Disclaimer – The people doing the star village arc in the filler episodes have not been taken out back and kicked, thus Naruto is not mine

Spoilers – This contains spoilers for the anime and manga. I am not sure of the exact chapters and episode numbers, but it is well beyond what Cartoon network is showing. It is also beyond what is released in English manga by VIZ since I believe the events referenced are in volume 14 f the manga.

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Water Runs Red – Chapter 16

Kakashi hurried with Asuma to the meeting place. They encountered several other jônin on their way there and soon were assembled into a meeting room. It was then that they found out that Gekko Hayate had been killed. Kakashi kept on expecting Iruka to show up, but it never happened. Eventually Ibiki showed up and answered some questions. Kakashi left the meeting, walking alone. He took his time as he went to his apartment, keeping an eye on the village. He didn't know where Iruka had gone to, he had to assume it was someone related to this, but he didn't want to question Ibiki at the meeting.

The village seemed quiet except for additional ANBU patrols. Nothing most of the villagers would notice. Kakashi folded up the blanket they had been sitting on and cleaned up a few glasses before grabbing a shower and going to bed.

After a few hours, Kakashi was suddenly awake. He didn't move or change his breathing or anything, he sensed someone near him. Mentally he remembered where all of his weapons were and within a split second was ready to attack if the presence turned out to be dangerous.

There was a knocking on his window. Since enemies don't normally knock on your window, Kakashi opened his eyes to see a very tired looking Iruka on his windowsill. He opened the window and helped the other man in, "Are you all right?"

Iruka shook his head as Kakashi closed the window. "No … I need to sleep."

Kakashi nodded and started to help Iruka out of his chuunin vest. "Do you need a shower?"

Iruka nodded and Kakashi grabbed a pair of loose shorts and a towel and helped him towards the bathroom. He stood there for a moment, not bothering to realize he was only wearing a pair of boxers. He walked back into his bedroom and grabbed his forehead protector and placed it over his Sharingan eye, he didn't bother with the mask. A few minutes later, the shower shut off and Iruka walked back into the bedroom. He was wearing the shorts and looked like a half-drowned version of death.

He muttered as he walked up to Kakashi, "Too tired to think." He let Kakashi guide him to the bed, "Ibiki said no school tomorrow."

Kakashi shhhed him as he pulled him down into bed next to him, "It's all right, you need some sleep."

Before the chuunin was even completely in the bed, his chakra calmed and as his head hit the pillow his breathing settled. Kakashi smiled to himself as he realized he was again in bed with Iruka, unfortunately every time that happened it seemed that the other man was sleeping.

Kakashi spent some time looking at Iruka. He had never been that good at sleeping around other people. Luckily, most of his missions were either solo or short. It took a while before he could sleep around his three Genin, and that was still a very shallow sleep. For some reason, Iruka didn't seem to bother him as much. The man was so peaceful when he was asleep. Kakashi removed his forehead protector and looked at Iruka, really looked at him. The man had one of the calmest chakra system's Kakashi had ever seen. Definitely not the most powerful, not even close to it, but calm.

Kakashi closed his eyes and relaxed, letting the warmth of the man beside him gradually calm him. The affect of Iruka's chakra was also felt as Kakashi felt himself drifting off to sleep again. A small part of Kakashi's brain noted that it would be nice to fall asleep like this every night. He smiled as he drifted off to sleep, smirking slightly at the portion of his mind that inserted the thought of 'but with fewer clothes.

The next morning and the sun was shining through the window. Kakashi woke up slowly, his arms wrapped tightly around Iruka. He didn't get out of bed right away. He didn't have anything that needed to be done. Sakura had some time off since both her team mates were going to be in the final chuunin exam. Sasuke was unconscious. Naruto was off training with Jiriaya. Iruka had the day off from teaching, so there was no reason Kakashi couldn't lay in bed and appreciate the warm body in his arms. He was sure Obito would understand him being late.

For once, Kakashi didn't have the urge to read his book. He just remained in bed, watching Iruka sleep. Kakashi had seen many wounds in his life. He had seen many scars. The one across Iruka's nose was probably the first one he would call cute though. How something that marred that man's tanned skin could be cute was a puzzle.

It looked really old. Older than the scar on Kakashi's face, older than the fox attack and older than any of the Genin on his team.

From the way it curved over Iruka's nose, it almost certainly happened when he was very young. A straight cut when the man still had a child's nose and the cartilage now pushing the upper portion into an arc would not have been there yet. It was certainly a perfectly straight cut at one point. Kakashi didn't know if it was something Iruka didn't talk about, or if he could ask the other man. He did know that staring at the other man's face was a much better way to spend the morning than getting out of bed.

After a while, Kakashi forced himself to get out of bed, it was almost noon. Iruka stirred when he left the bed but quickly settled back to sleep in the warm spot Kakashi left. Kakashi grabbed a shower, folded the chuunin's clothes in a neat pile and walked out to the living room.

He was microwaving the remains of his dinner when there was a knock on the door. Wearing just his standard pants and his mask and forehead protector he walked over to the door, the chakra was familiar so he opened it.

Genma was on the other side, "Hey."

Kakashi stepped back from the door as the microwave beeped. "What's up?"

Genma followed Kakashi into the kitchen are as the silver haired man pulled the remains of dinner from the microwave and started to poke it with chopsticks. He had overcooked it.

Genma leaned against the wall, "Your brat woke up." Kakashi put down the food before Genma continued, "They traqued him up but it should wear off in about four hours."

Kakashi picked up his food again. "Want something to drink?" Suddenly both men turned and looked towards the bedroom door as there was a loud thump heard from the other side followed by some sort of muttered curse.

Genma just raised an eyebrow and moved his senbon to the other side of his mouth. "I have one more person I need to track down before then, like I'm some fucking errand boy or something."

Both men turned to look at the bedroom door as it slid open and Iruka stumbled out, looking more than a little confused in his borrowed shorts and nothing else. He looked towards Genma and Kakashi, "Umm, Kakashi? I can't find my clothes."

Genma bit down on the senbon trying not to laugh as his face slowly turned red, and his breathing became irregular.

Kakashi gestured towards the bathroom, "They're in the bathroom."

Iruka nodded and walked over to the fridge, "Hey Genma."

Genma for his part managed to stop laughing, "I was looking for you. Obviously not in the right places."

Iruka grabbed his container of leftover Chinese and looked over at Genma, "Why were you looking for me?" Iruka started poking at his leftovers, not bothering to microwave them.

"Sasuke woke up. They sedated him while you guys get ready, so he should be up in about four hours."

Iruka nodded, "Did you already find Izumo?"

Genma snorted, "Course I did, I knew whose bed he was sleeping in."

Iruka rolled his eyes, "Wow, and to think with those amazing powers of observation you don't work full time for Ibiki."

"Bite me." Genma was obviously joking.

"Only if you beg." Iruka shook his head, "I'm getting dressed and eating and then I'll go. I didn't get out of there until… What time did I get here at?" He turned to Kakashi.

"Ummm," Kakashi looked over at Genma then Back to Iruka, "I think around three AM? I had been asleep for a while."

Genma winced and gave Iruka a sympathetic look, "Oh, sorry. I figured Ibiki let you go after the meeting everyone was at." As Iruka disappeared into the bathroom he continued, "I mean seriously, you've been out almost every night."

Iruka yelled from the bathroom, obviously multi tasking the getting dressed with the eating of the cold Chinese, "Tell me about it, I'm exhausted."

"Must be hell on the social life … or maybe not." Genma smirked and looked over at Kakashi.

Kakashi simply raised an eyebrow while cleaning up the kitchen, "I thought you said you had people to find?"

Genma smiled, "Person, and you were hiding him in your bedroom apparently."

Iruka walked out of the bathroom, fully clothed and with an empty container of Chinese. "Hey hey, be nice Genma."

Kakashi smirked, "Yeah Genma, be nice."

Genma rolled his eyes and laughed, "Hey, I am being nice. If I were mean I'd track down Gai and tell him."

Kakashi paled and Iruka looked at Genma, "Do it and find that Senbon someplace … interesting."

"Hey, be nice now. You shouldn't piss off the person who does all your piercing. Or... most?" He tried to keep a straight face at his pun and was whacked on the shoulder for his efforts by Iruka.

"Behave." Iruka managed to say it in one of his best teacher voices. "I should get to the hospital and help Izumo set up everything for when Sasuke wakes up."

Kakashi nodded, "Do I need to be there before he wakes up? I need to gather up some stuff to take with when I take him out of the village."

Iruka smiled, "Nope, just be there in about four hours. We'll get the seal a little more stable, then you should be good with what we taught you." Iruka walked over to Kakashi and wrapped his arms around the taller man's waist. He winked so that only Kakashi could see it and then purred, "Thank you, for last night. That was exactly what I needed." He was pressed up against Kakashi as he said it.

Kakashi was almost so distracted by Iruka, and Iruka's body, and Iruka's lips so close to his mask that he almost missed the surprised look on Genma's face. His attention was abruptly jerked back to Iruka as the man went into completely sexy mode and nearly grabbed Kakashi's collarbone in his lips, quickly sucking on it and ending with a little bite.

Iruka then stepped back and giggled as he admired his handiwork. "See you in four hours." He walked past a surprised Genma to leave the apartment, a slight swagger to his stride.

Genma cleared his throat as Iruka left, "Hope they don't call you up for any ANBU stuff, don't think that uniform will cover that." He smirked at Kakashi. "Damn, Kakashi. How did you keep that out of the mission room gossip?"

"It'll be in the gossip soon enough, Asuma was the one who got me for the meeting last night. Stopped by here mid-date."

"Yeah, he'll tell Kurenai and then she'll—"

Kakashi cut him off, "Hunt me down and kill me."

Genma quirked an eyebrow, "What's going on that I don't know?"

Kakashi gestured towards a chair, "Sometimes I forget Asuma and Kurenai didn't fight in the war."

Genma nodded, "If it hadn't ended when it did they would have been out there. They just missed it."

"Yeah. I guess the war caused us to be able to judge who to trust and who we could rely on."

Genma just nodded.

"Kurenai has something against Iruka and he won't tell me the details. Whatever it is, it is making her pissed that I have an interest in Iruka and Asuma is of course on her side so … it's a little dicey."

Genma shook his head, "Iruka can be trusted. The man has saved my life nearly as many times as I've saved his."

Kakashi nodded.

"Course if you didn't trust him I doubt he'd be waking up in your apartment."

Kakashi shook his head, "It wasn't how it looked."

"Really"?"

"He showed up at 3Am exhausted, I barely got him in bed before he was sound asleep."

"But you said you were interrupted mid-date …"

"Yeah, but that was dinner and a DVD."

Genma smiled, "Yeah, well I know Iruka pretty well. If this is where he came at 3AM when he was that tired, that is saying something." He stood up, "I better let you get dressed. If I don't get back to the mission desk, the guys I left in charge might screw up something. I'll try and keep the gossip about you guys truthful at least when it hits."

Kakashi nodded, "Thanks."

Kakashi used the rest of his four hours to get everything ready to go off training with Sasuke. He arrived at the hospital with his mission pack. He was directed down into the basement of the hospital into one of the windowless rooms carved from the rock. When he arrived there were several medical-nins writing down symbols while Izumo was consulting a scroll then directing the medic-nins.

Izumo looked up when Kakashi entered, "They'll be down in maybe ten minutes. We're almost ready. This should only take a few minutes; the seals are just really complicated."

Kakashi nodded and looked around at the room. Izumo wasn't lying, this was exceptionally complicated and definitely not any sort of a healing set up so the medic nins needed a lot of guidance to get it right.

Finally, Sasuke was brought down and Iruka was with him. The boy was placed into the center of the room and three of the medic-nins took up positions in the corners of the room, leaving one corner empty. Another medic injected something into Sasuke's arm as Izumo nodded he was ready and Iruka took the spot in the remaining corner.

Kakashi stayed back with the rest of the medic nins and watched as the boy woke up. Izumo was whispering to him and the boy calmed. Then Izumo placed his hands over the seal and started to do something. Kakashi wasn't sure what it was, but it seemed similar to a high power medical spells where the chakra from the people at the corners of the room was guided towards the one in the center causing them to have much more chakra. However, this time Kakashi didn't sense a large influx of chakra, just a gradual push of extremely flat chakra. The three medic nins had high levels of chakra control, as would be expected from people in their profession, but seeing it transferred along the seal emphasized how much smoother Iruka's was.

True to his word, it wasn't even ten minutes before Izumo ended things and stood up. "Sasuke, thank you, that went very well. I'll leave you in Kakashi-sensei's hands now."

The boy sat up and looked over at Kakashi before obediently following his sensei from the room. As Kakashi left the room, he turned back for a second to give Iruka a quick wave before putting an arm on Sasuke's shoulder and leading him from the room.

The next weeks passed quickly, yet slowly for Kakashi. Sasuke was getting stronger. He kept Kakashi on his feet making sure the boy would be ready for the final stage of the chuunin exam. The boy's control of the seal was increasing as well. He was learning to control his chakra better and hardly needed Kakashi to settle the seal. It did seem more stable than the one that had been placed on Anko.

He was careful to not tax Sasuke too much; the boy had to learn to increase his stamina. He wished he could push Sasuke harder, but the boy needed stamina. If he over did it and the seal fully broke out, the consequences could be dire. As much as Kakashi wanted to go back to the village, even for a day, he knew he couldn't

He hoped it would be enough. If he could get Sasuke through this exam, then they could spend the time afterwards helping him better control it. The stress of the upcoming test was getting to Sasuke, although the boy would never admit it. As the day approached, the seal came closer and closer to breaking through whenever Sasuke wasn't concentrating on it. The knowledge on how to calm the seal was indispensable. The day of the match it nearly broke through, and it took so long to help Sasuke get it back under control to the point where Kakashi was willing to let him compete in the exam that he knew they'd be late.

He hoped Iruka would be at the stadium when they got there, but he wasn't. He used a teleportation jutsu and even fancied it up a bit with Iruka's chakra spiral trick. He had intentionally teleported some of the leaves around them into the arena so he'd be able to spin them in a lazy spiral instead of just being surrounded by chakra smoke. He was after all the infamous copycat nin, he had to put on a show occasionally.

Then all hell broke loose. They were under attack. He was deep in battle and had to send two of his students off after his other student. He hoped Sasuke didn't do anything stupid. Things only got worse from there. The battle became a haze as killed his enemies. He was suddenly glad Iruka wasn't here, he just hoped wherever he was, that he was safe.

When the smoke cleared and the damage was discovered, the third was dead and their forces were decimated. Sand and Sound had attacked together. Two villages against their one, but leaf was strong enough to survive. Naruto and Sakura managed to bring back Sasuke; all three of his students were in the hospital that night, the very crowded hospital. Kakashi took guard duty, it had been a long time since he had guarded the walls, but these were not normal times. He knew every able-bodied ninja was needed right now to work themselves as hard as they could. The village was without a leader. The walls had been breeched. He didn't even want to think about the lives that were lost.

He grabbed a few hours sleep in a room in the administrative building, he wasn't the only jonin to not want to be too far away just incase he was needed. He didn't see Iruka; he was pretty sure every other ninja had walked through the doors of this building at some point. He kept looking at the casualty reports, hoping not to see his name.

He was going crazy not knowing. He left, promising he'd be back in an hour. He ran across the shattered rooftops to get to the chuunin's apartment. When he got there, it was empty. He didn't bother hiding his entrance. There was a bloody uniform thrown in the corner of the bathroom. Kakashi checked it. It didn't seem like serious injuries. It looked for all the world like Iruka had come home to change and left again. Kakashi let himself relax a little, that meant the man had survived the battle.

His next stop was the Academy. Half of it was destroyed; the other half was set up as a shelter. It was getting late. The sun had already set. He walked in; there were a lot of civilians and children here. The ones who obviously had no place else to go. He walked through the people looking for Iruka. He saw Sakura in a corner with several small children. He walked over to her and saw she was reading them a story. When she finished and looked up at him, Kakashi couldn't help smiling. He helped her shoo the children off to bed.

She turned to him, "The doctor ordered me to take it easy." She sounded sad.

"You were badly injured." He looked around, noticing the large amount of children compared to adults, "Why are there so many children?"

She frowned, "A lot of buildings collapsed. Some of them have their parents in the hospital …" She didn't have to say why the rest of them were there.

He put a hand on her shoulder, squeezing lightly. "You need to get some rest."

She nodded and took a deep breath, "I should get home, my mother is probably worried."

Before she left, he asked, "Is Iruka-sensei around?"

She nodded and gestured to a door, "He's back there."

Kakashi walked to the back room and pushed it open; it wasn't completely closed in the first place. He saw a very tired looking Iruka sitting with a pile of papers. The room was very dim and there was a baby in Iruka's arms. Somehow, the man was managing to write on papers and hold a sleeping infant.

Kakashi kept his voice very quiet, "Iruka?"

He looked up at Kakashi and smiled, "Hey." The child in his arms made a slight noise and Iruka moved the child to his shoulder, patting the small back as he stood up and walked over to Kakashi. "I didn't expect to see you here."

"I was worried about you."

"I'm not a fighter. I stayed with the students and evacuees, just in case" He knelt down and pulled out a bottle with water in it and handed a packet to Kakashi, "Can you open that and dump it in?"

Kakashi nodded and added the white powder in the packet to the water. Just watching as Iruka put a nipple on top of the bottle and shook it to mix the powder and water.

"We were lucky." Iruka moved the infant in his arms to be cradeled in the crook of his arm and placed the bottle to the hungry child's lips.

"Lucky?"

Iruka nodded, "Civilian casualties were low. We got most everyone out in time. Almost everyone should be back with family members by tomorrow." He looked down at the little bundle in his arms, "Her mother was ANBU, positioned at the southern wall."

Kakashi looked down at the baby, cradled so expertly in Iruka's arms, "Her father?"

"Critical condition but they think he'll make it. I said I'd watch her until they can figure out what to do with her tomorrow."

He nodded and took the bottle as Iruka handed it to him so he could move the child back to his shoulder. "You're very good at that." He gestured towards Iruka rubbing the infants back.

"Spent a few years in the orphanage." He didn't need to mention that he was by no means the only person to loose their family in the fox attack.

Kakashi nodded, "I ... I just needed to make sure you were all right."

Iruka smiled and took Kakashi's hand in his free hand. "I understand." He leaned forward and gave Kakashi a kiss on the small amount of exposed skin by his ear.

"I told them I'd be back in an hour." When Iruka just nodded and smiled, Kakashi left.

He was kept busy for the rest of the night and until just before the funeral for the third. Everyone that could was attending, with guards at the walls ready to set off chakra flares at the slightest hint of anything wrong.

Kakashi was just barely on time for the funeral, and was a ways away from Iruka. He didn't feel like he should go closer. The younger man was kneeling and comforting the third's grandson, Konohamaru.

Kakashi admired the man's ability to deal with emotions as he comforted the young boy and answered Naruto's rather philosophical questions about life and death. Kakashi had to leave before talking to Iruka, he had to take his team and relieve the people on the south wall. Even injured, they were still shinobi. Even Genin could stand watch.

It was almost nightfall when their relief got there. He sent the kids home and went to check with the mission room to see if he was needed.

-------------- Notes --------------------

This is a redo of this chapter. It contains more than the original chapter 16