His leg muscles screamed as he leapt backwards, barely avoiding a line of explosive tags that were not particularly well hidden. Damn. He should have seen them before now.

In the seconds before he landed, a spray of kunai peppered the area. Still in mid-jump, there was nothing he could do to change his trajectory. A clone wearing his face and body, but formed with something that was decidedly not his chakra appeared above him and practically threw him to the ground before disappearing in a cloud as several kunai found their mark.

He landed awkwardly and slid downhill across the loose soil into the dubious cover of a rotting stump. His haphazard fall was arrested by a strong hand on the collar of his vest, and Mizuki hauled him back into deeper cover.

Iruka panted, trying to get oxygen to his starved muscles, but in the end settled for signing, 'Clone?' when his lungs refused to work.

He wasn't complaining about the last minute rescue - he would have been unable to avoid serious injury without it - but rather confused as to why Mizuki had bothered to waste the extra chakra for a henge.

Mizuki risked a quick glance over the massive roots. "You've gotta figure they're watching this. I mean, half the challenges seem to be specifically set up to bring out certain basic skills that you'd need to be able to teach. It's a demonstration, really."

Iruka bit his lip. Mizuki was covering for him. A clone was one of those 'basic skills' that Iruka still hadn't been able to relearn. So was the henge for that matter, but that wasn't what they'd been looking for this time.

When they reached the test that forced them to demonstrate a henge, Mizuki reached out and wrapped a henge around Iruka. It was quite possibly one of the creepiest moments of his life. He could feel the touch of the other man's chakra down to his very soul, as if Mizuki was peering into the depths of his being.

He never wanted to feel so exposed again.

OOOOOOOOO

Iruka's knees were weak as he left the Hokage's office. The teaching job. They had offered him the job. Him! He would actually be useful again.

What was the old adage? Those who can't do, teach? Well, Iruka intended to make good on that saying.

He reached his apartment door with no memory of the journey there. He almost immediately knelt before the small shrine for his parents and explained to them the position he'd been offered. He was bubbling in a way that he hadn't in years, and while he didn't quite grin, the sad, close-lipped smile that had been his only expression of happiness had lost it's hard edge of unhappiness.

A noise at the door interrupted him, and he pulled it open to see Mizuki with what looked like a consoling look on his face. He couldn't hold it in. "I got it!"

The look of shock took him by surprise. "What?"

"I got it! How about you - you must have, I mean, if they took me, they would have been foolish not to take everyone." He was babbling.

A lightening fast rabbit punch to the end of his nose halted the words instantly. And made stars exploded behind his eyes, his brain feel like it was threatening to burst from his skull, and his cheekbones begin aching in an interesting rhythm. He stumbled backwards, gapping up at his friend.

"Fuck you. If you weren't the Sandaime's pet, he would have tossed you out long ago. But he wants you to be a shinobi even if you couldn't ninja yourself out of a paper bag. So he gives you this fucking cake job so you can be safe. And passes me over. You can both just go to hell."

The whole wall rattled as he wrenched the door shut.

Iruka ignored both the trickle of blood on his upper lip and the water welling in the corners of his eyes that, he told himself firmly, only had to do with the physical shock of the strike.

Mizuki was pacing outside his front door the next morning and pleaded to be forgiven. Iruka hesitantly accepted it - he could rationally understand why Mizuki was so upset. But the other man was awarded a teaching position at the next test, and the incident was all but forgotten.

Except for the slight distance Iruka began to place between himself and his friend.

OOOOOOOOO

Every inch of him ached. Producing a convincing henge required a conscious effort to wrap your skin in a thin coating of chakra. He described it to the kids as allowing your chakra to ooze out of your pores – a prospect that was easy for children with practically unlimited chakra reserves, but that was less than easy for someone with greatly limited chakra and a useless arm.

The reality of his arm, shoulder and a large portion of the left side of his chest forced Iruka to create a sheath of chakra extended from the last, still-working node all the way to his fingertips. The effort to maintain an extended sheet of chakra just above his skin was exhausting.

He'd discovered today that, if he pushed himself to the breaking point, his body would automatically retract all of his chakra as fast as possible and through the closest available node. He'd also discovered the reason why children were taught to have iron control over their chakra from a very early age and were never encouraged to find their limits.

Instantaneous retraction hurt.

A lot.

He sunk below the level of the water and let the heat permeate sore muscles and aching bones. His henge was far from perfect, and the reaction today almost convinced him to give up.

If only he wasn't so completely set against giving up, his life would be a lot easier and a great deal less painful.

OOOOOOOOO

The clone left a lot to be desired, and Iruka pinched the bridge of his nose to keep from yelling. "Fail!" Alright, so he hadn't quite managed to resist the urge to shout. But there were some skills so basic that no genin should be without them.

The henge was one, but the boy in front of him had mastered that one enough to completely pervert it.

Clones were another, and clones were one of the many jutsu's that Iruka had not managed to relearn. He was actually surprised that Naruto hadn't called him out on it since he had never demonstrated a clone for his class.

When Mizuki leaned in and tried to convince him to let the boy pass, Iruka waived him off. Mizuki, of all people, should understand his reluctance to put Naruto in a higher rank without first vetting his skills.

But the sad, dark look the boy gave him cut straight to the bone, and as he weaved through the crowd of congratulatory parents and celebrating kids, his path was vaguely aimed at the lonely figure sitting sideways on the swing. He really should explain his reasoning to Naruto. The boy had tried to pass several times after all, and he just wanted him to understand that Iruka was doing it for his own good.

They'd head to Ichiraku, he decided as he slipped between one of Mizuki's students and her parents. Ramen always cheered him up. But a surprisingly strong hand that belied the owner's age closed on his elbow and drew him off before he got the chance.

OOOOOOOOO

"Naruto…." Iruka felt a chill hand grip his heart. He knew he should have sought the boy out after the conversation with the Sandaime. He'd been worried that Naruto would do something truly stupid, but had not expected this. Nor had he expected the strange conversation when he'd located him. "Where did you get that scroll on your back?"

"Mizuki-sensei told me about it."

Mizuki. His weak chakra pinged at the very last minute, sending panicked sparks through his nervous system. One hand shot out without a second thought, shoving Naruto out of the kunai's path. The only other thing he could do was throw up both arms and hope that the weapons didn't hit anything vital.

A smirk crept across Mizuki's face as studied the injuries.

Iruka's blood froze in his veins as he saw the darkness Mizuki had hidden for years - the side that roiled up just below the surface on occasion and lasted long enough to make him uneasy around his childhood friend, but not enough to scare him this much.

Between one heartbeat and the next, Mizuki went from comrade to enemy. As he began the wind-up to skewer the kyuubi boy, Iruka made a choice. Mizuki knew that Iruka could not stop him.

But Mizuki always put himself before anyone else. The choice that Iruka made was one that Mizuki would never have considered.

The choice to protect, even at the cost of his own life. It was all he could do.

He could feel Mizuki's anger explode behind him. It took every ounce of strength to rip the shuriken from his back, and reservoirs beyond that to bring himself upright. He intended to stop the other chuunin, but his body refused to cooperate.

Mizuki was going to kill Naruto, and the only weapon he had left was surprise. He couldn't out-fight Mizuki, but he'd already stalled the other man simply by doing something unexpected.

He hadn't told anyone about the jutsu's he'd re-mastered between his selection as a teacher and the present.

He managed to hold the henge even when his legs gave out, and let out a little snicker as Mizuki's face twisted in rage. That's right. I beat you.

But he'd played his last card, and Mizuki had known him for long enough – knew more about him and his limitations than any other person – and he knew that Iruka was only still upright thanks to the tree at his back. He even felt safe enough to hold a conversation that would, in the end, mean his doom.

As Mizuki freed a shuriken and aimed it at him, Iruka fought to still the trembling of his limbs. They shook from sheer exhaustion – he hadn't expended this large a percentage of chakra since his first injury – so when the other man stepped forward into a striking position, he smiled slightly, resigned. He'd been on borrowed time after an injury that should have killed him. He'd been allowed to continue in the job he loved even though he could barely qualify for it.

His mother had died protecting him, and there were certainly worse ways to go than by carrying on her legacy.

Besides, Mizuki was the only friend he had. What was he going to do without him?

Naruto's appearance broke his train of thoughts, and he screamed at the boy, barely conscious of what he was saying. He'd given so much to try and keep Naruto safe, and now the idiot was…

The whole thing was unbelievable, and yet he was sure he hadn't slipped into some hallucination. Naruto jumped on him after he'd tied his hitae-ate around the boys forehead and the invitation for free ramen, and Iruka hissed under his breath, trying to channel the miniscule amount of chakra he had left to stem the bleeding from the severe wound in his back and choosing to ignore the shallower kunai wounds on the rest of his body. But even with that, when Naruto let him go, he felt his vision darken and his body slump forward.

The last thing he heard before passing out was Naruto's frantic, "Oi, sensei! Iruka-sensei!" He felt hands grab at his shoulders and shake him, and he tried to find his voice to give the boy a stern lecture about how to treat injured comrades, but the impulse never reached his vocal cords.

OOOOOOOOO

He awoke to the familiar sounds and scents of the hospital, but didn't open his eyes. Facing his surroundings meant dealing with the fact that for the first time in years, he was truly alone. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to hold back the tears that were threatening to fall.

He was sure that he'd known deep down that Mizuki was a bad seed, but he would never have expected... A particularly deep breath tugged at the open wound along his back, and he dug his fingers into the mattress to ride out the spike of pain. He would never have expected the other man to fall so far.

And even so…

He did not know if he could handle being alone.

But he was going to have to try.

He opened his eyes and sat up slowly. A chair was pulled over to his bedside, and Izumo was slumped over the foot of his bed. Kotetsu was passed out on the couch along the wall. He opened his mouth, but couldn't find the right words to say.

Izumo raised his head sleepily, caught his stricken gaze, and said. "Oh, good, you're up. We were getting worried."

Iruka wasn't sure what he'd expected, only that those words were not it. He'd thought they would make demands. Even a genin would have been able to save Naruto and avoid being hit themselves. He'd never explained the seal and his limitations to them, not wanting them to worry about him. In the back of his mind, he had always sort of assumed they would be furious over that omission.

Kotetsu struggled from the over-stuffed cushions. "We're really sorry, Ru. That we haven't been there for you."

A strangled sob escaped his lips, and he collapsed against Izumo's shoulder, clinging to his former teammate as he cried. He couldn't remember the last time he'd given into his emotions - probably that day as far back as the Sandaime's office when he first found out about his demotion. Back when he'd first reconnected with Mizuki...

The tears strengthened. Kotetsu reached over the bed and stroked his hair out of his face. "He's getting snot all over you." He said in a casually conversational tone to Izumo.

Iruka snorted, chuckling between the sobs, and slowly the gale passed, and he was able to sit upright again, wincing as stitches pulled in the motion, and wiped his face and nose on the back of his arm.

"What are you, an animal?" Izumo grabbed a box of Kleenex from the bedside table and shoved it at him. Iruka looked sheepish, grabbed the tissue and blew his nose.

"Sorry." He sobered "I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I...I just..."

Both men fixed him with serious gazes. He couldn't satisfactorily explain why he'd kept it from them, and they probably wouldn't ever understand. Izumo stretched out a hand and rested it on his blanket-covered knee. "Why don't you tell us now?"

They'd listened wide-eyed to the entire story, which started at the hospital in Mist and ended at the hospital here in Konoha.

"Fucking bastard." Kotetsu snarled out when Iruka was done explaining the fight in the forest with Mizuki, and Izumo bobbed his head in agreement.

"Your chakra is really sealed, Ru?" Izumo sat forward on the chair as Iruka pulled the neck of the hospital gown aside to reveal the seal that had burned out brightly against his skin ever since he'd depleted his chakra so much. The hospital staff assured him that it would become invisible again as soon as he wasn't in such dire straights.

"Not all of it. But most of it…" He pulled the fabric back up to hide the seal.

"And you made chuunin? That's freaking awesome!"

"Seriously! What kind of techniques do you use?"

"Guys…I didn't do it on my own. If Mizuki hadn't been there, I wouldn't have been able to…" He trailed off at the murderous look plastered on Izumo's face. His former teammate opened his mouth to rebuke him but was stopped by Kotetsu's upheld hand.

Said hand went from stopping Izumo to smacking him upside the back of the head. "If you ever say something that stupid again, we'll have to hurt you."

"But, it's true…" The sound of hand meeting skull interrupted him.

"Did you or did you not just beat him?" Izumo queried. Kotetsu was thankfully standing behind Iruka, so the injured chuunin missed him rolling his eyes in frustration.

"Beat" Iruka stammered. "Beat him? He almost killed me! If Naruto hadn't been there, he would have. And I-I put him in danger. If I had just passed him in the first place, Mizuki would never have been able to manipulate him like that."

Two hands dealt the blows this time, and Kotetsu actually grabbed his shoulders and gave him a single hard shake that made his head feel like it was about to fall off. "Mizuki's fucked up ideas and plans to control other people are in no way your fault!" The words were snarled out in pure fury. "The only person who should and will take blame for what happened out there is that sodding asshole who hurt you!"

"Whether or not you'd passed Naruto, he would have found some way to get what he wanted." Izumo chimed in. "Besides, there's not a single other teacher who would have done what you did for him. No one else would have thought about passing him or even considered feeling bad about failing him."

A memory swam to the surface from when he'd been knocked out with painkillers after he'd been bandaged up. The Sandaime was standing over him and resting a gentle hand on an uninjured stretch of skin high on his shoulder. He'd spoken for a while, but Iruka could only remember a couple of sentences. "You changed his life last night, Iruka. I hope you realize that."

"What am I going to do now…?" Iruka asked his clenched hands.

"Isn't the next Academy class starting tomorrow?"

"I-I…"

"You're really going to let those hooligans be alone in your classroom? Che. We'll be lucky if the entire building isn't a smoking crater by ten a.m."

"I'm glad we have gate duty." Izumo turned his back on Iruka, effectively excluding him from the conversation. "At least we'll be far enough away to be safe."

"But…" Iruka spluttered.

"The view won't be very good, though." Kotetsu rubbed his chin. "The top of the apartment building looks out over it."

"But then we wouldn't be doing our job. We might be able to park ourselves on the top of the wall, that way we can kill two birds with one stone." Both men considered it for a moment.

"There's a problem with this, though, you know."

"Mmm."

"We're going to wind up being assigned to help clean-up and rebuild."

"Yup."

"Probably three months of shoveling soot and debris. Another two months of reconstruction."

"Oh, and then there's the interior decorating. Knowing our luck, we'll probably wind up laying the floorboards and lugging in the blackboards."

"Ugh. I hate putting in flooring."

Two pairs of pleading eyes pinned him as he was suddenly added back into the conversation.

After a moment of silence, Iruka flung his hands up in surrender. "Alright, alright. I'll go back to teaching, if it means that much to you."

"Aw, really? Thanks, Ru!" Izumo's simpering smile didn't even falter under his glare.

"You're both manipulative jerks, you know that?" Iruka muttered darkly.

"Well, yeah." Izumo flopped down on the end of his bed and stretched out to steal the suspicious looking hospital food that had been sitting on his bedside table since he woke up. "This shouldn't be news to you."

The difference was that these two were not-so-subtly forcing him to make the right decision, so that, when he looked back on this portion of his life, he didn't regret the choices he had made.

The next day found him sitting behind his desk, reading off a roll call.

Save for the bandages that covered most of his torso and wrapped all the way up around his neck, it could have been any ordinary day.

OOOOOOOOO

The soft light from the bedside lamp barely illuminated the room. Heavy shadows stretched from all the corners and licked at the edges of the tangled sheets. The man sprawled across the bed had been tossing in his sleep again, and most of the blankets were shoved to the end or off the bed. He lay on his stomach, one leg crooked up to turn him slightly towards his side, and arms crossed under his pillow. The remaining sheet was twisted tightly around his waist.

Long experience told him that the other man rarely tossed like this. In fact, the last time his bed partner's sleep had been this fitful was when he'd come home bleeding from a dozen different wounds that all seemed superficial, but had turned out to be infected with a slow-acting poison. They hadn't realized until his tongue had swollen enough to close his mouth. After a sleepless night at the hospital, his touchstone hadn't rested peacefully for almost a week.

This time, like many of the others, he felt completely responsible. He hadn't realized, hadn't remembered enough of the story to figure out how bad the retelling would affect the other man. Iruka had spoken to his hands, which remained clenched in his lap, and his voice had cracked once or twice. He described actions and instances only and left out any information about his own emotions, but Kakashi could hear the tension in the words and was able to fill in enough information to understand the mind-fucks Iruka had been through. The chuunin had retreated to bed the minute he'd finished and had fallen into a fitful sleep.

From the way Iruka was sleeping, he couldn't see the scar that marked his chest and had so drastically reduced his abilities as a shinobi. What he could see was the pale ridge of puckered skin running from right shoulder to left hip. The scar stood out in stark contrast against the honeyed skin, particularly in the weak light, as a silent testament to Iruka's unquestionable ability to protect.

The bed dipped as he settled on the edge and stroked a finger along edge of the mark. This was not the first time he'd seen or even touched the marred skin that crossed his touchstone's back, but he had always assumed that it was a battle scar earned from a particularly nasty mission.

The knowledge that a comrade had inflicted the deep wound… Kakashi rested his forehead on Iruka's back, grateful to feel the rhythmic rise and fall of the other's breath.

A few months ago, after Iruka had stumbled over the mention of Mizuki's name when Kakashi'd asked about his genin team, he'd gone to the one person he knew he could get an answer from.

Well, two people to be exact.

The lazy stances changed instantly at the mention of the other chuunin's name. "Let's just say that, if we'd found Mizuki that night he attacked Ru and Naruto, there wouldn't have been enough left of him for anyone to identify."

"If there was anything left at all." Izumo added in a malevolent tone of voice that Kakashi had never heard before.

Only now did he understand their reaction, and he carded his fingers through the loose hair as Iruka shifted and muttered in his sleep.

Only now did he understand Iruka's overreaction at the chuunin exam, and he kicked himself for being such an asshole.

"Are you trying to crush these kids?"

Iruka's shout echoed around the back of his skull. The other man had been terrified that the kids were being pushed into testing far too early. The possibility that something similar might happen had scared him to death, but Kakashi had brushed him off and made a dark joke about adding a little pain to their lives to help them grow up.

In retrospect, his own words made him feel sick. He'd assumed, naively, that the chuunin who had been an academy teacher for the majority of his career as a shinobi, had never experienced true pain.

Oh, how wrong he'd been.

For a very long time, him simply perched on the edge of the bed, stroking the thick, soft locks and willing the apology to break past his lips. He was a fair bit out of practice for saying those words considering how often he whispered that phrase in front of memorial stone.

"I'm sorry." The voice was not his own, and it took him a moment to realize that Iruka had spoken, his words muffled in the pillow and shaking slightly. "I should have told you, before…" He turned his face deeper into the bed. "You've put your life in my hands, and you had a right to know that I..I can't do anything. If you were ever really hurt…I…I…" The end of the sentence broke off in what sounded distinctly like a sob.

Kakashi sat back. His short contemplation about the best course of action ended as his hand landed on the thick, overstuffed pillow that took up a large portion of his side of the bed.

"Gyahh!" Iruka rolled as he was buffeted by two quick blows. Kakashi knelt on the bed above him and brandished his pillow. "What are you do…mmmph." The next blow caught him full in the face, and he slid off the edge of the bed with a startled yelp as his legs stuck in the sheets. "You…you, bastard!"

Said bastard spread his hands innocently, happily ignoring the offending pillow still in his grasp.

Iruka let out a war cry, made a flying leap onto the bed, and snatched his own pillow up as he passed. The headboard clacked against the wall as he stumbled on the pile of sheets. Kakashi dove for him, wrapping an arm around his waist, and tumbling them both to the mattress. As they fell, Iruka wrapped a leg around his knee and twisted them so that he landed straddling the jounin. He reared back and swung almost blindly at the upper-ranking shinobi, knowing full-well that he didn't stand a chance of hitting the other man.

Kakashi let him get in a couple of hits before flipping their position.

"Argh, you…! Lemme go!" Iruka squirmed under him in an attempt to free his hands. "You jerk. What did you hit me for?"

"How many times have I shown up bleeding on your doorstep?"

"I lost count when I ran out of fingers."

"And how many times have I died?"

"What? None, idiot. Why are you…?" Confusion was plastered all over Iruka's face.

"Then why do you think you have anything to apologize for?" He kissed a line along the scar crossing Iruka's nose, grinning when he heard the uncontrollable giggle start building in Iruka's chest. Who'd have thought the rough skin would be one of the most ticklish parts of his touchstone's body? He'd discovered it almost a half a year ago now, and had no qualms over massively exploiting it.

Despite his best efforts to resist, the laughter exploded past Iruka's lips, and he shoved at Kakashi's shoulders as the older man nuzzled his face. "Stop it!" He gasped between gales of laughter.

Kakashi finally gave in to the pleas and sat back. "That's better. It's much more pleasant when you're smiling." For a moment, they lay in silence that was broken only by Iruka swinging his pillow into the side of Kakashi's head.

The jounin fell backward and clutched at his head in mock pain.

"That's for hitting me before." Iruka aimed the pillow at him.

"Ah. That method came on high recommendation from your good friends. They said that sometimes you needed sense beaten into you and suggested a smack upside the head."

"Well, thanks for softening the blow." He yelped in surprise as Kakashi tackled him back onto the bed and yanked the sheets over them. "What're you…?"

"It's late." Kakashi murmured into his ear as he nestled down against Iruka's side, one hand reaching back to turn off the light.

The room plunged into darkness, but Iruka's breathing didn't even out, and Kakashi waited for him to speak.

"What would you have done if you'd known from the beginning?"

"Nothing different." Kakashi pulled him tighter against his chest. "Shit happens, Iruka. 'S a fact of life, but what this scar shows," He punctuated the statement with a gentle stroke down the scar that crossed Iruka's back. "Is that you're willing to protect the people you care about. Sounds like the kind of person I would be lucky to have as a touchstone. You're not as useless as you think you are." A pregnant pause broke the thoughts. "I need you."

It had been a long night, and the act of recounting his past had brought back all the doubts and fears seeded by Mizuki's exploitation and left to run rampant in Iruka's subconscious. Kotetsu and Izumo had helped hold him together through the worst times after Mizuki's betrayal, but he had relied on them.

This was the first time since his original injury that someone else had relied on him.

The body in his arms trembled slightly, and he reached out to wipe tears from Iruka's face.

OOOOOOOOO

Pein loomed over the crouched figure at the end of the street. One of Kakashi's dogs was screaming for help along the link between them, and as he leapt to the next storey of the building, the Konoha shinobi came into view, and his heart skipped a beat.

Iruka.

A bright flash caught his eye as a long and narrow blade appeared in Pein's hand. His arm swung forward in an arc, aiming for Iruka's throat. The chuunin raised his head in defiance, but didn't move an inch beyond that.

Because there was absolutely nothing Iruka could do to stop the blow, and Kakashi was all too painfully aware of that.

All he could do was pray that he made it in time and whisper a silent thanks that Iruka had informed him of his limitations, otherwise he wasn't sure he would have acted soon enough to save the man, believing that the chuunin would be fast enough to dodge.

Anyone watching from the outside might think his actions overzealous, but Kakashi wasn't going to take any chances.

OOOOOOOOO

Fin.

Sorry for the wait (ah, I sound like a broken record...)

Broken was an attempt to explain why Iruka is the way he is. I rather feel like I didn't manage to capture what I was going for...but...eh

Hopefully it was all enjoyable - let me know!

P.S. Has anyone else noticed my writing changing? Seems like it's gotten really crappy recently, and I've got a writer's block a mile wide. *sigh*