Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, or any of the characters therein. I do not make any money from writing fanfiction.


Blood soaked the forest floor. It squelched under her feet.

She was not too late, she was not too late, she was not too late…

It sucked and gurgled around her sandals with each stride. The soggy ground had absorbed the blood and trapped it beneath the thin surface of mossy carpet, preventing it from drying.

How much of it was his?

She would have cringed at the warm, murky liquid bathing her toes and splashing across her calves if she wasn't so terrified. She forced her burning legs to go faster. She was supposed to come back stronger so she wouldn't ever have to feel this fear again. If he… no, she had to focus. Her heart thumped wildly in her chest

"Pakkun," her voice sounded strained and hoarse to her ears, "how much farther?"

"Almost there," the little pug wheezed out. His tongue lolled out, flecked with foam, but he didn't stop bounding from tree to tree.

She channeled more chakra into her screaming muscles and joined Pakkun in the low canopy.

They dashed past a corpse studded with kunai. Only the angry buzz of a cloud of flies alerted her to its presence; the rest of the forest was eerily silent. Above it, two sets of scarlet foot prints danced up and down the trees –a taijutsu master, then. They kept running.

How much ground could the battle have covered? She knew Kakashi was amazing and all, but hell, even he had to have limits. They had passed the first signs of the battle at least eight acres ago. She didn't even need Pakkun's nose now; a bloody trail told her the battle's story. Dried splatters, smeared handprints that had steadied cartwheeling bodies, and streaked footprints zigzagged across mossy bark, from the trees to the soil and back again. Each time the trail turned faint a fresh corpse provided ink for the next chapter of the battle.

Another corpse hung limply from a tree branch directly in their path. The flesh around the hole in his chest was charred. The mark of the raikiri. She was unsettled. To use that much chakra on one attack when he still had more opponents to face was near reckless. He must have been desperate. How strong were these rogue ninja? Who the hell were they?

"His scent is getting stronger," rasped Pakkun. "Just a little farther."

They emerged from the dense forest into a scene of destruction.

Everywhere, trees were uprooted. A layer of mud and dirt coated everything. The larger trees leaned against each other drunkenly, their trunks covered in scorch marks and shuriken. Craters peppered the area, giving the jungle an undulating base.

And everywhere bodies lay, their blood staining the vegetation.

Pakkun paused to sniff the air. "He's here. Somewhere, he's here." The tip of his tail nervously twitched as he bounded forward, nose to the ground. "I know he's here. He's going to be ok. I know it," he rambled to Sakura. "I would know if he... if he ever you know. It would break the summoning contract. I would know. I would know."

She couldn't think of anything to say so she kept her mouth shut as she cautiously weaved her way around fallen branches after the pug. Just because he was still alive didn't mean that he wasn't seriously injured. Still, she felt the same terrifying elation at being so close.

Pakkun paused, taking deep whiffs of the humid air. He froze. Sakura quickly followed his gaze. Underneath the shelter of two massive, fallen trees the outline of a man lay slumped over on its side.

Kakashi.

Panic jolted like liquid electricity up and down her body. Pakkun wasted no time to get to him. He raced through a shallow, murky pool, sending brown water flying into the air. She ran into the chilly water right behind him, throwing her arms out to balance herself on the uneven bottom.

Emerging at the other side, she jumped from the water and brushed strings of slimy lichen out of her away as she stooped under the fallen trees. She crawled the few remaining feet until she was by his side. Already there, the little pug let out a whine of agitation. "He's not awake, Sakura. Can you wake him up?"

Sakura leaned closer, twisting her torso to get a peek at his face. Sticky, dried blood plastered his hair to his features, obscuring the majority of it from her, but it was obvious he was unconscious.

"Give me a minute." If he hadn't regained consciousness this long after the fight, something was seriously wrong. Already she had started to tune everything out and focus on the injured man in front of her. She just had to remain calm.

Very carefully she manoeuvred herself in the cramped space over Kakashi. She settled down in the curve of his stomach. She didn't dare try to move him until she knew the extent of his injuries.

She took off her gloves and placed her hands on his side, sending a steady stream of warm chakra into his body.

What she found frightened the shit out of her.

It wasn't the cracked ribs, broken bones, gashes, pounds of bruised flesh, or the dangerously low level of chakra in his system that scared her.

A poison ran through his veins.

It had overcome his liver and seeped into his vital organs, slowing them down to a near standstill. His entire digestive track had stopped functioning, his immune system wasn't responding to her increasingly aggressive probes, and his muscles and respiratory system were fighting a losing battle. His lungs were nearly paralysed. Another couple hours and he would...

Nope.

Focus.

Tsunade had trained her to be better than this. Angrily, she choked down her fear and began a deeper assessment of his condition. The majority of the poison hadn't made its way to his brain. He must have been poisoned and then attacked. After a moment of searching she found a small wound just above his elbow. The flesh around it was a gruesome mix of bruises and contaminated blood. That must have been the poison's entry point into his body. Just above it a long, disturbingly deep cut sliced the inside of his arm, cutting through his muscle and into a major artery.

She paused. Something about it seemed off. It was too clean. It was to close. Kakashi was unparalleled at taijutsu. There was no way someone could get that close to him, let alone cut him at that angle.

He didn't...

Her insides flipped. She felt queasy.

Oh god.

She glanced at his face. Under the grime and blood, his jaw was clenched tight in pain. Even unconscious, he couldn't escape it.

As awful as it was, it had probably kept him alive. The poison should have killed him within minutes, but at a lower concentration it had to fight to conquer his body.

"Alright Pakkun, this is going to take a while, but bear with me."

"Give it all you've got Sakura," the pug replied softly, settling down beside his friend's head.

She had to stop the bleeding and repair his vital organs before they drowned in contaminated blood. Much longer and they would be beyond repair. But the real challenge was extracting the poison. She had encountered a similar type of poison only once before and she knew it was going to take all she had to safely remove it. But neither the issue of his damaged tissue and bleeding, or the poison could wait. Both had to be fixed now.

She stopped sending chakra into Kakashi's body and concentrated on rerouting it into her own.

"Kai," she whispered.

Slinky black bands of kanji, thick with her chakra, appeared around her biceps. Quickly, they bled down her forearms and down each of her fingers, transferring onto Kakashi's prone body. Upon making contact with his skin, they dispersed, snaking across his flesh, and curled around his most serious wounds.

"Seal."

The black ink glowed a soft green at her command.

"Release."

The seals twisted, opening. Her chakra, sealed inside the ink glyphs, poured out of the seals and seeped into his injuries.

From the corner of her eye she saw the little dog's ears perk up. This would be new to him. With renewed interest he watched her every move.

The healing technique she was using was the culmination of her work with Sai. It would exponentially improve Konoha's mission mortality rate and revolutionize their already superior medical system. No one had considered using a technique like this before. Well, at least not for healing.

Even genin knew you could seal Tailed Beasts, weapons, the tongues of your most dangerous agents, and even bind someone's chakra; but never had she heard of someone sealing portions of their own chakra. Having your chakra sealed by your opponent was something that every ninja was taught to fear; without chakra, most were scarcely more than fit civilians. Chakra sealing, made famous by the Hyuga clan in Konoha, was always regarded as a weapon. With this fear firmly instilled in every academy student, it was no surprise that no one had considered the benefits of sealing parts of their own chakra.

She could sense her chakra, guided by the instructions weaved into the seal, penetrate deep into his body and coax his cells to respond, unaided by her. Her own chakra levels remained steady.

Well that was one half of the problem solved.

Now free to concentrate on extracting the poison, she placed her palms above his chest and sent her chakra into his body one more time. She tried to separate the telltale sign of Kakashi's own silver chakra from the alien tar tainting it, but the poison stubbornly kept a vice-like grip on his body.

Too bad you didn't survive being trained by a Sandaime without acquiring a healthy dose of pigheadedness of your own. She increased the amount of chakra she was channeling into him, mindful not to disrupt the work of the seals.

Slowly, very slowly, the poison began to leave his system and pool under her hands.

Pakkun let out an appreciative grunt.

Where had she encountered a similar poison? The memory nagged her, but she set it aside – everything was a distraction, important or not – and continued to grapple with the poison in his body.

Outside of their little shelter, night began to pull its blanket over the sky.


God, she was exhausted.

Weary to the bone, Sakura guided the last of the poison out of his body. Her head spun. Dizzy, her palms met the ground to steady her. Cool sweat trickled down the sides of her face. Damn, that had taken more out of her than she had expected. Panting, Sakura closed her eyes, waiting for the ground beneath her to stop lurching.

Unseen by her, a crimson eye cracked open and looked at her. The pupil was jagged and the tomoes spun drunkenly.

Pakkun sprang up.

"Sakura!"

Startled, her eyes flew open to meet at tired gaze.

"Kakashi," she whispered, bending closer.

With great difficulty he blinked and started to focus on her.

"Sak...ura?"

He looked awful. Bloody awful, in her opinion. Quite literally. But he was conscious and he was alive.

Elation swooped through her entire body.

"Hi. Welcome back."

Groaning, he closed the Sharingan and opened his own eye.

"... back?" He looked at her in confusion.

"To the real world," she confirmed.

"Oh," He looked groggy.

Pakkun stepped forward, the end of his tail furiously wagging. Kakashi gingerly propped himself up on an elbow and reached out to silently greet the pug. Rubbing Pakkun's ears, he took a moment to gather his thoughts.

"I thought for a moment when you said..." he slurred, half to himself, "I expected..." He trailed off, leaving his thought incomplete.

Kakashi looked around their enclave. He tried to push himself into a sitting position, but winced when his muscles protested.

"Don't push yourself," she warned, scooting closer to his side to steady him. Even though he was conscious, there was always the possibility that he had suffered a head injury. She hadn't found one, but with the number of bumps and bruises he had, she wanted to be cautious. With a sigh he settled back, resting against the side of a tree.

"You're...?" he mumbled.

"Yeah, I'm home now." She placed a glowing green hand on his chest to check his heartbeat and breathing.

"Ah. Good," he breathed, "You scared me for a moment there."

Intrigued, she looked up at him, but he was staring off into an unseen distance, lost in his memories.

His heartbeat was slow, but regular.

A gloved hand covered hers and another wrapped around her shoulders, gently pulling her forwards to his chest.

"We missed you." A chaste kiss was pressed on her forehead.

Crap, she would not cry.

"I missed you too," she whispered.

He examined her through tired eyes and gave a faint smile. Dirt lined the beginnings of fine lines on his face. He looked older than she could ever remember. She hugged him back.

She leaned back after a moment and tugged his headband over the still-spinning Sharingan.

"I need to take a closer look at that when we get home."

He nodded. It looked like speaking was too much of an effort for him now. Sure enough, his eyelid drooped and he nodded off moments later.

She didn't think she could bear to stay away that long ever again.

"I'll keep watch," offered the pug.

She could've kissed him.

"Thanks Pakkun. Naruto or Sai or someone should be here soon."

The little dog carefully picked a spot by his partner's legs and plopped down, resting but alert.

Relieved to have found Kakashi, Sakura let out a long sigh. Every muscle in her body decided to let her know just how overworked they were. Completely spent, she leaned against the fallen tree and stretched out her legs alongside Kakashi's. With him sleeping, she could finally take a moment to recuperate.

Her eyes drifted close. Before long she was fast asleep at Kakashi's side.


Author's Notes:

1) Hi there!

2) Well, last chapter I said I just finished high school... and now I'm leaving for university. Yah, I'm upset with how long it took me to update too. In my defense, important reunions are one hell of a bitch to write. Grrr, it's not even funny how long I spend so long writing and rewriting this chapter.

3) Any thoughts on how I did? Anything I could improve on? Leave me a review please! They make me smile like this :D And they're super encouraging.

Thanks for reading!

Love, KaKiara.