Kakashi helps Genma rig up an IV. Basic fluids and the next round of antibiotics are their best hope for getting Itachi stable enough to move. Itachi stirs faintly as Genma adjusts the flow rate a bit, but he's been deeply asleep for some time now, not even waking when Kakashi finally settled him atop the meager comfort of a thin grey bedroll. He doesn't need Genma to tell him that's a dangerous sign.
Kakashi thinks uneasily of the last few hours. The warm weight of Itachi's head on his chest, rough sweat-matted hair against his cheek. Bracketing him against Tenzou's side and leaning hard into Genma's. The moment something in Itachi finally gave way when Kakashi tentatively stroked his thumb over the back of Itachi's neck.
Now Kakashi can only watch Genma fuss over crooked bandages and shake out all three of their black ANBU-issue cloaks before folding them into a makeshift pillow. The filthy Akatsuki mantle lays in a heap at the foot of the bed. Kakashi wants to burn it. Preferably on the Sandaime's grave. Or Danzou's.
"Did Sagara-sama know?" Kakashi asks, quiet but sharp.
"I don't think so. I remember her after... After." Tenzou shudders. Kakashi remembers too. That otherworldly calm, the afterimage of flash-frozen fury filed down to a razor edge as ANBU's Commander personally oversaw the investigation. Well-worn armor dusted with ash from the funeral pyres, and cobalt eyes flashing behind smoke-stained ceramic when the Wolf assembled her strike team. No one else could have carried them through those first days as the true scale of the tragedy came to light, and he knows the Uchiha case file still sits at the corner of her desk, unmarked but unforgotten.
"I don't believe she would have lied when Godaime-sama questioned her," Tenzou continues without inflection. A professional assessment, not a personal one, and there's no trace of doubt. "This was...outside official channels."
Kakashi wants to believe that.
-o-
Genma checks his pulse and respirations again—no better, but at least no worse. The fever holds steady too, which is less encouraging. Itachi wakes only when coughing fits wrack his body severely enough to rouse him with pain, and even then it isn't for long. He speaks little, and says even less.
Kakashi watches him relax back into the blankets again after another shot of painkillers, Genma's steady hands glowing over his chest to ease his ragged breathing. Itachi has an iron grip around Genma's wrist in warning, but otherwise lets him work without interference. And Kakashi thinks he's figured out why.
"How much can you see?" he asks quietly.
Hazy eyes focus a few inches to the left of Kakashi's face. "Enough."
By morning, Genma calls it. Itachi's slipping, and even Genma's limited interventions with ninjutsu are becoming a dangerous gamble. That medication of his is even worse; Genma caves and allows a miniscule dose, but it nearly drops Itachi into shock. Itachi shakes for most of an hour, every muscle wire-tense, fists twisted in his blankets and grim determination in his face, panting harshly through clenched teeth as he rides it out. Eventually his fingers slacken by degrees and his breathing steadies, all of it without a sound. But his flinch when Kakashi drops a hand on the top of his head is sluggish and weak.
They need to move.
Kakashi smooths his hand over Itachi's hair. Then he gets to his feet. The dogs' patrols had turned up no signs of civilization or pursuit, but Kakashi can feel their endurance flagging. Four days is a long time for a summons to remain in this realm, and even near the border Rain Country is still hostile territory. They'll move faster and it will be easier to remain undetected with fewer presences to conceal. He climbs upstairs and thanks Akino and Uhei for their loyal vigilance before he dispels the summoning connection. The thread of chakra linking him to Bull fades as well.
Pakkun's warning growl from below tells Kakashi exactly what he thinks of that idea. But he doesn't have his teeth in Itachi's wrist when Kakashi hops back down.
"Pakkun and I are going to do a quick recon," Kakashi says, preempting the dog's rising objection. "Be ready to leave in ten minutes."
-o-
He takes a slow breath as the tree trunk warps and closes at his back, screening off his teammates' chakra behind meticulous wards. He'd learned from the very best. Not a sound or scent or flicker of energy ripples outward as he walks a slow circuit around the massive tree. They'll be safe here for a few minutes, at least.
One finger traces a whirlpool pattern along the edge of a shoulder-high root. Then he's in motion. Kakashi makes a rapid, tight circle to survey the area, cataloging gently sloping land and heavy tree cover beneath clear sunny skies. Even Pakkun's keen senses detect nothing. Still, can't be too careful.
Kakashi stops along the side of a shallow rocky creek half a kilometer to the east. The water only comes up to his knees, but it's enough to let him scrub the first layer of sweat and grime from his face. A quick dunk-and-tousle sets his hair in order, then he refills all of their canteens. Including Itachi's. He absently traces fingertips over unfamiliar steel and a broken-in leather strap, lighter and narrower than ANBU's standard-issue gear. Wind Country workmanship. Memory is a knife between Kakashi's ribs as he thinks of a crumbling safehouse in the desert so many years ago. Of a dutiful young rookie tending to his injured team, and the first time he looked at Crow and saw anything but Obito's ghost. Of the mission that made them Team Ro.
"You couldn't have known," Pakkun says quietly.
Kakashi doesn't look up. "I knew him."
"We all thought we did."
-o-
There's a prickle at the back of Kakashi's neck, an instinct honed by the war. A sixth sense that warns of imminent danger. Kakashi flashes a signal, and Pakkun vanishes into the forest.
Slowly, he lifts his hitai-ate, and the Sharingan shows him the pale glimmer of chakra threaded through the riverbed like spider-silk. Delicate work. And clever. With the scent buried by the water, the dogs could never have found it. He turns—
Freezes.
The tip of a bandage-covered sword rests lightly on the back of Kakashi's shoulder. "Hello, Konoha."
The smile in Kisame's voice sharpens. "Where is he?"
"Ashes in the river," Kakashi replies evenly. "We aren't as lax as Kiri."
There's a faint creak of leather as Kisame's grip shifts. "You'll understand if I don't believe that."
Silvery needles slice through the leaves overhead, and Kisame's focus flicks momentarily upward. It's all Kakashi needs. He throws up an armored forearm and pivots, lightning shrieking in his palm as he drives straight for Kisame's heart.
Raikiri was developed as an assassination technique, invisibly fast, unstoppably powerful. Focused properly, you'd never see it until it was buried in your chest. With Samehada ripping at his chakra, that kind of precision is beyond even Kakashi's control.
This is chidori.
In his hand, he holds all the fury of a tamed thunderstorm. The scream of a thousand birds.
It is a very loud, very shiny distraction.
A spear of chakra-conjured hardwood buries itself in the back of Kisame's skull. An instant later, Kakashi's own attack lands—and passes right through as his target dissolves into water.
No scent profile. Even Pakkun missed him. Of course. Kakashi whirls as the real Kisame rises from the riverbed. Kisame yanks on the chakra threads beneath the river's surface, and Kakashi and Tenzou move as one. Hundreds of tiny droplets surge from the water, a barrage of miniature sharks flung like senbon tearing through Tenzou's hasty shield. Kakashi vaults up and over one wooden beam, then blurs out of existence to reappear crouched just inside Kisame's guard. He drives back to level with his tanto in hand, not quite fast enough to sink it beneath the ribs but steel grates on bone in Kisame's wrist as he deflects it. A lethal injury for any kenjutsu user. Kakashi disengages, clearing Genma's shot, and poison death rains from the heavens.
Even wrong-handed, Kisame wields Samehada effortlessly in a fluid sweeping arc like a bastardized Hyuuga kaiten. Not one needle gets through his defense.
In fairness to ANBU's Viper, they weren't meant to. Chakra surges from the riverbank, and Kakashi lands neatly on a perch of wood just above the water's surface. He touches one stray senbon embedded in a submerged stone.
The resulting arc flash is blinding even to the Sharingan as lightning strikes from all sides.
-o-
His satisfaction is short-lived. The cage of lightning and superheated steam dissipates and a blackened, grinning Kisame stands in the center, perched on the hilt of his sword. That monstrous reserve of chakra is only faintly diminished.
Kakashi, panting, finds that just a little unfair.
Kisame closes with him again in an eyeblink, and Kakashi goes on the defensive.
Kisame's style is blunt, direct, and terrifyingly effective. He wields Samehada more like a sledgehammer than a sword; blow after bone-shattering blow rains down, and the river roils as Kisame and Tenzou trade battering jutsu with none of the subtlety of the shark-senbon from before. Earth churns, cracks, and flooded fissures turn footing treacherous as rip currents tear through the trees.
Blade to blade, Kakashi does precious little damage of his own. He's losing chakra too quickly, the drag in his coils searing between Samehada and the Sharingan. He's a quarter-second slow on their next exchange, and jagged scales shred down his arm before catching at the edge of his vambrace. The blade twists, and if it weren't for Tenzou's interference it might have sheared clean through Kakashi's elbow.
Kakashi falls back, tanto held between his teeth, fingers clamped down holding pressure on his mangled arm. The Sharingan spins a frantic genjutsu, breathing into the space between heartbeats, shifting Tenzou's movements just slightly out of sync with reality in Kisame's vision.
It isn't enough. A torrent of water in the shape of a dragon snaps its jaws, tearing through Tenzou's armor. He goes down. Kisame moves to finish him, fingers blurring through seals, a cloud of smoke, and Kakashi is lightning. Chakra scrapes through his coils one last time, and he rips through the shark summons with the raikiri.
He falls to a knee in front of his teammate, smoking black blood mingling with bright scarlet, and stares up at Kisame through grey-edged vision. Tenzou groans faintly behind him, and Kakashi almost misses the movement in the tree-tops before Kisame is forced backward by a barrage of steel. His limited senbon are aimed to kill now, no more cover fire. And this time they come from point-blank range as Genma takes the fight to Kisame.
Silver glints between Genma's knuckles, and he rakes open a trio of lines across Kisame's chest before Kisame explodes into water again—substitution, swapping himself with a water clone held in reserve. Genma meets the real Kisame with fire, acrid chemical chakra providing cover for a strike from the earth as Genma yanks two stone spears from the ravaged ground. He flings one at Kisame's chest, and the other at where he would have dodged. Kisame parries instead, Samehada taking the hit straight on. Genma puffs out of existence—shadow clone—and reappears behind Kisame to sink a kunai down through the top of his spine.
Somehow Kisame anticipates the assassin's strike. He whirls and knocks Genma contemptuously aside with the flat of his blade. Genma's armor holds against Samehada's scales, but his already-drained chakra gutters. He slams back against a tree, and doesn't move again.
Kisame turns back to Kakashi and raises his sword. "Last chance, Konoha."
Blood loss and chakra exhaustion narrow his world to a pinprick. Tenzou. Genma. Itachi...
"Go to hell," Kakashi rasps.
The sword comes down.
At that same moment, something lean and dark lands in front of Kakashi, kunai rising to block the massive blade. A corona of brilliant crimson-orange flickers outward, then dissolves as Samehada shears right through it, and Itachi takes his full weight and the weight of the blow meant to cleave Kakashi in two full-on his injured leg. Itachi's stance crumples.
Kakashi catches him.
And Kisame...
Kisame stills.
"Itachi-san?"
Genma throws himself into the opening with another man's grace. Chemical chakra burns like a supernova in his signature, hyōrōgan, too many of them, as he snatches Kakashi's shoulder and Tenzou's limp, bloody arm. Genma's eyes close, a breath halfway let out, and Kakashi's hold on Itachi tightens as chakra twists through him in a way he hasn't felt in nearly twenty years.
Yondaime—
Genma rips a hole in the universe.
-o-
There's a dizzying, wretched moment of passing through frigid nothingness and howling white noise before the air lurches and pops, and they land on dusty hardwood. The room spins as Kakashi's blade comes up in a reflexive guard, the first line of defense between troops still disoriented from Sensei's jutsu and the chaos of the battlefield. The only one he could be sure would cover Minato's back.
Reality catches up a beat later.
"Did you just—" Tenzou rasps.
Genma gives a shaky, hysterical little laugh. Then he hits the ground with a thump.
Above their heads, Minato's marked kunai glints from the end of a worn leather cord, tacked to the ceiling by senbon.
It's only then that Kakashi takes in the rest of the room. Crumbling, moth-eaten paper screens filter the light across dark-stained floorboards, white walls, and traditional fusuma doors. Hushed silence and a heavy layer of neglect lie thick on every surface, but there are clear tracks in the dust. A well-worn path from the door to the corner, and a single set leading to a priceless red lacquer sakazuki, shot through with seams of gold and left like an offering to the only altar Genma still believed in. An offering to a ghost.
On the opposite wall, a clan crest is engraved above the shards of a shattered tanto laid out on crimson cloth. Spidery black sealwork in a familiar hand has been added along the edges of the silk, warding off rust and damp. A handful of ashes are scattered on the floor beneath it, along with a rough-carved masu cup etched with two precise characters: shunshin.
Nothing else has been touched, as if aware that he's an interloper here. As if the decay is holy too.
"Kai." Itachi's ragged whisper echoes in the empty room, and suddenly Kakashi has a very good idea of where they are.
There are indeed ghosts here.
Beside them, Genma is already forcing himself back upright. His eyes flicker between Kakashi's arm, Tenzou's chest, and Itachi's rapid shallow breathing as scarlet spreads over the bandages at his side and leg. Kakashi watches the calculation, watches it fail, and he sees the question behind them as they meet his own.
He nods. "Tsunade. Go."
-o-
Tsunade is, predictably, furious. Mostly at Genma, which Kakashi has to admit is a nice change.
"You said you'd stopped working on it," she growls.
From their makeshift operating area against the wall, Tenzou lets out a sound halfway between a snort and a groan. The deepest wounds in his chest have been closed but the healing is shallow, triage work. "Respectfully, Godaime-sama, you believed him?"
"I believed Namiashi, who might dabble in fuuinjutsu but at least he has the sense not to keep chasing ghosts."
"Ah."
Tsunade narrows her eyes. "Kakashi, if you ever so much as attempt the hiraishin—"
"It would kill me," Kakashi says softly.
Beside him, Itachi is terribly still, lifeless as one of Tsunade's slugs gently filters healing chakra through his system. It's barely a trickle, just enough to staunch freshly-reopened wounds, to keep his airway stable and his heart beating without overwhelming his damaged coils. All four characters on the tag across his throat blaze in dire warning.
So does Kakashi's Sharingan when Tsunade finally lays her hands over him.
("Shiranui, how much of this is your fault?" she snaps.)
-o-
Genma staggers briefly to his feet, regrets it, and sits heavily on the floor as he gives Tsunade the rundown on Itachi's condition. Tenzou, quieter, tells her the rest. Kakashi grinds his teeth at every pointed allegedly, every apparently, every assumed... Every question they still can't answer. But Tsunade's hands never stop their steady emerald glow, and she never moves without the barest edge of a tell.
Most of the medical jargon goes over Kakashi's head, but he gets the gist. Itachi had never been trying to heal. On his own, Tsunade gave him three months. Six, she adds quietly, if Orochimaru were still with Akatsuki. Maybe seven.
"And in Konoha?"
It isn't (quite) an accusation.
Tsunade breathes out slowly through her nose. "You're not your father, Kakashi. Don't threaten me."
-o-
As soon as Tsunade's left, Kakashi pulls up the tatami mats from another room to make something like a low platform bed for Itachi while Genma coordinates with Katsuyu on post-operative care. Tenzou is (forcibly) relegated to a supervisory role on account of still-healing chest wounds Cat, sit down, and copes with that in true Team Ro fashion: by driving medics to drink.
They do have a reputation to maintain.
Even if Itachi's gone and set the bar a little too high this time.
They all know they're being evaluated. It's straight from T&I's playbook, the opening left for Itachi to exploit if he dared. For all that Jiraiya was the true spymaster among the Sannin, Katsuyu's shared consciousness was the ultimate in infiltration and surveillance.
That's not what worries him. Tsunade was right to be cautious. A former teammate, and a genjutsu master… They're compromised. Completely. In her place, he'd want assurances.
Assurances he couldn't get with a setup like this.
"So," Kakashi says quietly. "Inoichi."
Tenzou grimaces. "Historically he's never aligned himself with Danzou, but there's a Yamanaka high up in Root. Late teens, maybe pushing twenty by the look of him. We can't rule it out." His gaze strays to Itachi, to the crest on the wall and the desolate shadows of the inner house. "He's also a Clan Head."
Yeah. There was that.
Tsunade wanted the truth, but what would she—could she—do with it in the end?
It's impossible not to see the inevitable sequence of events. The old Ino-Shika-Cho alliance was ironclad, its roots going back generations before Konoha's founding. They'd close ranks hard. As would the Inuzuka; Tsume would protect her Pack and if she defected, he dared anyone to try and track them. The Hyuuga would be furious. The Aburame possibly even more so.
They were sitting on a powderkeg.
And Itachi had been sitting on it since he was thirteen years old.
Genma doesn't look up from carefully sluicing the layers of dirt and dried blood from Itachi's pallid skin. His jaw is set, another hyōrōgan held braced between his molars. The top of his senbon holster is flipped up, and Kakashi knows better than most just how quickly Genma can draw.
He could have Katsuyu skewered to the wall even before his teeth broke the shell of the hyōrōgan.
If the compound's wards didn't keep Genma out, they weren't going to keep him in either. And Minato-sensei had left hiraishin seals scattered across half the continent.
If Tsunade decided to bury this, at least she'd know who her enemies were. Danzou wouldn't be long for this world, and she'd grant Sasuke just a little more grace when Naruto finally succeeded in dragging his wayward student home someday.
If she wanted to bury Itachi... Well.
Kakashi meets Genma's eyes and gives him a firm nod.
She was going to have to work for it.
-o-