Arashida Numa was nothing if not an experienced and competent field medic. In her more than 40 years of service, she'd contended with the most adverse of conditions and saved the lives of countless comrades and civilians alike. So she knew immediately, when she surveyed the room, that this wasn't going to be a walk in the park. The smell of blood and sickness pervaded the room, rising from clothing and bandages discarded on the floor. A man whose face was almost as colorless as his silver hair lay covered on a futon, with an exhausted looking comrade sleeping against the wall, apparently keeping watch over him.

The medic did nothing to mask her presence. She stood motionless in the doorway, projecting her chakra into the room, wanting to wake the shinobi well before she approached. A battle-injured ninja taken by surprise was easily one of the most dangerous creatures on earth - it would be senseless to let herself be attacked. She waited warily. The young man must have been truly exhausted, she thought, for it was almost 30 seconds before he sensed her, opening his eyes and tensing defensively.

In that time, in the dim light, she studied the man on the futon. Obviously suffering from blood-loss, she decided - there was no way he was naturally that pale, no matter how light his complexion. His brushy silver hair and delicate features stirred some memory within her. These men were Konoha ninja - a hidden village whose shinobi she had fought against more than once - had she encountered him before? Recognition hit her with a shock as it suddenly clicked into place - Konoha's White Fang! But no - he was dead - had died more than two decades ago, so - his son: Hatake Kakashi. The infamous Copy-Nin of Fire Country. This was a surprise.

Numa took a step into the room, but the ninja sitting watch immediately blocked her path, leaping between her and the patient. When he stood, he towered over her, his presence bristling with defensive hostility. The medic held out empty hands and raised her face so the young man - a chuunin by the looks of his uniform - could see it clearly. In a calm, low-pitched voice, she recited the ritual words that identified her as a member of the Neutral Medic Corps: "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 his face. Surely the man was expecting her - he'd called for aid, after all - and her own uniform marked her as a neutral medic. "Did you summon me, Konoha Ninja?"

"Y-y- yes," he stammered.

He had seemed to relax a little at her words, but his answer was incomplete. 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." His recitation of the ritual words seemed to calm him - his voice became less tense, more fluent, as he uttered them.

'Ah' - she had been right - 'chuunin.' "Then I am here bound to do you no harm, but only to aid you if I may," Numa completed the ritual. She looked up again into the young man's expressive eyes. Assessing, analyzing. He didn't appear injured, only tired and anxious. And so young. Still in his twenties. The thin scar that crossed his face somehow made him look younger, more vulnerable. She brushed past him, a brief touch to asses the state of his chakra - somewhat depleted but strong and stable - and knelt on the floor next to the futon.

Numa decided to hazard a guess, feeling even more confident, now that she was close to him, in her identification of her patient. "It must have been a formidable foe indeed to have felled Hatake-sama. Did you witness the battle, Chuunin?"

"Yes. Uh, most of it," The young man answered, clearly caught off guard by her question. "I was under command to stay hidden," he stammered. "The enemy is dead, but I think his weapons were poisoned. I collected them, and his clothes, in case there might be an antidote."

"Smart," Numa remarked, beginning to examine the patient, "That may help indeed."

So there had been a fight. A single enemy, now dead. Poison had been used. And there was no denial of the name - was she right? There was one more test to make.

The unconscious man's face and upper body were turned to the right. 'No doubt to keep him from aspirating, which means he's been vomiting,' Numa considered, as she rolled him onto his back. She pulled open his right eye, peering into it with a pen-light, finding a sluggish reaction. The pupil seemed dilated and the eye swam with a teary film - no doubt the effects of whatever poison had been used. She reached for the scarred left eyelid to pull it open.

"Stop." The voice from the bed was a breathless grunt.

Numa pulled her hand back, surprised to have been addressed by her seemingly unconscious patient. Before she could respond, however, he was thrown into a violent seizure. She was almost certain of his identity now - why else would he have tried to prevent her from looking into his eye, unless it was indeed the fabled Sharingan? But it didn't matter who he was if he died before she could treat him.

The other Leaf-nin was almost instantly kneeling at his partner's head, cushioning it before it could slam back into the floor. "This is what it's been like, Oisha-sensei," he said, sparing her a quick, tense glance before his focus snapped back to the convulsing man in his lap. He seemed to know what he was doing, but he couldn't quite keep the note of panic out of his voice, Numa noticed.

Her patient's face was pulled into a hideous grimace, and his strained lips were turning a slaty color as he struggled for breath. There was an alarming, wet gurgle of blood in his chest. The seizure arched his body backward in a tense bow, a classic hallmark of several neurotoxins, and obviously the first symptom to treat. Numa produced a vial of an anticonvulsant and injected a dose into one shuddering arm, a little surprised, despite her training and experience, at how much strength she had to exert to hold the limb steady. She continued to calmly manage the crisis, her movements almost automatic as she grabbed an oxygen cannula from the wall and connected it to a small green canister she produced from her bag, then slipped it over Kakashi's face.

The drug worked rapidly, stilling the spasms, and the oxygen eased the blue tinge from his lips. "Hmm. Well at least we know what class of poisons we're dealing with," the medic muttered, more to herself than to Iruka or her patient, who now lay unconscious and bleeding before her. During the seizure his color had darkened from ivory to frankly cyanotic in only a few seconds, and his breathing was a wet rasp - a sure sign of lung compromise - so she wasn't surprised to find his chest wrapped in bloodied bandages. She turned her attention to the wound on Kakashi's belly, where more fresh blood welled up through the soaked dressing. Numa lifted the gauze, then pushed it back down and held it with a firm hand.

"Here, come around to his side and keep pressure on this," she ordered Iruka, grateful for the extra pair of hands. The abdominal wound was severe - clearly a sword cut - and had been reopened by the force of the spasms. Her brief glimpse had shown contused-looking small bowel bulging through blood-smeared, porcelain-white skin that curled back at the edges from deeply-sliced muscle and glistening exposed fat.

'This chuunin must have done some fairly expert chakra work to have kept him stable, with injuries like these,' she thought. She was even more impressed with his handiwork when she probed the chest injury, finding the telltale signs of an advanced type of chakra healing deep within the wound.

"Looks like you know field medicine. You did a good job, Chuunin."

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

Numa was a little taken aback by Iruka's tears. 'He's crying? Is he injured, too?' The healer looked at him closely. She saw that his left arm was bandaged around the biceps, but there was little blood, and he moved the arm fairly easily. The only other mark on him, the scar across his nose and cheeks, was clearly many years old. The rounded curve of his cheek spoke of youth, but his face held the steely tension she'd learned to recognize in all the men and women whose duty-bound lives as ninja led them to witness horrors undreamed of by those they were sworn to protect. Beneath that though, on this man's face, there was a more profound grief, a hollowness, and a shocked pain. Not just stolen innocence, but some deeper hurt, something fresher and more poignant. It glittered behind his rich brown eyes when his gaze fell across his companion's pallid face. 'There is something more at work here than the surface shows...'

"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, reaching a hand out to pat one of his, while he continued to compress his comrade's bleeding abdomen. The young man was clearly strained almost to the point of breaking. 'Hang on, kid.' Numa thought, looking at Iruka, 'I'll need your help to pull your buddy through this, if he has any chance at all.'

She mentally toured the little medical shelter, appraising its facilities. Not much beyond the basics, but it would have to suffice. At least there was running water and antiseptic soap. And it was stocked with some essentials. The chuunin had already found and made use of ointment and bandages, and judging from a bottle and syringe lying on the floor, he had given the injured man morphine. Still, she was glad she had brought her full medical kit with her.

"We'll take care of this, OK, Shinobi?" She squeezed Iruka's hand and smiled, relieved when he sniffed and nodded, muttering a small apology for his outburst.

"Your friend will be alright. We can get him through this." Numa emphasized the 'we' - if this young man was like most of the ninja she'd worked with in her career, he would focus better and hold up longer if he knew he had a role to play. And she needed him stable and focussed if she was to help him and his companion. Only he could tell her what had happened, and how long ago. How much poison had gotten in, what medicines and healing jutsus he had already used. And since this was clearly a surgical case, and he was obviously skilled, she could use his help with anesthesia and asepsis.

"Just keep pressure on that until the bleeding stops. I'm sure you know by now how to tell when it's safe to release the compression." She directed, receiving a nod from Iruka in reply.

She looked again at her patient's face, sucking in her breath, then blowing through pursed lips. It really was Konoha's Sharingan Copy Ninja, the genius Hatake Kakashi. His fellow 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 this man's face was so young, no more than thirty-one or two, she guessed. She'd first heard of the genius son of the White Fang 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.

Numa stood and searched the cabin's cupboards, pulling out medications and equipment, supplementing her finds with more materials from her capacious pack. 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.

"We need to keep him hydrated and to keep the seizures under control. This'll help with the blood loss," the medic patted the clear bag as she spoke, "I've given him a sedative and I'm starting an antibiotic - do you know if he has any allergies?"

Iruka shook his head.

"You don't know or he has none?" Numa's voice was business-like and alert, cutting through the fog in Iruka's exhausted brain.

"I don't think he has any."

"Good. I'll give him something to keep his pain under control, too. I see you've used morphine. When did you last dose him?"

"About... about midnight, I think." Iruka's voice cracked as he pictured the way Kakashi's features had been twisted in agony right before he'd given him that shot.

"Good, good. Why don't you tell me what treatments you've applied? Starting with what you did in the field." Numa pushed a little, trying to get the chuunin to detach from whatever emotional burden he was clearly laboring under.

"I... I started a log - it's all in there..." Iruka answered, feeling suddenly too tired to go through the whole story, afraid he would get something wrong or leave out something critical.

"OK. Read it to me. I'll take over here." Numa knelt next to Iruka, gently pulling his hands away from Kakashi's abdomen when he didn't respond right away.

"When is the last time you ate something, Chuunin?" Numa asked sharply.

"It's Iruka, and... uh... I don't remember... maybe noon?"

"Right. Do you have rations with you? That's over fourteen hours ago. You need fuel. I need you to keep going a little longer."

"I'll get something in a minute." Iruka reached across Kakashi's still body for his notes.

"No, you'll get something now," Numa corrected. "You can read me your notes while you eat. I have energy bars in my pack if you don't have anything suitable."

"I... I have some..."

"Good. Get it now, Iruka-san."

Numa looked up, watching Iruka carefully. He rose unsteadily, moving around Kakashi to resume his former seat against the wall, taking a foil-wrapped bar from a pocket of his vest. His stupor was more than just worry and exhaustion - the subtle shake of his hands as he opened the packet confirmed her suspicion that the chuunin was long overdue for a meal.

"You're probably dehydrated, too. Drink some water, please," Numa instructed. Given the remoteness of the medical station, and the terrain it was in, she wasn't surprised at his degraded condition.

When Iruka had eaten a little, he started to read aloud from his notes. Numa nodded appreciatively. "You've done an excellent job, Iruka-san."

"No, I just..."

"Yes, you have. Don't argue with me. Just keep reading."

While she listened, she examined the belly wound more carefully, pleased to see that the cut was clean, and despite the many hours and repeated trauma, the tissue was still pink and free of the putrid odor of necrosis. It seemed that by some miracle - or more likely a last-ditch protective jutsu - the man's viscera had remained intact, a blessing he should be most thankful for. She'd try to seal the edges a little for now, but until the danger of seizures were over, there was no point in closing the wound only to have it reopened. If she stabilized him now, they could attempt the surgery in the morning.

"It's been over fourteen hours since the attack, then?" She asked, when Iruka came to the end of his notes.

"Yes. It was just after noon."

"Then we're dealing with a torture poison. Otherwise it would have killed him already." Her voice was matter-of-fact, almost blunt.

"Ye- yes, that's what we thought, too." Iruka answered, looking at Kakashi.

"You did, did you?" Numa looked at Iruka appraisingly. "You discussed this when he was more alert?"

"Yes. On the trail, when we stopped to rest."

"I'm sure you are not at liberty to discuss your mission, but I assume your opponent was also ninja. Do you know his village?"

Iruka just looked at Numa, wary of her probing. She said she was a Neutral, and the oath was supposed to be binding, but the events of the last 48 hours had only served to heighten his natural distrust.

"It will give me some idea what the base was," Numa prompted, sensing his caution, "What countermeasures to take. Different villages use different poisons for torture." Her tone remained calm, businesslike. Somehow at odds with her words.

"It was... It may have been a Leaf poison," Iruka answered after a long, silent moment. Shinobi caution was blurring into near paranoia in his exhausted, traumatized psyche. But trusting this medic was his only chance at helping Kakashi- at saving Kakashi. "Probably one of the older ones. Strychnine and organo-phosphate most likely make the base, but it would have other components, and probably several binding jutsu."

"I see. I'll add atropine to his meds, then." Numa picked up one of the packets she'd assembled and hung it with the other IV bags, connecting the tubing at a Y juncture. That little tidbit clouded the picture considerably - they had been fighting one of their own?

"This was originally a Leaf med station. Would they have stocked a specific antidote?" the medic asked, as she mixed and connected the medication.

"I don't know..." Iruka paused, carefully considering how much detail he dared tell this unknown, supposedly neutral shinobi. "Probably not. We don't use those in the field much. I'm not even sure it was really one of ours. But the enemy - he was a renegade. Missing ten years." If need be, he decided, he could do away with her, once she'd healed Kakashi. If she could heal Kakashi...

"Well, I'll do the best I can with what I have, then," Numa said, returning to her patient's side. She formed a sequence of hand seals, gathering healing chakra in her palms.

"Wait, what are you going to do?" Iruka asked, alarmed.

"It's an electric-based healing jutsu - slows nerve impulses. If it's strychnine and organo-phosphate as you say, this should reduce the hypersensitivity - help stop the seizures. And help with pain." Numa held her hands poised over Kakashi's injured side.

"Are you sure? If I'm wrong about the poison, will this hurt him?"

"Oh I don't think you're wrong. The symptoms point to your being right, at least about the base elements." 'And you seem to know a fair amount about these types of poisons' she added to herself. 'What secrets are you hiding from me, Leaf-Chuunin?'

Iruka swallowed, then nodded, watching Kakashi closely.

Numa's hands connected with Kakashi's body, and her chakra flooded into his nervous system, tracing down the branching, twisted pathways. She started at the poisoned blade's point of entry, expecting and finding the most traumatic nerve shock there. In the jounin's body the jutsu and medications fought the poison's effects, damping the unnatural resonance that was responsible for the fierce muscle cramps, the seizures, the torture it was designed to put its victim through.

As Numa worked, Iruka was relieved to see the tension fall away from Kakashi's muscles. The unconscious jounin seemed to breathe easier than he had since the fight, and his exposed chest and arms lost their over-hard edge, falling back to their usual smooth, sculpted state.

Numa sat back after several minutes, and shook her hands, then pulled a dense, black stone from a pouch at her waist and held it between her palms for several minutes. When Iruka looked quizzically at her, she explained, "Helps re-seal my own chakra, after I work an electric jutsu like that."

The medic turned back to the belly wound, peeling off the bandage and studying the cut. "I'm going to close this wound a little now," Numa stated. Better to explain every action to the jumpy chuunin. "You can help. Just stay where you are and hold his wrist and ankle on that side. Monitor him and feed healing chakra in, alright?"

"Alright." Iruka leaned forward, sliding one hand under the blanket to take hold of Kakashi's left ankle and holding his left wrist with the other. "He's so cold."

"I know. He needs blood, but we don't have any here. Unless you're his type?"

"I... I don't know about the sub-factors, but we're both O-pos." Iruka offered, feeling slightly hopeful at last. Here was something concrete and useful and meaningful he could do - something that might really make a difference.

"Let me work on this first," Numa replied. "I want to narrow the opening, even if just a little, and put a chakra barrier in place to seal out infection- although I suspect it's too late for that."

She pulled a bottle and brush from her bag, and began to decorate the edges of the wound on both sides of the cut, from navel to hip, with delicate script. When she had completed the seal, she held the edges of the wound closest to Kakashi's navel together, directing chakra in, drawing the cut surfaces to reunite. Nerves and vessels and fibers reconnected, layer by layer, healing together with only a smooth pink scar to mark where they had once been divided. When she sat back at last, panting and a little dizzy from her exertion, the wound was several centimeters smaller.

While she had worked, Iruka had monitored and supported. When the medic sat back, breaking the connection, he stayed hunched over, sliding his hands up Kakashi's limbs to rest at hip and shoulder. He could feel the strength of Numa's jutsu still humming through his lover's body, and Kakashi's own chakra felt stronger, more stable, than it had since they'd arrived.

"You're gonna be OK, Kashi, I swear it. You have to. Just... Just keep on hanging on." He brushed his lips over Kakashi's forehead.

The silver-haired ninja, white as alabaster, did not respond.

END Chapter 11

Author's Note:

Extra special thanks to my beta readers and cheering section (in reverse alphabetical order): WinterofourDiscontent, RadicalEdward, Messypeaches, Kaja, Carcinya, BitetheHandThatFeeds, AMidnightSunrise

Thank you to all my reviewers. Your feedback means a lot to me. Through you I've found that my writing has an effect on others - that it has meaning for more than just me. This chapter was a long time coming, and you've been patient. I can only tell you that I've been doing sensory research on pain. I'll be updating Homecoming next, and posting a new humor one-shot as soon as I finish it.

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