Enjoy!

OOOOOOOOOO

Iruka struggled with the worn blanket he’d cocooned himself in during the night. He thought he’d heard something in the kitchen, but when he raised his head to peer over the arm of the sofa, the room was deserted. He kicked the covers off his feet and stood slowly, one hand hitching up the pants that threatened to slide off his hips.

The rolls he’d gotten for breakfast were still wrapped and looked to be untouched, and he was just coming to the conclusion that he must have imagined it when he opened the fridge door, intending to pull out the butter, and discovered that about half of the food he’d made last night had disappeared.

He snorted and rolled his eyes at the image of Kakashi sneaking around with the food, perhaps even muffling the microwave just to keep him from knowing that the jounin would deign to eat his food.

“….such a child….” He muttered, scarfed down the bread and headed for the shower.

OOOOOOOOOO

“Any luck?” Iruka let his bag slide to the floor as he pulled up a seat next to Naoto’s desk.

“With….?” Naoto looked decidedly harried as he straightened the papers and shoved his glasses up his nose with his free hand.

“The kid.”

“Oh, sorry. Last night’s a bit of a blur. I’d forgotten that they’d come to see you guys.” He shook his head. “Nothing yet, but he tends to wander off every once in awhile for some reason or another. I’m sure we’ll find him.”

A weird silence hung between them as Iruka fought down the urge to point out that, if a child had gone missing in Konoha, the whole village would have been mobilized until he or she was found.

Naoto finally broke it by holding out the papers to him. “These are our pre-genin academy lesson plans. Sorry they’re a little messy – some of us have been teaching here a while, and we don’t bother to keep things organized because we know it like the back of our hands.”

“Just the Academy plans?” Iruka flipped through the pages.

“Yes, well, your cohort is off talking to one of our jounin-sensei about our genin training and examinations. He got here about a half an hour before you.” Naoto grinned broadly and winked at him. “I’m glad you showed up. For a little bit there, I thought he may actually have killed you in your sleep.”

Iruka snorted and winced as the movement shot a twinge of pain through one of the many knots in his back. “I don’t know; I might almost wish he had. That couch is murder.”

“Standard issue, I’m afraid.” Naoto chuckled. “I used to have one just like it. Sat on the floor instead.”

“Phew, I can’t say I blame you.”

The students started to file in right on the tail end of his statement, and Iruka rose, stretched and found a vacant seat at the back that he could observe from without interrupting the class. He slipped the lesson plans into his bag to peruse later.

OOOOOOOOOO

Kakashi shoved his hands deep in his pockets and ambled in the general direction of the apartment. Watching the genin training had been…educational, to say the least. The Mist genin simply did not take missions. As far as Kakashi could tell, their shinobi were not hired for anything less than B-rank missions, but given the row after row after row of dilapidated houses he was passing that had been hidden in the fog the day before, he was seriously considering suggesting that they start taking a lower rank missions. C and D missions might pay a little less, but with all the genin around here who were just training day in and day out, the village would certainly be able to make a little more money.

The genin trained in groups of three, but the teams did not seem to be specifically assigned. From the conversations he’d overheard, the three genin he’d observed had been on at least twelve different teams in the last week of training. Likewise, the jounin, and a large percentage of the chuunin, were not assigned to specific teams, but rotated around and spared with the trainees.

It was brilliant, really. Instead of being trained on teamwork, something that was the most important lesson for a genin to learn in the Konoha curriculum, they were learning flexibility and improvisation, which was focused on at chuunin level in Konoha. Mist was training an elite fighting force that was ready to deal with any situation and prepared from the beginning for fighting with multiple shinobi of varying skills and techniques.

But he’d also watched one of the genin trip his comrade and push him into the jounin they were fighting in order to get his own opportunity. If the jounin had been a real opponent and had not dropped the point of his bladed staff into the dirt, the boy’s comrade would have been run through. Kakashi’d almost dropped the boy to the ground and beat some sense into him, but the Mist jounin training them had commended the genin on his quick thinking.

He shook his head in disgust and pressed his hand to his neck, rubbing the crick that had suddenly tightened his muscles.

OOOOOOOOOO

Iruka shuffled through the plastic bag, searching for something out of the groceries that he could munch on during the walk home. He was downright starving and didn’t feel like waiting to get back to the rented apartment and cook something.

He fished around for a while before settling on ripping a hunk out of the bread he’d gotten and chewing thoughtfully on the crust. All things considered, the lesson plans already in place weren’t bad, per se, but could certainly be tweaked to help the students learn a better. He paused to pick a seed out of his teeth, ruminating on how best to rework the teaching schedule, and a flash of silver hair caught the edge of his gaze.

Iruka let out a snort of disbelief - Kakashi was motionless and face-down on the cobbled street. The jounin hadn’t struck him as a heavy drinker, but it certainly didn’t surprise him.

I should just leave him there.

It took a concerted effort of will to keep from turning tail and walking back the other direction, and as much as he hated to admit, a large motivation for returning to Kakashi’s side was to keep the other man from getting robbed. Kakashi did have to pay for half the food and rent, after all.

A dark, viscous splotch trailed across the road and into the gutter on the far side. It was far enough removed from Kakashi that Iruka didn’t give it a second glance. “Alright, Kakashi-san, let’s get you….” Iruka trailed off as he leaned over Kakashi’s shoulder and caught sight of the jounin’s face.

Kakashi’s visible eye was wide open and frozen in its socket. Oh shit. He better not be dead. Iruka grabbed his wrist and fumbled around for the vein, breathing a sigh of relief when a faint pulse thudded against his fingertips.

As he got over the initial panic, he caught a faint almond scent wafting up from Kakashi’s disturbed clothes. “Paralyzers…?” Iruka whispered. One of the things he’d added to his curriculum was a slightly more mundane way of identifying types of poisons – by smell. Some, the ones used by the best shinobi, were odorless and usually colorless, but he figured that, if you were being poisoned by a top-level shinobi, you probably shouldn’t be relying on such simple methods.

No, he was worried about his kids being taken on by a bumbling lower-level shinobi or, more likely, their own classmates, since the making of the same poisons was taught later in the year.

“What is going on?” Iruka hissed as he grabbed hold of Kakashi’s shoulders and hauled the limp body into a sitting position. A paralyzer wasn’t exactly something you accidentally got dosed with; whoever had tagged Kakashi had done it on purpose, but Iruka couldn’t figure out why.

He grunted as he hefted the jounin over his shoulder, looping his arms around the other man’s knees to balance the load and keep Kakashi from sliding over his shoulder and headfirst into the ground. As he backed away, his foot came down on slick stone, and he almost dropped to on knee as his leg slid out from under him. He spun and stared at the liquid on the ground. It looked for all the world like…

Blood?

He was fairly certain that Kakashi wasn’t injured, so the blood must have belonged to someone else, maybe even the person who’d drugged Kakashi, but at this point he just wanted to get the jounin home before he got accosted by too many people.

As he turned on to the main thoroughfare, he dropped his head and valiantly prayed that no one would ask any questions.

“Too much to drink, eh? I’d take advantage of it if I were you.” A dark snicker came from a pair of shinobi that staggered past him, leaning heavily on each other.

Iruka felt his cheeks flare brilliantly, ducked his head, and struggled for a level tone as he replied, “Well, you know, gift horses and all that.” He barely managed an indifferent shrug with the shoulder that Kakashi wasn’t slung over.

The male shinobi guffawed and elbowed his female companion. “There’s a man after my own heart.”

The woman rolled her eyes. “That’s not something to brag about.”

“Well, I don’t exactly have much to brag about, now do I? I take what I can….” The voices faded as the two moved farther away from him, and Iruka forced himself to relax.

Iruka groaned under his breath as he lugged the body up the stairs. “What did you do, get into a pissing contest with one of their jounin?” He leaned against the wall on the first floor landing and hefted his burden higher onto his shoulder. “You couldn’t at least be considerate and make post-fight arrangements so I didn’t have to carry you around.”

The door to their apartment was locked, of course, and a brief struggle ensued while he tried to get the key into the lock without either dropping it or Kakashi. Maneuvering Kakashi through the halls of their apartment proved harder than he’d expected, but he finally managed to drop the practically lifeless body onto the bed.

OOOOOOOOOOO

Kakashi could feel his chest rise and fall, could feel the strong muscles shifting under his stomach but couldn’t seem to make anything function. When Iruka tumbled him onto the bed, he tried desperately to flex his arms and legs in order to arrange himself into a more comfortable position, but the muscles refused to respond. He stared at the ceiling simply because he couldn’t look at anything else, but the view looked incredibly wrong. From the turns Iruka made after entering the building, he knew that he’d been deposited in the bedroom, but he didn’t remember the fine cracks on the ceiling, or the almost invisible spider’s webs in the corners.

He could make out a shadow on the ceiling, but Iruka remained out of his field of view. Hands grasped his legs and shifted them, and he let out a mental sigh of relief as the painful twist in his knee was straightened out. Iruka’s face came into view as the touch transferred to his arms, shoulders, and finally his head. He could see the jagged edge of Iruka’s scar in clear relief and every fleck of color in his eyes combined with a strange after-image that seemed to precede each of his movements.

His brain finally tuned in and alerted him to the obvious explanation. The enhanced vision combined with the disappearance of the feeling of cloth over the left side of his face suggested that his sharingan was uncovered.

His vision swum, Iruka’s face blurring. Already? His hitae-ate had slipped off when Iruka’d picked him up – he could pinpoint the change now that he thought back on it - and the walk home couldn’t have taken more than 10 minutes. His stamina allowed him to use his sharingan passively like this for two or three days on end. He shouldn’t be feeling the effects of its use this soon, but the headache arced through his brain, and he felt his breathing and heartbeat slowing.

The reactions were too fast. The paralyzer he’d been given must have drained or blocked his chakra, and at this rate, he would die long before the drug wore off.

“Kakashi-san?” Iruka’d been a heartbeat away from leaving the other man to sleep it off when he noticed Kakashi’s breathing shallow. He knelt on the bed, leaning over the immobile body. “Kakashi-san?”

Shit. He hissed mentally. He’d recognized the presence of one drug, but hadn’t thought to check for a second. It was possible that Kakashi had another poison swimming in his veins – one that would kill.

And he had next to no chance of identifying it and even less of a chance of having or finding an antidote.

He pressed his ear to the jounin’s chest, hearing the strong heart falter and skip.

“Bam, right on his face!” Naruto slammed his hand down on Ichiraku’s counter. “Just like that!”

“Naruto.” Iruka scolded gently, “You really shouldn’t make fun of your teacher.”

“But he made us all think that he was invincible during that stupid test with the bells, and he gets taken out by his own technique! I knew he wasn’t perfect!”

Iruka’d sighed, feeling the need to defend the higher-ranking shinobi, “Don’t gloat, Naruto, it’s extremely juvenile.”

Kakashi’s hitae-ate was missing. I’m a moron. You think I would have noticed that change. He sat on the side of the bed, pulling the cloth band from his head. The knot tangled with his hair-tie and pulled it free as well. He untangled the two, leaned forward and wrapped the protector around Kakashi’s face, covering the swirling eye.

The jounin’s demeanor changed instantly, the breathing evened and slowed to a more natural rhythm and the lifeless body somehow seemed to relax.

Kakashi felt the bed shift as Iruka rose and left the room, and he was left with an unobstructed view of the uninteresting ceiling.

But his mind kept replaying the perfectly memorized image of Iruka’s hair cascading down around his face as he pulled his hitae-ate from his head.

Iruka grabbed the lumpy pillow from couch, bundled the blanket into his arms and returned to Kakashi’s room. He tossed both down beside the bed and settled down, listening to the even breathing coming from the paralyzed shinobi on the bed.

OOOOOOOOOOOO

A loud banging broke the comfortable silence in the apartment, and Iruka shot up off the floor, his heart slamming in his chest. He’d barely slept, as he kept waking, thinking he’d heard a change the room’s ambient noise that might signal Kakashi either getting better or worse.

He made it to the door right as the second set of knocking broke the silence. “I’m coming. I’m coming.” He paused long enough to bite back any truly irritable comments and hauled the door open.

Iruka recognized the sour-faced guard from the night before. “Can I help you?”

“We’re here to ask you about a child’s disappearance.”

“Look, you were here yesterday, we don’t have anything to do with that!” Iruka insisted shifting his weight to his other foot.

“This is about another child.”

“A..” Iruka opened his mouth in shock. “Another child?! Another child has gone missing? And you think we’re involved?”

“Yes.” The man reached into his pocket, extended his hand, and a Konoha hitae-ate tumbled from his grip, dangling in the air and suspended at one end by his fingers. “We found this at the scene.”

“That’s mine.” Iruka stated. “I took it off on the way home, when I stopped at the grocery store. I tucked it into my bag, and when I got home it wasn’t there. It must have fallen out.”

“Down a back alley? Did you wander off the main road for some…sight-seeing?” Iruka opened his mouth to explain but the guard cut him off. “Don’t bother; I know this isn’t yours.” He grabbed the hitae-ate and spread it out, holding it in front of Iruka’s face.

The hitae-ate was creased into a very distinctive shape by repeated wear and tear. The angled edge was grimy from constant contact with the wearer’s face, while the front remained clean. The guard reversed it so that the metal emblem faced away from Iruka and held it up against Iruka’s face.

“Not unless you regularly cover one of your eyes.” He smiled evilly at Iruka and leaned in, and Iruka caught a whiff of what the man must have had for breakfast and grimaced. “Where’s your partner?”

Iruka made a split decision – more lies at this point would only make them look guiltier. “He’s in the bedroom. He’s been paralyzed, but I found him like that in the alley. There was no sign of foul play and no sign of a child. I just figured he must have said something to piss off one of your jounin, and I didn’t want him to get in trouble.” Iruka tried hard not to let his eyes follow the two men who pushed past him down the hall and half carried, half dragged Kakashi out of the bedroom. “Listen.” Iruka grabbed hold of the guard’s arm, ignoring the dark look cast down at the offending hand. “He would not do this. He was either in the wrong place at the wrong time or he’s being set-up.”

The man flicked Iruka’s hold off with a quick movement, causing the chuunin to stumble forward. “Are you insinuating that one of our own people is kidnapping our children?” He turned and followed his subordinates and Kakashi out, slamming the door behind him.

Iruka fell back against the wall and slid to the floor as his knees gave out from underneath him. This had to be the only moment he had ever seen the elite jounin vulnerable. He had almost left the other man in the alley. He had almost killed him simply by knocking his hitae-ate off. Kakashi was his comrade and his partner for this mission, and Iruka was not even capable of protecting him when he needed it most. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, “Shit, shit, shit, SHIT!”

The last curse echoed off the walls of the empty apartment.

OOOOOOOOOO

Kakashi groaned as he was tossed unceremoniously into the dank, stone-floored cell.

“Ah, your vocal cords are working again.” A sneering voice remarked from somewhere behind him. “It shouldn’t be too long before you tell us where the kids are.”

Kids? Plural? Kakashi tried to ask the questions, but a series of grunts and gagging noises issued forth instead. He stopped trying to talk, and instead hoped that Iruka was smart enough to return to Konoha and get help. Things had gone south too far, too quickly, and they couldn’t risk both of them being stuck.

OOOOOOOOOO

Iruka jogged up the few short steps and rapped sharply on the door. He was virtually certain he’d arrived at the right place and was grateful when the door opened on a familiar face. “Naoto-sensei.”

“Iruka-sensei? You’re out late.”

“What’s going on? The guards just came our apartment asking about….”

“The four disappearances.” Naoto cut him off. “I know. It looks like it wasn’t just Daisuke-kun being peculiar.”

Iruka gaped at him. “Four?”

“You didn’t know? After the first one, we lost two this morning around 6 and a third between 3 and 3:30.”

“The times?” Iruka grabbed Naoto’s upper arms. “They’re sure about that?”

“Well, yes. They’re limited by when the children left home in the morning and when they left school in the afternoon.”

“The jounin that Kakashi-san was meeting with? Where does he live?”

Naoto looked puzzled, “He’s two streets over, one block down. Apartment 4C. But he’s probably not there.”

“Where should I look for him?”

“He’s probably in the center of town, outside the jail. News spread fast about your comrade’s arrest and most of the shinobi are calling for blood.”

Iruka turned and sprinted up the path.

“Iruka-sensei? What are you doing?”

“I just need to ask him something.” He called back over his shoulder.

He reached the central square and was instantly grateful that his forehead protector was currently wrapped around Kakashi’s head and not his own, or he was likely to be lynched by the crowd.

People rallied and railed, shouting and demanding everything from execution to explanations. Some even brandished weapons.

The jounin he was looking for was instantly recognizable. Tall, dark and hulking, he loomed over the people standing closest to him. He seemed to be spreading his hands in order to placate the mob swarming around him.

Iruka elbowed his way over and shouted in order to get the man’s attention. Once he’d identified himself, the man shook his head. “Don’t know why they’re accusing him of this. We started training at 5:30 sharp and finished after the last kid disappeared. He couldn’t have done it; he was with us the whole time.”

Iruka nodded. “I thought as much, thank you.”

He pushed and kicked his way to the front door of the jail, where the all-too-familiar guard folded his arms and glared down at him. “What can I do for you, Konoha shinobi?”

He said it loud enough to carry, and the throng silenced instantly, hissing whispers radiating outwards from where he stood as he was identified to every armed, trained killer surrounding him.

“He didn’t do it.” Iruka spoke loudly, letting his voice carry. The more people who heard it, the more likely it was that Kakashi would make it out alive. “He couldn’t have. He was with one of your jounin during both kidnappings.”

“We’ve been through this, shinobi.” The guard snarled. “Are you trying to pin blame on our citizens?”

Iruka took a deep steadying breath. He’d thrown himself in front of Mizuki’s shuriken to save Naruto, he could sure as hell get himself tossed into jail for Kakashi. “I did it.”

Shouts and curses rained in around him, and Iruka caught sight of Naoto at the edge of the crowd, his hands over his mouth. “I have no alibi, and as you so astutely pointed out, this was not done by someone from Mist.”

A broken scream issued from one man’s mouth as he lunged desperately at Iruka, “Tell me where my daughter is!”

The guard caught the man’s forearm, halting the frantic attack. “If you kill him, we will never find out.”

Iruka held out his arms, wrist together and barely flinched as the cuffs snapped closed around his wrists. They were imbued with a chakra-impeding element, and he shivered as it came in contact with his skin, seeming to suck the heat out of the immediate area.

“Why are you just turning yourself in?” The guard gripped the center of his cuffs and pulled him through the door.

Iruka raised his chin. “I’m not about to let an innocent man be executed for something he didn’t do.”

The hooded eyes studied him. “Is that so.” The cell door banged open and he shoved Iruka into it.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Kakashi demanded, his speech slurred from the after-affects of the drug.

Iruka sank onto the rough-hewn bench and starred impassively at the barred wall across from him. “I told them I did it.”

Kakashi felt the dark anger boiling within him until he could no longer control his tongue. “You what?” He hissed. “You should be headed back to Konoha by now! I was fairly certain that this kind of genuine stupidity was reserved to Naruto and maybe Sakura, but only if Sasuke’s involved!”

“Look.” The word snapped out sharply in the same tone that consistently brought all pre-genin to a screeching halt, regardless of what they were doing. “I am not an idiot.” Each word was clipped, but Iruka didn’t turn towards him. “The people out there are about three heartbeats away from stringing you up by your neck until you stop breathing, and I am well aware of who is more valuable to the village. So when they let you out, you should go back to the village, and if I’m lucky, I’ll still be alive by the time a full team gets back.”

Kakashi opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

“I’ve gotten you out of an execution, the least you could do is say thanks.” Iruka pointed out sharply.

Thanks?! Kakashi wanted to scream. You want me to say thanks? You’ve practically signed your own death warrant just to save me. They’re going to kill…

I don’t…I don’t want anyone else to die for me.

OOOOOOOOO

Thanks so much for reading! As always, I love reviews, even if they're criticism (though I prefer them to be constructive) ^^