Chapter 4: Fighting for life

"Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That's part of what it means to be alive."
―Haruki Murakami

There was little options left to me, I could sit there in the middle of the forest and lay down to die or I could keep going. Call me foolish but I made myself get up to keep moving on. There was still a faint hope I would run across someone, or that I would find my salvation somehow. So I kept moving, ignoring my burnt blistering skin, my aching scabbed feet, my raw hands, and my protesting muscles as I walked on. It wasn't anything more than good old self preservation driving me now, that sickly acid feeling that pushed you to live even as you knew you were going to die.

I walked on. Within four days I ran out of water, and nine days into my journey I was sure I wouldn't last much longer. My stomach had moved on from growling and grumbling to shrinking painfully. As the tenth day rolled in my tongue had swelled up in my mouth and it felt like heavy sandpaper. I couldn't even muster up enough to wet my mouth with saliva anymore. I was drying out and getting very close to dangerous dehydration.

The sun beat down on me, I was barely moving now, stumbling along blindly as I leant heavily on my walking stick and tried not to think about how horrible it was going to be to die this way. My stick hit an unturned root; I fell hard and didn't even have the strength to soften the blow. I laid there face down, face aching, body heavy with exhaustion and knew I wouldn't be able to get up from this. My head turned weakly to the side and I looked out at the endless forest with little hope. Was this my end? Was this how I would die again? How could this happen? After everything my life was going to end with barely a whimper and I didn't have the strength to save myself.

I must have fallen asleep because when I woke up I saw something familiar. "I must be dreaming," I said weakly voice cracking from dryness. He chuckled beside me, his cheek was pressed to the ground and his hand reached out to slide through my hair. "Why do you think that baby?" he asked in that easy way I remembered. "Because you're here." I said simply and smiled weakly at him. My eyes drank in his face, my heart swelled up painfully as I took him in and if I had had it in me to cry I would have.

"Why are you just laying there, baby? You gotta get up!" He said ignoring my words.

"I can't, I don't have anything left darling, I can't move," I said weakly.

"Don't give me that, where is that stubborn girl I know? The one always racing off to do something recklessly out of her depth but managing to anyway? Huh?" he said smiling that heart breaking crooked smile at me.

"I don't want to get up, I want to stay here with you, and I'm so tired baby. Can't I just stay here next to you? I've been so lonely without you, I miss your laugh, I miss your touch, I miss cuddling with you, can't I just let go?" I asked feebly trying to reach out to him. My arm wasn't long enough anymore.

He smiled at me sadly, "You have to get up baby, I want you to get up and live. I'm selfish like that. So get up, get moving, you can do this! Remember that story I told you about the day I broke my neck?" he asked suddenly.

I chuckled weakly, "How could I forget, superman?" I teased, "You crashed your dirt bike and broke your neck, but you got right up holding your head in your hands like it was nothing. Then you walked five miles to the hospital, they strapped you a bed, put you into surgery and told you when you woke up that it was very likely you would never walk again." I said breezing through his usual embellishments to the story he smiled cockily at me.

"And what did I do?" He asked.

"You walked out of there the next day," I said smiling.

"That's right, and do you know how I did that?" he asked as his hand ghosted over my face.

"How?" I breathed.

"I didn't let anyone, even myself, tell me I couldn't do it. I refused to let them win, to let the world take something so precious from me. I was stubborn, bull headed and too stupid to give in. Now you need to get up baby, because I won't let you give up like this and you can't go." He said firmly.

"What if I can't?" I asked weakly.

"Don't ever say that again," he said firmly, "you can and you will."

My eyes burned with tears I could not shed since my body was so dry. I choked back a sob, "I don't want you to go, I miss you every moment darling, I can't do this without you here, and I can't let you go." I cried.

"Don't be stupid baby, I'm not going anywhere, I'll always be with you because we're soul mates, remember? You can't get rid of me so easily I've been here all along," he said gently. "Now get up lazy," he teased.

I nodded reaching for my stick, it took me a long time to get up and I was gasping for air by the time I stood. I slumped into the stick and forced myself to move forward. "That's my girl," I heard him say but as I turned around he was already gone. I hobbled along as the sun set and the night crept in. It was dark, the kind of dark that the night of a new moon bring, pitch black and seemingly endless. I couldn't see the hand in front of my face; I stumbled along blindly and stupidly kept walking.

The issue was that I knew that if I stopped, for even a moment, I would not be able to get up again even with some serious motivation from my lost lover. So, I kept going in the dark hoping for salvation. It seemed inevitable that I would trip again but this time I fell a lot further. I must have hit the precipice of a hill because when I fell I rolled and kept falling. I tumbled in a free fall, rocks hit into me, branches, roots, god knows what cut open my skin. Then I was free falling through the air for about two seconds before my pack caught on something wrenching my arms painfully as it was ripped from my back.

I landed with a splash, barely coherent, I was drowning under freezing cold water and I clawed desperately at it trying to swim up for air. The sudden shock of landing in the water I had so urgently needed had me gasping in shock filling my mouth with water and robbing my breath. I gulped down water as I struggled to the surface and managed to break through sucking in air frantically as I did. The current was gentle enough that I somehow managed to doggy paddle my way to the bank.

The bank of the river was muddy and I kept slipping back into the water as I tried to find something to pull myself out with. Eventually, covered from head to toe in thick slimy mud I collapsed upon the bank utterly spent. However, somehow I managed to muster the energy to roll onto my stomach and crawl to where I thought I had lost my pack. It took me a long time, groping blindly in the dark at the roots along the side wall of the bank before I felt the brush of cloth that signaled my success. I mustered just enough left in me to surge up dragging my pack from the greedy jaws of the roots and fell back into the muddy soup that was the riverside.

I dragged myself to the furthest I could go to get away from the river and then I sank down into the mud from utter and complete exhaustion. The pack was firmly in my arms was the only comfort I could give myself before I slipped away into unconsciousness. I could only hope some animal wouldn't make a meal of me during my slumber and that I would wake up still in this body in the morning. I couldn't take going through this again if I died during my sleep this time too.

~Sakumo~

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."
―Winston Churchill

Sakumo was unused to failure, not that he as an arrogant over confidence but just as a statement of the facts. He was skilled, and he had worked very hard to get to a place where he was skilled enough that his mission failure rate was less than two percent. The problem was that since he rarely failed, he had farther to fall when he did and that was what he was facing now. Their mission had been vital, recover the stolen documents from an ame-nin before he could reach Amegakure and silence him before the man could reach the Ame Daimyo. Just when they were within moments of reaching their target they were ambushed and his teammates had been captured leaving him to complete the mission alone.

However, in completing the mission it would doom his two teammates to a slow death by torture and Sakumo had to make a choice. Complete the mission, thus leaving his teammates to die or fail the mission objective to rescue his teammates from their captures. In the end there wasn't any other thing he would have done differently, these were his comrades, his partners, people who he had grown strong with and knew their families. Sakumo made the choice to go back for them and let the ame-nin escape.

He had managed to save his teammates from death but in doing so he had doomed their village to war once more. It was a spectacular failure and one he would have to shoulder the consequences for. There had been a tense peace between the villages for only the past four years, there had been a few skirmishes and some mounting tensions yet war had yet to be declared. Their failure, his failure, would lead to another Shinobi war and Sakumo wondered if they could shelter the storm of it once more.

The people were wary of fighting, and now the trigger of another war rested on his shoulder. His teammates could not meet his eyes, they were of two mind on this their instinctive relief to have been saved and their anger at being a part of the group to bring war down upon them. Sakumo was no fool, he knew that everyone would look to him for answers, and when he had none to give hate, resentment, anger would fester within them until it had to seek someone out to shoulder it. He would be a target now, within his own home, and what he couldn't handle, what he couldn't stomach, was that he had brought this on his little son Kakashi.

They traveled in silence, the unspoken agreement to not stop until they were within Konoha's walls hung heavy between them. They had to warn the rest, war was coming and there was nothing they could do to stop this wave form crashing down upon them. Sakumo was taking point, nothing escaping his keen eyes as he made sure no one was waiting in the sidelines to ambush them. He had already failed to protect his teammates once, he would not do so again and so he was on high alert. Even now.

It was because of this that he spotted the child, collapsed and half buried in the mud along a river bank. He landed to inspect the child's area, it wasn't above their enemies to use a child's body as bait for some trap and Sakumo didn't want to risk it. He was very thorough and cautious in his approach. His teammates where impatient but better to confront a trap, then to be taken for surprise from behind. It was only after he had the body cleared that he approached the small body and even then it was with extreme caution.

He picked the child up, it weighed nothing in his arms and brushed some mud from the child's face. Sakumo immediately winched, the child's skin was as red as a lobster and slightly swollen from blisters. It made distinguishing any features nearly impossible along with the mud in the hair Sakumo knew he wouldn't be able to pick up any identifiable markers until they got the kid cleaned up. What he could see was that this child was painfully thin, very obviously alone and had been for a while now. The kid was smaller than his little Kakashi and it tugged at his heart to think of such a little kid to be left for dead.

He was a failure anyway, what was adding one more mistake to his tally. Sakumo tucked the little thing into the crook of his arm, put the small pack the kid had a death grip on into his own pack and signaled his teammates to move out. They were looking at the child with wary distrust but didn't say a word to stop him. It seemed his saving their lives had earned him some leeway into allowing him to get away with this without a single protest.

The poor little tyke was obviously half starved and very dehydrated. The kid wouldn't have lasted a day longer on its own and Sakumo counted the little thing as being very fortunate to have been found by him. Perhaps Sakumo could work his way into redeeming himself from this whole he had dug underneath him. Then again, it was not like he was bringing anyone special home, well unless one of the Daimyo had lost a child since they had left the village.

Looking down at the child in his arms Sakumo tried to distinguish the gender only to come up with a blank. The mud, the sunburns, the clothes, it made the child very gender neutral and gave him no clues to the kid's identity. The kid's pack probably had something but taking the time to stop to check wasn't a priority and couldn't be done on the move effectively. Still, saving the kid made him feel a little better about failing so spectacularly.

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