OoOoOoO

When the attack finally came, there was virtually no warning at all.

They had been walking for the entire day – Kakashi insisted on not taking the easy way and using the wagon-track directly, but walking further off, keeping it within sight. The endless gold-brown fields were slowly thinning and eventually gave way to blank, crumbly shale. The further they traveled, the uglier and more exposed the landscape became. Iruka hated it.

When he felt a sudden gust of wind, he turned his face towards it, wary of a storm. He barely heard Kakashi's warning shout, and fumbled when the other boy shoved a kunai into his hands.

The wind picked up sharply and Iruka felt a thick pressure against his ears – like the popping deep in his head he got when he dived too fast underwater.

The windstorm dropped to nothing in an instant. And suddenly there were three men standing in a triangle around them. They were all tall, fit, with mean, leering faces and standard-issue chuunin flack jackets. Their forehead protectors displayed not the double stylized rocks of Hidden Rock, but a single musical note.

Upon seeing the boys, one of the men threw back his head and laughed, loud and hard. "Well, well. This certainly explains a few things."

Iruka shot Kakashi a glance, but the other boy had all of his attention on the other nin, one hand hovering over his weapons-pouch in warning.

"Who are you?" Iruka asked. He tried to look as he ought – a competent shinobi clutching his kunai and ready for a fight. But inside, he felt small and weak. He wasn't ready for this… wasn't ready for any of this. "What do you want with us?"

The laughing man – the leader by the looks of it – didn't answer, and instead jerked his chin towards his two companions. "Master will want the Copy-nin alive. I don't care about the other one."

"Iruka-sensei," Kakashi hissed in warning. "Move—!"

Whatever else he was going to say was lost to the winds. In a flash the three closed in on them. Two men converged on Kakashi, one came at Iruka.

He was fast. So fast that Iruka didn't have time to breathe or think – he could only react.

Iruka swept his kunai up, striking a double-set of shuriken out of the air he'd only seen coming at him from the corner of one eye. Then he ducked, nearly flattening to the ground as the man cut the air with his long-sword. Had Iruka been an instant slower, it would have taken his head clean off. The blade missed the top of his skull by a finger-width, and when the man struck again—a short downward chop—Iruka threw himself to the side and the blade hit rock, sending sparks flying.

Scuttling desperately to the side, Iruka grabbed at the ground with his free hand and threw a handful of gravel at the nin. It bounced harmlessly off his flak jacket. The man looked down at his chest and then snorted, amused.

"Interesting," he said, and to Iruka's amazement he sheathed his sword and came at the boy with bare hands alone.

Somehow, Iruka managed an awkward stab with the kunai, but the ninja easily batted it away and grabbed his wrist in a tight grip. His fingers jerked open as the man squeezed pressure points; the kunai fell to the ground.

And the man almost casually delivered a hard backhand slap that snapped his whole head back and made his ears ring. Then he struck Iruka again, on the other side of his face.

The man released him and Iruka fell bonelessly to the ground, disoriented. Vaguely, he felt his body being turned and his wrists brought together behind his back – some sort of fibrous rope wrapping around them.

"Nimble little shit…" The man muttered above him and jerked the boy's arm up painfully. Iruka let out an explosive breath, which served to clear his head a little. Something hard and heavy pressed into his mid-back – the man's knee – pushing him into the ground.

"You might be worth something to us after all," the man continued, lowly, almost to himself, still crouched over Iruka. "By the time Master is done with you, you'll be happy to join my clan. You won't even know the difference—uck."

Something slammed into the man—Iruka felt the impact through the man's body where his knee dug into his back—and at once the pressure upon him eased. Iruka rolled and sat up the best he could with this hands tied behind his back.

Kakashi was fighting the shinobi.

He didn't know where the other two men were; though judging by Kakashi's torn right sleeve and the blood running down his arm, he had managed to get the better of them. Iruka watched, stunned as the other boy almost casually evaded the nin's sword. He looked more like a graceful dancer than a fighter, but Kakashi's steely eyes contained the calm coolness of an efficient killer.

Kakashi's hands flashed quickly through some unfamiliar signs and abruptly there were three of him standing where one had been before. The two perfect clones and one real boy jumped towards the shinobi – attacking in perfect synchronization.

Iruka glanced swiftly around until he found his lost kunai. It had fallen blade-first into the rocky shale a few feet away. It took some awkward maneuvering, but he was able to grab it in his bound hands and start slicing at the bonds.

The rope fell away not a moment too soon. The shinobi, sword now gone, shrieked something and slammed his hands on the ground. A rolling wave shook the earth. Dirt and shale lifted, liquid-like, in an impossible tidal wave. It rose – six feet high, then ten, before it crested and came back down with hideous force.

Iruka got a glimpse of one Kakashi throwing himself in front of another—one of the clones trying to protect the original, no doubt—before the wave struck. The clone poofed out of existence and Kakashi was swallowed underground.

"NO!" Iruka shrieked, "KAKASHI!"

Alerted by his scream, the shinobi turned. His eyes narrowed and he bent to pick up his sword.

Again, Iruka didn't have time to think – only to react. When the blade came for him he ducked forward instead of back, and threw up his forearm, meeting the sword nearly at the hilt and letting the wire mesh under his shirt protect him from a nasty slice. The shinobi could have cut him down with a second strike, but he hesitated; stumbled. An earth-wave tidal jutsu must have cost him a lot of chakra, and in that moment he had made his misstep.

The man's eyes widened. It all seemed very slow at that point, as if everything had already been planned out in Iruka's mind, the chorography already fixed, and all he had to do was complete the steps.

Iruka ducked again under a clumsy sword-strike and moved forward under the man's guard. He slammed the kunai up, right under the shinobi's chin.

The man fell as if the strings had been cut from his legs, leaving Iruka standing, shocked.

Oh no, he thought, blankly, What have I done?

He turned, seeking someone… anyone. But there were only the still bodies of the man he'd fought and the two Kakashi had killed. The earth-wave jutsu had receded tamely back into the ground with its caster's death, and left the land looking wholly undisturbed, every tuft of grass and rock neatly back in place.

Iruka took a hesitant step forward. "Kakashi?"

There was no answer.

Taking in a sharp breath, Iruka sprinted to the place he'd last seen Kakashi – he had to guess. Nothing looked disturbed. He fell to his knees and started brushing away pebbles, lifting small stones as big as his fist and throwing them aside. Finally, Iruka began clawing at the shale in desperation.

"Kakashi!" he called, again and again. "Kakashi!"

No answer. There was nothing but dirt and rock under his fingers. Iruka yanked at a tuft of grass and tossed it away.

No, no, no… Iruka thought desperately. How far down could an earth-wave take him? How much air could there be down there? What if he never found him at all?

"Kakashi…" His voice broke and Iruka paused to run a forearm over his eyes, brushing away building tears, before continuing to dig.

A moment later his searching hand hit something soft and cold. Fingers. Three of them, curled and sticking out of the soil under where Iruka had tossed away a rock. Iruka cried out and dug faster. The soil seemed less densely packed directly around the body, and it wasn't long at all before he had followed the fingers to uncover Kakashi's whole hand, then arm, and followed it up to his head.

Kakashi gasped a great lungful of air as he was unearthed, and fought Iruka a little until Iruka whapped him upside the head and went back to trying to clear away the worst of the dirt from his eyes and pull Kakashi's mask down so he could breathe better.

"I think that stupid mask saved your life," Iruka told him, half-choked with laughter and tears as Kakashi coughed the dust from his lungs. Iruka felt like hugging him… and throttling him, for some odd reason. He settled for trying to dig the other boy's legs free from the ground. "It must have stopped the dirt from getting in."

Kakashi only nodded weakly and then spit. It came out brown with dirt. "Wha 'appened?" he asked, roughly.

Iruka felt the blood leave his face. He glanced over his shoulder and then quickly back again when he caught sight of the unmoving form. "I killed him," he said, lowly, closing his eyes.

A rough hand over his own made him open his eyes again. Kakashi was staring at him intently, the grime on his face making the white of his eyes stand out oddly. " 'would 'ave killed you," he said, then winced as if the words hurt and spat once more before speaking. His voice came clearer now. "He would have killed you. He almost killed me."

"I know." But it didn't make him feel any better.

The sun was very close to setting, and since Kakashi seemed too exhausted to move, it was up to Iruka to search the bodies for anything useful. He didn't throw up this time, although he thought that was more due to the fact that his stomach was completely empty than anything to do with his own bravery.

One of the men Kakashi had killed had a canteen of water. The second, the laughing man, had a scroll of some sort. Someone had drawn a childish picture of a face in hiragana on one end. Iruka took both items, gingerly, and tried not to look at their dead men's gaping wounds very closely. The shinobi he'd fought had nothing, save for the sword; Iruka didn't want to retrieve his kunai from the man's throat, so he took the sword instead.

He came back to find Kakashi much more alert with his mask pulled back up, trying to bind the long cut on his right arm with strips of his own torn shirt. Iruka bent to help him and winced at the grit he found pressed into the wound.

Kakashi made no sign he was in any pain. He picked up the canteen. "Use this to wash it out," he said. "I think the nin had some sort of paralytic on his weapon when he cut me."

Iruka's fingers fumbled and he leaned back to stare at the other boy in shock. "Wait, you think you were poisoned?"

"Probably." Kakashi nodded to his own arm which lay limp at his side. "I can't feel or use it at all. You'll need to wash out what you can before it spreads."

Iruka stared at him for a second. "You're… really calm about this."

That earned him a smile. Kakashi smiled with his eyes, Iruka noted. "Shinobi rule number thirty-one," Kakashi replied, wearily.

"Even the best shinobi will occasionally be injured – I know that!" Iruka snapped, and then took up the canteen. "Idiot," he added, to cover up his own nervousness. They'd only covered dressing wounds in lectures in class. He was so far over his head he couldn't see the sky anymore and if he did something wrong…

Shaking his head to dispel that train of thought, Iruka took several short, calming breaths and set to work.

Even though he was desperately thirsty (and knew Kakashi was even more so, having fought three men and then been buried alive) he used the entire contents of the canteen to wash out the wound. It wasn't as clean as he would have liked, but it would have to do and he caught Kakashi wincing as he bound up the slash in his arm – Iruka took it as a good sign he could feel something.

"Can you walk?" Iruka asked, once he was done.

Kakashi hesitated, and then nodded. He rose slowly, breathing through his nose as if worried he'd pass out if he stood too quickly. But he stood on his own two feet without help and Iruka let out a sigh of relief.

"Oh," he said, remembering. "I found something on one of the shinobi. He had a scroll." He withdrew it from his pocket.

Kakashi took one look at it and paled. His good hand reached out and snatched the scroll before Iruka could even blink. "That mark…" Kakashi said, turning it so that the odd picture of the face was visible in the fading light. And even with everything that had happened so far, this was the first time Iruka had ever heard Kakashi sound fearful. "That's a henohenomoheji – the scarecrow." He looked to Iruka, eyes wide. "This is mine."

OoOoOoO

It took more out of Kakashi than he wanted to admit to start walking again. The scroll with his identifying mark was tucked safely in one of his vest pockets. It hadn't opened to any of the basic unlocking jutsus he'd tried, and he was too drained to attempt any more involved ones.

It sat, a hard lump against his chest, confusing and damning all at the same time.

Kakashi didn't dare say it out loud, but there were only two reasons for a scroll with his signature to be in enemy hands: Either he had been betrayed, or somehow he was the betrayer.

He knew he was no traitor – he had certainly bled enough times for the sake of the village to prove that. He doubted Iruka was either. Surely, no one with a traitor's heart would take the time to dig a comrade out of the hard earth. Even with their recent memories gone, Kakashi felt nearly as sure about Iruka's loyalty as he did himself.

But why would an enemy-nin have a scroll with his mark?

His left foot caught on a rock and he stumbled, nearly tripping before Iruka gripped his elbow and steadied him. Kakashi grunted his thanks, honestly too tired to do anything more. He had used a lot of chakra in the fight and his right arm was completely numb and useless to him except for brief flashes of stabbing pain. He reached up, rubbing at his eyes tiredly and glanced at the rising full moon.

Two hours. He would give them two hours to put distance between themselves and the scene of the fight. Then he was going to sleep. Iruka could take the first watch, just this once.

"Kakashi?"

"Yes?"

Iruka bit his lower lip and glanced over. A guilty expression. "I think you were right," he said, "Earlier, I mean, with the memory jutsu? The man I ki—The man I was fighting said something about me 'joining his clan' and that by the time his Master was done with me, I wouldn't 'know the difference'."

"Aa," Kakashi said tiredly, and carefully stepped around a sharp looking boulder. It took more effort than it should have. His right ear had taken to ringing, too. He dug at it for a moment and came away with yet more dirt. The ringing didn't stop. "Perhaps you were what they meant by Copy-nin."

The other boy made a face. "What does that even mean, anyway?"

He considered his answer for a moment. "The Uchiha's Sharingan is often called the copy-eye due to the ability to observe and replicate most jutsu." He gave Iruka a sidelong glance, noting his brown hair and eyes. "Do you have any Uchiha blood?"

"No, my grandfather's father came from Wave Country," Iruka answered with a shake of his head. Then, "You?"

"No."

Iruka fell silent for several long minutes and Kakashi focused on placing his feet carefully along the path so he wouldn't slip or stumble again. They were only at a walking pace, but he felt oddly breathless; his arm throbbing dully in time with the beat of his heart.

"Kakashi?"

He closed his eyes for a moment, wary. "What is it?"

"I killed that shinobi," Iruka said softly. His head was bowed, hands clenched into fists at his side. "I… I didn't even think about it. My body just – it was like I'd done it before and I knew exactly what I had to do." The last all came out in an embarrassed rush and ended with another guilty glance at Kakashi, as if unsure of what he'd think of him.

"I've killed on missions," Kakashi murmured. The world seemed to have gone soft around the edges – the words sounding odd to his own ears, as if pulled from another place. "Do you think any less of me?"

"No!" Iruka said, quickly.

"Then don't think any less of yourself."

"Yes Kakashi-taichou," Iruka murmured, but graced him with a quick, hesitant smile.

And somehow, Kakashi was able to dredge up one of his own in reply.

...

Kakashi had planned on a two hour walking distance from the fight to be safe, but pure fortune granted them with a place to rest after only one.

They came to a low rocky hill. Kakashi meant to only sit down for a moment and catch his breath – dizziness and an odd hard pounding of his heart made it difficult to keep pace– when he spotted a dark patch, hidden in the cleft between two boulders.

Iruka went to investigate and came quickly back, his eyes wide and bright. "It's an entrance to a cave," he exclaimed, "And it's filled with supplies and food. Come on." He hefted Kakashi's good arm over his own shoulder and helped him inside.

Kakashi felt, in a distant sort of way, that he should have been indignant about the treatment – he wanted to be put-out, he wasn't completely helpless – but now that he was standing again it was all he could do to put one foot in front of the other. When Iruka led him inside and let go, Kakashi sank down, gratefully, on the smooth ground; he was breathing hard, and his arm was throbbing horribly.

The world seemed to go gray and fractured around him, brought back together only when someone tipped back his head and cool water dribbled over his exposed lips.

Kakashi blinked and found he was laid flat on his back; his own flak-jacket pillowed under his head. Iruka's concerned face hovered over him. "Drink it," Iruka repeated, and Kakashi realized that the other boy had been talking for some time. "I know it doesn't taste good, but I put a packet of immune boosters in… Just open your mouth."

He did, and coughed when Iruka tipped too much in, too fast. Kakashi raised his good hand and pushed the canteen away. Immune boosters wouldn't help if he was poisoned, anyway. Besides, there was something he needed to say… something important, only he couldn't – ah, there it was.

"Can't stay here," he rasped, between hard-won breaths. "Supply cave… Someone'll be assigned to check…Every few days."

Iruka's jaw tightened. "But you're sick and I can't carry you very far."

The world seemed to phase in and out again for long extended moments. Kakashi was shivering – he was afraid, he supposed. He might even be dying. "Go," he heard himself say. "Take the scroll…"

The other boy's eyes narrowed. "Shut up. I'm not leaving. Now open your stupid mouth and drink your stupid water."

Iruka put the canteen back to his lips and it took nearly all of Kakashi's flagging strength to push it away.

"That was an order."

"I don't care!" Iruka snapped.

Sucking in a deep breath, Kakashi levered his working arm under him and sat up, bracing himself against the wall. The world tilted and swayed alarmingly, and all he could do was grit his teeth and try to ignore it. "Listen to me," he said. "You are shinobi – sometimes it becomes necessary to sacrifice a companion for the sake of a mission."

Iruka's mouth worked for a moment or two, his dusky skin reddening as he struggled to find words. "You… IDIOT!" he said, or rather, yelled. He grabbed Kakashi by the shoulders almost as if he wanted to literally shake sense into him. "You're only guessing that we're on a mission. And if you think I killed someone and dug you up just to let you die now, well… well…" he sputtered for a moment, anger briefly overcoming his ability to speak. "Well you're WRONG!"

His head hurt. His arm hurt. Everything hurt. "It's the shinobi way," Kakashi said, flatly. Then he winced, knowing he had to drive the point home. "I would do the same if… if you were in my place."

Iruka froze for a long, long minute. "I don't believe you."

Kakashi started to shake his head, but stopped when the movement made the world spin. "Someone'll come… They will track us here and kill both of us. Take the scroll and save yourself."

"I don't care," Iruka snapped, although his voice broke on the last word. He set his jaw and blinked several times in rapid succession. Kakashi watched him, warily. "I don't abandon my friends," Iruka said at last. "And I think you're lying when you say you would abandon me." He smiled, wavering slightly, and the back of his hand reached out to brush Kakashi's cheek. It was a surprisingly… mature action. "You said the other day that you knew I wasn't the enemy. Well… I know you, too."

Kakashi sucked in a breath. "Iruka…"

The moment broke and Iruka's flushed. He withdrew his hand and instead shoved the canteen back at Kakashi. "Now shut up and drink your water. I'm going out to lay some traps."

He rose, turning his back to Kakashi. And in that moment Kakashi saw another boy, a few years older and taller, with spiky black hair and orange goggles. Something hot prickled behind his left eye as the boy turned to glare at him with dark eyes.

"Of course those who break the rules are called trash," the boy said, then looked over his shoulder to stare at Kakashi. "But those who abandon their companions are worse than trash."

All Kakashi could do was stare at him, wide eyed. His left eye watered and he tried to blink it away, but it was no use. The tears were coming whether he wanted them to or not.

The boy turned to go.

"No," Kakashi whispered. "No, no. Come back… Obito… come back…"

"… Kakashi?" came another's voice, very far away. Someone shook his good shoulder trying to get his attention.

His tears fell at last, moments before he passed out.

OoOoOoO

Next: Help finally arrives, and it comes from a very unexpected source.