Standard Disclaimers: I don't own Naruto

A/N: Almost near the end here now, guys. Thanks for sticking with me! I do feel the need to make a slight note about something I have Kakashi think – but in order to avoid spoilers, I'll put it at the end.

It was very rare for Kakashi, Copy Ninja of Konoha, to have any hesitation when it came to deciding an appropriate course of action. Indecision was a fatal flaw in battle and, frankly, there was very little in his personal life that needed a great deal of thought one way or the other. After all, he'd long ago come up with a system for deciding which Icha Icha book to read next, and after that everything else was easy.

This situation, however...

As soon as he'd made it back to the hotel rooftop his clone dismissed itself and its memories became his. His dispassion, so carefully kept in place during the mission, was overwhelmed by the newly acquired hours of helpless frustration, the fast-forwarded images of Tsunade deteriorating before his eyes, and the burgeoning fear that by the end of this mission he'd have another reason to visit the memorial stone.

Naturally, he wasted no time in bursting through the hotel window to check on her, see her, help her. The kunai flung at his head by the trap he hadn't bothered to disarm wasn't even consciously registered. Instead his eyes zeroed in on the slightly surprised but not really alarmed figure of his Hokage as the most important thing in the room, pointy objects be damned.

That's when it hit him.

Not the kunai - that he caught absently, automatically reversing his grip on the hilt as it went by.

No, what really hit him was the fact that Tsunade was, in fact, his Hokage.

But somehow she was also more than just that.

If she'd been just his Hokage, he could have relaxed now that he'd verified she was still upright and conscious. He would have still been concerned, of course, but not nearly as much.

Instead he was struggling between the impulses to yell at her for being so stubborn or to throw her over his shoulder and high-tail it back to Konoha and Shizune, the mission be damned.

He would not feel such dread, such a sense of encompassing loss, at the thought of losing her.

…just as he'd lost everyone else who'd ever become precious to him.

Kakashi threw the caught kunai to the side, burying it inches deep in the wood flooring. With grim determination he deliberately shoved his "revelation" into the corner of his mind marked "later". Right now he needed to be calm to see clearly, to evaluate just how bad things were, and to decide what to do next.

On the surface, it didn't look too alarming. Tsunade was standing by the desk, glaring at him. Her shoulders were set, resolute and strong. Brown eyes were highlighted with dark circles but were also as hard as granite and twice as resolved. She looked, if not hearty, at least healthy.

A closer look, however, showed the gray lines dancing up her throat, the myriad burst capillaries in her eyes, and the fingernails that had gone yellow-white.

Her breathing was far too careful to be natural.

"You realize," Tsunade said dryly, into the strained silence, "That we're going to have to explain that gouge you just made." She crossed her arms over her chest and scowled so predictably that it almost seemed like everything was fine.

Kakashi swallowed. There it was, laid out before him. He could force her back to the Leaf, and likely get himself put into the hospital for it later, or he could trust her. Trust not only her strength and her skill, but trust the decision she was making about her own health and the mission.

He trusted Tsunade with his life every time he accepted a mission at her request.

He supposed he had no choice but to trust her with her own life.

Of course, the fact that he wasn't entirely sure he could force her to leave without getting at least two or three bones broken for his effort, didn't exactly slip past his calculations. It wasn't the deciding factor, but…

Kakashi offered his Hokage a sickly smile and scratched the back of his head. "Ah, well. I got a little carried away."

Tsunade just looked at him for a moment before giving him a derisive sniff. Then she turned back to the dresser and picked up the pestle again. "You'd better do a better job of keeping quiet than your clone did."

Kakashi grimly reset the trap at the window and found a place to stand.

Morning was eventually seared from the landscape by the bright cheerful sun of the afternoon. In the streets outside of the hotel people went about their business. They moved, they laughed, they traveled and they lived in a rhythm that was both repetitive and reassuring.

Inside the hotel room, however, time moved differently. Marked less by the passage of seconds and minutes, it was tied firmly to inexorable progress of both poison and cure. The few attempts at normalcy through banter died as Tsunade found less and less breath to spare and Kakashi found himself retreating farther and farther back into a mission mind-set. No distractions. No emotion.

So hours passed while the Hokage, medical genius of her life time, worked on an antidote while fighting her own failing strength.

And the former ANBU, face as still and impassive as the ceramic he used to wear, maintained an ongoing of awareness of anyone approaching the room as well as monitored the general state of the town outside the window.

And eventually he watched as his Hokage's hand began trembling over slides…

… as fine lines deepened into brackets around her pursed lips…

… as first one and then the second henge dropped, brown hair blossoming to blonde before lightening into gray...

…as her uneven breath became rasping, rattling…

And the ANBU moved.

She was facing away from him, upper arm braced as she struggled with the plunger on a slim syringe. As he walked around her, he could see her fingers knotted – achingly bereft of their usual dexterity.

He touched her wrist with one hand and then gently reached over with the other to set his fingers along the syringe.

"Maa, Hokage-sama," Kakashi said quietly, casually, "I know I'm not medic, but surely you can trust me to do this much. Besides, it's a Hokage's privilege to order others around. Sit down for a moment."

She looked up at him, brown eyes like caramel, despite the wrinkles fanning out from their edges. She wet her lips and smiled, bright and beautiful. "What? Now that I'm all done, you decide to be helpful?" She snorted but released the syringe to his care, "Go on then, fill it up, brat. You do know how to hit a vein, right?"

She offered up her arm boldly, almost triumphantly. He exhaled carefully, suppressing every outward sign of the relief he felt except for a twitch of his jaw. He carefully drew up the full measure of the antidote into the syringe and then injected her with it.

"We'll give it an hour but I'm positive it's right," Tsunade could afford to be gracious with her time now. She turned towards the small table, "Now we just need to get it distr..."

Kakashi caught her under the arms as her legs completely gave out.

"-buted…" Tsunade gasped and then swallowed. Apology, embarrassment, damaged pride – all might have been the cause for the slight roughening of her tone as she lay sprawled at the mercy of his grasp. "I might be a little lightheaded…"

Kakashi picked her up smoothly, readjusting once to settle her more securely in his arms. She was tense, stiffened at first, but she gave up with a sigh and turned her face towards his chest as she relaxed.

He walked her over to the bed and set her down. As her eyes began to flutter closed he pulled a blanket over her and sat in the nearby chair. He waited until she was asleep, fully and deeply so, before pulling out his worn copy of Icha Icha Tactics.

He figured it was his best shot to blot out the memory of how frail Tsunade had felt in his arms.

And how much he'd wanted to keep her there, regardless.

So, I found it a little hard to have Kakashi say that he'd lost all of his precious people. I don't want to think that he does not count Gai and Yamato (or Naruto) as precious! I love those guys! However, he /did/ say exactly that in the anime and he knew those three at that point in time.

My justification is that I think Kakashi has "precious" defined in a very particular way. I'm tempted to think it has something to do with the fact that, since those folks have been mission partners from the first time he ever met them, he has somewhat accepted the possibility of their death. It's not that it wouldn't affect him; it's simply that he's had to talk himself through that possible future.

So perhaps he won't call them precious not because they /aren't/ precious, but simply because admitting that would make him even more vulnerable to their potential deaths.

That's my personal head-cannon anyway ;)