Oh, for fuck's sake…
When Tsume noticed his pack-mate's collapse, he stopped and called out to the two younger wolfs, "Let's take a break, guys," before heading back to see how Kiba was doing. What he found upon arrival made him frown. His friend had passed out completely, violently trembling as if he could not contain any body-heat, and looking paler than ever.
Tsume lifted Kiba up and carried him to the nearest iceberg in the hopes that it would give him some protection against the rough arctic winds. He started inspecting Kiba's leg while going through the fight in his head, trying to figure out what could be wrong with their pack-leader. Remembering that Kiba was thrown into an iceberg, he moved over to inspect the back of Kiba's head. Indeed, he soon found a nasty bruise; it looked swollen and very sore.
"What is wrong with him Tsume?" Toboe asked as he knelt down next to the two wolves. The pup looked like he was about to start crying, "Please, tell me Tsume, what's wrong?" He whined.
Tsume growled in annoyance and swallowed a snarky response. He knew that Toboe was just worried about Kiba. Now was not the time to snap at the runt, he reminded himself. "He must have hurt his head in the fight; a head-injury can cause nauseousness and fatigue. I've seen it before. Plus he has not eaten in almost a week, as supposed to the rest of us, and the moon is only new, so it can't help him."
"What should we do? It has to be something we can do, right?" The pup went on whining.
"Well I would tell you to find some medicinal herbs but there's nothing alive in this god-forsaken icy dump. I think the only thing we can do for him right now is trying to keep him warm." With that Tsume marked that the conversation was over by turning around to face Hige: "Go search for some shelter, we need to get Kiba away from the cold."
"I think we passed a formation of caves a little while ago, lemme check and I'll be back soon," Hige nodded with a worried look on his face and disappeared into the arctic landscape in the direction they had just come from.
Sighing slightly at the unfortunate turn of events, Tsume sat down to wait for Hige while Toboe shifted into his wolf-form and lied down next to his unconscious pack-leader to try to provide as much warmth as possible while protecting him from the icy winds of the north.
A couple of hours later Tsume finally spotted the outline of Hige's shape in the distance, and as the brown wolf came closer, he could hear shout:
"I was right; there is a good cave about an hour's walk from here. How is he?"
Tsume nodded and carefully lifted up their injured friend, hoisting him up on his shoulder while answering the brown wolf, "Still no reaction. We need to get him into a proper shelter."
…ooo000ooo…
After a short walk back, Tsume laid their injured friend down on the cave-floor and looked to the two youngest members of the pack, who eagerly looked up to their older friend for guidance. He sighed and rubbed his shoulder to rid himself of the stiffness from carrying Kiba. 'Why do they turn to me? I haven't got the slightest idea on how take care of stuff like this.'
"Toboe, I know it is probably futile, but go see if you can find some useful herbs. Hige, when he wakes up, he needs food. See what you can find," he ordered gruffly.
The two younger wolfs simply nodded before heading back out into the icy landscape.
Not long after Toboe and Hige left, Kiba started to stir. He woke up slowly, struggling to adjust to consciousness. He tried to sit up but the movement brought forward another wave of dizziness, and nausea rushed over him, quickly overwhelming him and forcing him to bend over coughing and retching. Tsume tried to help by holding him up while his friend lost the battle with the nausea for the second time that day. With his stomach completely empty, he only dry-heaved for a few moments while the convulsions ripped through his gut painfully. Once he felt like he could finally straighten out without being betrayed by his stomach, Kiba wiped his mouth, spat and struggled to sit up. When Tsume moved to help him, he merely accepted the offered assistance, and Tsume couldn't help the unease beginning to brew in the pit of his stomach. That Kiba would simply accept the other wolf's help without any protests was a clear sign that the younger male was faring far worse than he would have liked.
"Finally awake huh?"
Kiba simply nodded. "Where are the others?"
"They're out searching for food, how's your head?"
"It hurts like hell and I still feel a bit sick," Kiba admitted quietly after a few moments.
"You should lie down again and rest," Tsume stated and half forced, half helped Kiba to lie down on the cave floor again. Kiba nodded in agreement and tried to make himself as comfortable as possible on the cold cave-floor with his left leg stretched out and the rest of him curled up in a futile attempt to keep warm.
Tsume walked over to the entrance of the cave and sat down, staring out into the white nothingness. When he heard the light breathing signalling that Kiba has once again fallen asleep, he looked over to his friend and sighed quietly. He couldn't really bring himself to be angry with the younger wolf, not this time. He often did reckless things without thinking it through first and in the process ended up getting injured. However, this time Tsume had to admit it was not his fault; it could have been anyone in their small group that was lying on the cave floor with a huge piece of his flesh pierced right now. It just came down to bad luck this time. Tsume left his scouting position when it occurred to him that Kiba probably needed water judging from the last vomiting session. He got up and dug a hole in the ground, filling it with snow for Kiba to drink when he woke up the next time before the grey wolf once again sat down to scout for anything unusual.
Toboe arrived later without any herbs, and in the dusk of the day Hige returned carrying a skinny rabbit.
…ooo000ooo…
Hige got woken up in the middle of the night by a quiet moan. Quickly opening his eyes to locate the source of the noise, he found an unconscious Kiba shivering and whimpering in his sleep. Getting up from his warm, albeit improvised bed, he went over to his friend and licked Kiba's ear comforting before deciding to take a look at the wound on Kiba's thigh as he could smell something… off… about it. The smell was very faint and as he couldn't pinpoint the scent, he shifted into his human form and put a hand on it, noting that the skin around the gruesome wound was far warmer than it should be.
Hige woke up the other two by quietly nudging them awake, careful not to wake Kiba up in the process, figuring that he probably needed all the rest he could get.
"Kiba is not doing too well; I think an infection might be setting in."
"What shall we do? We have neither the medicine nor the knowledge on how to handle an infection," Toboe whined when the full extent of the situation dawned on him. It looked like he was about to start crying.
"Shut up runt. There's nothing we can do right now but try to keep him warm," Tsume muttered, careful to not let the worry shine through his voice. An infection? On top of everything else? Great, just great...
Hige shifted into his true wolf-form and licked the wound clean before parking himself next Kiba to trying to share his body heat with his freezing friend. The other two also let their illusions drop and curled up around their wounded pack-member.
…ooo000ooo…
The next morning a pale sun shined through the thick clouds, giving an illusion of warmth and making the cave seem a little lighter than last night.
"If we can find some better shelter for him, like an abandoned cabin or something, it would provide us with a better protection and possibly some blankets and medicine or something for Kiba," Toboe argued but his suggestion was met with nothing but a contempt snarl from Tsume.
"Yeah right, where the hell would we find a place like that? Look out kid; we're in the middle of nowhere. There is not a single human settlement for days in each direction and Kiba can't move the way he is now."
"We can't just sit here and do nothing can we!?" The pup exclaimed, frustrated with the situation.
Before Tsume had a chance to give a snarky comeback, they were all interrupted by a weak whimper followed by an unconscious cry from Kiba. The three wolves turned around to see their friend shuddering in his sleep.
They all bend down next to Kiba and Toboe put his nose against Kiba's; when he turned again away he had a worried look on his face.
"He has a high fever."
Hige inspected Kiba's leg and it really did not look good. The skin around the wound was swollen, bright pink, and there was a strong heat radiating from the wound.
"He is definitely suffering from an infection, come to think about it, it's probably not that unexpected, that old walrus' tusks must have been really dirty," Hige said, always the one to point out the obvious.
Kiba stirred under the noise their inspection caused and slowly woke up. First he looked confused and only half there, but as his vision cleared, he saw the worried faces of his friends.
"Hi guys," Kiba mumbled weakly before switching to his human illusion and struggling to sit up, leaning against the cave-wall with his good leg bent up close to his upper body and his arms wrapped around his chest for warmth.
Toboes expression switched from worried to happy in less than a second before he ran over and hugged Kiba. Kiba smiled slightly at the excitement in the pup's eyes but almost instantly inhaled sharply and pushed the pup away from his left leg, Toboe had accidentally leaned on it with his knee while bending down to hug Kiba.
"Oh no, I'm so sorry, Kiba!" The pup cried out in a high pitched voice with tears in his eyes.
"It's okay, it was an accident." Kiba assured and tried to make the kid feel better by smiling even though he was still panting from the pain.
"How do you feel?" Hige was the one voicing the question lingering on all of the wolves' lips.
"All right," Kiba replied, smiling reassuring, only to be met by sceptical stares from his friends. He could probably have pulled off the white lie if his flustered and sweaty appearance hadn't so obviously betrayed him.
Kiba choose to completely ignore his friends' glares and as soon as he could breathe fairly normal again started pulling himself up with help from the wall, only to be stopped halfway by Toboe and pushed down into sitting position again.
"Hey, what are you doing? You're in no condition to be up and running right now."
"I said I'm fine, we have to keep going." Kiba muttered in annoyance and stood up again. He took one limping step towards the cave-entrance before freezing when Tsume spoke.
"Geeze man, you're stubborn to the point of stupidity," the grey wolf growled in a low voice. "I didn't carry you all the way here for you to run yourself down and make me babysit you again."
Kiba's completely expressionless face showed no sign of what he was thinking as he looked Tsume straight in the eyes, but after a short moment he sighed slightly, backed one step and slid back into sitting positing with his back against the wall.
To be honest he felt like crap, he knew he had caught a fever, even though they were in the middle of an ice-desert, his whole body felt like it was boiling and every limb ached, thus he decided to remove his black jacket in the hope that it would cool him down a bit. His leg hurt, if possible, even more than the yesterday, and judging from the look and smell of it, he had already caught an infection, great. On the plus-side, the nausea seemed to have subsided somewhat to a mere discomfort in the back of his throat and his head no longer felt like it was on the verge of exploding.
Upon finishing the quick mental examination of himself and his current state he realised he was both hungry and thirsty. He didn't dare eat anything, but some water would be heaven for his ragged body. Dropping his human illusion, he bent down low and lapped up some snow from the hole in the ground that Tsume had made yesterday with his tongue, letting it melt in his mouth while tuning in to listening to the last part of his friends' most recent bickering.
"So what are we going to do, just sit here and role our thumbs?"
"If you have a better idea runt, I'm open for suggestions," Tsume retorted, well knowing that at the moment they just had to sit down and wait until Kiba felt well enough to get going again.
Hige, who had been silent for a while, interrupted the conversation when he noticed that Kiba was listening to them. "Hungry? I caught a rabbit yesterday for you," he offered.
"No thank you. I'm fine. You'll have it, I'm sure you're hungry again…" Kiba suggested, smiling slightly when Hige's stomach indeed started to rumble, almost as if on a cue.
Hige smiled as his cheeks flushed in embarrassment, "Well, it's no way near enough for all of us. Hey runt, isn't it time you learn how to hunt? Come with me and I'll show you a few things."
"Yeah cool!" Toboe nodded excitedly and they both disappeared into the icy landscape.