Title: Former Lives
Author: JBMcDragon
Status: Complete, 9 parts
Rating: R for violence and language

Summary: The sequel to The Kakashi Mission. Things are not perfect in any relationship, but even Kakashi knows something really isn't right in theirs. When Iruka tries to poison Naruto, he begins to think something isn't right, period.

Prologue and chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4



Chapter Five
Now

He sat in a chair at the bottom of the bed, watching Iruka without watching Iruka.

Both chakra patterns were slow and sluggish. He couldn't tell which was whose.

"Kakashi." It wasn't the voice he wanted to hear.

"Hm?" he murmured, not looking up from his book. He could smell Genma's anxiety and tried to block it out.

"I have--something. It might work. I mean, Tsunade thinks it will."

Kakashi looked up, and saw a scroll. Black ink was still wet, glistening in the hospital lights. Kakashi reached out and took it, eyes flashing over the contents. "This is a death-seal," he said finally. "It eats souls. How is this supposed to work?" The words were just shy of sarcastic.

"It should eat Mizuki's soul, and stop there. Tsunade thinks--"

"No," Kakashi said, and handed it back. He returned to his book.

"Look, we think it'll--"

"No."

"Kakashi--"

"No." It was firmer this time, louder. He was not going to let them kill Iruka by accident.

"Kakashi." That wasn't Genma.

He looked up sullenly as Tsunade walked through the doorway. Genma handed her the scroll and backed out.

"We've keyed it to Mizuki."

"You think," Kakashi snapped.

Tsunade ignored him. "We're doing this. If it kills Iruka-san that's regrettable, but I won't have a traitor walking in our midst. Or do you think he'd prefer to be jailed forever? Pretty young man like him, I'm sure he'd make *lots* of friends--"

"Stop it," Kakashi snarled.

Tsunade just looked at him. "Stand back," she said eventually, "or be thrown out for the duration."

He wasn't being given a choice. If it had been anyone else, he could have tossed them out of the room.

He wouldn't win in a fight with Tsunade. Oh, he'd *give* her a fight, but he wouldn't win. And then they'd do it anyway.

He stood up and stepped back. "You're sure it won't kill him?" He hated the pleading tone in his voice, but couldn't quite get rid of it.

Tsunade hesitated. "As sure as we can be." She offered him a slight smile. "Hey, I don't want good ninja killed." She stooped and started to unbutton the white hospital shirt Iruka wore.

Kakashi stepped forward, brushing her hands away, ordering his own to be still. He unbuttoned the shirt slowly, exposing nearly unscarred skin on a well muscled chest. Golden flesh was interrupted by tape binding his shoulder in place, holding the arm still so tendons could heal. Another bandage covered stitches from the kunai wound in the same shoulder. "Give me that," he muttered, one hand out.

After a moment, Tsunade handed him the scroll. He looked it over again, then took a deep breath and placed it directly over the heart chakra.

It started to glow. The ink ran, spreading into black edges, fusing with tan skin. Iruka whimpered, muscles tightening.

Kakashi looked with both eyes, and could see the scroll's energy spreading out, a black worm threading through Iruka's red chakra.

Iruka tensed. Kakashi's stomach wrapped into knots. The darkness spread, like rot around a wound. Iruka's breathing became shallow, his face pale.

He was unconscious. He couldn't feel anything. Kakashi repeated it to himself, knowing full well that physical laws didn't affect chakra. There was no way to tell what Iruka was feeling.

It wasn't Iruka's chakra the scroll was attacking.

But Iruka whimpered. He stiffened.

"Tell me it won't attack his chakra," Kakashi murmured, hands tensing.

"It shouldn't. Kakashi, maybe you should leave," Tsunade answered.

"I'm fine." He couldn't leave Iruka like this.

Iruka's breath stuttered in his lungs. His spine arched off the bed.

"Shit!" Tsunade snapped, jumping for him. "Seizure!"

Even as she said it, it happened. Kakashi leapt away, giving Tsunade the room she needed.

Iruka shook and trembled, the black rot spread through his body like frenzied lightning.

"It's going to kill him," Kakashi said, then repeated it louder.

"He's going to die one way or another--just stay back!" Tsunade snarled at him.

Kakashi did, pacing the far wall, watching the rot spread over Iruka's chakra as the man twisted and thrashed.

It was eating away at him. Inside out, chewing up his soul and devouring his spirit. Kakashi wondered, morbidly, if it hurt as much as being eaten physically.

Probably. Probably more.

The alien chakra--Mizuki's chakra--rose, and the black swarmed it. He could see the fight, see the two energies merging and lashing at each other.

The black was winning.

Iruka was screaming.

"Come on, kid," Tsunade said, and Kakashi realized she was funneling her own power into Iruka's body. "Come on, come on. I know, but you can do this. Be brave."

The injuries were bleeding again. A doctor raced in, trying to re-seal the slices Kakashi had put along the arteries in Iruka's legs. The pristine white bandage around his arm turned pink, then red.

"Come on, come on!" Tsunade repeated, words getting louder as if she could force Iruka to hear her.

He was dying. The black and Mizuki's chakra were fighting, and Iruka's crimson--now fading to blue--energy was being battered. It faded to green.

Kakashi pressed himself back against the far wall. He'd killed Iruka. He killed everyone who got close to him, he knew that, he'd believed it for so long, and then Iruka had come along and said he was wrong but now he'd killed Iruka.

The green stabilized.

Mizuki's flickering chakra gave one last defiant blast, and was swallowed by the black.

The rot twisted and swirled, pushing at the chakra left. Iruka stopped screaming. His body went lax.

The black pushed again.

He whimpered.

The room fell silent, waiting.

"Can we draw it out?" Kakashi murmured.

"No. It should leave," Tsunade answered, bending over the hospital bed, Iruka's head in her hands. "It should leave," she repeated again, in a whisper.

It pressed.

Iruka whimpered.

"Go away. Go away," Tsunade murmured, tracking the black chakra with her own. Kakashi could see the ebb and flow of it, the way she bathed Iruka in her energy to find out what was going on.

He just watched, the Sharingan spinning madly.

Slowly, slowly, the black eased back into the scroll. Parchment hissed and curled into smoke.

"Thank the gods," Tsunade said.

"He's half dead," Kakashi pointed out, still pressed against the far wall.

"He'll be fine. Now he can recover," Tsunade answered, all business once again. She stood, brushing her hands off as if they were actually dirty.

"He's alive," Kakashi said, stepping forward slowly.

"He is."

"And he'll stay alive."

"And possession-free, now," Tsunade said. She picked up her things and headed toward the door, considerably brighter than when she'd walked in. "All in all, a good day's work."

It closed behind her. The doctor checked the stitches on Iruka's arm, but it had already stopped bleeding. He left.

Kakashi edged toward Iruka's bed.

The man was soaked in sweat. He was still breathing raggedly. His chakra pulsed and faded, then pulsed again erratically. Kakashi sat gingerly on the mattress and started threading his chakra through Iruka's, trying to bolster it.

He was better at it then when he'd been eight. He shivered, and tried to push away the memory of draining his chakra into his father's corpse in the hopes that it might help.

This wasn't the same. Iruka wasn't dead. He wasn't.

Kakashi leaned down until his face was inches from Iruka's ear. "Don't die. Please don't die. I promise I'll cook every night and never try to push you into anything again if you just won't die. Don't die."

**

He perched on the end of the hospital bed again, Icha Icha Paradise open and in front of his face.

He wasn't reading it.

He wasn't looking at the tubes running into Iruka's mouth and nose.

He wasn't listening to the steady beep-beep of the machines, pumping oxygen into a body so chakra-burned that it was barely living.

Kakashi stared at the pages and tried not to see the slow rise and fall of Iruka's chest.

**

"Here."

Kakashi looked up from Icha Icha Paradise. Raidou stood there, eyes on Iruka, hands full of a box he was pushing toward Kakashi.

"What?" Kakashi asked, peering at the box but not taking it.

"Tsunade-sama said she wanted you to go ghost-proof Iruka's place." He shoved the box toward Kakashi again, still staring at the hospital bed.

Kakashi went back to his book. "You do it."

Irritated chakra flashed toward him and receded. "I have a mission. Stop being a brat and go do it." The box landed on the end of the bed with a thump. Kakashi snatched it back up, glancing at Iruka's legs. But it had missed.

Raidou had already left.

Kakashi debated, then finally muttered under his breath and transported both himself and the box to Iruka's apartment.

He set it on the couch and yanked the flaps open, peering inside.

It was filled with ghost remedies. He should have known. Not one or two things, no, Tsunade wanted him out of the hospital and she was planning on keeping him away as long as possible. And for once, he was sure he wasn't being paranoid.

Muttering about old hags, Kakashi grabbed salt from the box and began to pour it along the windows.

Mizuki's ghost was dead. It wasn't coming back.

Assuming Tsunade's seal had worked right. Kakashi glanced around and decided to use everything in the box, just to make sure.

**

"Kakashi!"

He stopped waving around the burning sage and stuck his head out the window. "What?"

Genma halted at the front door, backing up to see him better. "Iruka's awake."

Kakashi dropped the sage in the sink and transported.

**

Iruka lay in the hospital bed, groggy and confused. Things were coming back to him in fits and starts. Little of it made sense.

The door opened, and a familiar bush of silver hair poked around. For a moment, all Iruka could think of was the name Mizuki.

Mizuki's hair had never looked like that.

Kakashi. Relief flooded him.

"What happened?" he asked, his voice a croak.

Kakashi smiled, rubbing a hand over his hair. His shoulders dropped tension, and his hands relaxed. "You're all right."

Iruka's stomach fluttered.

"And you're you."

"Of course I'm me," Iruka said, anxiety making his voice sharper than he'd meant. "Who else would I be?" As the words left his mouth, he knew.

He *knew.* Panic gripped his chest. "I--I stole--"

"Not you. It wasn't you," Kakashi said quickly, striding to the bedside.

"Naruto--"

"He's fine."

"He's--he's--"

"Fine."

Iruka looked at him, stricken. "I tried to kill him."

Kakashi sat on the edge of the bed. Pain flashed through various injuries as the mattress dipped, but Iruka didn't care. "It wasn't you. It *was not* you," Kakashi said firmly. "Look, I'm going to take you home, and you're going to get better, and--and it'll be fine. Understand?"

Iruka nodded numbly. "Fine," he echoed.

"Good." Kakashi took a deep breath and exhaled. "Yes. Great."

**

They weren't even out of the hospital when chakra brushed over them. It wasn’t unusual, in a village full of ninja. A friendly check, a doctor doing a once-over for health.

But Iruka could feel it, suddenly. Horrifically clearly, the feeling of that Other chakra taking over his, melting over him--

He started to scream.

It wouldn't get off. He couldn't get it *off*. It crawled over him, invaded his body, shoved his consciousness down and made him do things--

People were shouting. Iruka bolted, Kakashi grabbed him, he struck, trying to escape, to run, to get anywhere but being tied down where he couldn't get free--

Something stung his arm.

The world collapsed into terror.

**

Tsunade sprawled in an uncomfortable hospital chair, staring at Iruka.

He was strapped down. Unconscious, now, with a seal over his eyes to keep him that way. There was nothing wrong with him physically.

She glared at his inert form.

An academy teacher had managed to steal the forbidden scroll. A possessed one, true, but really. They needed better security on that thing.

She glared at his inert form some more.

"What do we do with him?" Ibiki asked, leaning in the doorway. She could see Kakashi hovering behind him, trying not to look like he was hovering at all.

"I have no idea." Tsunade returned.

Ibiki sighed and glared at Iruka, too. "Even if we get him through the chakra-induced panic, he'll have to deal with that jutsu."

She winced. There was nothing quite like realizing you'd sentenced the wrong guy to that sort of torture. But then, even Iruka had thought he'd tried to kill Naruto, so . . .

"What if we just wiped his memory?" Ibiki suggested.

Kakashi tensed. Tsunade ignored him to ask, "We can do that?"

"Sure. We do when we get prisoners of war back and they can't function."

"It doesn't work," Kakashi muttered.

"Huh. I go for a wander, and people come up with all sorts of new and disturbing things," Tsunade said, still ignoring Kakashi.

"It doesn't work," the Copy Ninja repeated, louder. "They still have triggers and panic attacks, and if their minds don't have a bent toward repressing anyway then their memories still come back."

"But when the block holds, they're able to work out of any attacks faster without the flashbacks," Ibiki said over his shoulder, in what was obviously a well-rehearsed argument.

"And when the block *doesn't* hold, they're far worse off than they would have been," Kakashi said, voice alarmingly bland.

"But it usually holds," Ibiki snarled.

"You're tampering with someone's *mind.* If it doesn't hold he'll have all those memories on an unprepared mind and--"

"Didn't you have an apartment to de-ghost?" Tsunade interrupted.

For a moment, Kakashi looked like he'd explode. Then he slouched, overly relaxed. "You can't be seriously considering this," he drawled, shouldering into the room.

"Listen, you little brat," Tsunade snapped, "I don't have the time or the manpower to devote to rehabilitating a Chuunin who doesn't even do fieldwork! He can either have his memory wiped or he can live in a padded cell until he works himself out of this! Now get *out*!"

He wasn't going to budge. She could see that single eye narrowing ever so slightly even as she stood there. So Tsunade shoved him out the door, closed it, and locked it.

Not that it would do much to keep a Jounin out, but maybe he'd get the hint. Maybe he'd at least take some time to think about what she'd said, and whether or not he wanted his precious boy to be living in a padded cell. One thing Tsunade didn't do was make idle threats.

She could feel his chakra pulsing and fluctuating outside the door, could feel the indecision. Then it settled, leashed tightly under control. Decision made. The door didn't open. With a quiet breath, Tsunade turned to Ibiki. "Do the memory wipe--as long as you think it'll help."

Ibiki was still looking at Iruka, as if the Hokage and the Copy Ninja hadn't just been yelling at each other right beside him. "I think it'll help," he said at last. "Iruka's only a Chuunin, even if he's not inclined to repression he shouldn't be strong enough to throw it. It should take."

**

Mizuki was gone. The hard part should have been over. Still, Kakashi didn't like it.

It felt wrong, to go around erasing someone's memory. It was tricky business, poking and prodding at a mind, fishing around and trying to burn out things they thought were hurtful.

Ibiki had spun him some tale about how, without remembered trauma, Iruka would snap back to normal.

They both knew it wouldn't work that way. The mind might forget, but the body never did. Instinct was stronger than memory.

If they'd asked him, he would have said to give the Chuunin time. If they'd asked, he would have told them Iruka would be all right; Iruka could cope.

They didn't ask.

When Iruka woke, he was understandably confused.

**
Then

"Do you think he's *doing it* with her?" Iruka whispered, brown head tucked close beside Hayate's.

"It sounds gross," Hayate said on a muffled laugh.

"He said he was gonna stick his thingy in--" A sudden sting, more surprising than painful, stopped the rest of the sentence. Iruka rolled, bringing his legs up instinctively, clutching the side of his head.

"That's enough of that sort of talk, boys," his father snapped.

Iruka felt his face go dark red. He rubbed his ear where he'd been cuffed. "Sorry, Dad."

"We don't talk so disrespectfully of such things in this house," his father continued. "Hayate, I think it's time you went home."

Hayate scooped up his homework quickly and raced out the door. Iruka watched him spin down the road from the window, and sighed.

"We were just talking," he muttered.

"Talking about things you have no business talking about," his father said sternly. "Go help your mother in the kitchen."

Iruka dragged himself to his feet and slunk away. He never got to have any fun.

*******************