Kakashi rushed through the dense green canopy surrounding him, barely able to see past the blood dripping into his eyes. He had long since given up on trying to keep it at bay – the wound that had torn off his headband just wouldn't stop bleeding. When he stumbled on loose bark below his feet, he slammed sideways into the trunk, jarring his dislocated shoulder and making him groan in pain. That in turn made the many stab wounds in his chest and abdomen tense, causing him to hurt even more.
The solid thunk of a kunai hitting the tree trunk next to his head made him jump backwards onto the branch of a tree further away. The damn enemy was swarming towards him like ants to honey. Or was it bees to honey? A throwing star cut through his sleeve and he brought his attention back to his current situation, instantly seeing at least a dozen more weapons flying towards him.
He narrowed his eyes and waited until the last possible second before he leapt sideways and kicked himself off the tree trunk. He went sailing over the deadly weapons, grabbed a branch as he passed it and swung himself around, changing his trajectory and sending him sailing off in another direction.
His feet barely hit the branch when there was a man in front of him, short sword drawn ready for attack. The white haired jonin, reacting purely on instinct and years of training, pulled a kunai out of the pouch on his thigh and blocked the swipe at his head. As the weapons bounced back from each other, he tossed the kunai into his other hand, grabbing a second one moment later. He deflected a second attack, but this time he slid his blade over the enemy's and locked it in place where it was. Before the other ninja could work out how to get his weapon free, Kakashi had slashed his throat with the second kunai knife in his other hand.
"It's been too long since I went out on an ANBU mission alone," he groaned as the man hit the ground.
He barely had a chance to catch his breath before another man appeared behind him, attacking instantly before Kakashi had a chance to react. His kick landed squarely in the patch of muscle between his hip and ribs, which had only recently healed enough for him to be out doing missions. He gritted his teeth through the pain and grabbed the branch under his feet before he went sailing out of the tree. Using the momentum he had gained from the fall he swung himself back up, kicking his assailant under the jaw, making his head snap upwards with a resounding crack.
The man stumbled backwards, allowing Kakashi to get back to his feet and stab him in the chest. The ninja grunted, coughed up a mouthful of blood and tumbled out of the tree. When he didn't move, the white haired man decided it was safe to continue. Taking a deep breath, he wrapped an arm around the largest gash on his stomach and started running through the trees again, knowing that he was almost at the border of the Land of Fire. They should stop following him once he was over it.
His suspicion was correct, because the moment he knew he crossed the border, he felt the presence of the enemy ninja slowly fade away. He didn't stop running though until he hadn't been able to sense them for at least twenty minutes. When he was sure that he was no longer being tailed, he allowed himself to drop to the ground and slow his pace to a walk.
However he hadn't been walking for more than a few minutes when he had to stop again, trying to catch his breath. One of the injuries he sustained must have affected his lung somehow, and when he started coughing blood, he knew that his lungs were definitely injured. That meant only one thing to him – hurry up and get back to the village.
Gritting his teeth against the pain he forced himself to continue, only now becoming aware of the pain in his legs and back. How had he not noticed that before? That then made him question just how badly injured he was. Putting that thought aside he pressed on, trying his best to ignore the throbbing pain that was steadily growing throughout his entire body, and praying that he was actually heading in the right direction.
As he walked, Kakashi steadily became more and more disoriented, finding it difficult to walk in the meagre straight line he had been managing to walk in before. More often than not he found himself falling into trees, and catching his hair and clothes on branches. By now he was also sure that he was leaving a very obvious trail of blood that even the lowest level shinobi could follow.
Well, at least if anyone was following him then they would be very likely to kill him instantly. If he twisted his logic enough that was probably a good thing.
The sky was beginning to darken when his knees started to give way. He thrust his hands out, trying to find something to hold on to. His hands latched onto a branch, but it wasn't sturdy enough to hold his weight. It broke with a loud, resounding snap and he pitched forward, cracking his knees against the stone covered ground. He couldn't seem to move his arms fast enough to break the fall properly, and ended up with one arm caught underneath him at an odd angle, breaking when his body hit the ground.
A pained cry escaped his lips, muffled by his blood soaked mask. He was sure that on top of the now broken arm, both his kneecaps were broken too. Add that to the dislocated shoulder on his other arm, cracked ribs, and multiple stab wounds and cuts across his body, and he was nothing more than a broken bleeding mess on the ground where he lay.
Groaning he tried to roll over so that he could at least try and see how his arm was broken, and possibly asses the state of his knees, but he had no such luck. Now that the adrenalin he had when he was fighting had worn off the pain was getting to him, worse than it had been before. He was also completely out of energy, and had almost no chakra left at all. That meant that if someone was looking for him, they wouldn't be able to find him by sensing his chakra. It also meant that if he sensed anyone nearby, he couldn't alert them to the fact that he was there.
He was not in a good situation any way that you looked at it.
Best circumstance, he didn't bleed to death or die from the cold and was found by someone from Konaha, even if they weren't actually looking for him. It wasn't like he was taking a route that was never used by anyone. In fact he had taken one of the most used and most direct routes back to the village. Therefore he could be found by a squad or members of ANBU going to or coming from a mission.
Worst circumstance, he bled to death. Plain and simple, and probably wouldn't cause any more pain than that which he was currently experiencing. In fact, it would be just like getting really cold and then falling asleep. Not so bad.
"Fuck I'm pessimistic. Where's Naruto when you need him?" he mumbled, his words slurring slightly as his consciousness fought to stay in control through the haze of pain that was beginning to fog his brain.
Darkness fell, and with it came the cold, bitting wind that one instantly felt deep inside. Kakashi began to shiver uncontrollably, his body sheltered in no way from the chilling wind. When he could feel the cold deep in his chest he started to get worried. Pneumonia was not something that he wanted to catch on top of everything else that was wrong with him at the moment.
When he started coughing a few hours later, when the sky was no more than black with a few dots of stars poking through the thick canopy above him, the ninja knew that he was definitely in trouble. The cough was gravely and rough, and he could feel phlegm trying to force its way out of his throat. No doubt that this was the beginnings of pneumonia, and if he didn't get warm at least, then soon it would get really bad.
His eyelids gradually grew heavy, and his breathing became more laboured. Not bothering to fight any longer, he allowed his eyes to drift shut. His once tense muscles had long since relaxed, and he now felt as though he wanted nothing more than the melt into the ground and disappear. If he'd had enough chakra left to perform any jutsu he would have hidden himself underground using Earth-Style. Although even if he had enough chakra, it wasn't like he could even use his arms at the moment.
Somewhere in his slowly fading consciousness he thought he heard light footsteps walking around somewhere nearby. When he heard a twig crack loudly near his head, he cracked open an eye, which was difficult since it had practically been glued shut by dried blood. What he saw made his brow furrow in confusion.
Black dress shoes that were so shiny they reflected the few stars that were visible through the canopy. He tried to look up at whoever was standing over him, but before he could even roll his eyes up, everything around him suddenly felt heavy. Moments before everything around him went black, he heard an all too familiar voice from above him.
"Well now, isn't this interesting?"
…...
Sebastian really wished that his Young Master would stop focusing on solving crimes in the underworld for the Queen and start focusing on trying to find out who killed his parents. It wasn't that he didn't like the boy, in fact he found him to be quite nasty (a trait he greatly admired). No, it was more like he was growing tired of the staff and the often unwelcome visitor that he was currently dragging behind him in the middle of the night.
He wasn't the one who was doing the actual dragging. It was more of a case of 'the annoying thing won't let go of my tailcoat'. He had been walking around the dark grounds for close to twenty minutes now, dragging the thing around in the white gravel that lined the courtyard. At this point he was considering walking past the pond to see if that made any difference.
One good thing about the unwanted guest was that it came over so often that he now had a perfect defence against it – he ignored it completely. Although that didn't make it stop coming and causing a commotion, it did allow him to get on with his menial daily tasks in a more constructive manner. Although, when he finally managed to work out how to get rid of the thing permanently, his life would be much easier.
Just as he decided that he was indeed going to drag the thing into the pond, a vague scent hit his nose. Not vague in the sense that he couldn't tell what it was – he could quite easily tell that what he was smelling was blood. It was more like he had smelled this particular blood before, but the scent was too far away from him to be able to smell it properly.
When a large gust of wind blew towards him from the direction the scent was coming from however, he smiled. "Ah, I see," he said quietly.
"See? See what? Oh I know! You can finally see how much you love me back! Darling Bassy! I knew this day would come!" the thing squealed, jumping to its feet and attempting to wrap its arms around the butler.
"No Grell, I'm afraid that is not the case. Now if you'll excuse me, I believe that there is someone nearby who may need medical attention," Sebastian said calmly, gracefully slipping out of the thing's way when it tried to latch onto him.
"But what about me? This is supposed to be our time together Bassy!"
"I don't believe I ever agreed to that."
"But Bassy!" When the thing tried to pounce on him again, Sebastian grabbed its shoulder and threw it into the pond as he had intended to earlier.
He started walking towards where the scent was coming from even before he heard the splash that made him smirk slightly, especially when he heard the thing wail about being wet. There wasn't time to concentrate on that at the moment. The blood he smelt on the wind had been strong, so that probably meant that there was a lot of it, but it smelt too fresh for it to have been coming from a corpse.
Once he had reached the trees that surrounded the estate he stopped walking and started running. Just because the blood wasn't from a dead body didn't mean that whoever was bleeding wouldn't be dead soon if he didn't hurry up. In hindsight, he probably should have brought something with him so that he could cover the wounds that were causing his quarry to bleed, but there probably wasn't enough time for him to have done that anyway. He would just have to use it coat or something.
He paused to sniff the air several times, making sure he was still going in the right direction, and soon enough the scent was almost on top of him. He slowed his pace to a calm walk and began to scout the area. If his sense of smell was anything to go by, then he was very close. And even though he had very good eyesight, being a demon after all, there was no moon tonight to see by and the light of the stars could barely break through the thick canopy of leaves overhead.
There was just enough light however to make out the prone figure lying on the ground surrounded by blood. And he knew that by the white hair, although caked with blood, still had the same shape as the last time he had seen it. As he walked closer a twig snapped under his foot and the man cracked open an eye, his brow furrowed.
A smile grew on his face at the sight in front of him. "Well now, isn't this interesting?" he said quietly as Kakashi's eyes rolled back and he fell into unconsciousness.