Haku lifts Zabuza's body like it weighs less than a sack of wet cloth.
The mist clings to them both, swallowing edges, swallowing sound. For a moment the scene looks almost respectful—an official taking a criminal away, an unpleasant duty being done with clean hands.
But I can't stop staring at the hunter-nin's gloves.
They don't tremble.
They don't hesitate.
They touch Zabuza like they've done this before.
Kakashi's kunai stays raised, but the angle shifts a fraction—less "execution," more "question." His visible eye narrows, tracking every small motion: the way the hunter-nin's shoulders settle under the weight, the way the mask turns just enough to keep Kakashi in view, the way the voice stays polite.
"Your timing is convenient," Kakashi says.
The hunter-nin bows slightly. "I apologize. I was delayed."
It's said like an apology, but it isn't offered like one. It's offered like a door that looks open until you try to walk through it.
Naruto leans forward, curiosity and relief making him reckless. "So it's over?"
My ribs tighten, warm pressure swelling as Naruto steps closer to the center of the scene. The tether under my wrist pulses in response—warm, heavy.
And beneath it, cold depth slides.
Not Naruto's cold. Not the massive, caged amusement that lives behind his seal.
This is different.
Sharpened.
Attentive.
Like a needle.
My blood turns colder than the poison ever made it.
Because the hunter-nin's mask shifts, just a fraction—just enough that the eyeholes point toward me again.
Toward my wrist.
Toward the faint ink-ring hidden under skin.
It's a glance so quick anyone else could dismiss it as random.
But it isn't random.
It's recognition.
Then the mask turns away and the hunter-nin's voice stays gentle. "Yes. Zabuza Momochi will not trouble you further."
Kakashi doesn't lower his kunai. "You understand that we will confirm."
"Of course," Haku says, as if confirmation is a polite formality and not a threat.
He lifts Zabuza higher.
And steps back into the mist.
Just like that, the enemy is removed from the board.
Too clean.
Too easy.
Canon.
The fog begins to thin, as if it was never real. Sunlight pushes through in weak beams. The road reappears in full color: dirt, footprints, blood.
My blood.
Sakura is still pressing bandage to my wrist with both hands, hands slick and trembling. Her face is pale. She looks like she's trying to hold my life inside my body by force of will.
"It's not stopping," she whispers, voice breaking.
I stare at my right hand.
It is still attached.
But it isn't mine anymore in the way it used to be.
My fingers twitch, then go still. I can't curl them. I can't grip. When I try, the movement jerks halfway and stops, like the command gets lost on the way.
Tendons.
I know enough to understand what was cut.
Enough to understand this isn't a bruise.
This is a permanent subtraction.
The story is taking my tools away one by one.
Kakashi turns sharply toward us.
He crouches beside me, gloved fingers replacing Sakura's shaking grip with controlled pressure. He assesses the wound in one glance—claw marks, swelling, poison pallor, then the fresh slice at the wrist.
His eye hardens.
"This was intentional," he says quietly.
Sakura swallows. "I—I tried—"
"I know," Kakashi says, not unkind, just firm. "Keep holding."
He reaches into his pouch, pulls out a small roll of clean bandage, and wraps above my wrist with brutal efficiency—tight, tighter, tighter—until pressure bites deep.
Pain flares so bright I see white.
I gasp through my teeth.
My tongue seal coils at the sound, as if pain is a confession it wants to punish.
Kakashi's gaze flicks to my face, reading the micro-flinch, the way my mouth shuts too fast.
Then he looks back at the wound and speaks like a jōnin, not a comforter.
"We move," he says.
Tazuna protests weakly. "Move where? We're already—"
Kakashi's voice cuts through. "To your house. Now."
Naruto's eyes are still wide, fixed on my wrist. "He's—he's gonna—"
Kakashi's eye snaps to him. "Naruto."
Naruto shuts up.
Sasuke steps closer, jaw tight, anger vibrating under his skin. His eyes flick to my wrist once and then away, as if looking too long might admit something he hates: that he can't control what happens to people near him.
Kakashi stands. "Formation."
They obey.
Even Naruto, shaken enough that he moves without arguing.
Sakura and Sasuke lift me again, hooking my arms around their shoulders, carrying more of my weight than their thin bodies should have to. My stump screams where fabric rubs. My wrist burns. My vision swims.
The tether pulses.
Warm and heavy, synced to Naruto's presence ahead.
And under it, that cold needle-sense remains—faint now, but not gone.
Haku didn't just see my wrist.
Haku saw the *connection*.
The road turns into a blur of trees and pain and shallow breaths.
Every few steps my vision tunnels. Every time it does, the red world threatens to surface behind my eyes—bars, chains, a lazy gaze opening.
**Little…**
I clamp my jaw shut until it aches.
Not now.
I cannot afford to invite that attention while my body is already bleeding.
We move fast enough that the forest edges begin to change. The air grows damper, heavier, tinged with salt. Land of Waves creeping closer like an inevitability.
Kakashi keeps glancing back—not often, not obviously, but with the precise timing of someone tracking deterioration.
"You," he says without turning fully, voice pitched for Sakura and Sasuke to hear. "If he goes limp, you stop immediately and you shout."
Sakura nods, eyes wide.
Sasuke says nothing, but his grip tightens.
I swallow and taste blood. My mouth is dry. My tongue seal aches like a bruise inside my skull.
My wrist seal pulses faintly under the fresh bandage, like a heartbeat hidden beneath cloth.
Contained.
Not silent.
---
Tazuna's house smells like wood and old smoke and sea damp.
When we finally reach it, I'm barely aware of the transition—only the sudden warmth of indoor air, the soft give of tatami under my knees as Sakura and Sasuke lower me.
A woman appears in the doorway—Tsunami. Her face tightens when she sees blood. She doesn't scream. She doesn't freeze. She moves like someone who has learned the shape of disaster.
"Oh my—" she starts, then stops. "What happened?"
Kakashi's voice stays calm. "Ambush. We need a clean space."
Tsunami nods sharply and directs Sakura like an adult who knows fear doesn't change what must be done.
"Inari!" she calls.
A boy appears—Inari—eyes hard with the kind of bitterness that comes from watching adults fail.
He looks at me, at the pinned sleeve, at the blood-soaked bandage, and something flickers—pity, then anger, then he hides it behind a scowl.
"Stupid," he mutters.
He doesn't mean me.
Or maybe he does. Maybe "stupid" is what this world calls people who get hurt for others.
Kakashi kneels beside me.
He peels back the outer bandage carefully.
The moment air hits the wound, pain spikes and my vision stutters. Sakura makes a small sound like she's going to cry and swallows it.
Kakashi's gloved fingers probe the cut.
Not cruel. Just precise.
He exhales once.
"Tendon," he says.
Sakura's face goes white. "Can you fix it?"
Kakashi is silent for a beat too long.
Then he says, truthfully: "Not fully. Not here."
The words land like a blade.
My throat tightens. My chest feels hollow.
Of course.
Of course there's no miracle.
No medic-nin with glowing hands. No plot armor.
Only a jōnin doing field triage in a carpenter's house.
Kakashi's voice drops slightly, more to himself than to anyone else. "You're leaking too much. And the poison…"
He looks at Tsunami. "Boil water. Clean cloth. Anything sharp and clean."
Tsunami nods and moves.
Kakashi looks at Sakura and Sasuke. "You two, outside. Watch the perimeter."
Sakura hesitates, eyes on me, torn.
Kakashi's eye softens a fraction. "Now."
They go.
Naruto tries to follow them, then stops at the doorway, hovering like he can't leave. His eyes flick between me and Kakashi, guilt and confusion tangling his face.
Kakashi's voice hardens slightly. "Naruto. Outside."
Naruto flinches. "But—"
Kakashi's tone is still calm. "Outside."
Naruto leaves, shoulders hunched, as if being ordered away from a bleeding person is a punishment.
The room empties until it's just me and Kakashi—Tsunami moving in the background like a quiet storm.
Kakashi studies me for a long moment.
Not my wound.
Me.
His visible eye narrows, then relaxes, then narrows again, like he's testing angles.
"You couldn't speak earlier," he says.
My stomach drops.
I stare at the tatami.
Kakashi continues, voice careful. "In the forest. At the gate. In the tower hallway. You made a sound, then stopped."
The tower hallway.
He noticed that too.
My tongue seal coils, as if it senses the direction of the conversation and preemptively tightens its leash.
Kakashi's gaze drops to my wrist.
Not the bleeding cut.
The faint ink-ring under skin.
"I also saw a seal," he says quietly. "Here."
My ribs tighten faintly.
Not Naruto-pressure.
Something else: fear so cold it feels like wet cloth pressed to my lungs.
I don't answer.
The tongue seal gives a small sting when I even consider saying "Danzo."
Kakashi's eye hardens. "Who did that?"
I open my mouth.
The tongue seal bites hard.
Pain flashes under my tongue like a needle jabbed into meat.
I jerk, involuntary, and clamp my mouth shut, breath hissing between teeth.
Kakashi goes still.
For the first time, his calm feels different. Less casual. More dangerous.
He leans closer—not aggressive, just intent.
"That wasn't reluctance," he says.
His voice lowers. "That was compulsion."
I can't speak.
I can't even shake my head without risking making it worse.
The silence stretches.
Tsunami returns with hot water and cloth. She sets it down without comment, eyes flicking between me and Kakashi as if she senses something wrong that isn't just blood.
Kakashi doesn't push for answers again.
He watches my face, then my mouth, then my wrist.
Then he makes a decision.
Not a spoken one.
A shift in posture, a recalibration in his eye: *I will treat this as hostile until proven otherwise.*
He begins cleaning the wound.
Hot water stings.
Cloth rubs raw flesh.
I bite down so hard my jaw aches. Tears leak from the corners of my eyes without permission.
Kakashi works with one hand while the other holds my wrist steady. His touch is firm, careful. He isn't gentle, but he isn't careless either.
He wraps the wound again, tighter, immobilizing the hand as best he can.
"Tsunami," he says, voice returning to practical. "A splint. Wood, straight, smooth."
She nods and leaves.
Kakashi keeps his gaze on my face while he works.
"I don't know what you're involved in," he says. "But you're on my mission now."
The words are quiet.
They still carry weight.
"If you're a threat to my team," he continues, "I will treat you as one."
Naruto, I think.
My ribs tighten faintly at the name, as if the story listens even here.
Kakashi's eye narrows slightly. "And if you're being used…"
His voice drops another fraction, almost uncomfortably human.
"…then I'm sorry."
The apology is so unexpected it hurts more than the wound.
Because Kakashi doesn't owe me softness.
And because softness is what gets people like Iruka hurt.
People like me maimed.
Tsunami returns with a simple wooden splint and cloth strips.
Kakashi binds my wrist to it, immobilizing my hand fully.
My fingers twitch uselessly against wood.
I can't feel them properly. I can't control them.
The splint is a promise: *this might heal wrong.*
He finishes, then sits back on his heels, letting his breath out slowly.
"We rest," he says, more to himself than to me. "Then we train."
My stomach drops.
Train.
With one arm missing and the other hand half-dead.
With Root's leash on my tongue.
With a tether under my skin that connects me to Naruto's fate like a wire through bone.
Kakashi looks at me again.
His voice is quiet. "Sleep if you can."
He stands and leaves the room, footsteps soft.
Tsunami lingers a moment, then sets a small bowl of water near me and withdraws, sliding the door shut gently.
I'm alone.
The house is quiet, but not silent. I can hear distant voices outside—Naruto arguing with Sakura, Sasuke's clipped responses, the cadence of Kakashi giving instructions.
Normal team dynamics.
Canon.
The main thread continuing.
And me, bleeding in the corner like an unwanted annotation.
My wrist pulses.
Warm.
Then cold beneath it, deeper and more awake than it was earlier.
I stare at the splint.
At my useless fingers.
At the empty sleeve pinned to my chest.
I think, with a clarity so sharp it makes my stomach twist:
Root didn't send me to "observe."
They sent me to be *spent*.
A disposable buffer between Naruto and consequences.
My breathing turns shallow.
The tether gives a faint pulse, almost like a laugh that isn't sound.
And then, for the first time since the hunter-nin's glance, the cold needle-sense returns—stronger.
Not inside Naruto.
Outside.
Near.
As if someone is standing just beyond the thin wall of this house, listening.
Watching.
I hold my breath.
The lantern light in the room feels suddenly too dim.
Then, very softly, from outside the window—so soft it could be wind, so soft I could pretend I imagined it—I hear a voice.
Gentle.
Polite.
"You're bleeding again."
My blood turns to ice.
Because I recognize the tone.
Not Zabuza's brutality.
Not Kakashi's calm.
Haku's courtesy.
And my tether pulses—warm and heavy—like Naruto is somewhere nearby, alive and protected, while a hunter who can wear kindness like a mask has found the thread tied to my wrist.