Interlocked
Morning drags its pale light across the tree canopy, casting thin ribbons of sun through the leaves—gold through green, soft as moth wings. It creeps silently over the damp earth, the burned-out embers of the campfire, the pack you didn’t finish unpacking. The world begins again without your permission.
You sit still, hunched over and bleary-eyed, fingers curled tight around the edge of your knees. The cold has pressed into your bones during the night, even with the blanket wrapped around your shoulders. But you stayed awake. You listened to his breathing. You counted each rise and fall of his chest like a prayer you didn’t believe in.
Kakashi stirs beside you, a flicker of movement, just the twitch of his fingers. His face is slack with fever, but his breaths come more evenly now. Slower. Not as shallow.
It should be a comfort.
It’s not.
The fever hasn’t broken. His skin is still too warm, almost burning under the cloth you’ve pressed to his forehead again and again. You feel the heat even now as you lean in, replacing the damp cloth with a fresh one. It hisses faintly as the moisture meets his skin.
You press your lips together.
It’s not enough. None of it is. Not the poultices. Not the salves. Not the dried herbs you’ve crushed into bitter-smelling paste, nor the cool spring water you’ve used to sponge down his chest.
This isn’t something you can fight with training or stubbornness. This isn’t a wound you can grit your teeth and bandage shut.
This is specialized poison.
And you are running out of time.
Your hand lingers near his temple. His hair is damp, silver strands clinging to his cheek. You brush them back without thinking, fingers gentle. He doesn’t stir.
There’s a strange silence in the clearing. A hollow space in the air, like the forest itself is waiting.
Your voice is little more than a whisper.
“We’re going back to the village.”
The words are like throwing a stone into still water. They ripple. They mean something.
The village. Not the one you were born in. Not the one you’ve been forced to flee. But that one—the one that offered kindness when you expected cruelty. Yui, with her small home and strong hands. Toma, with his round eyes and tireless questions.
And memories.
Of fireworks in the sky, of bright color reflected in dark eyes. Of Kakashi by your side, standing whole and unbroken, just close enough that his silence was a comfort.
That was the night you let yourself believe things could be different.
He would be okay again. You could be something else—something not shaped by grief and duty and pain.
You could just be.
A quiet rasp interrupts your thoughts.
“No.”
The sound is barely more than air, but it carries enough weight to bring your gaze back to him instantly.
Kakashi’s eye has cracked open. Slitted and clouded, but wary.
Even now, he’s calculating. Even now, he’s resisting.
“No,” he repeats, rougher.
You dip the cloth in the cool water again. It trembles slightly in your grip as you wring it out and press it gently to his forehead. The touch earns a soft exhale from him, but his expression doesn’t ease.
“We don’t have a choice,” you say softly. “Civilian medicine isn’t going to cut it.”
He’s silent, watching you.
“You need medical ninjutsu.” Your voice tightens. “And the only person I know who could handle poison like this is Tsunade.”
His eye closes.
A breath escapes him—part frustration, part resignation.
“The Fifth Hokage,” he says eventually, words slurred and slow. “If she’s still loyal to the Leaf…”
His sentence trails off, but the meaning hangs there.
She might turn us in.
You know it. He knows it.
The Leaf is still hunting you. Still watching for a glimpse of your chakra like wolves sniffing for blood.
But this isn’t about risk. It’s about necessity.
You sit back on your heels, grounding yourself.
“We won’t risk anything,” you tell him. “I will find her. You’re in no condition to move.”
His hand shifts suddenly, clumsy. He catches the edge of your cloak in his fingers, curling them weakly into the fabric.
His grip lacks strength, but not intent.
“She could—” he says, strained. “They could… hurt you.”
The words stumble out, rough around the edges.
And it hits you—not the poison in his veins, but the fear.
This isn’t about strategy. It’s about you. About the thought of you walking alone into danger while he lies helpless and unable to protect you.
Because Kakashi doesn’t fear death—not his own, anyway.
But yours?
Your throat feels tight.
“I’ll handle it,” you whisper, almost too softly. “You just… just stay alive.”
His hand tightens a fraction, enough that you feel it through the cloth of your cloak. His eye doesn’t open again, but the message is clear.
Don’t go far. Don’t go alone.
Don’t disappear.
You don’t answer that silent plea. You just stay.
The day passes slowly, a gentle, aching drift.
The sun rises high and falls low again, painting the sky in bruised purples and smudged orange. You move through the motions like muscle memory—tending the fire, boiling water, checking the herbs again. You repeat the same salve, apply the same cool cloths, keep him hydrated one sip at a time.
You speak to him, sometimes. Quiet things. Your voice barely above the wind through the trees. Memories, maybe. Small things. Moments from your life back home, before the fracture that hurled you into this strange, twisted mirror of your world.
You don’t talk about the fights.
You don’t talk about how you used to resent him.
You don’t talk about the way you don’t anymore.
How you can't.
Instead, you glance at him every few minutes. Watch the rise and fall of his chest. The twitch of his fingers. The way his brows sometimes draw together in dreams.
And you wonder what he sees when he dreams.
Night bleeds into the sky again. The stars blink into being, one by one. Cold little witnesses.
You’re starting to nod off, head resting against your arms, when something brushes your hand.
You startle—only slightly—and look down.
His hand.
His fingers are reaching again, clumsy, half-conscious.
You turn yours over slowly, palm up.
He latches on, gently.
No words. Just contact.
He’s still hot with fever, his skin clammy, his grip loose and trembling. But it’s there. A tether.
Your breath catches.
There’s no confession. No whispered apology for every cruel word you exchanged weeks ago, no admission of guilt or feeling.
Just that.
His hand, holding yours.
And that’s enough—for now.
The return to the village isn’t quiet.
It’s made of rasping breath and creaking joints. Of footsteps that drag and falter. Of the rustle of fabric stained with blood that has long since gone tacky and dark.
Kakashi leans heavier into you with each passing mile, the line of his body loose with exhaustion but trembling beneath it. His weight isn’t unbearable, not physically—it’s not what buckles your knees or knots your back—but it’s a different kind of crushing. One that coils itself behind your ribs and sinks talons into your chest.
He’s too warm. Fever-warm. Not the good kind of heat, the kind you remember from nights spent close for warmth, sharing firelight and silence. This is different. This burns from the inside, slow and rising. His breath is shallow against your shoulder. Sometimes, you can feel it pause.
You want to stop. Every twenty steps, you want to stop. Sit him down, splash cold water over his face, force him to sip from the canteen. Just to do something. But you can’t afford to linger for long. Whatever’s in him, it’s spreading. And you can’t heal what you don’t understand.
The only choice is forward.
And so you keep moving.
The forest is changing.
You notice it first in the bark—the way the trees twist more tightly here, like they’ve been coiled by wind and age. The roots rise higher, moss-covered and knotted, reaching out across the path like limbs. The air thickens. Not with poison, not with chakra, but with weight. With memory.
This forest remembers you.
It’s where you fought together. Where you almost died. Where you first stepped into the world that wasn’t yours.
And now you pass through it again, carrying the man who has become the only anchor to the version of yourself that still feels real.
You duck beneath a low-hanging branch, glancing up just in time to catch a shard of moonlight breaking through the canopy. It paints the silver of Kakashi’s hair in pale fire, makes his skin look too pale, almost translucent.
You adjust your grip.
“Stay with me,” you whisper, not sure if you mean it for him or yourself.
He doesn’t respond. His head lolls slightly, forehead brushing your temple. But his breath is still there—shallow, ragged, but present. You hold onto that like a lifeline.
Time blurs.
There’s no count for it anymore. You lose the rhythm of sun and moon somewhere along the way. You walk until your feet blister, until your knees ache with every step, until your shoulders feel flayed from the burden they carry. Sometimes, Kakashi mumbles. You can’t make out the words, but his voice is hoarse and distant, like he’s caught in some half-dream just outside your reach.
You answer him anyway.
Tell him stupid things. Mundane things. The kinds of things you wish you’d said more often before the world changed.
“You know, the last tea we had wasn’t even that bad. A little over-steeped, but not tragic.”
His only reply is a breath caught on a groan.
“You’d hate this,” you continue. “All the walking. No books. No quiet. No privacy. I’m making you sleep on the ground like a civilian.”
Silence.
You glance down, see his eye flutter slightly behind the mask. Not awake, but not gone. Still there.
It’s enough.
The land softens as the village nears.
The cliffs fade into hills, and the trees grow thinner. The underbrush gives way to paths you half-remember, half-feel. There’s an old well at a fork in the trail, covered in ivy and birdsong, and the sight of it steals the breath from your lungs. You passed it once before—days ago, weeks, you’re not sure anymore—on your way out.
You never thought you’d be retracing your steps like this, with blood on your hands and desperation in your gut.
The pain is sharper now. Not physical—though your body is a collage of soreness and bruises—but emotional. Existential.
Because beneath the urgency, beneath the fierce need to save Kakashi, something else is clawing its way to the surface:
You don’t know what’s waiting for you in that village.
You don’t even know if Tsunade will be there.
All you know is you need her. And you hate that. Hate the dependency. Hate the gamble. Hate how it makes you feel like a child again, helpless and reaching for something that might not reach back.
But you keep going.
Because you don’t know what else to do.
Then, at last—you feel it.
Not the village itself, not yet, but the pull of it. The ghost of its presence. The world around you shifts almost imperceptibly. The air is more structured, like chakra patterns pressed into the dirt beneath your boots. Birds fly in different formations. The wind carries the distant hum of life—faint, but real.
It curls in your chest like smoke.
You’re close.
Close enough that the fear kicks in.
You pause at the crest of a slope, adjusting Kakashi again, letting him lean more fully into your side. He mutters something, so soft you almost miss it.
“…you okay?”
You blink.
Your throat tightens.
“You’re the one bleeding out, and you’re asking me that?” you murmur, voice thick.
He exhales through his nose, the closest thing to a laugh he can manage. His body shakes with it. Then he sags against you again, unconscious or nearly so.
The path bends ahead. Down the slope, just past the trees, you can see the rise of rooftops. Lanterns glow like fireflies in the mist. The village isn’t large—it never was—but it feels like a beacon now. A miracle.
Your knees almost buckle with relief.
But there’s no time to rest.
You tighten your grip on Kakashi and begin the final descent.
You enter the village at twilight.
It’s quiet. A little too quiet.
The usual bustle of twilight—children being called in from the street, laundry pulled down before nightfall, merchants shouting about last-minute deals—is missing. There’s something else in its place. A hush. A pause.
You recognize it.
It’s the same hush that filled your lungs the night the world broke open.
Maybe it’s just you. Maybe you’re seeing ghosts where there are none. But you keep your head down. Hood drawn low. Mask up.
Kakashi’s still unconscious.
You make for the only place you can.
Yui’s door stands just as you left it.
Wooden. Crooked. Flaking paint. A stubborn, unassuming thing. You knock once, too softly, then again harder when there’s no response. Your hand leaves a smear of blood on the frame.
The door swings open moments later.
Yui blinks at you.
Then she sees Kakashi.
Then she steps back.
“Oh my gods—”
“Please,” you rasp. “Please just… help me. Hide him. Just for now.”
She doesn’t ask questions.
You’re already half inside before she can answer. The scent of herbs and oil fills your nose. You lower Kakashi onto a futon in the main room, as gently as your trembling hands allow. He doesn’t stir.
Yui watches with wide eyes, wringing her hands.
“What happened to him?”
“Later,” you whisper. “I’ll explain everything later. Just… stay with him. If he wakes, don’t let him move. Keep him cool. If his fever spikes, there’s a root poultice in my bag. Please. I need to go.”
She starts to speak, confusion etched into every line of her face. But you’re already moving. Already gone.
The door closes behind you.
The night swallows you whole.
Your heart’s still racing. Your legs feel hollow. But you’re running now—quiet and sharp and determined.
Because you know who you need.
And she’s somewhere out there.
Waiting.
Or not.
You just have to find her first.