“Ah, that explains it,” Niimi-sensei said dryly. “Good luck to the man, then. Third door on the left. I trust you can find your way?”

Ryouma hopped cheerfully off the table. The top of his head came up to the doctor’s chin. “We’ll start leaving trail-sign if we get too lost.”

Kakashi cleared his throat and, when the entire room looked at him, tipped an ironic look at the back of Ryouma’s hospital gown, which had flapped open enough to reveal a pair of dark red trunks. “Pants first.”

He expected Katsuko to say Or not, but the presence of the doctor seemed to quell something in her. Instead, she picked up Ryouma’s pants and tossed them helpfully at his face.

Ryouma caught and skinned into them easily enough, since they were looser jounin blues, and zipped up the fly. “I’ll see you Friday, sensei. Thanks.”

Niimi-sensei gave him a cheery wave and departed.

In the silence that followed, Ryouma stripped off the flapping gown and pulled his shirt on, transforming from beleaguered hospital patient to only-somewhat-rumpled shinobi. There was an ease to him now, increasing every second as the news sank in and grounded in his bones, becoming fact. Kakashi could almost hear the beat of it: My career isn’t over.

“Ten years is a long time to be in pain,” Katsuko said quietly. Her hands hung loose and open, nowhere near her stomach. “I’m glad you saw Niimi-sensei.”

Ryouma looked at her with a quick, flashing smile. Relief and gratitude made his face open and young. “Thanks for holding my hand and punting my ass all the way in here. Both of you.”

Kakashi snorted. “The lieutenant made you. I just came to make sure you didn’t jump out of a window.”

“Yeah, well, the lieutenant's going to be pretty smug when he hears about this. He’ll deserve it.” Ryouma bent his knee a little, bringing his foot off the floor. For just a moment his eyes went unfocused and his mouth tightened.

Pain, Kakashi recognized. Not much, not crippling, but acknowledged. A decade was plenty of time to practice ignoring something — half of Ryouma’s life, in fact.

Ryouma shook his head and came back to himself, grinning. “D’you think he’d take a grateful kiss?”

Katsuko’s bodhisattva expression had returned. “We could still probably fit him through the window,” she told Kakashi. “If we threw him hard enough.”

Kakashi looked consideringly at Ryouma.

Injured knee aside, Ryouma still had an excellent turn of speed when he scrambled out of the room and fled back to the safety of Genma’s common sense.

(The lieutenant was smug, but he had the decency to hide it. Mostly.)