem either, and undoubtedly Iruka can leave here right now, go down to the nearest bar, and find someone willing to take him home and fuck him into next week with no questions asks. But Iruka came here. He came to Kakashi's house when he could have gone to anyone else, when he could have gone to no one at all, and Kakashi isn't sure whether to be pleased with or ashamed by this understanding. That Iruka wants him badly enough to be desperate for it. Or worse, that Iruka maybe doesn't really want him for any other reason. 

"Are you sure?" He asks. Iruka does what Kakashi expects him to do and grows frustrated at his lack of immediate cooperation. He's dumped off Iruka's lap as he pushes away from the couch. 

"Yes. And if you won't then I'll find someone who will."

Fuck, he knows he will, and regardless of anything else Kakashi doesn't like the idea of Iruka acting out of grief with someone he doesnt trust quite as much. Because if anyone else like that existed then most certainly he would have gone to them instead. Iruka gets one step across the room before Kakashi makes up his mind. He stands and follows after him, and underneath the flush to Iruka's face there's an obvious and expectant glare. And Kakashi, more than anything, has always lived to serve. 

He surges into Iruka's space and spins him around by the shoulder, grabbing his arm to pin it against his back and march him down the hall towards the bedroom. He puts a hand to Iruka's waist when he stumbles and kicks the door closed behind him as they enter the room, shoving him towards the bed and kicking off his own sweats and underwear. Iruka undresses and tosses his clothes onto the ground, but Kakashi picks up his slacks from off the floor as he's struck with an idea. Unceremoniously he climbs across the mattress over top of Iruka's naked body and grabs him by the wrist, dragging him roughly a few inches closer to the headboard to fasten his only remaining arm above his head with his own clothes. He digs around in his nightstand until he finds the bottle of lube, and then he sits back, resting between Iruka's parted legs to watch him struggle to flick the stray hair out of his face when it sticks to his already sweaty skin.  

He certainly could be gentler when he shoves Iruka's knees towards his chest and presses in two fingers at once. Iruka bites back a groan at the less-than-elegant preparation, something more appropriate for a tryst in the back alley of a grimy bar or a quiet fuck at camp on a low-stakes mission. Part of him almost decides to forgo the request for this to be rough all together - until he watches the way that Iruka's shoulders relax instead of tense, how his legs spread instead of contracting, and how when he closes his eyes it isn't in pain, but relief. A relief Kakashi understands all too well. A relief of the mind and not just the body, to have a weight so far removed from the front of your concerns that you can momentarily forget about anything that isn't right in front of you or happening to you right this very second. That's the only thing he needs right now, and Kakashi finds himself more than willing to give it to him. So not for the first time, and gods know it won't be the last, he caves in the face of Iruka's wants.  

The fucking Kakashi gives him is rough. He draws it out as long as possible but Iruka takes it just as good as he dishes it out, even if he usually prefers to lead. Kakashi might consider his stamina fairly substantial but he doesn't think he can be blamed if Iruka unconsciously puts a bit of a strain on how long he's able to last. Iruka keeps his fist clenched as he pulls at the restraint, and what remains of his other arm writhes at his side as if he still had a hand with which to find purchase, the bandages beginning to loosen and spool underneath of him. His short hair starts coming out of the hair tie and sticks to his face and his ears, sweat gathering in the dips of his skin and sliding down his temples to land on the sheets beneath his head. Kakashi pulls out only long enough to flip him onto his front for a better angle, tucking Iruka's knees beneath his stomach to bare his ass, and he moans loudly and obscenely into the pillow as Kakashi pushes his head down while finding a rhythm he can stick to. With every tilt of his hips he drags out another throaty noise until Iruka is a sobbing mess, babbling incoherent pleas not to stop, to go faster, or harder, more.   

Kakashi runs a sweaty palm across Iruka's back, freely touching his bare skin and the sensitive new scar tissue since Iruka is unable to swat his hand away at the gesture, feeling the puckered edges of the freshly healed wounds and the warped intersections created as they overlap. He yanks the tie out of Iruka's short hair and takes as much of it as he can in his fist, pulling up his head to free the sound of his voice to the room, and Kakashi runs his tongue up the side of Iruka's neck before sinking his teeth into the dense muscle of his shoulder to bite back the noises coming out of his own mouth. Maybe like this he can understand why Iruka prefers to fuck with the lights on - the sight beneath him would be a real shame to miss. If he were to make more than a flippant attempt to employ the eidetic properties of a certain ocular jutsu he happens to have in his possession, well, Iruka has never minded him the habit in the past, and some things are definitely worth the headache.  

But Iruka isn't satisfied after one round. Once Kakashi is thoroughly spent and their sweat cools as they lie in a heap, the post-orgasm exhaustion hasn't even fully cleared before he feels a wandering touch trail down his stomach as Iruka licks into his open mouth, apparently satisfied with his once-in-a-blue-moon forfeiture of control for the evening and taking it back immediately. If he was any more dexterous with only one hand then Kakashi would surely be paying dearly for his previous stunt, for tying Iruka's only good arm to the bed post. But having only half of the usual amount of fingers doesn't stop him in the slightest from wringing out Kakashi's second orgasm a little too easily. Iruka works him open with clear impatience and wraps a hand around him tight enough to stop him from coming immediately, but neither of them last longer than a few minutes. Iruka collapses against Kakashi's back once he's come for the second time, and Kakashi suppresses a shudder when Iruka finally pulls out and lays down at his side. 

He falls asleep for at least a few minutes, though he's not sure how long exactly since someone's underwear is draped over the alarm clock on the bedside table. He wakes lying under the crook of Iruka's elbow, cheek pressed against his ribs as Iruka's arm circles his neck like a heavy collar. Ffor a long time, neither of them say anything at all. If Iruka's hand wasn't absently petting across his chest, Kakashi would think he's asleep. Again he has a thought he's had almost every time they have sex. Maybe especially after this time in particular. 

"Iruka," he says quietly. Iruka makes a small noise in attention before Kakashi continues. "I think we shouldn't do this anymore." 

"...you don't want to fuck anymore," Iruka says. It isn't a question. Maybe a statement of slight disbelief. Because really, Kakashi would have to be kind of insane to give up such a good thing. 

"That's, well- that's not really what I mean," Kakashi says.

Iruka curls his hand and drags his nails down Kakashi's sternum, his touch intentionally light as if to ask the warning question of 'are you sure about that?' Then he exhales like he's disappointed. Kakashi imagines it's a sound he makes quite often at the Academy to his adolescent students. 

"You've always been pretty insistent that you like doing this." 

"I do like it," Kakashi is sure to tell him. "Fuck, I like it a lot." 

"Then what's your problem?" 

Kakashi tries to consider his reply carefully. 

The problem is that what he doesn't want is for this to be the only thing they have. What he wouldn't want to happen is for Iruka to die tomorrow or the next day or the next year or whenever, and for the only thing they were to one another to be just two people that slept together and nothing else. But they don't have the type of relationship where Kakashi feels comfortable admitting that out loud. He's not even sure whether he'd call them friends, not like he would other people in his life. Not when he knows that the relationship they do have is physical in nature, and both of them take a great deal of comfort out of one another, albeit for vastly different reasons. Iruka comes back to him because Kakashi is good for a reliable, discrete night in bed, and after so many years of sleeping together they've gotten used to and feel safe in one another's company. Kakashi, on the other hand, he lets Iruka have whatever he wants because he loves him far too much to ever consider turning him away or telling him no. And he's never felt brave enough to ask for more, but he knows that if he doesn't eventually get this off his chest it's going to stay trapped behind his teeth forever.

"Because all we ever do is have sex," he says. "That's it." 

"Yeah, and it's great." Iruka snorts an inelegant laugh. "More than great. Gods, you're the best fuck I've ever had. You want to stop doing this for what?"

In other circumstances Kakashi might take pride in this statement, because it's the exact same thought he's had about Iruka, too. Right now it only serves to underline his point. 

"I don't want to stop," Kakashi says, trying to be patient. "But maybe I don't want only this."

"Well what do you want, then?" Iruka asks, somewhat harshly, the mirth in his tone quickly subsiding as Kakashi continues to push. "What do you think I want? I don't know how you expect us to be friends after sleeping together for so long. Or are you talking about a relationship? Why are you asking me this all of the sudden?"

Because there's nothing quite as eye opening as the death of someone you know to really force you to define what else you are or aren't comfortable with losing. Or maybe because he already has enough ghosts, living and dead alike, and the last thing he needs is one more person to join all the others he has so far failed. Or because the first time that Iruka decided to seek him out at all since they returned to the village was to ask for sex, and that's not the reason Kakashi wants to have as to why Iruka might come looking for him. And because he can sense a pattern developing, one that's already been happening for years but now has the opportunity to get worse, for Iruka to close himself off and to start avoiding Kakashi entirely unless it's for moments of physical comfort and nothing else. And what he doesn't want is to look back in another five years and wonder whether this was his opportunity to change things between them, and have to live with the regret of not having taken it. 

But what he decides to say is, "I'm tired of finding out that I wasted what was right in front of me. Because I waited too long to do anything about it." 

"Why?" Iruka asks. His tone is neutral, decidedly impartial, though he tightens his arm around Kakashi's neck as if to threaten his honesty in the following question. "Because that's already happened? Because Genma died before you got around to having this conversation with him instead?"

Kakashi's stunned silence is too telling. All this time and he doesn't know why he was convinced that Iruka had no idea about how often Kakashi slept with his best friend. Maybe because it sounds really awful when you say it like that. But Iruka isn't even wrong. Kakashi does, very deeply so, regret that Genma's death has left him with the glaring sting of a wasted friendship and a dozen questions he never had the courtesy to ask. He can say what he wants about his intentions with Iruka right now and what they have ever been in the past, but like it or not, Kakashi has never furthered their relationship beyond someone good for a fuck every few weeks. 

"Yes," Kakashi says simply. "And I don't want it to happen with anyone else." 

Iruka is silent for a few tense moments. His hand absently traces across Kakashi's chest and stomach while he considers his reply. Kakashi tries not to tense as the feather light touch skims over his ribs. The silence grows heavy until Iruka finally speaks up. 

"Did you love him?" He asks quietly. 

And Kakashi wants to say, Not the way that I love you.  

"I could have," he says instead. And that's really the most painful part. The answer isn't even a yes or a no. The answer is that he never made the attempt to try properly. Iruka pauses for a long time. Kakashi wonders if he's said the wrong thing, but even without being as blatant as he could have been there's really no misconstruing his intentions any longer.

"What do you imagine happening instead?" Iruka eventually asks. His tone is a little more soft. "You think it would be different if you and I were... if this was more than just a sex thing between us? When I die, would it hurt less if we'd been friends instead?"

Like many other things Iruka has said across the years of their not-friendship, Kakashi understands where his head's at. Because there was a long period of his own life, after he'd lost almost everyone who meant something to him, where he avoided making friendships or furthering the ones he already had, solely out of fear. Companionship and love seemed like a waste of time when his only examples of their conclusion was to be left with the gaping reminder of that person's death, when their lives were inevitably taken from him by the world that they live in. So for years, he didn't seek out any more opportunities to experience that hurt again. The friends he had, he ignored. He barely spoke even when spoken to. In his head this was the safest option. With nothing and no one to lose, he couldn't hurt any more. But in that safety of having no one to lose, he of course had no one. Tenzo and Gai were among the first to successfully draw him out of this period of self-destruction. Looking back he now knows that no one ever really gave up on him, but he definitely gave up on them for several years. And with perspective he can easily say that it's not better to be alone just to save yourself the chance at heartache. 

So he gets it, of course. Iruka's sentiment - his fear, even if he doesn't really display that he's afraid, Kakashi can tell. Iruka is in the same place he was before, an isolating sense of loneliness that eats away at your ability to entertain friendships, or relationships, or love. Iruka lost his parents as well as countless friends and mentors in the nine-tails attack, he's suffered Mizuki's betrayal and Hiruzen's demise, he says goodbye to his comrades and former students at the desk and knows that not all of them will return, and every day he suffers the fear of Naruto's questionable safety. And now his best friend is dead, and he considers himself to blame for it. Kakashi doesn't know if Iruka has ever really had a significant other, or a lover, but it's easy to empathize with the idea that he doesn't want one. Not when it's clear, given their lives and livelihood, how that would most likely end up. As a rule, very few shinobi die in their own bed. 

Despite this, Kakashi disagrees with the sentiment on principle. Because he's lived through and come out of what he now understands was a terrible and debilitating depression of loneliness, self-imposed only by adherence to his own rules of avoidance in order to protect within himself that which he considered fragile - his heart, and his capacity for love. And ever since he realized that the answer was never to avoid everyone he cares about, it's not to say that he hasn't suffered losses that exist only because he decided to participate in those acquaintanceships or friendships. He certainly has. Members of the squads he's served on, friends and allies and acquaintances alike that he's gotten to know over the years, who are now dead. People like Genma. And the others' deaths will hurt when they happen. He knows he'll grieve fiercely when news of Tenzo's or Gai's death comes back to him one day. But if Iruka were to die tomorrow, mostly what he fears he would feel is simply regret, for not trying harder to make attempts to know him better.  

Kakashi, of course, has no idea how to articulate this in a manner that might be in any way convincing. For him it was never a string of words that helped pull him out of his rut. It was the deliberate and continued support of those closest to him, making sure he understood that he was seen and heard even when he didn't want to be, that he was appreciated and he was missed and most importantly that he was loved. Maybe it won't work for Iruka in the same way, but it's the only thing he knows to try. 

"It wouldn't hurt less," he says carefully. "But the effort is worth it." 

Iruka removes his arm, still wrapped around Kakashi's neck, to scrub across his own face. 

"Kakashi, I can't afford to be more than just fuck-buddies with you," he says blatantly. "This is supposed to be easy, okay? Don't make this hard."

Kakashi concedes in light of his obvious frustration, and for now, he lets the matter go. Iruka rolls out of bed to take a shower without another word on the subject. Kakashi sighs and gets up to take off the topsheet, tossing it in the corner to join the dirty laundry he's had plenty of time and not enough care to deal with. The bathroom door is left open so he helps himself to wiping down with a wet rag and finding some clean clothes to put on. But Iruka pokes his head out from behind the curtain when Kakashi enters, tugs him into the tiny stall, and pushes him down to kneel on the floor for round three. Iruka's second favorite thing after having sex with the lights on is getting a blow job in the shower. Kakashi always walks away with his skin red and warm from how scalding Iruka likes the water. 

He expects Iruka to make himself scarce after this, and he towel dries his hair out on the balcony while he smokes a cigarette. Most likely he'll head back to his own apartment shortly. Kakashi tucks a new topsheet on the bed and unfolds the comforter from where it landed in a heap, and is surprised when Iruka comes back into the room as he's lying down in the dark. Hair damp and still smelling like smoke, Iruka climbs in after him without a word, despite that Kakashi can count on one hand the number of times either of them have stayed the night in each other's company after having sex. But he's got no arguments if Iruka wants to avail himself of his bed, or his person. Kakashi isn't sure if he'd call this afterglow, but it's definitely nice. It's maybe nicer than it should be. He detects a certain element of being thrown a bone for having voiced his quickly dismissed opinions, a sort of 'I might have shot you down but I'll sleep in the same bed as you' air, if you will. But it's still nice. Beggars can't be choosers. 

Iruka lies down behind him so they're back to chest, and is asleep within minutes. The stump of his left arm is squished between them and his right hand tucks tightly around Kakashi's waist, almost like an embrace. He lets it be the comfort he wishes it really was as he drifts off to sleep, thoroughly exhausted by the entire evening. 

The sun hasn't even touched the horizon when Iruka climbs out of bed, making very little effort to be quiet. Not that it would matter - Kakashi wakes on a hair-trigger and will not likely go back to sleep. Iruka pilfers around in Kakashi's dresser until he finds a change of clothes to put on, and just like that, the front door shuts behind him as he departs. Kakashi has no idea where he's going or if he's got somewhere to be. He doesn't know what Iruka gets up to these days when it seems like he doesn't occupy the desk any longer, nor has he gone back to the Academy just yet. Kakashi has to be at the hospital early this morning anyway, so it's just as well that Iruka's already left. Tsunade wants to 'try something' with the seal on his head, and he has no reason not to let her experiment. 

When he gives up pretending that he might be able to go back to bed for another hour before he has to leave, he gets up and finally starts a load of laundry and then makes the smallest, most calorically dense breakfast he can manage so his medication doesn't make him ill. It feels silly to put on his uniform just to go to the hospital when they're probably going to make him change into the awful paper gowns anyway, but dressing in civilian attire would really make him feel even more down and out than he already is, somehow. He wears everything except the vest and hitai-ate, and rolls up to his usual hospital room only twenty minutes late. Tsunade leans against the wall talking to someone standing in front of the window who he really didn't expect to see again so soon. 

Iruka, of all people, stands at her left, dressed to a T in his own uniform instead of whatever clean clothes he stole from Kakashi's wardrobe not even an hour prior. You'd have no clue they spent the better part of the previous evening fucking each other stupid just by looking at him now, not with the somewhat unimpressed stare Iruka levels across the room like Kakashi just interrupted them in the middle of a meeting. 

"Ah, Kakashi," Tsunade says as he enters. Iruka goes back to flipping through the half dozen open files on the table in the corner - Tsunade's notes and research on his condition. Kakashi sits down on the edge of the bed. "You're late, needless to say."

"Got a bit lost." 

Iruka rolls his eyes and Tsunade ignores him. 

"I've decided to formally bring on Iruka as a specialist to help deal with you," she says.  

"Deal with me," Kakashi repeats. Iruka replies without looking up. 

"Tsunade-sama thinks I may be able to help reduce the frequency of your episodes."

"You aren't a medic," Kakashi says, mostly a statement of confusion. In honesty though he's got no idea what Iruka is or does. He was working towards promotion to tokubetsu, maybe this has something to do with his specialization. Kakashi's response maybe comes across a little harshly because Tsunade frowns and pushes away from the window. 

"Your very unique type of brain damage has been temporarily helped by the seals I placed on your big head," she says as a matter of fact. "And Iruka happens to be the best seals specialist we've had on the roster since Minato was alive."

"Oh."

Iruka rolls his eyes again and approaches the bed. "Turn around and hold still," he says. 

"Maa, sensei, you could at least buy me dinner first," Kakashi teases, entirely deadpan, and is rewarded with a pinch on the back of his arm as he turns and sits cross legged. 

"I'm not going to make any adjustments yet," Iruka says, ignoring his remark. "Just getting a feel for what Tsunade-sama has already put in place, to see what I have to work with." 

Iruka puts a palm on his neck and slides it up into his hairline, the same place it usually rests when Iruka is holding him face down against the mattress. Kakashi tries not to shudder.

"Never heard of a one armed seals-master," he says. The tease comes to him before he can think better of it but he regrets the attempt at levity as soon as it leaves his mouth. Iruka, though, only pauses briefly as he considers how to respond.

"And some lightning nature you are," he says. "Nearly getting electrocuted to death by your own affinity." 

Kakashi huffs in amusement and Iruka steps in close to press his palm firmly against Kakashi's head. 

"Tell me if this hurts," Iruka says in slight warning. Then Kakashi feels him push a small amount of chakra into his fingers, and there's the familiar pulse as Tsunade's seals activate. 

Tsunade, while being a sannin and a master medi-nin in her own right, is not truly a fūinjutsu specialist. The best that the village has had to offer recently has been Jiraiya, though of course, he's been absent the last two years and change galavanting across the countryside with his new protege, and he maybe no longer counts. The fact that Tsunade is willing to bring Iruka in for this either means that he is secretly insanely skilled in the art, or that Tsunade is frighteningly desperate for help. Kakashi isn't sure which answer he dislikes more, because if Iruka's specialization is in fūinjutsu and Kakashi somehow never managed to notice or find that out, he's going to feel like a dick. On the other hand, if Tsunade is getting desperate  enough to bring in amatuer help then she's running out of ideas. And Kakashi is not exactly much closer to being fit for duty once again. So he grits his teeth as Iruka prods around in the patchwork, invisible seals applied against his scalp which tendril down into his brain to do - well, whatever it is it's doing to stop his seizures from being so frequent.

Iruka's inspection drags on for nearly ten minutes, which Kakashi counts against the clock on the wall as he times his inhales and exhales by the ticking second hand. Sometimes Iruka speaks up to ask her a question about the seal's application or abilities, strings of jargon that Kakashi has heard being said before but doesn't truly understand. A bit of a headache develops behind his eyes at Iruka's sustained interference and chakra touching him so directly. Eventually he lets go, though in the absence of whatever he was doing the small headache immediately blossoms into a full-blown migraine. Kakashi grunts in pained surprise and leans forward to dig the heels of his palms into his eyes, and Iruka curses under his breath. 

"Damn it, sorry, I was trying to avoid that," he says. His voice is sharp like the point of a blade as he quickly puts his hand against Kakashi's forehead. Then there's another, more concentrated pulse of chakra, and the pain recedes away from the front of his face but remains, much less intense, in the back of his skull. Despite Iruka just perusing for today, Kakashi is already drained and tired. He flops down in a huff against the bed. 

"That's some solid handywork, Tsunade-sama," Iruka says. Kakashi scrubs at his face and Iruka gives him a hardy pat on the shoulder as he goes to talk to her. "What you did with the tiering seems to be really effective." 

"It would be more effective, but I had no choice but to tone it down," she replies. "I tried upping the response rate and I think I nearly put him in a coma for a few days." 

Whatever that means must be why he couldn't stay awake for more than ten hours at a time last week. Go figure. The lights overhead are bright in his eyes and he covers his face with his arm.

"Hmm... that's unfortunate," Iruka says. "Have you thought about adding a third seal, to handle the overlap?"

"I have," Tsunade says. "But I didn't want to overcomplicate it when I'm not confident I won't short-circuit him the rest of the way. Which is why you're here."

"I'll try my best not to do that," Iruka says. "If you don't mind, I'd like to take your notes with me. I've a few ideas I'll workshop."

"By all means. I'll have Shizune pull you the rest of the files." She glances at the clock on the wall with a scowl and heads towards the door. "I have to run but let's talk about this more tomorrow. I'd like to see what you have in mind. Meet me at oh-eight-hundred in my office." 

"Yes, ma'am," Iruka says with a polite nod, and Tsunade exits the room. Kakashi peeks out from under his arm when Iruka remains behind. The silence that stays in her absence is a bit awkward. He addresses the elephant in the room. 

"I didn't know you were a fūinjutsu specialist," he says. 

"Why would you?" Iruka asks, not unkindly. He collects the files from the bedside table and stacks them into a neat pile to take with him.

"We've been on missions together," Kakashi says. "I've seen you use seals before and I know you're handy with them. I didn't know you were an expert." 

"I'm only an expert as of recently," Iruka says. "Way after the last time we went on a mission together. Handy is all I've ever been until the last year or so, when I got serious about learning." 

"Who's training you?"

"The library," Iruka replies with a shrug. 

"The library," Kakashi repeats in slight disbelief. "You're self taught out of the library? And you became a specialist like that?" 

"Yeah. Didn't you become chuunin at like, six years old?" Iruka counters defensively. "I know you didn't go to the Academy. Some people are just gifted. I'm good at this. Konoha has a lot of shit in the archives if you know what to look for. It's sad to let all this knowledge go to waste."  

Kakashi sits up to reply to this but grunts when the motion sends a fresh ache through his skull and makes his heartbeat throb behind his head. Iruka sees his discomfort and approaches the bed again, gesturing for Kakashi to turn and face him so he can help. Kakashi sits on the edge of the bed and Iruka cups the back of his head. The pulse of chakra he releases from his palm is much smaller and slower than before, and Kakashi's headache practically melts away entirely. He blows out a relieved exhale and Iruka lets him go. 

"I'll let you know when I've come up with something," he says.

Then he gathers the files under his arm, and he exits without a backwards glance. For some reason Kakashi feels like he doesn't breathe easy until Iruka leaves the room.

Chapter Text

It takes a little over three weeks for Iruka to have any sort of breakthrough. In the meantime Kakashi continues to have episodes at least every four or five days. If he can pick himself up afterwards he'll go and find Tsunade, and usually she pulls Iruka from whatever he happens to be doing to give him a once over. If he can't get off the ground he'll have one of his summons fetch Iruka, who will come over and help him up from wherever he happened to lie down, relieve his headache if he has one, ask a few brief questions and take a glance at Tsunade's seals, and ultimately leave him be. Sometimes if he's at the hospital then Tsunade will have a Hyuuga medic look at his tenketsu, just to be safe, and each time she's less than impressed with how slowly his chakra pathways are healing themselves.

His symptoms don't get worse but they definitely don't get better. Being so exhausted and short-focused for so long is starting to make him seriously frustrated. He's been used to a lifetime of distinct clarity of mind and sharp focus that he finds he's taken for granted until now, when it seems to be lacking. Sometimes he catches himself spacing out when he's at home unbothered, which is not something he ever used to do. He'll walk into a room and forget why, he'll misplace words mid conversation, he'll misjudge a distance as he tosses something across the room - small things, things that might seem insignificant to someone who considers these normal human behaviors. For a shinobi, especially for him, it's concerning, and it worries him more than he'll admit. The headaches are the worst thing outside of the actual seizures, ranging anywhere from mild if annoying to physically debilitating. The latter is relieved by almost nothing except Iruka's direct intervention, and Kakashi spends a lot of time lying in bed trying not to let the pain make him sick. 

Tsunade has thus far avoided saying outright that he's going to have permanent cognitive damage because she's not sure whether it's true, but the idea is still firmly on the table. Every time he talks to her or Iruka following another episode, they share worried glances with one another that he supposes they for some reason assume he doesn't see. And every day that passes without another seizure gets his hopes up that much further that this thing has started to resolve itself - until he wakes up on the ground with one of his pack's wet noses snuffling at his face in concern, and then he'll make his way either to the hospital or to Iruka's apartment, if he doesn't feel like having Tsunade prod at him. Iruka's not really gentler than her  but Kakashi will admit to more than a small amount of bias between them.

Unfortunately, outside of their interactions regarding his condition, they still speak very little. Through the grapevine he finds out that Iruka has been taking remedial training to learn to compensate for his missing arm, and that Tsunade has finalized his promotion to jounin. Kakashi isn't surprised he doesn't hear of any sort of congratulatory get-together for him, like the others usually do for new promotions. Considering the circumstances it was received under, it's understandable that Iruka wouldn't want to celebrate. Which means Kakashi doesn't have even that as an opportunity to talk to him, which is a real shame. He finds he's starting to miss Iruka quite a bit. He also hopes that this distance isn't because he sort of bared his heart so thoroughly and admitted that he wants more than just a physical relationship, and now Iruka is uncomfortable around him. Certainly he wouldn't forgo what he's assured is some phenomenal sex just because Kakashi has a few emotional hang-ups. Iruka just isn't that bashful.  

No, he's simply insanely busy, as it turns out. Kakashi is very surprised to also learn he's no longer teaching. Being a sensei at the Academy has always been near and dear to him and it's discomforting to think he's given it up. But Kakashi can understand if the stress of that sort of job isn't something he can handle at the moment on top of everything else. His promotion comes with a properly classified fūinjutsu specialization, and he's often harangued by not only Intelligence but also the Barrier Team, to offer his expertise on various matters regarding anything adjacent to sealing, tags, or formulae. And of course, he's putting more than a small amount of time into developing whatever it is he's still working on to fix Kakashi's issue. He's often back at the hospital or holed up with Tsunade in her office late into the evening as they bow heads and try to figure out a solution. More than once Kakashi sees him come out of the archive with an armful of tomes and scrolls. He won't admit to using his excessive downtime to do a little bit of following Iruka around sometimes because he honest-to-god has nothing better to do. He knows it's pitifully embarrassing but quickly gets over the shame. 

"He and I are sparring later," Tenzo says one day. Tenzo had let slip that he was meeting Iruka that evening and Kakashi's inquiry as to why was not subtle. "You can come with me." 

"Dunno why I'd do that," Kakashi levels. 

"Because I know you want to," Tenzo really has him there. "You're not doing anything anyway. Get out of the house for a bit. I know you're keeping up with some of your own training in your downtime, maybe you can go a few rounds with him. For a guy with one arm, you'd be surprised how good he is."

"I'm sure I wouldn't."

Kakashi lets himself be bullied into going, mostly because Tenzo is right, and he's curious how Iruka is faring now that he's physically recovered from his injuries. And of course he misses seeing him in a casual setting sometimes, so he puts on his uniform for the hell of it and follows Tenzo across the village to one of the larger training grounds. Iruka is already present when they arrive, practicing taijutsu against his own clone for lack of a partner. It's late in the evening and it's hot, now that they're a few weeks out of spring and Konoha doesn't do summer halfway. Iruka still has his sleeves rolled up past his elbows - well, elbow, singular - the empty one tied in a knot with the extra fabric cut off to keep it out of the way. His short hair is low to his neck and has started to come down from its tie. Ever since he lost an arm he's never worn it high on the back of his head, probably not because it's too short to do so but likely because he couldn't manage the style with half as much dexterity. Kakashi fights off the desire to brush his hands through it.

"Impatient, are we?" Tenzo asks as they approach. Iruka dispels his clone and wipes the sweat from his face with his shoulder. 

"You were taking forever," he says, giving Kakashi a stink eye. 

"Hey, don't look at me," Kakashi says. "It wasn't my fault." 

"Well this isn't spectator sport," Iruka says with a slight scoff. 

"It might have slipped your mind, but I am still technically a shinobi," Kakashi says. He didn't even want to go in the first place but if Iruka is going to be stubborn then two can play at this game. "Who says I'm not here to participate?"  

"Only you would be so bold as to invite yourself to someone else's sparring match," Iruka tells him, and Tenzo intervenes. 

"Relax. I invited him," he says. "Your progress is good, and I want to see how you manage a second opponent." 

Iruka puts a fist on his hip, and he doesn't quite grin but there's definitely an amount of amusement in his expression, something that hasn't been present in weeks. 

"Do you now?" He says, and cocks his head. "Think I couldn't handle both of you at once?" 

Kakashi thought he knew how to throw around an innuendo, but Iruka's foul mouth hasn't been tempered by his proximity to working with children the majority of his career. Kakashi can attest to that personally.

"I think I'd like to see you try," Tenzo says with a grin. Kakashi is really going to kill him. He's not sure why he suddenly feels like he's not even there at the moment, but he won't admit to the sudden thread of jealousy that finds him watching someone so easily jokingly flirt with Iruka right in front of him, and for Iruka to flirt back. Especially Tenzo, of all fucking people, who has never once expressed interest in Iruka and knows that Kakashi has some severely not-so-repressed feelings about him. Kakashi is really going to kill him. 

"I think I might go back home and finish dying of boredom rather than third wheel whatever foreplay the two of you are having right now," he decides to say. Tenzo barks a laugh and Iruka rolls his eyes. 

"Green isn't your color," he says mockingly, and Kakashi pays for his smart remark for the next hour of training. 

He's never had the pleasure of sparring against Iruka, but Tenzo wasn't wrong. He's good. He's already learned to do one-handed signs for any jutsu he wants to sling around, and he's fast, insanely so. Kakashi is not exactly in his prime at the moment and it shows, but he thinks that even if he was he'd have a hard time keeping up with Iruka's speed. He's able to delicately balance his offense and defence enough to keep him far away from Tenzo's Mokuton, but not so far that he doesn't have plenty of openings to strike when he wants to. Eventually Tenzo calls for some one on one spars and Kakashi tags out to watch, and is similarly impressed by how Iruka is still able to resist what is likely the instinctual desire to block with an arm he no longer has. It probably took a fair bit of training to overcome the natural inclination. Kakashi definitely gets what it's like, to a lesser degree. Losing his eye and having the sharingan instead left him with a blind spot that took months to feel comfortable with. Instinctually he'd open both eyes to compensate and would be hit with the sudden and immediate drain on his chakra. Keeping his hitai-ate over it is the only reason he grew out of this habit, though now he's much more conscious of when he decides to sacrifice a bit of chakra just for some additional depth perception. He couldn't imagine doing all of that for an entire hand and arm, arguably one of the most important parts of the body to a shinobi. 

Tenzo decides to switch out after he's trapped beneath a barrier for the third time, frowning in frustration at Iruka's smirk of victory from the other side. He takes the sidelines to spectate, and Kakashi does some estimation on how much of this he can do before he starts risking exhaustion. They've been sticking to taijutsu because he still can't really use chakra, and after so long being out of commission he's starting to feel his lack of proper training and exercise catch up to him in a bad way. It's been a while since he pushed himself so hard just for a round of training but he's starting to forget what a real taste of adrenaline is like.

"Tell me if I need to go easy on you," Iruka says. "Since you're a bit fragile at the moment."

Kakashi stands fifteen feet away with his hands tucked into his pockets as Iruka brushes through his messy hair. It's grown some, since it was sheared down to his chin. He redoes the tie low against the back of his head.  

"Typical jounin newcomer," Kakashi says. "Letting his rank get to his head." 

"You'd recognize what that looks like, certainly," Iruka tells him. "Since yours never stopped."  

"I've earned the right to an ego," Kakashi says simply. "Maybe in a few years you'll actually have earned yours."

"Maybe in a few minutes you'll see why I already did."

Kakashi decides to go out on a limb. This is the most playful and relatively good-humored that Iruka has been in weeks. 

"And yet it took you this long to get promoted." He says. Iruka puts his hand on his hip. 

"I was a little busy having a life outside of work," he says, tilting his head, and Kakashi can just barely see a smirk almost cross his face at his next retort. "Not all of us are such masochists that we enjoy going on missions non-stop."

"I've toned down the number of missions I take by about a hundred percent in the last few weeks," Kakashi says. "So it's a good thing that was never what did it for me." 

Now Iruka smirks. Kakashi will accept a little ribbing at his own expense if it takes the frown off Iruka's face. 

"Ah, okay," he says, as if suddenly enlightened. "So when I hand you your ass, are you going to enjoy it more than me?" 

"If you manage to impress me, I just might." 

Tenzo pipes up from his seat on the sidelines some hundred feet away, yelling across the empty field between them. 

"Get a damn room!" He shouts. Iruka flips him off and Kakashi readies a kunai, pre-emptively taking a defensive stance when he has a feeling he's just goaded Iruka into making the first strike land harder than it needs to. 

And just as he's deciding that the risk of a headache might be worth the use of his sharingan for this, he feels the very first symptoms of another seizure. His heart starts beating erratically in his chest and the rush of blood sends pins and needles into his arms and legs. Iruka has already leapt forward before Kakashi has a chance to signal that he needs to stop, and when he can't move to block it he takes a roundhouse straight to his legs and they're effortlessly swept out from underneath him. Distantly he hears a curse of alarm at his complete failure to dodge, and instead of hitting the ground he's caught in someone's arms - or arm, more like - just as his vision blacks and he passes out. He wakes up on the dirt with a flak vest bundled under his head. He tries to roll onto his back but feels a steadying hand on his shoulder. 

"-just be still for a second." 

Iruka's voice solidifies through the dissipating haze of unconsciousness. Kakashi blinks a few times and grits his teeth against the ache behind his eyes and the tension in his muscles, and takes a minute just to breathe in and out before he attempts to push himself off the ground. Iruka removes his hand but hovers behind him as Kakashi leans back on his elbows. Tenzo stands not far away, giving them space but watching with apparent concern. 

"Are you okay?" Iruka asks, and Kakashi blows out a strained exhale. 

"Never better," he says. With a hand upright he's hoisted to his feet and brushes the dirt off his clothes. Iruka seems like he's fighting the urge to say something, and quickly loses. 

"I promise I'm working on it," he says. Kakashi isn't expecting him to sound so guilty which makes Kakashi feel guilty, as if he has any control over the frequency and severity of his seizures and had one right in front of Iruka to make him feel bad.  

"I know, I trust you," Kakashi says simply. Iruka relieves his headache for him before they all leave the field in a tense silence. Kakashi doesn't go to any more sparring matches against Iruka after this, and only feels like a little bit of a coward because of it. 

In everything that's been happening the last few weeks, he almost entirely forgot that Naruto was due back at some point soon, up until the morning he shows up and nearly knocks the door off its hinges in his excitement. It's a welcome reprieve, to catch up with him again. Kakashi can't get over how big he's gotten in just two and a half years, and he looks more like Minato than ever. They walk around the village to talk and wind up bringing takeout back to Kakashi's apartment to eat while Naruto regales him with the events of the last two years. He's distracting enough with his exuberant story-telling that Kakashi can almost forget the ongoing dilemma that's been the month and change now behind him. Almost. Naruto finally asks when they'll take their first mission together again as Team 7, and Kakashi has to break the news. 

"You're retired!?" Naruto shouts. His volume is nearly painful at close proximity. 

"I'm not retired," Kakashi clarifies. "Not yet. I've been medically discharged... temporarily." 

"Aw, damn, this sucks!" Naruto complains. "I thought we'd go back to being a team again, you me and Sakura! It's not gonna be the same if you're not our sensei, y'know!?"

"I hate to disappoint," Kakashi says. He's teasing but he means it. Naruto's honesty is touching. "But I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you." 

Naruto crosses his arms with a pout.

"Who the hell are they gonna give us?" He asks. "I don't want some random jounin."

"No idea," Kakashi says. "But I'm sure Tsunade has someone in mind." 

"Okay, then let's go talk to her." Naruto leaps off the couch and heads to the door, turning back expectantly for him to follow. Kakashi sighs in defeat and puts on his shoes. Naruto only grumbles mildly when they walk out of her office an hour later. Team 7's new captain is none other than Kakashi's own kohai. He's a little offended Tenzo never mentioned he was the one filling in the sudden vacancy.

"This won't last long," Naruto insists. "You'll be back to normal in no time. Tsunade-baasan is like, the best medic in the world." 

"If it can't be fixed between her and Iruka then I don't think a cure exists," Kakashi says. He didn't mean to make his outlook seem quite so abysmal, but the words are out of his mouth before he can correct them. 

"Iruka-sensei is helping?" Naruto asks with a frown of confusion. Kakashi has the sudden dread that maybe Naruto hasn't even talked to Iruka since he's been back in the village. 

"Yeah, he's... have you seen him yet?" 

"Nah, it's the middle of the day," Naruto says. "I figured he's busy at the Academy still." 

"Right," Kakashi says. Decidedly he'll let Iruka be the one to explain his own abrupt career change. "Well, he's been giving Tsunade a hand." No pun intended. "I'll let him tell  you the whole story." 

Naruto shrugs, placated despite not getting a straightforward answer. They part ways just outside the Hokage tower, when Naruto decides to swing by the hospital and bother Sakura for a while. The following evening they have one spar together, just the three of them, and the nostalgia is so sharp it almost hurts when he quickly loses both bells to two of the only students he's ever had that he now fully considers have outgrown the need for him. Afterwards they all get dinner, and Kakashi sits across from them and watches them laugh and trade jibes just like they used to with a sense of rightness that he hasn't had in far too long.

But Tsunade doesn't let grass grow under anyone's feet, and Team 7 is sent out on their very first mission not even a few days later. Their third and newest member ( "Not Sasuke's replacement", Naruto says, and inwardly Kakashi agrees until he considers he doesn't have room to talk about being replaced) is someone from Root. Despite Tenzo having a frighteningly similar background as this Sai character they're all introduced to, Kakashi finds him much less trustworthy than Tenzo has ever been - even during that short period where he was out for Kakashi's blood. Ultimately though, it's just not his business anymore. He asks what their mission is and even Naruto is tight-lipped about it, so he simply sees them off at the gate and tries not to let such a terrible emotion as jealousy fester under his skin watching them leave. 

Eight days into the eleven that they're gone in total, Kakashi is called back to the hospital. He leaves his house on time but remembers he should walk instead of chakra running across the rooftops, so he arrives fifteen minutes late. Iruka, Tsunade, and Shizune are waiting in his usual exam room. The occupancy doesn't bode particularly well. 

Iruka has copies of Tsunade's notes, and now plenty of his own, spread across the small table in the corner by the window. Kakashi is no stranger to fūinjutsu, though he'd never call himself an expert in Iruka's presence, but his very neat handwriting might as well be in another language. Whatever it is he's got planned seems complicated and intricate. Especially considering Shizune is helping Tsunade finish chalking an enormous seal formula onto the tile floor. Large scale stabilization seals like this are only used with extremely complex applications and it might as well have a 'please sit here' sign in the middle of it for him. Kakashi rests on the bed and waits somewhat impatiently to be told what he's supposed to do. There's a large calligraphy brush and a pot of ink on the bedside table and not a whole lot else. It seems they've finally veered out of the territory of traditional medicine and are approaching attempts a bit more experimental.

Eventually Iruka piles up his notes and instructs Kakashi to take off his shirt. Everyone in the room has seen his face more than once, but he's not a fan of baring himself to all of them at the same time. He sits cross legged on the bed and Iruka nudges his shoulder until he turns around. 

"So," he says, foregoing any pleasantries. "What we've decided to do is to rewrite part of the main seal that Tsunade-sama has already put in place." He picks up the brush and dips it in the well, and Kakashi suppressed a shudder as the cold ink wets his nape. "At this point I don't think it's going to be possible to entirely resolve your issue. The lightning jutsu you got hit with did a fair amount of damage to the chakra pathways in your brain. You're lucky it's not as bad as it could have been."

"Fantastic news," he deadpans. "I should consider myself fortunate." 

"You should," Iruka says, just as plainly. "The odds of you having lived through being hit with that type of attack at such close range and not immediately dying are miniscule."

"Good thing I decided to bring you back with me," Kakashi decides to say. "Or else this would never get fixed." 

Iruka pinches the back of his arm, and continues without deigning a reply.

"Exactly what are you doing to me, then?" Kakashi asks. Tsunade finishes the last line of the formula on the ground and stands to chime in when Iruka is busy focusing on whatever it is he's writing. 

"In individuals with certain arrhythmias," she says as she dusts off her hands. "One of the best ways to regulate their heart rate is by applying a permanent seal that counteracts any failed attempts at electrical conduction in order to manually force the heart to beat at an intended rhythm. A pacemaker, if you will. Iruka is going to apply something similar directly to your brain, an improved version of what I've already done. With more of that luck of yours, it will function along the same principle. When you start having abnormal electrical activity, the seal should counteract the conduction and therefore halt your symptoms."

"And what happens if it counteracts the wrong thing?" Kakashi asks. 

He turns to catch Iruka's eye over his shoulder but Iruka turns his head with the end of the brush to face forward so he can continue. Tsunade steps up to watch Iruka work and it's not in a shinobi's nature to allow people in such a large blind spot. It starts to make him antsy, having them at his back. 

"It won't," Iruka says. "But it's not going to stop the rest of your symptoms nor is it guaranteed to prevent all of your seizures. This is a bandaid for something that... might not have a cure."

"I've always loved your sunny optimism," Kakashi replies. Iruka steps back and he climbs down off the bed. Tsunade and Shizune give him room as Iruka heads towards the seal inscribed on the floor, and Kakashi trails after him to sit down as instructed. Iruka kneels behind him and puts a hand on the top of his head while Tsunade and Shizune sit on either side of the large formula, in order to help stabilize it while Iruka works. 

"This shouldn't take that long," he says. "But it's probably not going to be pleasant. Just sit still and breathe slowly." 

"Ready when you are," Kakashi quips. Iruka taps his fingers against Kakashi's scalp, and begins. 

'Not pleasant' is a bit of an understatement. It's not necessarily painful, but it's uncomfortable to an overwhelming degree. It feels the way that breaking glass sounds, or like Iruka is reaching down and scraping his nails on a chalkboard directly inside of Kakashi's skull. It definitely hasn't been this bad during the smaller adjustments he's made up until this point. Kakashi instinctively shies away from the sensation like you might yank back your hand after touching something hot. His shoulders hunch and he tenses his fists in his lap as a headache immediately develops. There's a clock on the wall across the room and he tries to count the seconds as a distraction but he can't focus around his own discomfort. Every time Iruka shifts his fingers against Kakashi's scalp it sends a shudder down his spine which he tries to suppress enough to keep himself still.  

Thankfully it doesn't take long. No more than a few minutes later and Iruka's chakra slowly abates until it disappears entirely. The moment the connection is broken Kakashi is left suddenly and extremely wrung out. It's not until a wave of dizziness hits him that he realizes he's been holding his breath and he tries to inhale slowly. The sudden vertigo is killer and he's glad he hasn't eaten much recently or else he might throw it up. 

"How are you feeling?" Iruka asks. Kakashi clears his throat and blinks blearily. 

"... I'll live," he says, but scrunches his eyes against the throb behind his sinuses. Iruka palms his forehead with a much calmer pulse of chakra, slowly diffusing the tension until the headache starts to recede. Iruka helps Kakashi to his feet, and Tsunade approaches with a bit of a frustrated grimace like she's waiting for him to keel over any second. He sits down on the edge of the bed when he's not sure he can remain standing. 

"You're sure you aligned the overlap properly?" She asks. She stares at him like she might be able to see the seal on his head right through his skull. Kakashi doesn't know the particulars of what Iruka did and doesn't understand the question, but Iruka seems to understand her concern, and nods. 

"I took an extra minute to make sure."

"And the pulse redundancy?" 

"It shouldn't be necessary, but it'll work." 

Tsunade puts her hands on her hips, unsatisfied.

"And did you make sure to-?"

"Tsunade-sama," Iruka interrupts. "I applied it exactly like we wrote it. It's not going to cause any harm. If it fails, it simply won't work, and we're back to the drawing board. But it won't hurt him." 

Kakashi supposes he should be reassured by this statement, but he's having a hard time finding reassurance in much of anything these days. Tsunade sighs in acceptance and waves her hand. 

"Alright, fine," she says. "But I don't love that the only measure of success is an absence of further symptoms. It would be best if we can monitor him for a few days-"

"No way," Kakashi chimes in as the two of them speak over him. "I'm not hanging out in the hospital for days on end waiting for nothing to happen if we assume this worked."

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," Iruka says. "It goes without saying that you're still on house arrest until I say otherwise."

"Oh, silly me, I must have missed the ceremony," Kakashi says. "Where Tsunade retired and handed you the hat-" 

"Enough," Tsunade interrupts. "Kakashi, go home and sleep it off. We'll start doing more frequent check-ups until we can determine the efficacy of Iruka's handiwork. If you do have another episode then treat it like normal. The only thing we can do right now is to wait and see." 

Kakashi can't disagree, but he's never liked sitting on his hands. Iruka hands him his shirt and he tugs it on as Tsunade turns to leave now that their work here is done. It feels a little anticlimatic. He sort of expected something to happen, though he's got no idea what in particular he thought would come out of this. It's just a waiting game now, until his next episode happens. Or doesn't, hopefully. He obediently goes home and collapses on the couch when his bedroom seems too far away. Bull lounges on the floor to keep an eye on him overnight, just in case, but Tsunade had been right - by the time he wakes up twelve hours later, he's feeling much better. He eats a small meal and then does what he can of his usual morning workout in the living room before heading back to the hospital. Iruka isn't present, but Tsunade does a full work up for him just to get another baseline. She makes him do some basic chakra control exercises while a Hyuuga medic watches him do so, and then he completes a few other tests which mainly consist of him sitting still while Tsunade hooks him up to a machine to record brainwaves and heartbeats as she watches the printouts with a frown. 

He considers that the relief in having a solution, even one that isn't perfect, should really be better than this. But somehow he's even antsier than he was before. Yesterday he at least knew what to expect. He tries not to get his hopes up too much that this is going to work. Iruka doesn't seem to have confidence in his own ability to fix him. He tries to temper his expectations, but the longer he goes without another episode the higher his hopes rise despite his efforts to keep them subdued. 

A day seizure free turns to four. Naruto comes back from his mission, and he, Kakashi, and Iruka share a meal together for the first time in years. Four days turns to eight, which is the longest amount of time he's gone up to this point without having another episode. It's encouraging, but again, he tries not to let it get to his head. Every time he goes back to the hospital, if Iruka is present Kakashi tells him he's still feeling fine, but Iruka never quite seems convinced. Especially when the chakra pathways around his brain show no further signs of healing on their own, nor have his other non-seizure symptoms changed, just as Iruka promised. Team 7 goes on another, very short mission, and Kakashi later finds out that they met and intercepted Sasuke but were unable to bring him back to the village. He finds he's not surprised by this in the slightest. He also suggests that it's well past time Naruto put his training with Jiraiya to use and develop his own signature jutsu, finally taking advantage of his own chakra nature. Kakashi spends a week supervising as Tenzo helps Naruto work on his newest technique. Sixteen entire days go by with not a hint of a seizure happening at all. It's starting to get very hard not to be convinced that Iruka's seal worked as intended, and he's easily become antsy with inactivity. He longs for the thrill and adrenaline of taking missions again, and he misses working with his team. 

It takes Iruka much longer than him to start displaying any optimism regarding his prognosis. The first week and a half he wore an overly troubled frown every time Kakashi would make an appearance at the hospital to be given a once over. More often now his expression is neutrally hopeful, not daring to put this problem behind them. Kakashi's latest drop-in is at Iruka's apartment because he knew Tsunade was busy all day with the council. Iruka's medicinal touch quickly turns less-than-professional. They haven't slept together in several weeks, not since before Kakashi went back to find what remained of Iruka's squad. He's sorely missed it, and it hasn't escaped his notice that Iruka has been rather short and cold-shouldered with him lately. If Kakashi didn't have the excuse of a brain injury to give him an audience, he wonders whether Iruka wouldn't be avoiding him all together. Not that he blames him for it. Kakashi understands that he's probably a very specific and poignant reminder of what happened. Maybe only second to Iruka's own image in the mirror every time he puts eyes on what remains of his arm. Kakashi can't and won't begrudge the idea that it's hard to be around him, so he'll take what he can get. If that means a quick fuck on the couch before he's sent away again, then so be it. 

"It's been more than twice as long as I've ever gone without an episode," Kakashi tells him. "I think it's safe to say it worked."

It's kind of hard to focus on his argument when Iruka pushes him flat on his back. Kakashi has already efficiently been stripped him down to his briefs, and Iruka tugs his own shirt off over his head one handed, taking down his hair with it. It just barely touches his shoulders now. It still looks good on him. Somehow it makes him look younger, even though these days the frown he wears more often than not ages him quite a bit. To Kakashi's surprise, Iruka's front is no longer marred with the curse seal. Now knowing his capability with fūinjutsu, it's not as unrealistic of a feat as he might have considered it otherwise to have it removed. He wonders when or how Iruka managed to do so and hates that he's not brave enough to ask. Iruka tosses his shirt onto the ground into the growing pile of clothes on the floor. Around his neck rests the silver chain holding his dog tags, with two extra that aren't his. The name is too small to read without a closer look, but Kakashi already knows who they used to belong to. 

"I never took you for an optimist," Iruka says. 

"It's confidence, not faith," Kakashi counters. 

"Give it a few more weeks and I'll be convinced." 

"If I have to sit in the village for any longer when I'm in perfect health-"

"You aren't in perfect health," Iruka reminds him. He sits up straight and Kakashi feels a bit of a spiel coming on. He wishes he hadn't said anything. "The chakra pathways around your brain are still damaged and aren't recovering on their own. You're still having all the other symptoms even if we have reduced the frequency of your seizures."

"Maybe the other symptoms won't go away until they stop for good." 

"Yeah, maybe," Iruka says with a shrug. "But even if you never have another seizure again, and you're still left with permanent cognitive impairment because of the-" 

"Don't call it that," he argues. "You make me sound like an invalid." 

"I don't know what else you want me to call it," Iruka argues back. "You got electrocuted so hard you have brain damage that might never right itself. This isn't a small problem. This isn't a 'if I fix your seizures you're right as rain again' problem."

"I can't do anything about it, Iruka," Kakashi says. Despite his lingering concern, because he doesn't think Iruka is wrong, it's still true. Fretting has never gotten him anywhere and never will. "I'm trying not to stress myself out over it." 

"I just worry," Iruka says with a frown. "I worry that it hasn't gotten better, and I worry about it getting worse." 

"You think it will?"

"I don't know. That's what bothers me so much." 

Kakashi isn't trying to start a whole discussion about it and tries to find a way to bring them back to the present. Namely, to the fact that he's almost entirely undressed and Iruka is sitting in between his legs without so much as touching him. It's starting to drive him a little mad.

"I'm so honored to have your concern," he teases, hoping to goad a response. He squeezes his knees around Iruka's hips. "But if the brain damage doesn't kill me, then I'll be the first shinobi to die of boredom within the safety of the village walls." 

Iruka sighs and rolls his eyes. 

"Oh, stop being such a baby," he chides. He ruts his hips forward, pressing an obvious and stiffening erection against Kakashi's thigh through what's left of their clothes. Kakashi grips the arm of the couch behind his head. "You'll sit here as long as you're told."

"I forgot our esteemed Hokage Iruka-sama is calling my shots these days." 

Iruka leans forward so they're chest to chest, pinning Kakashi down with his weight and mouthing against the side of his throat, grinding against him and pinching his nipple like it might get him to shut up.  

"I know you like it," Iruka says, matter-of-fact. "I see that little gleam in your eyes when I tell you what to do. Have you always had such a convoluted relationship with authority figures?" 

Kakashi is finding it difficult to string together a reply for reasons that have nothing to do with as-yet-definitive brain damage.

"I wouldn't call it that," he says. "You're not actually in charge of me." 

Iruka sits up enough for Kakashi to see him properly, and the sudden and somewhat mischievous look on his face, like he's taken this statement as a direct challenge. It should have been more of a warning when Iruka sneaks a hand under the waist band of his underwear and closes a fist none-too-gently around his cock. Kakashi sucks in a breath and tries not to tense. Iruka grins. 

"Aren't I?"

Kakashi swallows thickly and Iruka lets him go to grind forward again, harder this time. The friction of their clothes is starting to become unbearable. Iruka isn't always in the mood for kissing or being kissed, but right now he's very mouthy. Kakashi feels his heart racing under his ribs as Iruka leans back in, but only gives him a chaste brush of lips as he slowly grinds forward. Kakashi grunts in frustration and cranes his neck enough to catch Iruka's lips against his, and Iruka hums in amusement at Kakashi's obvious impatience with being teased. And right as Iruka takes mercy and puts his tongue in Kakashi's mouth, there's a rapid knock at the front door not even ten feet away. Iruka sits up and glares across the room. 

"For fucks sake," he says. He remains hovering over top of Kakashi's chest, but doesn't push off the couch just yet, watching the door impatiently. Kakashi has to speak around  an embarrassing pant of breath.

"Think they'll leave?" 

Iruka doesn't reply. Then there's a second knock, louder this time. Iruka frowns. 

"It's Sakura," he says. He rolls off the couch and picks up Kakashi's clothes to toss them at his head, tugging on his own shirt and putting it on inside out in his haste. 

"How can you tell?" 

"Wards around the building," Iruka explains simply, and tames his messy hair away from his face. "Don't go far, I think she's just dropping something off for me. This shouldn't take long."

"I can leave if -"

"No," Iruka says abruptly, and shoves him towards the hall. "Just be quiet." 

Kakashi sneaks down to Iruka's room and shuts the door just as he hears Iruka greet Sakura kindly and asks her if everything is alright. He flops down on the bed and tucks his arms behind his head. He hadn't bothered to turn on the lights and the room is mostly dark despite it being the middle of the day. The summer weather is at the point where the humidity is starting to threaten rain, and it's been overcast for the last two days.

Iruka doesn't take too long, as promised. The hum of the air conditioning unit in the small window is loud, and Kakashi can't hear what they're saying but he pointedly doesn't eavesdrop regardless. He can hear the quiet muffle of voices for just a few minutes before the front door closes softly, and Iruka comes back down the hall. Kakashi sits up and fully expects him to pounce now that they're alone again, but he enters the room, shuts the door behind him, and leans against it like it's the only thing keeping him upright. 

"What was that about?" Kakashi asks. Iruka eyes him like he forgot or didn't even notice that Kakashi was present, holding his gaze with a blank look for several tense seconds but saying nothing. He huffs an exhale and sinks down to the ground against the door. 

"Asuma is dead," he says. Kakashi doesn't even make it across the room before Iruka dissolves into sobs.

Chapter Text

It is, of course, somewhat rare that there's a body to bury during a shinobi's funeral. Most of the graves in the cemetery are empty. But Asuma's name is added to the memorial alongside dozens of others, in addition to the headstone created for him. Rather, not really for him in particular, considering that every single marker is exactly the same. There's probably a stockpile of them somewhere in storage, not even sitting still long enough to collect dust before the stone mason is given a call to put another name to marble. Konoha is only a hundred years old. At this rate the graveyard will need to be bigger soon. 

Kakashi pulls out his funeral attire again. It hangs right next to the rest of his other uniforms, because it gets used often enough there's no need to put it into storage. More convenient if it's within reach. The day of the service is bright and humid. The skies finally opened and drenched the village in rain, leaving the ground steaming and the air thick in the heat that quickly followed. Again Kakashi stands on the sidelines, perched on a tree branch in the nearby forest to watch the crowd gather below before the services start. These things always feel very rote. He's lost track of how many funerals he's been to but it's always the same. A handful of loved ones will take the podium to say a few words about the deceased and everyone pretends the people next to them aren't crying and trying to hide it. Certainly no one ever walks away from a funeral feeling better for having attended. It's not an original thought to say that he's tired of going to these, but it's the truth. At this point he's getting down to the single digits for friends still left to bury. 

Iruka shows up with Naruto, both of whom make a beeline for where Kurenai stands in the front of the crowd next to Ino and Choji. Shikamaru is glaringly absent, a reserved sign on an empty chair next to the rest of his team. Iruka pats Choji on the back and nods in reply to something he says quietly. Then he gives Ino and Kurenai a hug, careful of the latter's very pregnant belly. He takes his seat, also in the front row, already swiping at his face. Naruto puts an arm around his shoulder and Iruka hunches forward to rest his head in his hands. Kakashi was never privy to exactly what Iruka and Asuma's relationship was, aside from the fact that Iruka was very close with the Sandaime and thus was friendly with Asuma as well. Considering this fact, and how Konohamaru hangs off arm almost the entire time, or how Iruka is seated at the very front, there's a good chance he was maybe more than just a friend, and was perhaps a part of their small family. He, too, is starting to become an expert at watching his loved ones disappear. 

After the service, Iruka is among the last to leave. He stays and sits next to Kurenai while everyone else filters out of the grounds. Ultimately Ino offers to make sure Kurenai gets home safe, and Iruka finally departs. Kakashi follows as he slowly picks his way through the village, heading in the complete opposite direction of his apartment. Kakashi only deliberates for a few moments before landing next to him in the middle of the street. Iruka doesn't even acknowledge his presence, but he isn't sent away, which he takes as permission to continue trailing after him. His face is red and splotchy from crying, and he's more than a little flushed from the humidity. There's a blank look in his eyes, a dark stillness that Kakashi unfortunately recognizes too well. He has no idea where they're headed, but he's not a fan of the inkling he's starting to get that Iruka is hankering to do something self-destructive in the wake of his grief, and probably shouldn't be left alone at the moment. Kakashi knows exactly how appealing the idea is, and how dangerous it can be to be allowed to cave to it. 

They wind up all the way across the village, to a district so tucked away that Kakashi only knows it exists because when he was in ANBU he'd hop the rooftops on patrols. It's not a nice part of town, and looks as if the budgeting committee entirely forgot any of these buildings even exist. It's adjacent to the red-light district, which makes an unfortunate amount of sense in that regard. But it isn't a sex-den or a dodgy casino they wind up in, and instead Iruka heads to a bar nestled so tightly between two buildings you'd think someone put a door on the mouth of an alleyway and called it an establishment. They go up a flight of stairs and end up in a very decrepit looking taphouse on the second floor. There's absolutely no one present, not even a bartender. But all the lights are on, the ones that aren't broken, and there's a grainy stereo in the corner trying its best to put music into the empty room. There's a handful of tables but not enough chairs, and there's only a single stool at the bar. In the corner there's a set of threadbare couches in an L shape around a low table with a half-finished card game spread across the stained fabric cover. Iruka gestures towards it, and speaks for the first time the entire trip.  

"Sit down," he says, voice rough. Kakashi does as instructed while Iruka helps himself behind the bar and makes two drinks out of a few unmarked bottles lining the shelves. He flops on the couch when he returns, and sets one of the glasses on the table. The other he downs in one take, grimacing and exhaling a shudder at the taste of alcohol, and swaps the empty glass for the full one which he simply holds in his lap like he intends to attempt to savor it this time. Kakashi sighs.  

"Well it's not like you can have alcohol," Iruka says. "You're on enough medication to kill a horse."

Kakashi says nothing, but Iruka takes his silence as a response all the same.  

"Since you followed me here," he continues. "I'm going to get plastered, and you're going to make sure I don't get robbed when I walk home."

"You could have gone to the not-shit part of town and wouldn't have had to worry about it," Kakashi suggests. "I wouldn't have imagined you going to a dive like this." 

Iruka huffs a humorless laugh.

"Think I'm too uptight for such a seedy bar?" 

Kakashi actually has no idea what kind of bar Iruka prefers to go to. This is the first time they've hung out socially on purpose in a long time, if you even want to call it that, without the buffer of their separate friend groups or Naruto present to draw them together while in public. 

"I think I assumed you have better taste," he says. 

Iruka shrugs, but hesitates before he replies.

"...I like this place," he says simply, and takes a sip of his drink. The melting ice cubes clink against the glass. "Genma and I used to hang out here sometimes. It's quiet. No chance of running into anyone I know." He frowns then, like something about the statement makes him unhappy. "Not that I need to care about that anymore. I was only ever avoiding the parents of my students. Gods it was hard to go to pick-up bars without being recognized."

"Why did you stop teaching?" Kakashi decides to ask. He also decides to ignore the second half of that statement. Iruka's frown turns into a scowl. 

"I lost an arm, in case you forgot."

"You're the one who told me that wasn't going to stop you." 

"It didn't," Iruka says. Frustration begins to color his tone. "I just couldn't do it anymore. I can't stand in front of those kids and- and pretend like I don't know what kind of world I'm sending them into." 

He huffs and he downs the rest of his glass to hide the sudden tremor in his hand. Kakashi almost wants to tell him to go easy on the alcohol but isn't stupid enough to try and coddle him, especially right now.

"Do you ever look an infant in the eyes and wonder whether it's going to grow up and die for this place?" He gestures with his empty glass out into the room, and Kakashi can almost hear the disdain in his voice when he says it, disgusted with the village at large. "Because I do. I hug my eight year old kids in the morning and I have to hope they'll outlive me. And when graduation happens and I hand over a headband to yet another class of twelve year olds I think about how they're more likely to be killed on their first mission than they are any missions after it. Cannon fodder for the rest of us who somehow managed to stay alive this long. And when I give out scrolls at the desk to jounin with- with fucking babies standing behind them, little kids still fresh faced and young, their clothes still new, pride and joy in their eyes at the chance to prove they've earned their place. As if being a shinobi is all that matters in the whole world. Not their lives. Not their families. Not the futures they might not get to have or the friends they leave behind or-... or literally anything else." 

Iruka sniffles and sets down his glass, and Kakashi speaks up only when it seems like his rant is over with. He's not sure whether Iruka really wants consolation at the moment, but Kakashi also doesn't want to make him believe he's unheard. 

"...I understand," he says cautiously. It's a sentiment that Kakashi also had to learn for himself, that his own life is worth more than just his potential for its sacrifice in service to his superiors. Ten years ago, if asked, he'd have said he'd happily lay down and die to protect Konoha. And he still would, of course - but not with quite as much enthusiasm. If he's going to sacrifice his life, it's going to be to protect those he loves or to stand in front of harm that might otherwise affect the innocent, and it's going to be for no other reasons. Not knowing how easily replaceable he is, in the eyes of an entire village. It took a long time for him to accept that he's worth more than just his servitude as a shinobi. And it's not a lesson everyone manages to learn. Iruka can try until he's blue in the face to explain to his kids that their lives are still their own, and then see them choose to give up that life in order to follow the Will of Fire, thinking they understand what it means. Kakashi did exactly the same thing for more than fifteen years. No doubt it's hard to watch. It was hard enough to live through. 

Iruka frowns and rests his head against the back of the couch, tipping to the side to rest against Kakashi's shoulder as a few tears slide down his face and land on his shirt. He inhales deep and it shudders in his lungs. 

"I think I hate being a shinobi," he says. He clears his throat and swipes at his face, and Kakashi puts an arm behind his back. "I hate the fact I used to want this. I really used to believe there was something here I could be proud of. Like I was making a difference somehow, that all of this- this pain and death and this loss, that it would be worth it in the end. But I haven't felt that in a long time. The only thing I've had lately is grief."

Kakashi isn't sure how to reply to this. Pride isn't a thing he's ever sought after in his own career, but there's a measure of it regardless, at least in himself, looking back at the twenty plus years he's spent completing missions. He likes to think that his contribution, however individual, has helped maintain the village's peace and prosperity, and there should be pride in that. Iruka, too, should be able to find pride in years he spent rearing the villages' prospective shinobi candidates, preparing them for the life ahead of them. But Kakashi can understand why he wouldn't. Or maybe used to, and can't anymore - can no longer take pride in preparing the village's cannon fodder, as he called it. A harsh but not-inapt description . And he definitely understands Iruka's grief. It's the only thing Kakashi had for a very long portion of his life as well. He still has it, and it hasn't gotten any smaller with time, despite what people say. But he likes to think he's grown around it and gotten better at carrying it. Or maybe he's simply gotten used to its weight, after bearing it for so long.

In the end he can't seem to find anything he considers might be helpful to contribute, and decides that no response at all is better than a failed attempt at condolence. Iruka gets up and takes the entire bottle from behind the counter, dropping far too many coins into the money box before he sinks back down on the couch, and drinks in the undisturbed silence. 

By the time they leave the bar Iruka can barely walk a straight line let alone stand, nor has he stopped crying as Kakashi hauls him back to his apartment across town. Iruka is clingy when drunk and hangs off his arm while they walk, not letting go even when the front door shuts behind them and Kakashi helps him take off his shoes and clothes and deposits him in his bed. He knows Iruka wouldn't appreciate the pity or the fawning, but Kakashi feels so achingly bad for him at the moment, so he climbs in after him to lie atop the blankets. The moment that Kakashi draws him close to his chest, Iruka clutches at his shirt and breaks down into sobs. 

"I d-don't want to do this any- anymore," he says. His words are slurred horribly and he stutters on every gasped inhale as he speaks. Kakashi holds him tightly and lets him get it out. "I'm s-so sad, Kakashi, I- I'm so- so sad all the t-time. Is something w-wrong with me?" 

Kakashi feels his lungs clench around his heart to hear Iruka ask such a thing, as if he doesn't have every justifiable reason to be upset. Knowing Iruka is so miserable and being able to do almost nothing about it hurts worse than anything else. 

"Nothing's wrong with you," Kakashi tells him. "I'd take it from you if I could."

"Why would- why w-would you do that?"

Kakashi carefully brushes Iruka's messy hair out of his eyes and tucks it behind his ears, a gesture that Iruka might never allow it outside of a moment like this. Nor might he allow what Kakashi chooses to say in response. But Iruka is definitely not going to remember any of this when he sobers up, and if that's maybe the only reason Kakashi bares his heart so completely, then so be it. At least once in his life, he needs to have said this out loud. 

"Because I love you, Iruka. I'd do anything for you." 

Iruka presses his face against Kakashi's chest, and if he has any sort of response to this, he doesn't manage to get it out around his tears. It's not long before he cries himself to sleep. It's the middle of the afternoon, but with how much alcohol he just consumed he won't likely wake until sunset. And knowing that he'll want to finish the day with at least a small amount of his dignity - despite the fact that Kakashi would never in a thousand years think less of him for this - Kakashi allows himself a few hours to lie in the stillness of the room and listen to Iruka mumble quietly in his sleep, and then he leaves. 

Instead of going home, he goes on a bit of a hunt. Shikamaru doesn't make himself easy to find, but eventually Kakashi spots him lying on his favorite grassy knoll by the river bank, one leg crossed over the other as he watches the clouds move across the haze-white of the humid sky. He's also still wearing his funeral attire, but not once did he show up for the service. Kakashi isn't judging. Far be it for him to criticize how people choose to grieve. He doesn't speak as he sits down, and similar to Iruka, his presence isn't acknowledged nor is he turned away, which he takes as permission to remain. Wordlessly Shimakaru pulls out a box of cigarettes and lets him have one, lighting it for him when Kakashi accepts the offer. There's the smallest of breezes which helps whisk away the smoke. This close to the village there's a bit of noise as people amble along the streets adjacent to the river. Kakashi watches the thin crowd of commuters while Shikamaru keeps his eyes trained on the sky above them. It's not until his cigarette gets down to the butt and he taps another out of the pack that Kakashi decides to say something. 

"I've got little room to talk about unhealthy vices, but a kid your age should really take it easy on these," he says. Shikamaru rolls his eyes. 

"'Kid'," he repeats. "Aren't you still in your twenties?" 

"You're still a teenager," Kakashi counters. He's twenty-nine, and doesn't know how he feels being reminded of it. Thirty isn't an age he thought he'd ever see. "What are you, seventeen?" 

"Sixteen," Shikamaru corrects. "'And going on sixty', as my mother would say. Would that be old enough for a second smoke?" 

"...alright, touché." 

"How've you been, anyway?" Shikamaru asks suddenly. "Haven't seen you much. Has Tsunade-sama managed to figure out what's wrong with you?"

Kakashi sighs. "Not exactly," he says. "We'll see. Between her and Iruka I'm sure they'll eventually iron things out." 

"Hmm. Shame you're not in the field anymore." Kakashi has nothing to say to this. He doesn't disagree. "Know what you'll do if they don't?"

"I haven't thought about it," he says. Shikamaru nods, like he expected the answer, and they both fall silent. Kakashi finishes his cigarette and leans back to watch the clouds overhead. 

"You're taking things rather well," he says eventually. He'll admit to some concern with how put together Shikamaru seems at the moment, knowing that there's no way he isn't hiding how he's really feeling about Asuma's death. Grief looks different on different people. Kakashi just helped Iruka drink himself into a stupor. 

"I'm thinking," Shikamaru says simply.

"Careful doing too much of that," Kakashi warns. He knows exactly what Shikamaru is thinking, and knows it's not a good idea. Revenge is definitely tempting to someone like him, at this point. 

"You know me," Shikamaru says simply. "Aren't I always careful?"

Kakashi lets the question be answered only by silence. Shikamaru doesn't seem to be in a great mood to talk, at least not about anything of significance. Kakashi leaves shortly after, letting him get back to his cloud watching and his thinking on his own. He goes back to his apartment feeling particularly unsettled by the whole day. He finds Naruto lounging on his couch when he gets home, flipping through one of his many Icha-Icha novels. 

"Hey, those aren't for kids," he says as he toes off his sandals. Naruto lowers the book enough so Kakashi can see him rolling his eyes. 

"I'm not a kid," he says. "And y'know I've already read all of these? Pervy-sage always had copies with him. They're not even that good." 

Naruto is taking up the entire couch, so Kakashi flops down on the floor instead.  

"Didn't know you ever learned to read." 

Naruto slaps the book closed and drops it off the edge of the couch where it lands corner-first between Kakashi's ribs. 

"Have you seen Iruka-nii anywhere?" He asks, otherwise ignoring the tease. Kakashi sets the book on the kotatsu and tries not to sigh. 

"He's at home," he says. "I wouldn't bother him right now." 

Naruto sighs too but he doesn't try to hide it.

"I didn't know he was super close with Asuma-sensei," he says. "But I think they were kinda like brothers. A little. Like he and I are, or like Konohamaru and me." 

"I didn't know either," Kakashi admits, a fact he's not proud of. "But he's always been close with Hiruzen. It makes sense." 

"I can't believe Kurenai-san is gonna have a baby," Naruto says. "I hadn't seen her since I came back, not until last week. It's-... man, it's so sad that it'll grow up without a dad. That's... it really sucks." 

Kakashi couldn't have put it better himself. 

"Yeah," he says. "It does." 

"What do you think Team 10 will do now? Shikamaru says they aren't getting reassigned. I dunno how he knows that. I think he means he's not gonna let it happen." 

"I didn't even know Tenzo was taking my place, so I've no idea what will happen to Team 10," Kakashi says somewhat bitterly. "But they're all chuunin now. They don't necessarily need to stay as a squad. Assigning another jounin to them might not be the best use of personnel." 

Naruto sits up and rests his head in his chin to frown at where Kakashi lies on the floor. 

"Yamato-taichou didn't take your place," he corrects. "He's just filling in for you. And Tsunade-sama can't just break up Team 10 like that. She let Team 7 stay together, didn't she? I mean... most of it." 

"You're still a genin, in case you forgot," Kakashi points out. Naruto scowls. "You don't have much choice but to be on a team. And Tenzo's the best fit as your captain, considering his ability to control the nine-tails. Which you still can't do." 

Naruto lays back down and pillows his head in his arms with a humph. 

"You'd know a thing or two about needing special babysitting these days," he says. Kakashi can't even argue with that. He's not wrong. 

"That why you've decided to come bother me?"

"No," Naruto says after a pause, and his somewhat playful tone goes a bit more serious. "I just, y'know. Thought I'd... swing by."

Kakashi can appreciate the effort, but that doesn't mean he knows how to properly articulate his gratitude. Naruto doesn't say anything further, so Kakashi rests his hands on his stomach and watches the slow blades of the fan spin on the ceiling until he starts to get dizzy. He doesn't mean to fall asleep, but the day is so listless and dreary, and his perpetual fatigue makes it easy to do. He wakes up with a bit of a stiff neck from lying on the ground, and a sheen of sweat on his face from the heat of the room. Naruto apparently got bored while Kakashi slept, because he dog-eared every single page in the poor Icha-Icha book before leaving. Kakashi spends a minute undoing Naruto's effort before he gives up and finally goes to bed before the sun's even properly set. 

He chooses not to bother Iruka again for now, and as such doesn't see him at all for three more days. Not until early one morning just after sunrise when he's out in the training field with Tenzo, ostensibly helping Naruto work on his rasen-shuriken, which he's very close to completing. Sakura shows up, which she's done a few times to bring lunch on her break from the hospital or to check up on Naruto's progress - but this time she's dressed in her flak vest instead of a pair of scrubs, and instead of food, she brings news. 

"Team 10 is going after the two Akatsuki that killed Asuma," she says. Naruto's surprise quickly morphs into an expression of determined approval. Kakashi, though, is more concerned than anything else. 

"Tsunade is letting them go?" 

"I have a feeling they were going to leave with or without her say-so," Sakura says. 

"Surely not alone," Tenzo says. "With just the three of them they'll get themselves killed." 

"They have a squad leader," Sakura says. "Iruka volunteered." 

"Iruka?" Kakashi asks in alarm. "And she's letting him?" 

"She only let them go at all because she's sending back-up," Sakura adds, oblivious to Kakashi's fretful concern, and then turns to Naruto. "Which is why I'm here. Team 7 has been assigned to help. They're leaving in a few minutes, we should go soon so we can all head out together." 

"Hell yeah we can help," Naruto says, smacking a fist into his open hand. "Where's Sai? We can leave right now, I'm ready." 

But Kakashi's already heard enough. He ignores Naruto's shout of surprise when he leaps into the trees and heads for the western gate, where he hopes Team 10 is still waiting. In the waxing light of the morning, he spots four individuals standing near the check-in desk, dressed for combat and ready to head out. Iruka sees him coming before Kakashi even has time to consider what he's attempting to do, short of talking Iruka out of going. He touches down in the street in front of him, and Iruka frowns. 

"You shouldn't be using chakra so flippantly-" he starts to chide, fussing over Kakashi's rush to jump across the rooftops. Kakashi ignores him. 

"Tsunade sanctioned this mission?" He asks. Shikamaru eyes him questioningly but neither he nor the rest of his team interrupt Kakashi's sudden appearance. 

"Yes?" Iruka says in question. "Sakura just went to go get Team 7 as our backup."

"Iruka..." Kakashi has no idea how to say that this seems like a phenomenally terrible mistake without making the statement insulting. So he doesn't waste time on the attempt. "I don't think this is the best idea." 

"Good thing this isn't your mission then, isn't it?" 

Kakashi tries very hard not to sigh. Iruka turns and gives Shikamaru a brief look, and then he walks a few dozen paces in the opposite direction to give them a chance to speak privately. Kakashi trails closely after him. 

"She stopped them at the gate when they were planning to leave without permission," Iruka says. "The only reason she's allowing them to go at all is because I volunteered, and because we're bringing back-up." 

"You're still going into this with too many disadvantages," Kakashi says. Iruka's slight and lingering frown turns into a proper scowl of anger, and he scoffs.

"Oh please, by all means," he says. "I'd love to hear what you think they are."

Kakashi suddenly feels like he is treading on very thin ice. 

"These aren't your average run-of-the-mill nukenin you're going after," he says. "And just think for a second. All four of you are rushing into this for the wrong reasons-"

"It's wrong to want to hold Asuma's killers accountable?" 

"You'll be handing your deaths to the enemies to underestimate them in such a-"  

"You think I'm not aware of who we're up against?" Iruka interrupts. "Asuma is dead because of these Akatsuki, the same people who went after Naruto before and who still threaten his life. And you have the gall to talk to me as  if I'm not taking this seriously enough? I'm not blind in the face of revenge, and neither are the rest of us." 

"Don't act like you don't know exactly why I'm concerned," Kakashi tries to say, but again Iruka cuts him off. 

"Why don't you stop fucking around and tell me you don't think I can handle this? Did you forget we're the same rank?"

Iruka is maddeningly frustrating when he's made up his mind about something. It's a trait that Kakashi respects almost as often as he finds infuriating. He knows the next words out of his mouth are crossing a line, if he hasn't already. He hopes he's not about to make another chuunin-exams level mistake again.

"You aren't stupid enough not to understand that there's a difference between someone who's been a jounin for more than a decade, and someone who's been a jounin for six weeks, who has one arm and a tenth of the field experience of almost anyone else his rank."

He knows he's being harsh but he doesn't know how else to put this. Iruka might be a good shinobi, a fact that Kakashi has admitted to more than once, he might have earned his title and he might be able to hold his own in a fight - but Kakashi is still so vastly uncomfortable with the idea of him walking headlong into an engagement driven almost entirely by a desire for vengeance in the wake of his enormous grief, against enemies that took out someone as skilled and capable as Asuma, and pretending he doesn't understand why Kakashi might not agree with this decision. Iruka's face begins to turn red in his anger, and he grits his teeth as if to bite back the urge to yell when he replies.

"You didn't even fucking know what I specialized in until a month ago," he says. "You didn't know I was getting promoted until it happened. Did you know last year I was recommended for ANBU and I turned them down because I didn't want to stop teaching yet? Did you know that Tsunade has been asking me to go for jounin since she took over? Or how about the fact that when you redid the annual ranking evaluation last year, I scored better than you in almost every category when I passed six weeks ago? Did you know that? Did you know any of that? And you really think you're fit to judge me?"  

Kakashi comes up rather short at this. It wouldn't be the first time he's had to face the fact that he actually knows very little about Iruka these days, whether that's his skillset, his level of ability, what missions he's taking, what he does in his spare time, or, even until recently, what bars he likes. It's a fact he's hated as long as he's known that it's true, and in honesty the reason for his fear isn't because he knows that Iruka can't handle this - because he doesn't know that - but in fact it's because he doesn't know. And it scares him, to lack the confidence that Iruka will come back safely. To watch Iruka leave the village and not have the certainty of belief that he'll survive, and that's no fault of Iruka's at all. It's only his own. But these enemies killed Asuma, and Kakashi is terrified of Iruka facing the same threat. And if asked he would easily admit to a certain amount of bias regarding his consideration for Iruka's safety on this mission. 

"It doesn't matter. Either I'm either going in your stead," he says. "Or I'm going with you." 

"You cannot leave the village," Iruka argues.

"Your seal works-"

"It hasn't been long enough to know that for sure, and your other symptoms are-" 

"You have all this faith in your ability to succeed on this mission and no faith in your own ability to have fixed me?" Kakashi asks. His own frustration is starting to steadily rise as Iruka continues to argue. "I'm not going to sit here while you run off to your death because there's a small chance that I might have another episode in the relatively short window of combat you're about to deal with."

Iruka takes an abrupt step forward into his space. 

"That's exactly what you're going to do," he says, too calm. Kakashi's had enough of this ridiculous posturing. 

"Stop me, then," he says, just as calm. "Because I'm going with you whether you like it or not." 

He didn't actually expect Iruka to do anything in response to his obvious goading. So he's entirely blindsided by the action, which is the only reason he doesn't immediately fight it when Iruka grabs him by the wrist and puts enough chakra into his grip to force Kakashi to walk the three steps backwards between him and the bench on the side of the road, and push him down into it. Iruka doesn't let go, squeezing hard enough to bruise, and towers over him to glare him down with a cold and barely contained fury.  

"You," he seethes. "Are not going anywhere. You're going to stay in the village where there's not even an infinitesimal chance that you might be killed in the middle of combat because you stupidly want to test something that I don't even have full confidence in for myself. That is a fact, and it's not changing."

His tone is clipped and measured, forcefully level to stop himself from shouting. Kakashi is entirely taken aback. In all the years he's ever known him, been yelled at by him or been manhandled by him, Iruka has never spoken or acted in true rage quite like this. Team 7 timely catches up right in the middle of Iruka's rant, and in obvious concern, Naruto tries to interrupt what is clearly an argument. Tenzo puts a hand on his shoulder to hold him back while Kakashi gathers his bearings. 

"The risk you're taking is far larger than one I would take by going with you," he says, once he's slightly gotten over his surprise. He doesn't pull his hand away, he doesn't even try, and Iruka's fingers still squeeze so hard he can almost feel his bones grinding under his skin. "Why are you so adamant that I-" 

"Because I need you to be safe!" 

Iruka's rising fury is visible before it even breaks the surface. His face pulls taut into a scowl, brow drawn in the type of glare that Kakashi knows means he's taken something too far and the conversation is now over. Iruka has quickly and entirely forgone any intentions of keeping his voice calm. He shouts his reply, jostling Kakashi's arm to get him to be silent.  

"Because I'll actually go insane if I have to be at your funeral next, okay?" He says. Tears well in his eyes and spill down his cheeks as he continues, and Kakashi can do nothing but sit still and listen. "Is that what you want me to say? Do you want me to tell you I can't stomach the idea that you trust your life in my hands more than I trust myself? Or that you'd take such a huge risk just to help me, again? Or do you want me to tell you about how convinced I am that you're going to find a way to get killed out from under me just like everyone else I've ever lost? Or what about how I hate that I keep imagining what it will be like to watch them put your name on a fucking piece of marble? Or maybe how, more than anything, I need to know that the next time I lay eyes on someone I love, they won't be a goddamn corpse! Do you understand me!?"

Kakashi understands perfectly. He doesn't actually think he's understood anyone better than he understands Iruka right this moment. And he wants to scream right back in his face. He wants to say, Don't you see that the reason you want me to stay is the same reason I need to go with you? To make sure I don't lose you next? To show you that I'd do anything to keep you safe? Can't you see that I'll lose myself without you? Can't you see that I love you so much that it burns, that I've loved you like this from the very beginning?

But this is not the time to have an argument he doesn't even disagree with. Kakashi has had every one of those exact same fears, and in Iruka's shoes, he would feel the exact same way. 

So, "I understand," he says.  

Iruka is breathing hard through his open mouth and tears land on the front of his vest as he silently cries. He finally lets go of the crushing grip around Kakashi's wrist and takes a step back. The others stand in the distance and have migrated closer to the gate, politely but awkwardly giving them space to hash this out. Iruka takes a deep and steadying inhale before he's able to continue.

"Okay," he says. His volume is back to normal, his tone still harsh but quieter than before. "Then wait for me here."

"I will," Kakashi agrees.

Iruka gives a short solemn nod and retreats by another step, and Kakashi really can't bear to let this be the note that this entire thing is left on as Iruka walks away. So he stands and pulls down his mask as he closes the two steps between them, and he puts both hands on Iruka's face to tug him forward for a proper goodbye. For the first time ever they share a kind of embrace they've never had before, one that isn't given while in the heat of an intimate moment, one that's slower and far more tender than anything Kakashi has ever had with anyone else. Where he can taste salty tears on the corners of Iruka's mouth, and can feel a quickening pulse in his fingers where his hands rest on Iruka's jaw and the sides of his neck. When they both pull away Iruka's lips tremble until he thins them into a line to make it stop, but neither of them go far, close enough to breathe the same air, so close that Kakashi can see his own reflection in the sheen that coats Iruka's eyes which he blinks away as he speaks. 

"I'm sorry," he says. "I love you."

"Don't be sorry for that," Kakashi tells him. "Just come back to me in one piece."  

Iruka nods and Kakashi kisses him again, so deeply and for so long that his lungs ache when he can no longer breathe, until Iruka is the one to put an inch of space between them only to tug him into a brief but crushing hug before reluctantly letting him go. Iruka dries his face with his sleeve and holds Kakashi's gaze for several tense moments, and Kakashi tries to let this moment impress upon him like he would if he could open his sharingan and permanently engrave the last thirty seconds right onto his brain, like the seal that now lives under his skin. But Iruka finds his resolve much quicker than Kakashi does, and before long, he turns to join the others. Then he disappears under the trees without a backwards glance, and he takes a small piece of Kakashi's heart with him when he goes. 

Chapter Text

For the entire time Iruka is gone, Kakashi has a pervasive sense of anxiety so bad that he has to talk himself out of going to the hospital. He's almost convinced he's going to have another seizure again, despite now being nineteen full days without one. He doesn't go, in the end, because he's sure it's just his paranoia making him fear the worst. Iruka is plenty skilled and he's with seven other skilled shinobi, including Naruto, who at this point is better in a fight than Kakashi is, and Tenzo, whom Kakashi would trust hands down with his own life. So he tries to tell himself that Iruka will be fine. But he does summon Pakkun that evening to keep an eye on him, when more than twelve hours go by and he still feels like his heart won't stop clawing its way out of his throat. His stress headache slowly develops into a migraine over the course of the day and it's not helping his mood in the slightest. 

Pakkun asks if he's feeling alright and Kakashi doesn't even know how to answer. He's still in disbelief that Iruka has so blatantly admitted that he shares the same sentiment that Kakashi has always had about him. Love, he said, like he didn't even have to think about what to call it. Kakashi almost can't believe that after more than five long years of what he's been reluctant to call friendship, Iruka has finally admitted that it's much more than that, a thing which has never been simple between them but is now more complicated than ever. And he's nervous, because after those five years he's really not sure he's going to know what to do with himself in Iruka's presence once he returns, but he's ready to finally see where it leads now that he can put forth the effort.

When he lies in bed that night, though the attempt to sleep seems futile, it takes a long time for him to calm down enough to keep his eyes closed. He spends an hour worrying about Iruka's safety - but by now they've probably already dealt with the Akatsuki, if everything went smoothly, and have bunked down to rest before making the return trip to the village tomorrow morning. Then he spends another hour figuring out what he's going to say to Iruka when he gets back, how to word what he knows he needs to get across, and wonders if it would seem overly desperate to go and wait for him at the gates. 

But by the following morning, when the anxiety has not relented in the slightest, and the migraine is so horrible that his teeth hurt every time he breathes, Kakashi decides to give up and find Tsunade. He rolls out of bed, fighting the ache behind his eyes, and he makes it halfway across the village before his vision starts to blur. He pauses in the middle of the street, wondering if this is a new and terrible symptom of his headaches he's going to have to deal with. But ten seconds goes by and it doesn't relent. Then twenty. Then his heart starts to race, fluttering against his ribs like he's running full tilt through the trees.  He leans against the face of a nearby building and takes a few deep breaths but it only gets worse. And against his previous confidence, he feels the familiar pins and needles begin to prick at his arms and legs. 

"No, no no no, not again." 

He knows with sudden and dreadful certainty that he's about to suffer another episode, maybe the worst one so far if the enormous precursors are any warning. He dares to push enough chakra into his legs to propel him to Tsunade's office, skipping the hospital all together. One of her ANBU stands guard outside the door and he's barely twenty feet away from them when he pauses at the opposite end of the hall. The moment he stops pushing the extra chakra through his system it seems to take all of his strength from him as it fades away. He's forced to put a bracing hand on the wooden paneling when his vertigo can no longer tell up from down. The ringing in his ears grows to a suddenly cacophonous level and his vision blacks around the edges as his heart beats so fast he thinks he might throw up. Tsunade's office might as well be a mile away. Kakashi can barely hear the ANBU speak at all as they approach and reach out to help.

Kakashi tries to reply and it chokes on its way out. He's barely getting around to considering the idea of lying down before the decision to do so is taken away from him. The last thing he sees is the thick swirls of a painted mask rushing towards him, and he doesnt even feel it when he hits the ground. 

Later, though he couldn't say how long he was unconscious, he wakes. 

He's entirely alone, not another soul in sight. His headache is gone and his vision is perfectly clear. He's no longer standing in the middle of the street, or the brown hallway of the Hokage tower, nor is he lying in a hospital bed or back at his own apartment. He's not anywhere, as far as he can tell. A black and empty nothingness stretches out in front of him in all directions. And a looming sense of dread tells him he knows exactly where he is. 

"Well, look who the cat dragged in."

A sudden voice rings out into the silence, only a few feet away despite the fact Kakashi is sure he was entirely alone. He turns around and finds himself standing at the mouth of a wide and nondescript balcony. The glass door is propped open with a potted house plant as if to tempt in a breeze that doesn't exist, but which nevertheless blows away the smoke as a familiar silhouette stands over the railing with a cigarette between two fingers. Kakashi steps up next to him and is met with a bit of a smirk.

"Didn't think I'd see you again so soon," Genma says around a drag of his cigarette. The tiny glow of the burning embers is the only obvious source of light, and it illuminates his face and hands in dull orange. The trail of smoke in his wake has no smell, and quickly dissipates until it's gone. Kakashi is more than a little lost for words. 

"...is this really happening?" 

"Already happened, babe," Genma teases. "This is as real as it gets."

"I don't-... I don't even remember it." 

"Neither do I," Genma says. He taps his ashes onto the ground, though they disappear before they fall more than a few feet. "I think it would suck if you did. Wouldn't want that to be the last thing I had." 

"No... I guess not." 

The last thing Kakashi remembers is lying awake, worrying himself sick about Iruka's safety. Everything after that might as well not have happened. Kakashi couldn't say whether he even woke up the next morning, and the irony that he might have died in his own bed isn't lost on him in the slightest. Genma hums and looks over the railing, into the darkness surrounding them. 

"Village still the same?" He asks. Kakashi shakes himself out of his thoughts. 

"Mostly," he says. "Feels like it never changes." 

"Felt," Genma corrects helpfully. But then his playful smile falls away. "How's, um... how's Iruka been?" 

There's an obvious reluctance in his tone, like he doesn't want to ask, or is scared of the answer. Kakashi tries to be honest, but not cruelly so. He's no less afraid of the truth than Genma might be. 

"Losing you was... it's been hard on him," he says. "But he's stronger than he gives himself credit for." 

He has to be, right now. Even if Kakashi would be a bit of a hypocrite, to expect, to hope that Iruka can pick himself up and carry on, after this. He knows for a fact that he himself could not. 

"...yeah," Genma says after a considerable pause. "I don't even regret being dead as much as I hate hurting him."

Kakashi understands this more than he wishes he did. 

"I went back for you," he decides to say. "I gave him your things. I like to think it helped, at least some. He wears your tags."

What Kakashi doesn't say is that the gesture helped him as well. That he didn't find closure until he finally held Genma's headband in his hands. He doesn't say he regrets waiting so long to make the decision to go back and look. He doesn't say that if he had to pick between the two of them to give back to Iruka right now it wouldn't be himself. Genma keeps his expression neutrally reserved at Kakashi's explanation, and Kakashi can't decide whether he shouldn't have said anything at all, not until Genma exhales a weary sigh. 

"Thank you," he says. "I appreciate that." 

Both of them let the ensuing quiet grow until Genma finishes his cigarette, stubs out the butt on the bottom of his heel, and tucks it into his pocket. 

"Did you at least get a chance to fess up before you kicked the bucket?" 

"Fess up?" Kakashi asks.

"To Iruka." 

"Oh... yes. I told him." 

"Not an enthusiastic response." 

"I had very little time to do anything about it," Kakashi says with a sigh. "But he knows. We... talked." 

"Take it from me," Genma says. "Better too late than not at all, for stuff like that." 

Kakashi exhales a weary sigh. He's not sure whether he agrees, to be honest. Genma gives him a consolatory pat on the back.

"You ready to go?"

"No," Kakashi says. "Not yet. I promised I'd wait." 

Genma nods in understanding. From behind his ear he untucks another cigarette and puts it in the front pocket of Kakashi's vest, clapping his arm in farewell. 

"One for the road," he says. Kakashi turns to watch him leave and can't bear to let him go so easily. 

"Genma," he says. Genma pauses and looks over his shoulder impatiently, like he's in a big hurry to be somewhere after this. "I'm sorry." 

"You're sorry?" Genma asks incredulously. "What the hell for?" 

"I-... I don't know," Kakashi says. But he does. He's sorry for a lot of things he never figured out how to put into words. He doesn't know how to say it. "Everything."

"Everything," Genma repeats, only a touch of mockery in his tone. He turns around and crosses his arms. "You won't have to apologize ever again, saying sorry for 'everything'. You know you never did wrong by me." 

"I never did right, either." 

Genma shrugs and throws up his hands. 

"Says who? You? I'd think I would be the judge of that." He turns to leave, like they're just having a casual chat after dinner and he's going back home for the night. "Don't pity yourself so hard, yeah? You did good, Kakashi. You did exactly as much as you should have." 

And he doesn't even give Kakashi a moment to come up with a reply to this. He steps through the glass doors and shuts them without a backwards glance. The balcony disappears once he's gone, like it was never even there to begin with. 

With little else to do, Kakashi walks. He knows he'll recognize what he's looking for soon enough. He keeps going until he arrives at a bench just like the ones on the side of the streets back in the village next to the gates. A light flips on overhead as he sits down, flushing the small area around him and his solitary bench with the warm but washed out tone of the dim fluorescents. He does the only thing he knows he can do right now, and he waits. 

He's not at all surprised when eventually, a gentle hand touches his shoulder as someone sits down next to him. And he turns to find a welcome sight for such sore eyes as his. 

"Hello, Kakashi," Iruka says. 

Kakashi feels the air still in his lungs. Iruka is older now, older than he would have expected. There's a few grays in his hair and he wears glasses when he didn't before. There are wrinkles around his face too, some from the habitual scowl that Kakashi is so used to seeing, but others, the newer and deeper ones, those can only be from years and years of laughter. Iruka chuckles softly at Kakashi's somewhat dumbfounded silence and a smile touches his eyes and scrunches his brow. Kakashi doesn't think he's ever seen anything or anyone more beautiful. 

"Look at you..." he says, in awe of the sight in front of him. He thinks he could sit and stare for the rest of whatever eternity still awaits him. "You look good, Iruka."

"Is it weird to say that I feel good?" Iruka asks, a bit wistfully. And then he inhales deep, like he'd forgotten how to do it until now. "I am so glad to finally see you again."

"I didn't think it would be this soon."   

"Soon, huh?" Iruka asks. "It's been far too long. Let me look at you." 

Kakashi obligingly tugs down his mask and combs a hand through his messy hair, so Iruka can see his face. It's not until this moment he realizes he's been keeping his left eye closed purely out of habit - though he supposes it no longer matters - and he opens it, so that not one of his features are obscured in the slightest. For him it feels like only moments have gone by, somehow. That it was just yesterday he saw Iruka last - relatively speaking, though relative to what he isn't sure. But for Iruka that time must have been far, far longer. He takes a moment and just... stares, his eyes roving across Kakashi's face like he's drinking in a sight he simply can't get enough of. 

Kakashi too takes in Iruka's appearance. Everything about him is just a little different than it was before, but it's all still exactly him. Yet another version of him that Kakashi never had the privilege to see, or to ever have the chance to know. He looks at the smile-lines on Iruka's face, the graying hair tied low behind his head, longer now than it was before, so long that the dense braid reaches down and touches his back. He looks at the unfamiliar uniform Iruka wears, or the way he now holds himself while he sits, at the color of his complexion, like he's seen too much of the sun the last few years, and at the freckles that have blossomed across his cheeks and between his eyes to decorate the scar that bisects his face. At the silver chain just barely visible beneath the collar of his shirt, where he undoubtedly still wears two sets of tags, maybe more, resting close to his heart. Kakashi looks at the calluses and the faded scars alike on his fingers, which speak to a lifetime of labor, of holding weapons and tools. But they're softened some in his age, as if that type of work has been behind him for a while. 

And then he sees the ring. A delicate golden band worn around the fourth finger of his right hand, of course, instead of the left. Kakashi swallows around the sudden and constricting breath lodged in his throat. 

"It... it seems like you had a good long life," he says. "Did you, I hope?"

"I did," Iruka says. His eyes track to where Kakashi's own now rests, and he flips his hand to bare his palm so that he can run his thumb across the smooth metal. "It took me... a very long time. Eventually though, yes. It was good." Then he lifts his gaze and he finds Kakashi's eyes on his face, catching his stare and holding onto it. "But I missed you, Kakashi. I missed you... every single day."

"... I'm so sorry," Kakashi says. "I don't even know how to begin to apologize. But I'm sorry for the way things happened. The last thing I ever wanted to do was make you unhappy."

"I know, it's okay," Iruka says patiently. "You never did."

"Not even once?" Kakashi teases. "I seem to remember spending a lot of time getting on your nerves on purpose."  

"No one could manage the feat quite like you could," Iruka teases back. "And I never said you didn't make me angry sometimes. But you never made me unhappy."

Kakashi stifles a guilty smile at the thought. Even now he thinks fondly of those days at the desk, arguing over nothing at all. There's a slightly awkward pause as both of them figure out how to continue. He cautiously reaches between them and rests a finger atop the ring on Iruka's hand. 

"And did they make you happy?" 

A small smile touches his eyes when he answers. 

"Yes," he says fondly. "Very much so. More than I thought I'd find."

"I'm glad to hear that," he says. And it's not in the least untrue. But it hurts. Iruka doesn't offer a name, and Kakashi isn't sure he has the courage to ask, or to be told. It doesn't matter, it shouldn't matter who it is, or was. It matters that there is a light in Iruka's eyes and a smile on his face when he speaks of them. 

"Kakashi," Iruka says, pointedly catching his attention as if reading his mind. "You know I loved you, right? Not one day went by that I didn't regret not doing it properly for you." 

"I'm sure I didn't make it easy," Kakashi decides to say. "Loving me was probably a lot of work." 

"Oh, hon, I think if anyone should be saying that, it's me," Iruka says. "But you were right. Either way."

"Was I?" Kakashi asks. "What about?"

"That... that the effort of love is worth it," Iruka says. And he blinks away the sudden film of tears gathering in his eyes. "Even if it hurts."

"Sounds pretty wise of me. You sure I said that?"

"You had your moments," Iruka says. "But you were right, and I should have listened. I spent so long not letting myself try with you that I... I wound up wasting what was right in front of me the whole time. It took me a long time to understand what you meant. And I tried so hard to live by your words. I was- I was sure to never make the same mistake again. But knowing I learned my lesson too late, and- and how badly I failed you, I-" 

"You didn't," Kakashi interrupts. "Iruka, I might have wanted plenty, but I never expected anything from you. I knew exactly how you felt, and what you were afraid of. I could never hold that against you, not when I understand you so well. At the end of the day I counted myself lucky just to know you, even a little. That's... I won't say that's all I ever wanted, because it isn't. But it's all I ever hoped for."  

Iruka shakes his head slowly, pressing his lips into a thin line. He blinks hard and the tears welling in his eyes catch on his lashes, and slide down his face to wet the crease of his lips. 

"But you were worth so much more than that," he says. He speaks quietly, his voice strained down to a whisper in an attempt to stop himself from crying. "I'm so sorry I made you settle for- for scraps of what I could have given you if I'd stopped being so afraid of myself before it- before it was too late to try. I was such a ridiculous coward, and you deserved better from me. You were always worth every ounce of my effort. I wish we'd had the time to... for me to give you that."

Iruka sniffles and takes off his glasses so he can dab at his eyes with his sleeve. Kakashi doesn't know what to say. Two lifetimes full of unspoken truths sit between them, with more regret than relief at every sentiment left undefined. He still wants so badly to bridge the enormous gap between them. A gap he may never truly cross, not anymore. He doesn't even know where he'd begin if he had the chance to undo all of the mistakes he made that led to this moment. He can't even say he would undo them, not anymore, not when Iruka was able to find and to hold onto some sort of goodness in his life, that he was able to achieve a happiness that he has always deserved. Despite that he found it with someone else. Without Kakashi there at all. 

But he doesn't have it in him not to try. Because regardless of anything else, for Iruka, the effort always was and always will be worth it. Even if it hurts. 

"Well," he says. He clears his throat and takes a deep breath. "...I think we have time now. I have a lot of things I'd still like to talk to you about. And I'm sure by now you have at least a few good stories under your belt."

"You've no idea," Iruka says with a quiet and watery chuckle, as if this is a bit of an understatement. Kakashi can imagine that Iruka's life never slowed down. Even if he couldn't change a single thing about how it unfolded, he wishes he could have been there to see it happen.

He nudges Iruka's arm with his elbow. "Ever earn that ego of yours?" He asks. 

"I might make you work for it, before I tell you that one," Iruka says, and swipes at his face one last time to dry his eyes. "It's a pretty good story. You'd be impressed." 

"I'm sure I would," Kakashi says. "But I'd like to hear everything, so be sure to start at the beginning for me."

"My, but we just might be here forever at that rate." 

"Forever doesn't sound that bad," Kakashi says. And he tries to laugh, to force a little levity into this moment so he isn't crushed underneath it, ignoring the hitch in his voice, ignoring the sudden pinch of tears behind his eyes or the horrible ache in his chest, and the desperate stinging clench of his heart beneath his ribs as it breaks in half, and he asks, "Would you like to tell me about your life?"

Iruka nods, and pats him on the wrist with a sad smile.  

"Gladly, Kakashi," he says. But Iruka doesn't miss what Kakashi tries and fails to smother behind his words. He thumbs away the sudden moisture on Kakashi's face, and gently takes his hand, holding it between them. "I'd like nothing more."