It was clear that in addition to the obvious wounds on his body, Kakashi had been poisoned. Whatever vile substance his enemy had used seemed to pose the most immediate threat to his life, weakening him to the point of paralysis, and causing the periodic shuddering convulsions that seemed to be trying to pull his body apart. When a seizure came it would wrench the tall jounin's body like a terrier shaking a rat. His breath would be stopped by the force of the spasms, and the deep gash across his abdomen would gape, exposing pink loops of intestine under the gauze that Iruka had wrapped around him. Then, when the awful contractions released, blood would pour from the wound. Time and time again Iruka had changed the bandage, held pressure over the wound, directing his chakra into it to stop the bleeding, only to have another seizure rip away the fresh clots and start the cycle anew.

Worse, though, was seeing the anguish and fear on Kakashi's face when he was in the throes of a convulsion. Mercifully, he usually lost consciousness partway through, but it was clear that the torture was nearly beyond human endurance. After thirty minutes or so, in the lull between the storms, Kakashi would struggle back to consciousness, exhausted and in agonizing pain.

"Fight it, Kakashi-kun, fight! Don't let that traitor have your life, dammit!" Iruka whispered, staring in despair at the unnaturally pale face resting on the pillow next to him.

For his part, Kakashi was fighting, and he was fighting mad. 'Fucking poison my ass, I'm not gonna let you win this one from the grave, Akumaru-bastard.' Lying as still as death, he concentrated on slowing the flow of chakra in his body, willing the poison's violent grip to loosen, keeping the intolerable seizures at bay for as long as possible. Iruka had given him a shot of something that was helping with the pain, and the eased pain was helping him focus on neutralizing the poison's actions. '... where did Iruka get morphine?' his mind drifted. Iruka wasn't ANBU was he? No, that wasn't it. Had he been carrying the drug with him on the mission? No, that didn't seem right either. Kakashi's exhausted and foggy brain couldn't seem to get his situation clear. 'He's dead, right? I'm pretty sure I killed him at the end there.' The pain in his wrist convinced him he had indeed rammed his chidori-charged hand through the man's armored chest. 'And Iruka didn't get hurt, right? I protected you after all, right, Ruka-chan?' He wanted to stay awake, talk to Iruka, tell him not to worry, ask him to explain where they were now. He glanced through a slitted eyelid at the drawn face of the chuunin, but the exhaustion was just too powerful. Cold. He was so fucking cold. Feeling like he was slipping beneath the surface of a frozen lake, Kakashi lapsed back into unconsciousness.

ooo

Jerking awake with a start, Iruka turned to see a short, dark-haired woman standing poised on the threshold to the room. She wore a plain black uniform under the white vest of a healer nin, but she bore no marks of allegiance that Iruka could see, though her facial features and coloring hinted at ancestry in the Land of the Ferns. The metal plate on her hitai-ate was unblemished and unadorned.

She looked coolly around the room, at Iruka, at the bloodied bandages and clothing strewn on the floor, at the prone figure on the pallet. Iruka saw her eyes widen slightly then - did she recognize Konoha's infamous copy nin? He tensed tired muscles, preparing to defend his fallen comrade from any sign of hostility from this woman. But she looked up past Iruka, fixing her eyes into the distance and recited,

"I am here under the Code of Neutrality. I am here under the Code of the Healer Shinobi of the Five Villages. My duty is only to those who suffer. My loyalty is only to those who seek my aid."

She turned her gaze to Iruka's face, "Did you summon me, Konoha Ninja?"

"Y-y- yes," stammered Iruka.

The healer nin stared up at him expectantly for a moment before prompting, "And do you seek my..."

"I, Umino Iruka, Chuunin of Konoha, seek your aid, Healer, for myself and my comrade, injured and sickened and suffering," The ritual words flowed over Iruka's tongue from the deep well of his training. He was relieved to fall back on the formal exchange; as he said the words, he felt a tiny needle of the anxiety that had filled him melt away. Someone who knew what to do was here now.

"Then I am here bound to do you no harm, but only to aid you if I may." She completed the ritual, then looked up again into Iruka's tired eyes. A concerned warmth flickered in her swampy gaze. She was older than she had at first looked, Iruka noticed, her eyes surrounded by tiny creases, her temples silvered. His own mother would have been about her age, if she had lived, he thought.

The healer nin was already brushing past him to kneel by the injured man on the floor. "It must have been a formidable foe indeed to have felled Hatake-sama." So she did recognize Kakashi. "Did you witness the battle, Chuunin?"

"Yes. Uh, most of it. I was under command to stay hidden." Iruka reddened, remembering the horrible helplessness he had felt while watching the jounin fight. "The enemy is dead, but I think his weapons were poisoned. I collected them, and his clothes, in case there might be an antidote."

The healer nin had turned Kakashi onto his back, and was peering into his right eye with a pen-light. "Smart. That may help indeed." She reached for the scarred left eyelid to pull it open.

"Stop." The guttural command came breathlessly from Kakashi's lips. His hand would have restrained the woman's wrist, if only he could have moved it, but the poison's paralyzing effect still held him. The effort it had taken just to speak the single word set off a new seizure, arching his back, tightening his hands into claws, pulling his face into a hideous grimace. The clenching muscles of his abdomen tore the edges of the belly wound apart again, pulsing fresh blood into the thick gauze bandage that Iruka had so recently changed. Kakashi's breath came in pained and shuddering gasps as he fought the drug-induced convulsions for control of his body.

Instantly, Iruka was kneeling at his head, cushioning it before it could strike the floor. "This is what it's been like, Oisha-sensei," he couldn't keep the note of panic out of his voice. Kakashi's strained lips were turning a slaty color as he struggled for breath. The wet gurgle of blood in his chest was terrifying to hear.

The healer nin deftly filled a syringe from a bottle in one of her pockets, then injected the contents into one shuddering, rigid arm. She produced an oxygen canister from somewhere, connecting it to tubing dangling from a hook on the wall, and fitted the prongs to Kakashi's flaring nostrils with one hand, turning the valve controlling the precious gas with the other. Almost immediately the injection began to work, the convulsions ceasing, body and limbs collapsing limply to the bedding. His breathing eased, and the fearsome grey tinge ebbed away, replaced with ivory pallor.

"Hmm. Well at least we know what class of poisons we're dealing with," she said, more to herself than to Iruka or her patient, who now lay unconscious and bleeding before her. She pulled back the twisted blankets and turned her attention to the wound on Kakashi's belly, first lifting the gauze, then pushing it back down and holding it with a firm hand.

"Here, come around to his side and keep pressure on this," she said, indicating the bandage under her brown hand. Iruka did as he was instructed. He could feel feverish heat radiating through the damp gauze from his friend's slashed abdomen, a sharp contrast to his own fingers, icy and whitened with worry and fear.

As the healer continued her survey, the sound of the oxygen hissing through the hose and Kakashi's wheezing breath filled Iruka's ears. 'Gods, what an idiot I am!' he thought, 'Oxygen. How obvious. Was it here? How did I not see it before? Of course he needs oxygen! How could I... I'm so sorry, Kashi-kun. I should have... I shouldn't have... Oh gods, Kakashi!' With the medic-jounin now here to take over, Iruka's facade of strength began to crumble. Self recriminations crashed like storm-whipped waves in his already agitated mind. He looked at his pallid, dying comrade, and knew it was all his fault. 'I led the enemy right to him! He followed me like a beacon! And I couldn't help at all in battle. All I could do was watch as he was nearly slaughtered! I... I... I'm... I've killed the man I love! I don't deserve to live! Please, please, Kakashi! Please don't die! Gods, let me change places with him. Let him have my life! If only I had...' Tears slid down his face, pausing at the edge of the scar that crossed his nose and cheeks.

"Looks like you know field medicine. You did a good job, Chuunin." The healer nin's words shocked Iruka out of his daze of self-loathing.

"I... what?" he replied, bewildered, turning his distraught face to her.

She was a little taken aback by Iruka's tears. The healer looked at him closely. Was he injured too? She saw that his left arm was bandaged around the biceps, but it didn't look serious. And the scar across his face was clearly many years old. He was young, late-twenties? and sweetly good-looking, though his chocolate brown eyes were full of pain. Something more has happened here than first meets the eye, she thought.

"You did a good job," she repeated, "You dressed these wounds well, even this chest wound, and these are tricky," she indicated the place where the enemy kunai had stabbed between Kakashi's ribs, "You undoubtedly saved Hatake-sama's life."

Iruka's mouth hung open. "No... I... that is..." More tears welled up in his eyes and his voice cracked and strangled on his words.

"It's OK, it's OK. It's going to be alright," she soothed. The young man was clearly on the point of breaking, and she still needed his help, if she was to help him and his companion. She needed to know what had happened, and how long ago. How much poison had gotten in, what medicines or healing jutsus had he already tried? And since this was clearly a surgical case, and he was obviously skilled, she could use his help with anesthesia and asepsis. She looked around the little medical shelter, appraising its facilities. No surgical suite, of course, but there was running water and antiseptic soap. The chuunin had already found and made use of bandages, and judging from a bottle and syringe lying on the floor, he had given the injured man morphine.

She looked again at her patient, sucking in her breath, then blowing through pursed lips. It really was Konoha's Sharingan Copy Ninja, the genius Hatake Kakashi. The other leaf-nin hadn't corrected her use of the name, and there was the scarred eye and the way the barely conscious and grievously injured jounin had tried nonetheless to stop her from examining it... What a shock that under the silver hair his face was so young, no more than thirty-one or two, she guessed. She'd first heard of him twenty years ago at least, and though she knew he was still a child then, despite his shinobi status, she really hadn't integrated that fact. Now, looking at him and his soft-faced companion, it struck her again that she and her kind were in the business of sending children to war.

Iruka watched numbly as the healer set up and started an intravenous line, hanging two bags, one large with a clear solution, one small with something opaque and yellowish inside. He wondered if the bleeding had stopped yet, but didn't want to risk checking. The competent efficiency with which the woman moved was comforting. He couldn't save Kakashi, but maybe this woman could. His shoulders shook a little with fatigue and effort, and he suddenly realized how exhausted he was. How long had it been since the attack? Twelve hours by the clock, it seemed so much longer, the previous morning an eternity ago. Had it really been only the day before yesterday that he had set out to meet Kakashi on the road home from his last assignment?

END Chapter 1

Japanese terms:

Oisha-sensei - what one calls a doctor when one doesn't know their proper name (otherwise it would be name-sensei.)

koibito - lover, sweetheart

Other notes:

These are the effects of a real-world poison - I did my homework.

Timeframe is a few years after the current manga, so possible spoilers if you aren't there yet.

Attitude about sex (borrowed from Paxnirvana, whose explanation makes perfect sense. Read her short "Sharing Sake") - Ninjas mostly die young, and having children can be a serious liability both to the parent and child. "Live for today, for tomorrow you will surely die" is taken very much to heart. For this reason, it is common for ninjas to have same-sex as well as het relationships, and for high-profile shinobi to conceal the existence of any offspring.

Thank you for your reviews. This is my first fanfic, so I'm looking for both constructive criticism and encouragement.

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