When she wakes up the blizzard is gone.
Unfortunately, so is Kakashi-sensei.
"What do you mean he's gone?!" she demands from Pakkun.
Pakkun, who sits surrounded by the other dogs, gives her large, innocent eyes. When he speaks his voice is flat and vaguely confused, as if he doesn't understand her ire at all.
"What I just said. He's gone. Went out to climb the mountain."
"In a bloody blizzard?!"
"Yup. Said he had no choice but to face it."
She'd thought Kakashi-sensei lacked people skills, what with him reading porn in public and all that, but compared to his dogs he's apparently well adjusted! She wants to scream. She wants to cry. Some part of her wants to hit something, preferable Pakkun or even more preferable Kakashi himself.
"Why?!" she asks at last, exasperated.
Pakkun shrugs.
"Don't know. Sometimes a man's just got to do what a man's got to do."
The other dogs nod sagely, as if Pakkun has just offered up a piece of great wisdom. Sakura sighs, resisting the urge to take the sudden terror that flushes through her out on them.
"He said he'd be back in four days," Shiba pipes up.
"No, idiot!" Urushi says, glaring at Shiba. "He said if he wasn't back in four days to take her back to Konoha."
"Which means that he expects to be back in four days," Shiba argues, giving Urushi a pointed look.
Sakura can only stare at the dogs as they argue, her heart having stopped for a moment in her chest and her whole body running cold.
"That's not at all what it means! It means that he isn't sure that he'll be back at all and for us not to wait for him!"
"Well, I was trying to be discreet about that!" Shiba says, pointedly tilting his head in her direction.
"Well you weren't! You were just feeding her false information, is what you were doing!"
Bringing her hands up to rub at her eyes, Sakura turns away from the arguing dogs, returning to pacing the main hall of the temple.
"Perfect," she mutters to herself. "Just bloody perfect. Fucking dogs are trying to take care of me!"
"Hey!" both Urushi and Shiba exclaim in unison, glaring at her.
She ignores them, trying instead to focus on calming her frantically beating heart. This isn't the first time her sensei has left her while he goes on to face danger, she tries to reassure herself. Except this is nothing like being left in the village while he goes on a mission. She's alone in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of arguing dogs being in charge.
"Ignore them," Pakkun advises her. "That's usually for the best. And hey, look at the bright side; the wolves are gone."
That at least is a small comfort, she has to admit. The last thing she needs on top of everything else is to have to fight off wolves with only these insane dogs for help.
"Don't worry," Pakkun tells her. "Boss left us to protect you, and we're pretty good at what we do."
"So's he!" Shiba says.
"Yeah, exactly!"
Mildly comforted, she settles down to get breakfast going. She still has plenty of rice so breakfast turns into rice and a protein bar, with her making a mental note to ask the dogs to bring her something with meat to cook for lunch.
Once breakfast is over she decides to take advantage of the lack of blizzards outside, cautiously emerging from the tunnel into the sunshine.
"Be careful of the Boss's traps," Urushi says, hurrying past her.
They spread out, easily avoiding the traps and stretching their legs. Sakura herself doesn't dare go very far. Though sensei had shown her where the traps were, the landscape looks entirely different now than it did before the blizzard and she's not confident in her ability to avoid them.
The day is mild and sunny, despite the still relatively early morning. To better enjoy the sun she digs herself a bench in a nearby snowdrift. It's quite cosy, once she pads it with her bedroll. She spends mid-morning enjoying the sunshine, a cup of hot tea in hand as she listens to the peaceful forest and the arguing dogs.
It is also an excellent spot for keeping an eye out for Kakashi-sensei.
An hour or so before lunch a tremor in the ground, almost like a small earthquake, startles her.
"Oh oh," she hears Pakkun say, even as she turns to worriedly look up the mountain. "That can't be -"
Eight simultaneous poofs have her tearing her attention away from the mountain. The dogs are gone. All eight of them?! she shrieks mentally, wildly looking around for them.
It takes her a moment to realise that the ground is shaking beneath her again, a sound as if from distant thunder growing stronger and closer. Panicked she looks around, breath stopping as she spots the absolutely humongous mass of snow coming her way.
So that's what an avalanche looks like, some part of her notes.
RUN! another part screams.
Survival wins out and before she knows it she's running, pushing as much chakra into her legs as she can. It still isn't enough to outrun the avalanche and it is quickly gaining in on her. Terrified she takes to the trees but a glance behind her shows the snow taking the trees with it as it moves on towards her.
Stupid, useless non-Konoha trees, she grumbles to herself. These tiny little trees are just inferior!
Then the snow is over her and she's thumbling, thrashing around in a desperate attempt to keep herself above the snow and only being mildly successful. Despite her efforts she's slowly being buried alive. A thick tree branch to her back has her gasping for breath and then she's breathing in snow, curling in on herself in an attempt to avoid further injuries.
The whole thing is over in a few moments.
Caught in the snow as she is she can barely move, barely breathe even as she coughs and tries to rid her lungs of snow. Her throat burns, there is snow leaking into her clothes and she can't move! Thrashing she only manages to make the small little space she has cave in on itself.
She needs to get out.
She can't breathe!
She can't move, she can't -
She can't, can't, can't-can't-can't..!
Dizzy with terror and lack of oxygen she at last manages to clear some space for herself, which gives her room to take a few deep breaths and calm down a little.
There's a lot of things she can't do, but focusing on that won't save her now. Kakashi-sensei isn't here, the dogs aren't here, no one knows where she is and even if they did Konoha is still a week's journey away.
A sob escapes her and she angrily brings her hand up to rub the tears away. All of that training and she hasn't learned one useful thing! Sasuke could just use a fire jutsu or the chidori to break himself free of the snowy confines, Naruto could probably break out using his shadow clones and even he has the rasengan as well. All she has are the stupid Academy taught jutsu and …
A wet laugh escapes her and she brings her hands together, running through the signs, and her chakra eagerly responds. The result is immediate.
She can move!
As quickly as she possibly can, she swims to the surface, uncaring whether the swimming movements are actually necessary or not. She gasps for air as she finally breaks the surface. With a glance around, she locates a tree that has survived the avalanche, and climbs it eagerly.
Once she's safely above the snow, as near the top as she dares at these little trees, she surveys the chaos left in the wake of the avalanche. The tunnel to the shrine is gone, as is most of the forest that surrounded it. All of her things are gone, just like the dogs and Kakashi but she's alive and not buried in the snow! Knees too weak to hold her upright any longer, she sinks down on the branch, shakily holding herself close to the trunk.
Note to self: don't panic next time, she thinks to herself.
Now what?
Her academy lessons have prepared her poorly for this, she realises. She's good at following orders but what good does that do her when there are no orders to follow? Or a superior to give orders, for that matter. When in doubt, consult your closest commanding officer, she remembers Iruka-sensei saying. If he or she is not available, consult their commander, and so on. If there is no commander around, consult the one with the most experience.
Yeah, there should definitely be a class or two on what to do when you yourself are the one with the most experience, she thinks sourly. Or even when you're on your own. She'll be sure to tell Iruka-sensei as much when she gets back to Konoha.
If she ever gets back to Konoha.
Which is, frankly, looking less and less likely by the minute.
Well, first thing first, she decides. Finding her supplies will have to be top priority.
She can't stay in the tree forever, after all. Even if just the thought of diving into the snow again is enough to make a shiver run down her spine.
Using the snow-swimming jutsu she's eventually able to locate the shrine again. Surprisingly it is still intact beneath the snow. Surveying it, she quickly realises that she's not spending another night there.
Nope!
Not a chance!
She's not doing it!
There's way too much snow on top of her for her liking!
So she packs her things and the things Kakashi-sensei left behind and takes it all outside. With her backpack not big enough to carry it all she has to go twice, and the weight of the snow seems to weigh more heavily on her each time.
That's probably something she should deal with at some point. Sooner rather than later, most likely. Right now though she has to get the tent set up, and try to find her bedroll, and she should definitely try to hunt down something to eat …
The bedroll proves to be impossible to find, at least without diving through a lot more snow than she is currently comfortable with. Luckily she does have an extra blanket that was not swallowed by the snow. It will have to do. She cuts herself plenty of spruce to have on the floor of the tent, to create as much insulation between her and the snow as possible.
Camp made, she sets out to find herself some food, and eventually manages to catch herself a squirrel. Not the most appetising thing she has eaten, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Meat is meat, and all that.
It is as she's cooking the squirrel, waiting for it to fry in her portable kitchen, that the reality of her situation once more hits her. She's alone.
Should she wait for Kakashi-sensei to return, risking dying of cold, or running out of gas in the stove or other essentials?
Or should she try to head back to Konoha, hoping that she is able to make it all the way back? Or at least back to the lowlands, where she might be able to plead with the samurai for help?
Either way it is an uncomfortably high likelihood that she will die from hypothermia or the next obstacle mother nature decides to throw at her.
Terrified and lost she crawls into a ball and cries, all tension and emotion pouring out of her. She only stops when it becomes evident that the squirrel is about to become more burnt charcoal than dinner if she doesn't deal with it soon.
Warm food in her stomach helps her calm down again and she thinks back to what Pakkun and the others told her. Four days, she thinks. That's how long Kakashi-sensei told them to wait for him.
She'll do the same, she decides. Just three more days remaining.
She's not at all certain that she really will abandon Kakashi-sensei if he doesn't return in three days, but for now the decision gives a nice sense of direction.
Her tent is buried deep into a snowbank, a snug little cave protecting both her and it from the worst of the cold and serving to keep what little warmth she is able to emulate in. It's nothing fancy or warm, but it is less cold than the outside so she gratefully crawls under her blanket that evening with the hopes that tomorrow will be better. She misses the dogs and their warming forms around her dearly, and she falls asleep fantasising about warm fires and being back in Konoha.
Despite the exhausting challenges of the day her sleep is uneasy and she wakes several times throughout the night. Around dawn she becomes aware that she is awake, though she's not sure for how long she's been so. She's tense, listening intently though she's not quite sure for what.
Something or someone is outside, she realises with rising dread. It might be Kakashi-sensei, she tries to comfort herself. Except that it could just as easily be the wolves that have returned.
Careful not to make any noise she pulls off her blanket, coming to a crouch and withdrawing a kunai. She wants to call out, to tell Kakashi to make a noise if it's him, but if it's not him then doing so will only alert the danger outside to her presence and awareness.
Sharp, silvery claws cut through her tent, revealing a large paw. She doesn't have the time to hesitate, just stabs it with all her might, drawing blood. The force of the paw being retracted pulls her forward, tumbling through the now broken tent wall and out into the snow. Somewhere she loses her grip of the kunai but she doesn't even notice, too busy processing that that's not a wolf roar! and that's not a wolf at all!
Scrambling backwards, away from the tent and the large figure before her, she struggles to get to her feet. Her mind draws completely blank except for the perfectly irrelevant thought that bears are supposed to hibernate in winter!
Unnatural, red eyes focus on her and then he's rushing forward, absolutely ignoring that his species shouldn't even be awake this time of the year or doesn't grow as big as he is to begin with.
One swift jump has her high in a tree, looking down at him in terror as he turns his eyes on her again. He's far larger than what he ought to be, or at least what she thinks he ought to be, easily reaching past her shoulder even standing on all fours as he is. Now he stands on his hind legs, reaching for her in the tree and when he doesn't reach he starts to climb.
She wants to curse but doesn't have the vocal reserves for it at the moment, all of her mental capacity focused on screaming DON'T PANIC! Clumsily she jumps to another tree and then another as he starts to follow her.
The small part of her that might just not be quite panicking notes with gratitude that he's slower and more clumsy than her at least. While he seems intent on her and is capable of climbing whatever tree she's in he doesn't seem able to jump between them like her, forcing him to get down on the ground and lumber towards the next one.
As long as she stays in the trees and doesn't stay still for too long she should be fine, she thinks desperately. The question is whether she'll be able to outlast him in stubbornness or whether he'll keep chasing her until she makes a mistake.
Frantically trying to come up with some kind of plan she continues to jump from tree to tree, forcing him to follow her. Distractedly she tries to make sure that there are always trees around her, that she doesn't back herself into a corner where there are no more trees to jump to.
His frustrated roar is loud, echoing between the trees and against the mountain. Worriedly she glances towards it, afraid that he might start another avalanche. The mountain seems perfectly calm though, and she's not sure whether she should be grateful for the fact or not. An avalanche might come in handy just about now, if it weren't for the fact that she and her things would be swept away as well.
Desperate to get some sort of further edge she allows him to reach the tree she's in before she launches a barrage of shuriken at him. With unnatural reflexes he sweeps them aside with his paw, the same one that's still bleeding prominently from her earlier stabbing.
Jumping away again she follows her shuriken up with a set of kunai, both with explosive tags attached to the handles. As if he's able to tell this he swats them away as well, and they detonate harmlessly in the snow some distance away.
That can't be natural, she deduces. It's almost as if he knows what she's doing, knows how to defend himself against her attacks.
Well, she'll just have to get more creative then.
The clone technique comes to her easily and she only needs the Ram and Snake signs before there are two more of her. She and her clones take off to different trees, leaping from tree to tree. Confused, the bear tries to follow all of her with its gaze, and she takes the opportunity to launch another set of kunai with explosive tags on it. Her clones do the same and for a moment it looks like she'll succeed in her attack. Then in the last moment he jumps away and once more the tags detonate harmlessly in the snow.
Worse is that the movement has brought him downwind from her and now he lifts his head, nose sniffing in the air as those impossibly intelligent eyes lock on her. Fuck, she thinks as she jumps again, trying to outrun it this time. However he proves to be surprisingly fast, moving with ease despite the snow.
Now what? If she can't trick him with clones, and if her attacks aren't working ..?
It reminds her of her fight with Tenten and she wishes that her current fear was only due to a kanabo. If nothing else she would have had easy access to the hospital back then. Out here in the wilderness there is no hospital or even a medic for her to rely on. Not even a teammate.
She continues to run, glad for her morning runs when the effort itself is well within her stamina. Part of her is still panicking, though the panic is slowly being washed away by the adrenaline and her continued success at keeping her distance.
There is no time for her to set a trap, much less one large enough to possibly affect a bear. Clones don't work against it, it is able to deflect her kunai and shuriken and she is not going to test whether it can reach her if she dives into the snow. She longs for Naruto's rasengan or Sasuke's chidori, though both attacks would unavoidably force her into close proximity with the bear and she's not sure that she's brave enough for that.
Can she possibly trigger another avalanche? It's a desperate thought, and a quick perusal of her surroundings show that there are no cliffs nearby that seem ready to part with any suitable amounts of snow. In fact, her running has brought her closer to the ocean again.
She'll just have to make do with that then.
Deliberately ignoring the part of her that screams about insanity, she heads for the edge of the island, using chakra to make her run easily and quickly on top of the snow when she runs out of trees to use. Behind her the bear speeds up, slowly gaining on her.
Though every part of her wants to run as far and fast as she can she forces herself to keep the same pace, focusing instead on digging through her weapon's pouch. Kunai are sent flying left and right, landing innocently in the snow as she continues running. Once she deems herself far enough out she comes to a halt, turning around to face the bear again.
It is more weary now, having stopped as well and just glaring suspiciously at her from a distance. Too long of a distance. She needs it closer.
"Are you too much of a coward to fight me head on?" she shouts, channelling her inner Naruto. "Come at me, I dare you!"
Her voice cracks in fear but slowly he comes forward, gaining momentum as he gets moving again. She forces herself to stand still, her eyes locked with his as he approaches rapidly. She brings her hands up in the snake-sign, readying herself.
When it is almost over her she detonates the explosive tags.
The eyes beneath the bear's paws explode, sucking the bear down into the depths of the ocean. However, the cracks spread with worrying speed, and before she has time to react the ice beneath her is breaking too.
The icy cold water takes her breath away. Her hands are already halfway through the sequence of hand signs Kakashi-sensei taught her but the shattered ice and the currents beneath it are tugging at her, pulling her down into the depths of the water.
Then her back erupts in agony, what can only be the claws of one of the bear's paws tearing into her flesh, and she can't help the scream that escapes her. Immediately her nose and lungs are filled with water and she's panicking again, unable to breathe and desperately trying to get away from the reach of the bear.
Somehow she manages to swim upwards, or what she thinks is upwards at least, and then her head slams into ice above and she still can't breathe! Desperately searching for an opening her hands run over rough ice, drawing blood with the force of it but not finding anything. The current is tugging her along, down into the depths, and she fights it, trying to cling on to the ice but only managing to further scrape herself.
In desperation, she claws at herself, trying to get rid of any extra weight that she can. Somehow the thick winter jacket comes off. The boots are a bit tricky, but with some kicking they too come off. Cold, stiff fingers tear at the harnesses she's wearing.
She's still being pulled downwards, down into the depths of the ocean and finally, finally, she manages to tear the harnesses off. The loss of the extra weights allow her to kick herself upwards, but once again she collides with ice above her.
She's going to die.
She's-going-to-die, she'sgoingtodie, she'sgoingto-
DON'T PANIC!
JUTSU, REMEMBER?!
Stars dance before her eyes as her cold and decidedly stiff fingers clumsily run through the signs, the current pulling her further along as she struggles to make her fingers obey. It doesn't work at first and desperately she tries again, her throat and lungs burning with the cold water and lack of oxygen.
The next thing she knows she's vomiting and gasping for air at once, her fingers digging desperately into the snow and her whole body shivering with fear and cold. For a few minutes her whole world consists of vomiting water and gasping for breath, before she is able to quickly catch a glance around. The bear is gone and she is further away from the island than she was before. However the mountain still rises far above her, taunting her with its distance and definitive lack of heat.
She's alive, but she's doomed.
She won't make it that far, she realises with startling clarity even as she shivers with cold, her teeth clattering against each other. Soaked through in ice cold water in sub-zero temperatures she won't be able to make her way back to the island, much less find somewhere to light a fire and a safe place for her to undress.
Shivering, she crawls in on herself, resting her forehead against the snow covered ice beneath her. A sob escapes her. Is it better to die from drowning or from the cold? The thought is mirthless and she fists her hand in the snow, angry with her helplessness.
No! She can't give up. Kakashi-sensei has taught her how to keep herself warm, after all. She can do this.
Her chakra is slow to obey, moving more sluggishly than she is used to, though she thinks that might be her own lacking facilities making her control bad. Finding the balance is even harder and every instinct she has is telling her to turn the heat up high, to circulate her chakra for all she can. Only Kakashi-sensei's warning keeps her from doing so. Even if being boiled alive is quickly starting to sound a lot better than frozen to death.
Slowly, ever so slowly, her chakra circulation starts to approach the balance, though it seems a pitiful effort. Not nearly enough to keep her warm, not even enough to remove the dullness from her limbs. A little bit more, she tells herself. Just a little.
Once more her world shrinks, except instead of vomiting and oxygen it now consists of cold, shivering and chakra.
Thicker.
Warmer.
Not too warm, but warmer.
Everywhere.
Need to make the cold go away.
She's not sure when she closed her eyes but when she opens them again she's no longer on the ice. Instead she's on a small, grassy island, just a few steps wide, surrounded by water.
Opposite of her sits a mirror image of herself, dressed in her old qipao dress.
"What?" she and the mirror image asks in unison.
She stares at herself, mouth ungracefully agape as she struggles to make sense of what is going on.
"This is scary," the other her says.
"Where am I?" she asks back.
They blink at each other, identical green eyes large with confusion.
"Who are you?" she asks.
"Who are you?" the other her replies.
She blinks at herself again, and then the mirror-she breaks out into a grin.
"I'm just messing with you. Me. Us. Whatever."
The other her leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees and studying her closer.
"I'm you. Or, me. I'm you and us but I'm also me, get it?"
"No," she admits, shaking her head in confusion.
Her mirror image frowns, distractedly blowing a lock of hair out of her face.
"Well, I'm everything that you are but can't currently be, if that makes more sense?"
"Not really."
Wherever they are, it's comfortably tempered, much closer to Konoha-temperature than the icy hell she just came from. A curious look around her reveals that it's just her and the other her, their small island and the water surrounding them. There is light at the island but beyond the water there's only darkness.
"Like this then: you can't be a lady and a shinobi at once, right? So I am whichever part you aren't at the moment, and whenever you need to be that I become what you were. Cool, right?"
She's not at all convinced that cool is the right word but politely keeps quiet about it. Opposite of her, her mirror image grins again.
"See, now you're being the polite lady again and I'm the frank one!" Then she frowns. "I've never seen this happen before though. Usually I'm kind of alone in here."
She frowns at the other her.
"Where is here anyway?"
The other leans backwards again, tilting her head as if she's studying the sky in search of answers. Except there's no sky to study. Only darkness.
And they're not entirely similar, she notices as she studies herself and the other her closer. The other her is wearing her old qipao dress and still has her old headband, the one Ino gave her years ago. She's also well manicured, hair looking as if she has just come from a grooming session with cousin Kiku. In comparison, Sakura is wearing her new, green training clothes, including the wrist- and ankle warmers. She's less composed too, hair not nearly as neat and hands looking more calloused.
"As far as I can tell," the other her says again, interrupting her reverie, "this here is your innermost self. So there's water, for your affinity with water, and there's earth, for your affinity with earth."
She knocks on the ground, covered in soft grass, as if to prove her point and offers a grin before she continues.
"Then there's me. Your innermost self. Whatever part of you that you chose not to show the world, the good and the bad."
"That doesn't sound normal," she points out, cocking her head in confusion.
The other her blushes, looking away.
"Well, maybe it's not. Then again, I'm no Yamanaka so I can't really compare this to the mind of anyone else."
The whole conversation is giving her a headache. Frustrated, she shakes her head, trying to clear her mind.
"How did I get here?" she asks next.
"I don't know," the other her shrugs. "I've never seen it happen before?"
"Didn't you say something about being everything that I'm not? So if I'm confused, shouldn't you have the answers?"
To her surprise the other her glares back.
"I said I'm everything that you're currently not. I can't be anything that you have never been. It doesn't work like that."
She sighs, feeling her shoulders drop.
"What do you know then?"
"Not much really." The other her pulls her knees closer, wrapping her arms around them and resting her chin on the knees. "I've just … always been, I think. Sometimes I'm one way and sometimes I'm another way, but I've always just been me and I've always been alone in here."
Something in her twitches in sympathy then. Is it even sympathy if it's with yourself? Both of her smirk at the thought.
"Well, I'm here and you're here," she states. "That should mean that I'm not dead at least, right? Unless this is the afterlife?"
"No, I don't think it is," the other her replies, shaking her head. "Not unless we've always been dead or something, and that just sounds insane, doesn't it?"
"Being two in one mind sounds sort of insane too."
"True."
They share a brief smile before they frown, trying to figure things out.
"We were dying and now we're here," the other her states after a few moments. "That doesn't seem like a coincidence."
"No, it doesn't. And I remember really focusing on my chakra. If all of this is somehow connected to my chakra, perhaps that is why this happened?"
"Sounds like a plausible explanation. At least for now. But how do we get back to normal?"
"And how do we stop ourselves from dying?"
Leaning in closer again they - she - start to exchange ideas.
"You humans continue to find ways to amuse me."
He's floating in darkness, somehow aware that he is suspended somewhere between awake and unconscious. His thoughts are sluggish, his speech even more so.
"Fuck your amusement."
"I shall be amused by your visit until the next of your kin makes their way to me. In return, I give you a piece of me to keep with you."
The air around him is growing noticeably cooler, causing little goosebumps to appear on his arms. He shivers in the cold, feeling like he is slowly rising towards something.
"May luck be with you both."
He comes awake slowly, which is more than a little unusual in and of itself. After years of active shinobi duty he is a very light sleeper, always waking up immediately at even the smallest sounds. Now though, he slowly becomes aware of himself, the hard surface he's lying on and of a wet, ticklish sensation on his cheek.
It takes another few moments before he can feel his body and figure out how to move it, struggling to open his eyes. Two silvery eyes meet his, large and innocent. The tickling sensation returns and he realises that he's being licked.
With a groan he manages to push himself up to a sitting position, gasping as pain shoots through his leg. The wolf cub - the source of the earlier licking - backs away and eyes him with weariness. No older than a couple of months from the looks of it, it still has its puppy fur and disproportionately large ears and paws.
Since the cub doesn't seem to be moving, Kakashi leans forward, inspecting the damage to his foot. The boots have protected him from the worst of the damage but there are still several deep gashes where wolf teeth have torn through leather and clothing alike. Thankfully it is not bleeding too much, probably from a mixture of the cold and it having coagulated while he has been unconscious. Reaching into his pouch he withdraws the first aid kit, swiftly wrapping the wound. He'll have to clean it properly later but for now it looks clean enough, and he needs to figure out what else is going on.
His last memory is of detonating the explosive tags, blowing both himself and the cave up. Yet here he is, still alive and sitting in the middle of the intact cave.
When another shiver runs through him he looks around again, locating his backpack and discarded clothing. Rather than walk over to it he elects to shuffle across the floor, trying not to rustle his wounded foot any more than necessary. The thick clothes come on with some difficulty.
Meanwhile the cub seems to have decided that he's not an immediate danger, inching closer and curiously sniffing him. It yips in surprise and probably a bit of fear as Kakashi picks it up by the scruff, lifting it to eye level to get himself a proper look at it.
Unlike the wolves he remembers fighting, this one looks perfectly ordinary, no silver claws or unnatural size. The only thing even remotely unusual about this particular cub seems to be the strangely intelligent eyes and the silvery fur, which he somehow suspects is a perfect match to his own hair.
"So you're my reward for this whole spectacle, are you?"
Instead of answering, the cub licks his nose and Kakashi puts it down, absentmindedly petting it. Through the mouth of the cave he can tell that it is daytime and that he is far, far above the forest.
"Though I wonder what's the point of keeping me alive if I'm going to die here after all," he comments to the cub.
It yips again and jumps out of his lap, rushing over to the mouth of the cave. A moment later it returns, pulling a long staff with it and depositing it at his side.
"Well, maybe you're not entirely useless."
With the support of the staff and the cave wall he manages to pull himself up to standing, and with the support of the staff he is able to hobble a few steps. His chakra reserves are still low, but as he exits the cave he finds himself perfectly capable of walking on top of the snow.
An indignant bark behind him makes him turn around. The cub is still sitting at the entrance of the cave, giving him a look that reminds Kakashi heavily of Pakkun. What are you doing? I can't walk through all this snow! it says. With a resigned sigh he reaches out to pick the cub up again.
Staff supporting his weight and wolf cub stuffed under his arm he slowly makes his way back down the mountain.