Survival
Kakashi was flying through the trees, his little legs on his dad’s shoulders. The ninken and Sakumo’s wolves were running with them in the woods. Kakashi inhales deeply, loving the forest smells. He felt so safe riding on his dad’s back. “I could do this forever, dad!” He shouts gleefully, hands raise up in glee. His father smiled at him and says something that gets lost in the wind.
Kakashi couldn’t quite remember his voice. Something hot and paintful clamps onto his right thigh. Kakashi looks down at his leg and makes an astonished sound, “Pakkun, what are you-?” He looks down and sees the pug’s teeth attached to his leg, biting into his right thigh. “That burns…” he murmurs. “Dad?” He was no longer on Sakumo’s shoulders, the scene drifting away to something darker. He looks around, torrential rain falling hard and plastering his hair against his head. “Dad?” He calls out. “Dad!” The security that he had felt in that moment, on his dad’s shoulders, was more relaxed than he felt since he died. Tears slide down Kakashi’s face, remembering. Right. He’s gone.
“Ka… Ka… Kashi,” Rin’s voice echoes. He shouts out in surprise, pain in his voice. Rin’s face was tight and her eyes. The light that was always in her eyes was fading fast. She said something else, that day, but the roaring in his ears had drowned it out. Her hand was bloody when he touched his cheek, smearing red across his face. Red everywhere. His hand was inside her body, the killing blow.
“Rin!” Kakashi’s head tilts up, up, up, unwilling to look any longer. Dark treetops meet his gaze, the memory saving every detail photographically via Sharingan. Raindrops drip onto his face, and he squints. It hadn’t been raining that night, had it?
Like an old tape on repeat, the images came up. The sky displayed them and pushed Kakashi right back there, right back where he didn’t want to go. Sakumo is on the floor, blood gathering on the kitchen floor and soaking in the rug.
Obito smiling at him through the pain of being crushed alive as he gave him his sharingan, Rin faceless in this memory as medical ninjutsu lit up her hands. “I want you to have it.” The boulder was crushing his leg instead, Kakashi trading places with Obito. If only it had gone this way instead… Obito and Rin look down at him with tears streaking down their faces. His right leg was pinned under the boulder crushed and burning. He screams, the burning, it won’t stop, it keeps getting worse. Help me, dad! Rin! Obito! Please!
“KAKASHI!” Guy shakes his friend aggressively, desperation to pull Kakashi out of whatever nightmare he was trapped in. Guy had never heard his friend scream like that, shouting out the names of his loved ones into the night. He was not about to let his friend join them. “Wake up!” Kakashi pushes his hands into Guy’s chest, unintentionally pressing on his cracked ribs. He grimaces, keeping ahold of him as he comes back to his senses. Kakashi pushes up and immediately attempts to get to his feet, Guy having to forcefully push his friend down to keep him on the ground. Kakashi’s eyes were wild and disoriented, face slick with water from the rain and sweat.
Guy breathes through the pain in ribs, keeping his grip tight on his shoulders. “Don’t get up,” he tells him sternly. He squeezes his shoulders, shaking him a little, “Are you with me Kakashi? We’re back in the Land of Fire again, close to the border… At that stupid cave you wanted to stay in. Still smells like mildew, but at least it’s out of the rain.” The storm had followed them, it seems, the miles that Guy had covered with Kakashi unconscious on his back had left them both soaked to the bone.
“What happened?” He murmurs. He could be in shock, Guy supposed. He didn’t answer at first, electing to investigate the medical kit. Guy was angry with Kakashi, and with himself, for getting in a position where he needed to be saved. Not only that but putting Kakashi in a situation where he could pull out some self-sacrificing bullshit. Guy pulls out items from the kit, muttering some curses about idiot self-sacrificing Bakashi. The nickname that Obito had given him all those years ago slips out. Guy had never used it often before, but Guy was beginning to understand he probably had not because he hadn’t worked with him on missions consistently on this. He felt a kinship with Obito, warming his heart in understanding. His eyes flick to Kakashi guilt instantly making itself known at the big-eyed look Kakashi made at Guy. Practically a kicked puppy.
“Sorry, rival. Just seemed like an appropriate name for you given your lack of self-awareness when it comes to your well-being… You saved me from getting burnt into a crisp,” Guy supplies, looking stressed. “Information gathering only, my ass,” he says, staring at his friend’s leg.
Kakashi seemed lost, trying to string together his thoughts. He looks down at his leg. Guy’s hand shoots out and forcefully moves Kakashi’s chin up to look at him. “Keep your eyes up here, rival. Nothing good that you should look at down there,” he tells him. He moves his headband down over the sharingan for him, “You probably should conserve chakra.”
Kakashi squints at him, “Are you real?”
“Of course I’m real,” he answers. “Your mind isn’t creative enough to make up the blue beast of Konoha!” Guy finds a laughably small tube of burn cream and turns to the large wound that was bleeding sluggishly. He tears off any fabric touching the wound still, wincing at the pained moan Kakashi makes.
He looks at Kakashi, “You got burned. I’m going to try and do some first aid.” He thinks about what he can do for the pain. In a split-second decision he grabs one of Minato’s kunai from Kakashi’s pouch, handing it to him. “Grip onto this,” Guy smiles at Kakashi, hoping to sound encouraging.
Kakashi had instructed Guy to do this once. He had dislocated his shoulder and needed it rest. He had gripped the kunai in his own palm tightly before handing it over. Guy echoes what Kakashi had said to him that time, “Just for something to hold onto.” Kakashi looks to the left, eyes brimming with unshed tears. Guy had no way of knowing where he got that. Rin was thoughtful like that, always considering ways to help getting her patients off of their ailments for her to give care.
His eye settles for staring at the pitiful fire next to them. The wood was soaked, so Kakashi uses his hands to make a small fireball. The flames lick up the moisture and the fire crackles to life, luminating Guy’s reproachful look and warning about chakra exhaustion.
He begins cleaning the wound with water and painstakingly uses all the burn cream on the large wound. Kakashi’s body contorted, knuckles white around the handle of the kunai. The pain was so intense that he lost consciousness again, body going lax.
“Probably not any nerve damage, then,” Guy murmurs, trying to see any sort of silver lining in this situation. He wrapped gauze hastily around Kakashi’s leg. Staring at his face, Guy tells Kakashi what he so desperately wants to let him know when he’s conscious, “I know that you want to protect your comrades, Kakashi... I just don’t want it to be at the expense of my best friend,” he tells him somberly, letting himself cry. The rain pours, matching Guy’s stream of tears.
Kakashi’s hair was sticking to his cheek. He must be back in his dream from before. He brings his arm up to brush his hair away, wincing when it pulled at the cut on his cheek. There was a piece of gauze taped there. He feels the edges curiously before letting his arm drop back down. His chin rests on Guy’s shoulder, bobbing with each jump he makes through the trees. Guy’s hands were clamped underneath Kakashi’s legs, their bags strapped to his chest.
A burning feeling made itself known, increasing a nauseous feeling in him. He swallows down the urge to groan out loud. He glances down at the gauze on his leg and swallows thickly, feeling nauseous. “Guy,” he murmurs. “You… okay?”
Guy’s face twitches. “I am fine, rival, thanks to your insane tactic of getting me out of the line of fire!” Literal fire!
His head lolls a bit, unable to lift it from its perch on Guy’s shoulder. “Put me down, I can walk.”
“You cannot.”
“I can… walk!”
“You are being stubborn, and we simply don’t have time for your martyr routine with your wounds.”
“It’s not… a routine!” he hisses.
“What would you call it, Kakashi?”
“…My ninja way. Protect my comrades. No matter the cost. S-stop!” His stomach was still rolling. “I can’t look out for you like this,” he adds hastily.
Guy stops short, turning his head to look at Kakashi. “You’re insane,” he tells him.
“I’ve never seen you in such a bad mood before, Guy.”
“When my rival almost dies, it tends to sour my mood,” he answers tersely, stopping at the base of a tree and setting Kakashi on the ground into a sitting position. His hand stays on Kakashi’s shoulder, “We should keep moving. I can make it to Konoha in ten hours if I keep at the same pace. If I don’t make it in eight, I will do three hundred laps around the village on my hands.”
Kakashi looks Guy up and down, looking for any injuries. “The electricity, did it hurt you?”
Guy rolls his eyes at Kakashi. “A small zap in the scheme of things!” Kakashi seemed more lucid than last time, which was a relief.
Sweat beads up on Kakashi’s back and he shuts his eye, inhaling and exhaling slowly. Breathe. Breathe. It was hard to try and tie his thoughts together.
“…Kashi?” He opens his eyes. He touches his ripped mask, fingers meeting gauze. “Don’t touch that, I just cleaned it,” Guy warns him.
“Mm.” He sits up a bit more, leg burning constantly. It throbbed with his heartbeat. The intensity of pain made it so that Kakashi couldn’t seem to focus. Kakashi thinks back to the end of his last mission. Staring into the coals. Maybe this would purify him, finally.
“You don’t need to be purified,” Guy tells him, expression unreadable.
Kakashi blinks, startled, “I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”
“Do you feel rested enough to continue?” It was dark out. Kakashi nods, relieved at the subject change. “I can.” He pushes himself to his feet and he sways a bit, unsuccessfully swatting at Guy when he tries to help him. His leg buckles and Guy keeps him from falling.
“Kakashi,” Guy says his name firmly. “We will go significantly slower if you don’t let me carry you.” He would have fallen if Guy didn’t loop an arm around him, keeping him upright. It seems like his leg can’t take any weight.
“It’s embarrassing,” he murmurs.
“You followed your ninja way, didn’t you? Protecting your comrades?” His precious people. Kakashi nods, conceding that he has a point. “Have you ever considered, Kakashi, that your ninja way isn’t unique to you? That your precious people wish to protect you as much as you want to protect us?” Guy’s stormy and intense expression was boring into Kakashi’s soul. He is trying to tell him that he wants to protect him just as much as Kakashi wants to do the same for his people.
Kakashi shakes his head, a couple of tears squeezing out of the corners of his eyes. His breathing speeds up with his heartrate. The pain was skyrocketing, his mind catching up with the extent of his burning leg-
He feels wind on his face again. “…with me, rival. Stay with me, Kakashi. Don’t die.”