An odd combination of fear and dull resignation roiled in Yasu’s gut as he recognized Hatake Kakashi’s muffled chakra signal. It was mostly suppressed but Yasu never quite forgot the chakra signals of the ANBU agents he’d healed. It was difficult to forget scrubbing the feeling of leaking blood and chakra off one’s skin after having knit a man’s organs back into his stomach.
Hatake was a hunter-nin from what Yasu understood, though he seemed too high ranking to be sent after someone like him--But maybe it was just Danzo ensuring someone actually got the job done. At least ANBU weren’t prone to overdrawn deaths the way missing-nin or bandits were. It would be a faster death than the last he’d been sentenced to.
There was no real point in running, he was a field medic but he’d never been a true combat medic. That particular brand of medic had mostly died off when Tsunade left the village. As the strangely unsteady chakra signal warbled towards his small house, he mentally apologized to both Takeko and Moriko, that he would be seeing the former sooner than the latter.
To say he was surprised by the knock at his door was a rather large understatement. He staggered towards the door, dread blooming in his chest. However, his brows furrowed in confusion at the man in his doorway as he opened it with only a deep breath to muster his courage.
“You’re the village doctor?”
The chakra buzzing erratically told the medic that this was indeed Kakashi Hatake but the henge he wore was flawless. A man with a plain and boring face, one that could be native to any region--not too far off Yasu’s own in fact--swathed in a worn traveling cloak.
“I--Yes, I’m Yasutora. Can I--How may I help you, sir?”
There was no immediate reply but a quick jerk of Hatake’s arm had Yasu flinching back. However, no kunai came at him, instead, the man had pulled back the cloak to reveal two wounds, a large bloody gouge just below his right hip, the kunai that presumably made it still jutting out, and a slightly less bloody patch bleeding through his shirt. Yasu swore, medic’s instincts propelling him to the man’s side--Enemy or not, this certainly explained the fluctuation of the younger man’s chakra.
It was, quite frankly, amazing that Hatake could keep up a henge in this state, it was certainly beyond Yasu’s own capabilities. His primary method of disguise as of late was the slow-growing peach fuzz he’d stopped tending to on his face. With muscles not quite out of shape yet, Yasu hauled most of Hatake’s weight onto his side as he slipped an arm around the younger man’s waist and hurried the not quite stranger into his home. Yasu had taken an oath once, to protect and heal all Konoha Nin who came across his path, though he certainly hadn’t expected that oath to follow him into his exile.
He was neat and meticulous as he got to work, though he mumbled under his breath as he did so, an old nervous habit that had never quite left him. Occasionally he would ask Hatake innocuous questions, the date, year, or how many wooden slats the injured man could count on Yasu’s ceiling(rather impressively it was all twenty-seven) just to make sure the man was still alive under his hands. He refrained from using chakra any more than he absolutely had to, he was a competent enough trauma medic to get away without the use of it and therefore pass for a civilian doctor. Of course, the most trauma work he did in the village were all childbirths and the occasional cart accident.
He almost felt out of his depth as he finished with the leg wound and carefully stripped away the fabric on Hatake’s chest. The young man released an irritated huff more akin to what one would give in response to a cold stethoscope and not having fabric gently pulled off clotted blood. The wound itself had Yasu swearing again, “What kind of mediocre sutures--this is terrible. My dau--A toddler could make neater stitches than this.” He hadn’t really meant for the words to tumble out of his mouth, but they pulled a rasping snort from Hatake.
“Mah, sorry about that, had to use my left hand.”
It was more words than Yasu had heard from Hatake since he’d arrived and it was Yasu’s turn to release and irritated huff of his own because this would be painful and there was only one way he could help. “I’m going to have to rip these sutures out, but I need your permission to do something.” Hatake shifted uneasily and Yasu wished at once he could send a wave of relaxing chakra through the man--but it would disrupt the henge and probably get him killed if he didn’t ask first.
“You didn’t ask my permission to do anything with my leg.” Which was true, but Yasu had treated Hatake’s leg the civilian way. If he did the same with this wound then there could be complications, “I swear that I won’t hurt you--I swear on the will of fire--but I’m going to have to use chakra to heal the edges of that wound so I can sew it back neatly otherwise you’re going to end up with so much scar tissue your mobility on that side will be completely shot.”
At the mention of chakra Yasu felt Hatake stiffen beneath his hands and without even seeing the other man move he felt the cold sting of metal against his throat. Yasu knew he should have moved the kunai removed from Hatake’s leg out of reach, a sloppy mistake made in medical haste.
The words came out cold as the steel against his throat and Yasu sighed, ANBU were so twitchy. “I’m just a dead man from Konoha but I’d like to help you.” Slowly, ever so slowly, the pressure on his neck receded and Hatake slowly laid back down on the bloodied pallet. Yasu took the action as assent and took up his scalpel to carefully cut away the sloppy sutures. His right hand gently followed after his scalpel wielding left, sending gentle waves of healing chakra in the flesh and soothing too warm, red-tinted skin and numbing it for the new sutures he would soon place there.
For a fleeting moment, Yasu glanced up from the wound, to gauge Kakashi’s pain level only to be startled by the red sharingan swirling at him. Again, Yasu swore and it was only long years of medical discipline that kept his hands steady in spite of his rising panic. It would be unfortunate to go to all this trouble of healing Hatake only to kill him by stabbing him in the kidney by accident.
“Did Danzo set this up?” The young shinobi’s voice was ice and Yasu practically felt the room’s temperature lower. It was difficult, almost impossible to break eye contact but biting the inside of his cheek hard enough to bleed brought sense flooding back into his brain and his eyes trailing back down where they belonged--Taking care of Hatake’s wounds before he bled out.
A nervous laugh bubbled out of his throat because the world was more surreal than he’d thought. It wasn’t just disposable medics Danzo was purging from his illustrious regime, he had somehow ran off Sharingan Kakashi. It was both gratifying and worrying if Danzo was willing to throw away such a powerful tool what did that mean for little ones like Moriko.
“No, if Danzo knew where I was I would be very dead. Technically, I must be dead, since no one’s come after me yet.” Nearly a year now, it would be a year soon but it had been three hundred and seventy-two days since he’d last seen Moriko, which was the more important number.
Hatake shifted again, and Yasu really wished he wouldn’t fidget, even with healing chakra blocking any further blood from escaping the wound he could still exacerbate the damage. The masked man seemed to grimace if the slant of his single visible eyebrow was any indication and Yasu just barely refrained from tutting when the younger shinobi spoke again, “Is that why you’re helping me?”
Carefully, Yasu sterilized his needle with a small katon before threading it, “Hmm, does Danzo hate you?”
The question stopped Hatake short, his solitary eye blinking in confusion, he looked very young when he did that, Yasu noted.
“I--yes...That’s a good thing?”
Ignoring the small hitch in Kakashi’s breathing as Yasu began stitching he tried his best to smile comfortingly but it felt completely fake on his face. It was better to smile, because if he didn’t at least try then he’d likely be crying, “Danzo killed my wife and kidnapped my daughter, anyone who pisses him off enough to be run out of the village is alright in my book. Now, could you please stop using that sharingan? It disrupts the chakra flow to the rest of your body and makes healing harder.”
Hatake stayed at his house for exactly two days before he escaped while Yasu went out to the market to buy fresh linen for bandages. He left a small thank you note on Yasu’s kitchen table with an odd little henohenomoheji instead of a signature. Yasu wasn’t terribly surprised a few weeks later when he arrived home after helping out with the rough childbirth of a farmer’s wife one village over only to find Kakashi collapsed on his bed and bleeding into his clean sheets.
It was the beginning of an odd sort of companionship.
