A branch snapped with the characteristic crack of dead wood and Kakashi's one exposed eye, sharper than most people's two, caught sight of something. Finally!

He'd been tracking for hours and was starting to fear that he'd lost their trail, but only a ninja moved like that. And not one from Konoha either, a Leaf nin would never have made such a clumsy move. Kakashi melted into the canopy of the ash where he was currently poised, and watched the androgynous figure. Was it young woman? Or a beautiful youth? Well whoever it was had made a critical mistake, because they'd alerted him to the exact position of the group he had been seeking.

His shuriken hit and he caught the falling body before another twig could break. He wedged it into a forked branch and looked closely. So it was a woman, and her headband bore the mark of sound. It figured… no one understood corpses better than Orochimaru. If he was the one who'd perfected that clean-up jutsu it was a wonder it was detectable at all. Kakashi knew only too well that it was the Snake Sannin's experiments on corpses that had made him an outlaw in Konoha. And not just corpses, his stomach tightened into a knot… Konoha babies too.

Once he had enough information to perform a convincing henge, Kakashi transformed into the Sound Konoichi. With steely discipline he took stock of the situation.

There were four shinobi below him, one behind, three more up front, winding their way through the trees in a single line. But only one of them knew how to move in the forest. Two possibilities, either the traitor was still with them or, he hardly dared hope… it was Iruka. He strained to see but his line of vision was too obscured by the dense undergrowth. If it was Iruka, he'd be holding Keshi, that was the only possible reason they'd have let him live. They were in a hurry and a quiet baby would slow them down less than a screaming one.

Dropping out of the tree Kakashi fell into place behind the last of them, a bear of a man with spiky yellow hair. Except above his left ear, where the scar of an old burn had left his scalp pink and naked.

The blond giant turned to acknowledge Kakashi's presence and grunted. "So you've given up on try to impress that pretty-boy monkey from Konoha. I told you that you were wasting your time swinging through the trees. That bastard wouldn't give the time of day to someone like you…snotty little shit."

Kakashi smiled in reply, he couldn't risk speaking because he had no idea what the woman sounded like. The man's eyes hardened with understanding.

Shit, busted. Just his luck to henge into a damn gossip.

The group ahead of them stepped into a pool of sunlight where the canopy had been broken by a fallen tree. He only had a fraction of a second to take in the scene, but it was all he needed. Instantly the air crackled with electrical energy, sending jagged forks of plasma from each of his fingertips, the sharp tang of ozone stung the air.

Then it was all over, in a flash. Literally.

He stepped over the closest corpse, then strode over to the man crouched between the two others, crouched very low. As if to shield something from harm, something that he valued more than his own life. And not for the first time, Kakashi was familiar enough with the scar. He used a kunai to cut away the cloth that was bound around Iruka's head and gently pulled him up by the shoulders, so that they were facing each other, one kneeling the other crouching.

"Iruka, it's okay now. It's me… you're safe."

The younger man blinked against the sudden invasion of sunlight and used his forearms to pull his blanket-wrapped bundle closer to his chest. The movement drew Kakashi's attention to his hands. They were wrong, horribly wrong, hanging limply like plucked dead birds in a butcher's window.

"God Iruka! What did these fiends do?"

"Kakashi? It… it's ok, don't get upset, please. They just broke my fingers so that I couldn't form seals. But Keshi's not hurt at all. Were ok really… both of us."

Kakashi held out his arms in a silent demand to be given the baby. He snuggled her against his shoulder, then used his other hand to take Iruka's wrists, one at a time and gently kissed each swollen purple digit. As his lips touched, rage compounded and multiplied inside, spilling beyond his control, so that even the cicadas and crickets fell silent and scurried for cover. Keshi, who had been taking everything in, in a state of dazed glassy-eyed terror, snuffled and started to wail. Apparently bewildered by the furious power she could sense from her father, the habitually calm, never so much as flustered, one of her two fathers.

Iruka was almost as scared. "Kakashi! Please… stop!"

Kakashi was still struggling to suppress the image of his proud feisty lover, passively holding out his hands to have his fingers snapped, one by one.

He took a deep breath, he could handle this, he'd handled worse. "Right, I'm sorry. Who was it from Leaf Iruka? Who was the traitor?"

Iruka forced a thin unhappy smile. "I didn't get a chance to see before they blindfolded me. I just saw two of these, with the mark of sound. I killed one of them, almost got her away…" His words faded. Yeah, almost… killed one of four or five… He'd failed, miserably, and they both knew it.

They walked back to Konoha in silence, in the added gloom of the fading light, Kakashi holding the baby and Iruka by his side.

Their first stop was the hospital. Iruka stayed to get his hands treated and Kakashi took Keshi to a children's medic for a thorough check. As he'd expected she was unharmed. In the words of the medic, "the bonniest and healthiest child he'd seen in a very long time."

It was completely dark when Iruka arrived home several hours later. Long after Keshi had been fed, bathed and snuggled into her crib with an unusual abundance of hugs and a pitiful attempt at a lullaby. He knocked at the door, feeling foolish at being unable to turn the door handle with his bandaged hands. Kakashi let him in without a word and he followed him into the kitchen.

"Soup?"

Iruka just blinked, trying to make sense of the random word.

"Would you like me to heat up some soup? I already had some."

Right soup… food, it must be some time since he'd last eaten. "Er, yes thanks. As long as you don't mind me drinking it out of a bowl or a cup. I won't be able to use chopsticks for a day or two."

Ignoring the packaged ramen, Kakashi opened a can of soup, poured it into a large china bowl and put it into the microwave. When it was hot he put it on the kitchen table with a napkin and a spoon. He glanced at Iruka's bandages, picked up the spoon and put it back in the drawer.

To Iruka the meaningless action seemed like a reprimand. He sat in the chair next to the bowl. His stomach was too tense to feel hunger, but sipping the hot liquid gave him an excuse not to talk. Kakashi sat opposite him, chewing at a thumbnail, his other hand lying clenched on the table.

The silence went from strained to uncomfortable. By the time it had reached painful, Iruka couldn't take anymore.

"So what do we do now? Do you think we can still trust the nursery, or should we try to find something else?"

Kakashi closed his eyes, took a deep breath, then opened them again. Without the cover of his mask his jaw muscles flexed, grinding out his tension.

Iruka couldn't look. Part of him wished the other man would just yell like anyone else and be done with it.

"Kakashi, please. We have to talk about this. I'll be able to write again in a couple of days so I'll be expected to go back to work."

"Yes we should talk." Kakashi's voice was controlled and steady, too controlled. "What the hell did you think you were doing, running off like that? There was no reason for you to get yourself involved."

He slammed his fists into the table, making the soup dish jump and the salt fall over. Spilling a small pile of its contents, a tiny white pyramid, onto the polished blond wood.

"You're a fucking teacher, Iruka, not ANBU."

Now he was shouting.

Keshi, who had been sleeping fitfully, let out an ear-piercing wail in the next room.

Iruka sprang to his feet. "Shit Kakshi, now you've woken her up. Keep it down can't you, you're frightening her."

Kakashi clawed his hands into the wood, leaving deep finger-shaped gouges. But his voice was obediently low.

"Frighten? You can't even imagine frightened. What would have happened if I hadn't got here before you were across the border? Don't you realise that I could have lost both of you?"

Keshi continued to fill the apartment with loud sobs.

Iruka, torn between comforting his child, and comforting his lover, did neither. He sat back down into his seat and folded his bandaged hands on his lap, as if trying to hide the guilty evidence. He met Kakashi's eye with a furious glare but looked away again immediately. Even he was outmatched by its pained intensity.

It was too much, he lashed out, erupting in fury. If it hurt as he thumped his fist on the table he didn't show it.

"Fuck! I had to get there before you Kakashi. Keshi's a baby, a hostage, she's not worth anything to anyone but us. Obviously you were the one they wanted."

Kakashi's eye opened wide. So that was it! He felt his heart soften and melt. Iruka was just doing what real men do… everything in their power to protect those they love. It didn't matter to him that he was a chuunin and that Kakashi was one of the most powerful jounin in Hidden Leaf. At the time it had probably never even crossed his mind. He was still his lover and Keshi was their child. Iruka would stand between them and Orochimaru, he'd stand between them and the world.

He pushed up his headband to wipe a tear from Obito's eye.

"Iruka, Orochimaru's low but he's not a cheap bounty hunter. He doesn't need hostages, he needs babies, and he wanted our child, my child, to do God knows what to. And once he had her he'd have disposed of you as a minor inconvenience."

Iruka looked into Kakashi's eyes, both eyes this time. One cool blue the other fiery red, but both now filled with nothing but love. He blinked and stood up, then staggered into the next room, as much to cover the guilt and shame he was feeling as to tend to the baby. Kakashi was right, as always. He'd been an idiot. Thinking with his heart, not his head, and breaking every one of the shinobi rules that he taught his students so diligently.

Once Keshi was quiet he brought her back to the kitchen with him, supporting her weight with the crook of one arm while she clung to his neck. He pulled his chair close to the other man and sat down.

"You really do love her don't you?"

Kakashi removed his hands from the ruined table and put one around Keshi and the other around Iruka, nudging his partner's head down onto his shoulder, so that his ponytail tickled against an ear. His grip was iron tight, and he was shaking hard enough to make them all tremble.

Neither man said a single word. Neither needed to. Lips found lips and they kissed urgently, desperately, over the top of their daughter's head.

Slowly the tension left Kakashi's body, and Keshi too finally relaxed enough to slip back into sleep. Kakashi gently lifted her away from Iruka's chest and started to carry her back to her crib.

He looked back towards Iruka, slumped in his chair with his mouth still slightly agape, as if hoping for more.

"Just… just don't ever do anything like that again."