When Kakashi opened his one working eye he found himself staring at an institutional style suspended ceiling. The kind formed from large rectangular slabs of fire-resistant… stuff set on a metal grid beneath the pipes, air ducts, cables and com lines that were the life support of the building. It hid their ugliness just as his human skin hid his ugliness of arteries and veins and nerves and guts.

Moisture had gathered at the crack between two of the ceiling tiles, third up from the corner and five across, darkening it into a brown line, like the parody of a battle scar. It was all too familiar.

"Sheesh. Not this place again!"

Kohona hospital, sharingan overuse, same old same old.

He cringed as recent events came back to him. Gah! He could only hope that Gai hadn't carried him all the way home. That would be… embarrassing.

Easing himself to a slump against his pillows, he let his vision sweep the perimeter of the room. There was a streak of blue and green, topped with a tuft of dark hair, wilted across an unaccommodating chair next to the window. Iruka. Now that made any humiliation worthwhile. He'd hug and kiss Gai when he saw him… or not. Give him a flower? Well he'd think of something. Did the gift shop have 'thanks for saving my butt and getting me home and into the arms of my beautiful lover' cards? They should. It was a common enough sentiment in a shinobi village.

When he woke up again Iruka was gone. The immediate sense of loss hit him like a blow. Just how brutally would Tsunade kill him if he snuck out the window and went home?

He'd swung his legs to the side of the bed and was trying to find enough chakra to stiffen them so that they would take his weight when the door opened.

"Kakashi! Just what the hell do you think you're doing?"

Iruka, in full blown fury mode, shoved him down into the pillows and tucked the covers back around him. "Hatake Kakashi, you have to be the biggest idiot I've ever heard of. And don't bother telling me that you weren't trying to sneak out of bed. Just call a goddam nurse if you need something."

Kakashi stretched up and kissed the angry face leaning over him. But he didn't need anything, not now. Iruka's face went from outraged purple to embarrassed red. And he didn't kiss back. In fact he stepped away, then went back to the doorway and took a bundle of orange with pink ribbons in its silver hair from the woman standing there, the rather attractive blond woman.

"See? I brought Keshi to visit."

Mmm, but that wouldn't explain his sudden shyness. "Hey there kiddo, come to see your poor old Daddy One?" Even to his own ears his voice sounded strained and cold.

As Iruka sat Keshi on the side of his bed Kakashi shot a glance past the curtain to the woman still lingering by the door.

Ah, so it was Kagura. And Iruka was… ok with her? He analysed the tension and the distance between the two.

Not behaving like best buds certainly, but Iruka was at least being civil, maybe a little brittle but definitely not hostile. And Kagura didn't look as if she'd been attacked with anything sharp.

The only possible explanation dawned on him and instantly filled him with the threat of impending doom. Tsunade hadn't told him, the cowardly old coot.

Later, deal with it later.

"My team? Did they get back ok?"

Iruka flinched at his harsh tone then his face softened into a fond smile. "Yeah, they're fine. Naruto can bounce back from anything, you now that. And Sakura's tougher than she looks too."

Keshi crawled over the rumpled bed covers to Kakashi's belly then sat on him, indifferent to the fact that she was using one of the greatest ninjas of the current age as a mat, and stared into his eyes. He closed the left one tighter, his control was shot to hell and there were things in there no toddler should ever see.

"Ruto and Skura came to play every day Daddy. Ruto says Team K'kashi powns. He says they got one back and now they're gonna go and get the other bastard. What's a bastard Daddy?"

Kakashi didn't even smirk at Iruka's strangled 'eep' as he snatched Keshi off the bed and held her at arm's length.

"Keshi! That's a bad word. Remember I told you that there are words it's not polite to say?"

Keshi's little face started to pucker and two fat tears rolled down her cheeks. "But Ruto said…"

Iruka folded her against his chest and rubbed comforting little circles on her back. "There there, you don't want Daddy One to see you crying now. I'm not cross with you." He stared daggers at no one in particular, although Kakashi felt himself break into a cold sweat as a reflex. "But you can bet I'll be having a little talk with 'Ruto-kun'."

He shifted her weight to his hip and used the other hand to finger comb Kakashi's hair back from his face, then pressed the back of his hand against his clammy forehead. Kakashi still had the hard edge of the mission etched onto his features, but there was nothing he could do to ease it here, not with Keshi and Kagura in the room. "We should go, you look stre… tired. I'll be back when you've had time to rest a bit more. Keshi, give Daddy a goodbye kiss."

Kakashi leaned into Keshi's sloppy smooch and looked hopefully at Iruka. His lover gave the figure at the door a nervous glance and pulled the bed curtain halfway closed before pecking him softly on the other cheek.

Then he cupped his jaw in his hand and whispered, lips barely moving. "They won't really send you out again will they, so soon?"

He replied, just as softly, with a hint of a shrug. "Not my choice. But it's hard to imagine that I'll be much good to anyone, for a while."

Iruka let his hand trace the details of Kakashi's bare face. "That's not true and you know it, it's all the good in the world to me, just seeing you."

Kakashi caught his hand. "Come back soon love, alone."

Still standing unacknowledged by the door, Kagura's hands clenched into fists as she saw the backlit silhouettes of the two men merge into a single shadow behind the curtain. Keshi, who had long since wriggled free, grabbed its edge and spun around, wrapping herself up as if in a winding sheet. But when the curtain was pulled back by her playing, it revealed nothing more than two old friends, clutching each other's hands in a fond farewell.

Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

For the first time since she'd been imposed on him, Iruka let Kagura hold Keshi's hand while they walked together. His heart and his mind were too full of Kakashi to care. He led them on a small detour through the marketplace, he'd get fresh vegetables, and fish, make his lover some decent soup. Kakashi hated hospital food. Well anyone with working tastbuds would hate hospital food.

But despite his self-imposed indifference he still scowled as he saw her showing off his daughter to the stall holder, while he selected shallots. She had no right to beam with pride like that as the old woman fingered the silk ribbons in Keshi's hair. No right to explain the little tricks she'd used to get then to stay in place in the silky fluff. He shoved his irritation aside as Kagura accepted a small homemade cookie on Keshi's behalf, saying that she'd save it for after lunch.

For once he reigned in his temper and held his tongue. He couldn't chaperone his daughter from her nanny. Really, he should be glad that the woman had such obvious affection for his child. And it was a good thing that Keshi had some one else in her life who loved her.

The shallots were dry, last season's. Maybe he should compromise and use sweet onions, Kakashi had done that before, and the soup was…

He flipped over the stall and dragged Kagura behind it as the characteristic thud of a shuriken confirmed his instincts, no doubt finding its mark exactly where he'd just been standing. He didn't even hear the screams of fleeing civilians all around, but he heard the whistle of another weapon as he tossed aside the vegetables still in his hand, letting them roll and lose themselves in the scattered produce all around, and hauled Kagura and Keshi under him. Just as the kunai sank deep into the wood above his shoulder.

So there was more than one of them, they were surrounded.

With minimal movement he rocked back onto his heels and into a crouch. There were already three kunai in his right hand, his left found Keshi's hair, and the velour of her sweats. He could tell from the vibration in her body that she was shivering, but she wasn't crying. He forced down the swell of paternal pride. Focus.

Keshi was the target. This wasn't the first time they'd infiltrated the village to get her. Whoever 'they' were.

He henged her into the appearance of a bag of rice and whispered, "Run, I'll catch up," into Kagura's ear even as a substitution jutsu placed her and her burden in the scattering crowd and a stallkeeper's battered wooden chair by his side.

Suddenly a genjutsu swirled around him. He was at the academy, in the training field. His students were running in all directions clawing at the weapons embedded in their flesh.

Focus!

He closed his eyes and shot his kunai at the one point of genuine menace that he could sense beyond the illusion. It was bearing down on him from high in the air, way above the heads of the crowd. By the time he'd reached the body he was already back in the marketplace.

Asuma's voice rang out through the silence. "Got them all?"

"Yeah, these three and the one the Sensei took down over there."

Good, now to find Keshi, and Kagura. They hadn't had time to get far.

Iruka spared a moment to check his victim. To his surprise he recognized him at once, despite the kunai lodged in his left eye and the one in his throat. He'd seen him repairing brickwork at the academy, after a particularly disastrous exploding tag demonstration. He'd seen him before that too, building a wall at the village nursery, the one that had been so efficiently destroyed. Curiosity piqued, he bent down and looked at his hands, bricklayer's hands, thick-skinned and leathery.

Of course, the characteristic calluses that came from constant practice with steel weapons would be lost in all that toughness. Clever.

"Iruka! Over here."

He turned at the sound of Genma's voice and saw him dragging a body to lie beside two others, in an area cleared of debris. But what made his heart jump to his throat was the fourth body lying nearby. Kagura, face down, the shiny points of a shuriken protruding from her back like the spines on a stegosaurus.

"KESHI!"

He was there in an instant, groping under the limp form for his daughter. She wriggled free and fairly leapt into his arms. "DADDY!"

She gripped him around the neck as if she was trying to fuse their bodies together, while wrinkling her nose against the fresh corpse stink of cooling blood and shit that was rising like a miasma all around.

Keshi was safe, it was alright, Keshi was safe. Iruka sank to his knees in his effort not to faint from relief. Then he remembered Kagura.

With a monumental effort he forced his eyes to the body beside him. A shuriken to the back. To protect Keshi Kagura had taken a shuriken to the back. He placed a finger to her throat and felt a faint pulse and for the second time in as many minutes a wave of relief washed over him. He hauled Kagura up and close against him while he kept his vice-like grip on Keshi with his other arm. The little girl already had a shinobi's instincts, she kept her body completely still and didn't make another sound.

"I… I'll take them to the hospital, they need… she needs… "

Asuma was crouched in front of him, a gentle smile losing its battle with the fury clouding his eyes.

"Iruka-sensei, you may be used to bossing jounins around in your personal life, but I'm in charge here for now. Give me the woman, she'll be taken care of. Just get your kid to the hospital and for God's sake talk to Kakashi before news of this starts filtering through to him there."

Right, ok. Keshi, Kakashi, the hospital. He could do that.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Kakashi looked up from his book, but Iruka could tell that he hadn't really been reading.

"You smell of blood Iruka. What the hell happened? And what the hell are you wearing?"

He did? He'd showered and changed into orderly's scrubs before he'd dared set foot in Kakashi's room. Looks like he'd wasted his time.

"Yes. But it's… it's not mine. It's Kagura's, she's two rooms down."

His voice took on the impersonal tone of a mission report. "We were attacked in the market place. Four hostiles, ninja skills. Dead. I killed one. Asuma and Genma were there, probably others too, they killed the rest. Two civilian casualties. They hadn't been identified when I left the scene. Kagura was injured in the fight. A shuriken in the back, the medics already healed her but she's suffering after effects of shock.

Kakashi's visible eye had darkened to an unfathomable black. "Keshi?"

"Escaped all harm. Kagura protected her successfully. Shuzune-san is watching her now."

It wasn't until he saw Kakashi relax that he felt the tension in his guts start to unwind as well. He knew without saying a word that they'd reached an understanding. That they'd talk about this later, when they were both home and in their own familiar territory. They'd thrash out the details, work out what had happened, and how to make sure it never happened again. They'd find a way to keep Keshi safe in her own village. But for now Kakashi was still too wired from his recent mission to make any decisions that weren't too cold and analytical to be repellant to him. And he was still far too over emotional to say anything at all.

He'd go and retrieve Keshi from Shizune and the three of them would hang out in this room and chat and play kiddie games and pretend that nothing had happened, for as long as the hospital staff would let them. They were a family, they'd get through this together, but later.

They'd deal with it later.