Impossible to Forget

Chapter 40: Leave It

I cracked open my eyes to bright sunshine and happily singing birds. It was just after the sun had risen, and it felt like I had been run over by a herd of Academy students.

I with a groan, I had another sip of water and bite of food. It was barely enough to sustain a rabbit (a carnivorous rabbit, that is, since I had eaten jerky), but this was the reality of life as a ninja.

I then checked on Kakashi. His fever felt about the same, but his eye lids were fluttering a bit more than before. Hmm, if I could wake him up, then I could get some food and water into him.

I shook his shoulder gently, and he didn't even stir.

"Kakashi!"

That didn't work either. I didn't want to do anything overly drastic because he was injured so I just decided to see if I could sit him up and pour water down his throat or something. I know, I was getting pretty desperate.

But, once I started pulling down the edge of his mask, his hand shot up out of no where and grabbed my wrist.

"Leave it, Naruto."

I snorted with laughter. Naruto? He thought that I was Naruto just because I had tried to take off his mask?

Kakashi blinked slowly, and as his eyes slowly focused on my hand on the edge of his mask, he let out a tired sigh. "Really, Kaiyo? I had expected something that low out of Naruto, but never you." His voice was raspy, and I was torn between wanting to hug him because he was awake and wanting to pummel him over the head.

"Goddammit, Kakashi, what the hell do you think that I'm doing?"

He hummed, "Trying to unmask me in my sleep?"

"No, you dolt. I'm trying to make you drink some water."

"Water... I-" Then he froze and took in our surroundings slowly. "Kai, where are we and where did your mother go? What happened?"

"Well, I think that I became friends with a yokai."

"What?"

"Yeah, well, Raiju couldn't be awakened because of what Kaguya did to him during their fight, and then Nori decided to kill us. We fought, I won, and then afterwards she tried to kill me. I killed her in self-defense, stole her food, collapsed the cave to allow Raiju to pass on, and then ran here. I couldn't make it any farther last night so I set up camp here. You're really heavy, you know that right?"

"I can't say that I've ever carried myself, but I'll believe you."

"Here," I handed him our limited supply of food and water.

"Thank you." He began to pick at the food slowly, but didn't start eating anything. "This isn't just some ploy to see under my mask, is it?"

"First of all, I've already seen your face so why would I care? Second of all, why are you being such an ass right now? And third of all, will you just shut up and eat? I didn't haul you all the way here to starve to death."

He pulled his mask all the way down to his chin in one fluid movement, "I was just kidding. And thank you for hauling me all the way here; I'll endeavor not to starve to death just for you."

I smiled, "I'd really appreciate that."

"How far out do you think that we are from the Cloud?"

I sighed, "At my current pace, about a day. I don't know if our food supply and injuries can last that long."

He sighed as well, "Any sign of Anzu and Tadao?"

"None. I can only hope that they made it to the Cloud, but it would be safest to operate under the assumption that no one is coming to save us this time." I pinched the bridge of my nose, "And then even if they do get help, who knows how long it will take them to track us down? Nori used a fairly powerful dispersion jutsu to hide our tracks. Yamato or Naruto could find us pretty quickly, but they're back in the Leaf Village, and I don't think that we can last the three day journey it will take them to get here."

Kakashi nodded, "We'll just have to get to the Cloud on our own." He set aside the food and placed one hand on the cave wall behind him. Before I could figure out what he was doing, Kakashi started to lift himself up off the ground.

I wrapped my arms around his torso as his knees started to give out about half way to standing.

"Fuck."

I looked up at Kakashi in shock. He doesn't curse that often, and I was mildly startled to hear such language coming from him.

"What's wrong?"

"I-I can't mold my chakra."

I sighed, "I figured that would be the case. When you start learning how to use the Eight Gates, sometimes you can lose your grip on your chakra after opening up more gates than you're used to. Nori drew chakra straight out of the closed gates so I can only imagine that it threw your chakra network completely out of whack. Also, with the chakra drain that you're suffering from, I don't want you to try to mold any chakra anyways. It could kill you."

I leaned Kakashi up against the wall and scooped back up our rations before placing him on my back again.

"I'm so sorry that I can't even walk right now."

I sighed, "You did carry me a lot farther yesterday so consider this my way of paying you back."