Kakashi stands guard all night, the soldier pill keeping him awake. He doesn't wake up his students for their watch shifts; it's no use, anyway. Kakashi won't be able to sleep, no matter how hard he tries. If he's going to be awake all night anyway, he might as well give his students a chance to rest.

Undisturbed, his students sleep the whole night through. Kakashi can't do much else than sit and wait and feel restless. They could be using this time to travel, but his students need rest. He feels a bit guilty about how much that frustrates him.

When the sun – finally – begins to rise, Kakashi takes care of his wound in the early sunlight. Which isn't easy; the bandages are sticking to the wound, and Kakashi has to carefully peel them off. The bandage catches on the stitches a couple of times, and Kakashi may not feel much of it, but he can't help but wince regardless. He knows that if he hadn't taken the soldier pill, this would have hurt like Hell.

Most of his outer thigh is swollen and red at this point. The cut itself is raw and moist and angry-looking. It smells unpleasant – Kakashi does not want to make the comparison, but it smells like something rotten. Any signs that his wound was healing have by now completely disappeared.

There's nothing he can do about it, apart from trying to keep it from getting worse. He cleans the wound as well as he can and wraps it in clean bandages. Deep inside his leg, he can feel his heartbeat throb vaguely, like a threatening reminder: once the effects of the soldier pill wear off, Kakashi is going to be in a world of pain.

Twelve more hours. He's got about twelve more hours before the half soldier pill starts wearing off.

He wakes up his students once he's put away the first-aid kit. His genin are groggy and confused as to why he didn't wake them up for their guard shifts – Kakashi just tells them that he couldn't sleep, so he figured he should make himself useful. It's not a lie.

As soon as Kakashi's students have stopped yelling at Kakashi, Naruto checks on the traps that he set last night. They're all empty; Kakashi hadn't expected otherwise. Wildlife doesn't come near people easily. Kakashi also suspects that the glow of his Sharingan may have scared the animals off. Oops. Well, it's probably for the best that they didn't catch anything, now that Kakashi thinks about it. They would have to make a fire to cook the animal, and that takes time – time that is much better spent traveling.

Naruto sets off the traps with a stick, disabling them; leaving them activated will just lead to some poor animal dying a meaningless death, or some unsuspecting passersby could step on a trap by accident and break a toe. It's best to keep that from happening.

After that, Team Seven soon starts walking. As they walk, they eat the rest of the plants that Naruto found yesterday, though the leaves have gone a bit limp during the warm night. This quickly prompts Naruto to go and find fresher plants, and he ends up running through the forest again all morning.

Despite the genin's grumpiness about the fact that Kakashi let them sleep all night, they all seem well-rested. Naruto is even more full of energy than he was yesterday, and Sakura seems to have a bit more color in her face now that she's had a proper night's sleep.

Most noticeable, though, is the change in Sasuke's demeanor. He doesn't seem nearly as tired as he was yesterday. He slept through the night, and Kakashi is pretty sure that he slept for a bit while Naruto's clone was carrying him yesterday as well, and the resting has clearly done him good. He's still a little pale and shaky, but he's standing up straight and he's not dragging his feet anymore. It seems that Sasuke recovers from chakra exhaustion much faster than Kakashi does. If he sleeps well again tonight, he should be completely recovered by tomorrow morning.

As the sun rises in the sky, the temperature rises and rises. Even in the shade under the trees, it's warm. Kakashi fears at first that he's feeling his fever, that the soldier pill has worn off before it should – but then he sees Naruto tie his jacket around his waist, grumbling about the heat. Sakura is fanning her face with her hand. Sasuke is the only one who doesn't seem bothered by the heat; his body temperature is probably still low from the chakra exhaustion, so he's probably comfortably cool.

Kakashi makes sure to refill everyone's flasks with a Water ninjutsu, now that he still has enough chakra to do that. He rolls up the sleeves of his jounin sweater and unties the bandages that tie his pants to his ankles, trying to cool off. He considers taking off his flak jacket, but he decides against it. He can handle this heat.

Around noon, Naruto starts to get a little too red in the face, so Kakashi stops him from running around. During the warmest hours of the day, Kakashi continues where their talk about elemental ninjutsu had left off yesterday. He tries to subtly add in some lessons about first aid as well; the later it gets, the more worried Kakashi becomes about what's going to happen once the soldier pill wears off. If he passes out, he wants at least to make sure that his students won't freak out.

Around seven in the evening, Naruto declares that it's not too warm to run anymore, and he sets out to find Team Seven dinner. His statement surprises Kakashi; he doesn't feel like it's cooled down at all. Kakashi logically knows that the warmest hours of the day should be over, but he's only been getting warmer.

It seems that the soldier pill has worn off.

Thankfully, the effects wear off gradually instead of all at once. The soldier pill stops concealing Kakashi's pain, and the energy that he got from the pill starts to fade away, but it happens slowly. Kakashi thinks that it's wearing off so slowly because he took it easy. He remembers a couple of times when he took half a soldier pill during a difficult and drawn-out battle, and he would sometimes just faint on the spot when the effects wore off. He's grateful that that doesn't happen this time.

Still, it's uncomfortable to become aware of his physical problems again. His fever is the first thing that he feels again, and it brings with it some shakiness and a headache. His tiredness follows; he can feel his chakra level dropping, and the pressure in his skull evolves into spikes of pain. It becomes harder and harder with every step to move his right leg. He's sure that he's limping worse, and he's sure that his students notice.

And then, the pain comes back, slowly but unrelentingly. It starts as a vague throbbing under his skin, and then it turns into a persistent throbbing, until every step sends a familiar jolt of pain up Kakashi's leg. Mercifully, the pain doesn't turn into that full-blown agony from yesterday morning again, not yet at least. It seems that the soldier pill hasn't fully worn off yet, then.

Despite that small blessing, Kakashi feels that it's time to stop walking for the day. He's uncomfortably warm and tired, and his headache is making him a little dizzy, and it's probably for the best if he sits down soon.

When Naruto comes back with his arms filled with plants, Kakashi halts and smiles at him. "Good job, Naruto," he tells him, though he finds to his regret that the words don't sound very sincere underneath the thick layer of tiredness in his voice. "Let's settle down for the day and eat."

"We're going to stop walking?" Naruto asks, sounding surprised. "Already?"

Kakashi nods, hoping that Naruto won't ask him why they're stopping so much earlier than yesterday. "Yeah."

"Oh- Well, if that's the case," Naruto replies, gesturing with his chin towards something up ahead. "I saw a creek not far from here. I was going to ask if we could stop there and cool off. Maybe go for a swim, or something."

"Fine by me," Kakashi replies with a shrug. He tries to be nonchalant, but the notion of cold water sounds absolutely amazing right now. He feels like he's cooking in his own skin. On top of that, this team could honestly really use a bath. Judging by the looks on Sakura's and Sasuke's faces, they share his enthousiasm. "Lead the way."

Naruto brings them to a narrow stream, slightly North of their original path. The water is fairly shallow, and it streams fast. It looks clean; definitely clean enough to swim in.

Naruto spreads his jacket on the ground and carefully lays the plants down on it. That carefulness was apparently all the patience he could muster, because he next takes off his backpack, weapons pouch, T-shirt and shoes at an astonishing speed and splashes loudly into the creek. The water is about waist-high for him. He sits down on the ground with a content sigh, letting the water run over his shoulders.

As Naruto yells for Sasuke and Sakura to join him, Kakashi slowly lowers himself down at the edge of the creek a bit ahead. He's been noticing that the hearing in his left ear is a little better than his right ear – the explosive tag went off next to his right ear, because he turned away from the explosion to protect his Sharingan – so he keeps his left side to his students so that he can hear them. Out of habit, he scans their surroundings once more before he lets himself relax.

Kakashi shrugs out of his backpack and gratefully takes off his shoes. Shinobi's sandals are made to be comfortable, but after wearing them non-stop for an entire week, Kakashi is glad that he can take them off for a moment.

He's not going to go for a swim – soaking a wound in water is generally a really bad idea, especially if you want that wound to stay closed – but he does roll up his pant legs and dangle his feet in the water. The water comes up to his knees, and it's blissfully cold. Kakashi hadn't truly realized how warm he'd been feeling up until now.

Kakashi takes off his flak jacket, and then his jounin sweater. Now that he's here, he should really wash the sweat and the blood from his clothes. The possibility of being clean has suddenly opened his eyes to how gross his clothes feel.

He's sitting downstream from where Naruto is swimming, so Kakashi can safely wash his clothes without drenching Naruto in dirt and old blood. Kakashi washes his sweater, and he also cleans the spare sweater that he was still carrying in his backpack. Both sweaters are covered in dried blood; the water briefly turns a brownish red before the stream washes the blood away. Kakashi knew that his clothes were dirty, but he hadn't realized how dirty. It just hadn't really been a priority to care. He feels better now that they're clean again, though.

He also cleans his gloves – those, too, are stiff with blood from back when he had to apply pressure to his wound to make it stop bleeding. His flak jacket is somehow the least dirty, though the front has some specks of enemies' blood on it and the back is entirely coated in dirt. Well, Kakashi has been sleeping on the ground all this time. He scrubs the flak jacket clean and lays it down next to him to dry.

His pants are really dirty as well, but Kakashi isn't sure how to take them off without putting himself through unspeakable amounts of pain, so he doesn't do that. Instead, he just splashes some water onto the fabric and washes off the blood as well as he can. His right pant leg is absolutely covered in dried blood; Kakashi had almost forgotten that his uniform is supposed to be a much lighter shade of blue. He'd almost forgotten that the bandages around his ankles were never supposed to be red.

Once his clothes are somewhat clean and are drying on the ground around him, Kakashi takes off his headband and scoops some water into his hair. He bends forwards, letting the now-dirty water drip back into the creek. The water returns with a muddy gray color; there was still soot in his hair from Sasuke's Fireball jutsu and from the explosive tag that went off next to his head. He washes the soot from his hair and watches a cloud of gray water float down the river.

The water is a cold weight on top of his head. It helps cool down the growing heat inside Kakashi's skull. He breathes a sigh of relief.

He looks down and studies the tank top that he was wearing underneath his uniform. He'd like to clean that as well, but there's a problem with that idea: his mask is attached to the tank top, so if he wants to clean the tank top, he needs to take off his mask as well. Which is risky, since his students are right next to him.

He briefly considers leaving it be, but the fabric is sticking to his upper body with sweat and he's been wearing the same mask for a week without washing it. The more he thinks about it, the grosser he feels.

He looks over his shoulder, trying to see if his students are paying attention to him. Naruto is splashing Sasuke with handfuls of water, and Sakura is sitting at the edge of the creek with her feet in the water, laughing alongside them. As Kakashi watches, Sasuke angrily takes off his shoes and weapons pouch and gets into the water to wrestle Naruto. They seem distracted enough.

Quickly, Kakashi turns his back to them and takes off his tank top and his mask. His face is left uncomfortably bare. He has to be quick.

As he bends down to wash the tank top, he can suddenly hear Naruto's voice behind him. "Whoa, Kakashi-sensei! That's a lot of scars!"

Kakashi stills immediately, his hands tightening around the tank top. Right. The scars on his back. His students hadn't seem them yet. For some reason, he'd forgotten about that; it's weird to realize that he's bared his soul to them, but not his skin.

He hadn't meant for them to see. His skin is a map of all the times he's screwed up – of all the times he lost a fight or couldn't protect a loved one. He'd been so careful about keeping his past from his students, because his past is not their burden to bear, but now he's let down his guard.

And of course, of course Kakashi has just shown them the very worst of his scars. His back is an absolute mess of rough, raised scars – each of them serious injuries that he got during fights against dangerous opponents, during moments when he let his guard down and saw too late that an attack from behind was coming.

The scars on his back are remnants of life-threatening stab wounds. Of attacks so powerful that they cut straight through his flak jacket and into his skin. Of explosive tags stuck to his back that he managed to peel off just a moment too late. He remembers being thrown into a tree exceptionally hard one time – and when he regained consciousness, half of his ANBU squad was dead and there was a broken rib sticking out from his back. These are not stories that he wants to tell his students.

It appears that the fever is making Kakashi's mind spiral more easily than before. It takes Kakashi so much effort to get his thoughts back under control that he almost forgets that his students are still behind him, and that he should say something. By the time he does remember that he should reply, Sakura has already started yelling at Naruto.

"Don't just shout stuff like that at people!" she tells him. "It's probably a sensitive topic!"

"Ah, no, crap, I didn't…" Naruto stammers in response. "Sorry, Kakashi-sensei, I didn't mean to be rude-"

"It's fine," Kakashi forces himself to reply, his back still turned to his students. "You weren't being rude. And you're right; I do have a lot of scars. You were just stating a fact, that's all." He realizes belatedly that his tone is clipped and cold – a reflex to try and prevent his students from asking any questions. He'd actually decided not to use that tone with his students again.

But he's already said what he said, and the mood changes in response. His students had been playing around and laughing earlier, but they get quiet now. Kakashi kind of feels responsible for that; he could've definitely reacted better than he did. Less coldly, at least. He practically snapped at them, while it's not their fault that his mind took the reminder of his scars as a cue to throw bad memories at him.

Trying to think of a way to remedy the good atmosphere from before, he finishes washing his tank top and puts it back on, pulling his mask over his face. His skin is still far too warm, so he appreciates the fact that the fabric is still dripping wet. He closes his eyes briefly; he's tired, and frustrated with himself. He'd been getting along with his students so well for the past couple of days, yet his first reflex at being slightly uncomfortable was still to snap at them and close himself off. He just hopes that they won't take his curt reply as a sign that he hates them now, or something.

He's about to turn around and apologize when Naruto's voice sounds again from behind him, this time in a triumphant tone. "Hey, sensei! We caught something!"

Puzzled, Kakashi turns around – to Naruto and Sasuke physically wrestling a large fish. "We haven't caught anything yet, you dumbass," Sasuke replies, his voice strained, but he hasn't even finished his sentence before Naruto straightens up and lifts the fish against his chest, out of the water.

"Caught it," he says, grinning proudly. "Time for dinner!"

Sakura laughs a surprised laugh, shaking her head. Kakashi can't hold back a smile, either. Leave it to his students to salvage the good mood where Kakashi couldn't.

"Well, what are we waiting for, then?" Kakashi asks, getting up. "Let's get a fire going."

Sasuke starts a fire, and Kakashi prepares the fish – Kakashi had planned on showing his students how to do that, but he zones out and suddenly the fish is already cooking over the fire. It seems that the fever is starting to mess with his head again.

Despite his fever and his steadily increasing pain, Kakashi does still feel hungry, so he allows himself to eat as much as he needs. It likely won't be long before the pain starts making him nauseous again, and once that happens, it'll probably be a while before he can bring himself to eat properly again. He should eat now that he still can.

Team Seven feasts on the fish and on the plants that Naruto gathered. The food is good and the atmosphere is generally content, though the genin are uncharacteristically quiet. They're probably still startled because Kakashi snapped at them. He wants to apologize to them for that, but he's not sure how to do that without inviting any questions. Maybe it's for the best to just leave the subject of his scars alone.

"Hey, Kakashi-sensei?"

…or maybe not. "What is it, Naruto?"

"I, uhm… I wanted to say sorry again, for yelling at you that you have a lot of scars. I was just surprised about it." Naruto glances at Kakashi's face, checking his reaction. "Sorry. It was rude. I just thought they're super cool. That's all."

That catches Kakashi off guard. Before he can stop himself, he replies with more bitterness than he should show towards his students: "Cool? None of my scars are cool." He shakes his head. "They're just remnants of times when I got hurt – nothing more than that. They're nothing but reminders of times when I wasn't as strong as I should've been, and when either I or other people suffered because of it."

Naruto wrinkles his nose at him in confusion. "Really? That's the way you think about it?" he asks. "It looks to me like you just survived a lot of stuff. That's pretty cool to me. I mean, if you hadn't survived all of that stuff, you wouldn't have become our sensei. That'd be boring."

Kakashi has to admit that he has a point. He has been appreciating the fact that he's alive more than usually, lately – if he'd kicked the bucket at any time during his shinobi career, he wouldn't have met his genin, after all. It sounds corny, but it's true. Maybe he should try to view his scars as reminders of times when he survived, instead of times when something awful happened to him.

Changing that mindset won't be easy, though. He can't imagine looking at his face in the mirror and not thinking of Obito. He can't imagine looking at the large diagonal scar on his chest and not being reminded of the fact that he almost lost Team Seven that day on the bridge in Wave. The scar that he's going to have on his leg after this will probably evoke a similar feeling of despair. No matter how hard he tries, he'll still look at the lines on his skin and be reminded of his failures and almost-failures.

Naruto takes Kakashi's silence as an opportunity to study him, his eyebrows drawn together in an earnest expression. "They can't all be reminders of crappy times, right?" he asks. "Your scars, I mean. Don't try to tell me that every scar makes you sad when you look at it."

Sakura nudges him. "Just leave it alone, Naruto," she whispers at him. "You know that that's a far too personal question."

Naruto ignores her. "For example," he says, quickly taking off his headband and brushing his hair out of his face. There's a white, horizontal scar along his forehead. "This is from when I fell off the swing when I was a kid, and when I tried to get up, the swing hit me square in the face." He grins. "It was bleeding like crazy, and it wasn't funny at the time, but now it makes me laugh. Or," he continues, holding out his hand to show a pink line on his palm, "this is from our mission to Wave. I mean, I got it when I almost got poisoned – but it reminds me of our first big mission as a team. Which was pretty awesome, even if it was scary." He looks up at Kakashi. "Don't you have scars like that? Ones that connect to good memories?"

"What is the point you're trying to make?" Sasuke asks him, frowning. "Why do you care about this?"

"Because it's important," Naruto explodes. "Kakashi-sensei basically just told us that every scar on his body makes him sad. Every single one. Don't you think that that sucks for him? Don't you think that I should try to make him feel better?" He looks at Kakashi, his expression determined. "Maybe I'm being rude again – I don't know," he tells him. "All I'm trying to say is that it can't all be terrible. There's got to be something happy, too, and I'm trying to get you to see that, sensei."

There's a plethora of cynical replies that Kakashi could give to that, but he swallows them all down and forces himself to consider what Naruto is saying. When he's given it some thought, he clears his throat and points at the one scar he can think of that doesn't actively make him sad, the only one he can think of. It's a thin, pink line across the back of his left hand, normally hidden by his gloves, but since his gloves are drying in the grass, the scar is now in full view.

"I got this when a friend of mine challenged me to a juggling match," Kakashi says, and Naruto's face lights up. "We were juggling with kunai. It went about as well as you can imagine."

"Who won?" Naruto asks.

Kakashi finds himself grinning. "I don't remember clearly. There was saké involved. A little too much saké, I think." He shrugs. "I'll have to ask Gai when we get back home."

"Wait," Sakura says, her eyebrows rising. "Do you mean Gai-sensei?"

"Yeah. He's been challenging me to all kinds of weird matches for as long as I can remember." Kakashi points at a patch of rough skin on his shoulder; "Now that I think about it, that's not the only scar that I got during one of those challenges… This one I got during a very intense game of rock-paper-scissors."

And before he knows it, he's pointing out scars and telling stories. He hadn't thought that that'd be possible. He hadn't thought that he had any scars at all that were lighthearted enough to talk about. But he does have some. A lot, actually.

He can think of five scars at first; five scars on his body that don't connect to some kind of trauma. Five stories that don't end with death or bloodshed or catastrophic failure. Then he can think of eight stories, then a dozen, then twenty.

It's… weird, and also kind of comforting. Kakashi had always thought that his skin is nothing but a map of all the fights he's lost, of all the times he wasn't able to protect his loved ones – but as it turns out, there are also plenty of scars that connect to lighthearted stories. That connect to fun times with friends or weird stuff that he did as a kid. He hadn't realized that. Maybe Naruto is right: it's not all terrible. Plenty of it still is, but not everything, and that's an oddly reassuring thought.

So he talks. About one of his very first D-rank missions, when a cat almost clawed his ear off. About the second time Gai challenged him to a juggling match, except they were now juggling with shuriken and they were possibly even more drunk. About that one ANBU sparring session which started with Tenzou trying out an experimental Woodstyle jutsu and which ended with at least a hundred splinters and a trip to the hospital.

About the time he woke up to Pakkun trying to gnaw his foot off, when Kakashi was little and Pakkun was still a rowdy pup. About all the times he accidentally electrocuted himself when the chidori was still a work in progress, creating vaguely lightning-shaped burns on his hands and wrists. About the time Kakashi got hurt and got fed up with being stuck in the hospital and tried to sneak out, except he was still very loopy from the pain meds and ended up falling through a window.

His students listen, and they're genuinely interested, even though Sakura and Sasuke initially try to pretend they're not. During some stories, it takes minutes before Naruto stops laughing. Kakashi imitates how Tenzou tried to apologize to him after their training accident – Tenzou felt so bad about it that he tried to convince Kakashi to kick him out of ANBU, his voice wobbling and cracking, while Kakashi laughed at him from a hospital bed – and it has Naruto doubled over on the ground, crying with laughter. Kakashi finds himself laughing as well, which is not something that he'd expected to do when this conversation started.

He doesn't tell his students about the battle scars, about the near-death experiences. He trusts that they're smart enough to figure out that he doesn't want to talk about that. He might tell them when they're older – if he told them now, he would just be showing off the most awful and dangerous aspects of shinobi life, and it'd just make them scared for their own future. Besides, Kakashi first has to figure out how to talk about his past without making himself feel like shit, anyway.

When his genin-friendly stories start to run out and the conversation stops distracting him from his fever and his growing pain, his students start sharing stories of their own. Times when they tried, and failed, to make tea or cup ramen and scalded their hands with hot water. Times when they reached into their weapons pouch blindly and grabbed the wrong end of a kunai. Sasuke is reluctant to join in – probably a combination of his pride and the fact that he dislikes talking about his past as much as Kakashi does – but he listens, and despite his occasional snide comments, he seems genuinely interested in what his teammates have to say. It's almost unnoticeable, but he seems more social than he was before this mission.

The four of them talk until the sun sets; by then, Kakashi has started having trouble keeping his eyes open. The exhaustion from the soldier pill has definitely started setting in. He doesn't protest when Naruto offers to take first watch.

As Kakashi lies down, leg stretched out on the ground, he can't help but feel… lighter than before. His past normally feels like a dark and intimidating shadow, lurking just beneath the surface of his mind at all times, ready to strike as soon as Kakashi gives it any sort of attention – but today, it doesn't feel like that. Today, he was reminded that his past isn't entirely dark at all, no matter how badly his pessimistic mind wants to believe that it is. In between the awful stuff, there were plenty of good moments. Kakashi just forgot.

His students are a good influence on him.

Kakashi closes his eyes, his mouth quirking into a smile that's hidden underneath his mask. It seems that his exhaustion and his fever are making him sentimental. He'd better go to sleep before he starts to turn into an optimist, of all things.

With that thought, he drifts off. He knows that he'll likely feel horrible again by the time he wakes up, but for some reason, his mind doesn't want to worry about that. For now, he just lets himself feel calm.

Sleep claims him suddenly and silently.