Things settled down after that.

Katsuko and Ryouma stayed asleep, curling closer together by unconscious but apparently mutual agreement, his chakra signature bare embers next to her half-smothered blaze. At least Ryouma was warm now, and Katsuko seemed comfortable.

Kakashi was strangely reluctant to leave their bedside. The medic—Namura, Raidou finally learned—had an extra cot brought out from storage, but Kakashi point-blank refused to get on it.

“I’m comfortable here,” he said, cross-legged and stubborn on the bare wooden floor.

Raidou had never had to order someone into bed before. After a brief, bizarre personal debate, he decided not to start now. If Kakashi was really that fierce about guarding his teammates, Raidou didn’t actually want to discourage him. Though, why Kakashi was picking Katsuko and Ryouma, instead of the man he’d sweated blood for trying to haul out of a mountain—

Raidou did not understand geniuses.

It did leave a free bed for him, which he was happy to drag next to Genma’s and sit on, since someone needed to watch their errant medic.

Genma was less peaceful than the other two, alternatively sweating and shivering, muscles jumping in sporadic clusters. Raidou frowned and called the doctor back, bullying her and her assistant into setting up a (dusty, but usable) IV line, working to replace some of the fluids Genma had lost through his fever. After that, Genma looked a little better.

Should’ve thought of that earlier. Raidou was tired, too.

Namura had no excuse, unless lack of practice counted. But she did go on to set up an IV for each injured civilian.

The soup arrived some indeterminate amount of time later, when Raidou had lapsed into an eyes-open doze. He jerked upright at the knock, almost cracking his head against the wall. Across the room, Kakashi’s katana drew two inches out of the scabbard. Katsuko, noisy even in sleep, muttered something about green weasels.

Namura regarded them all with wryly lifted eyebrows, and answered the door.

The warm smell of cooked meat and vegetables rolled into the room. Raidou scrambled up to help, and found himself on the receiving end of a soup tureen and seven bowls. Kakashi was pressed into reluctant service and made to carry a teapot of brewed green tea, and a jug of fresh barley water.

“Thank you for your service, ANBU-san,” said the woman Raidou had offered to pay. She bowed, tendrils of hair slipping from a neat bun. At her elbow, her teenage son also bowed and offered a plate of warm buns with red bean paste.

“Um,” said Raidou, whose brain had switched off.

Smoothly, Kakashi reached past him and took the plate, managing to fake being an actual human being long enough to murmur, “Thank you,” before vanishing again.

“Yes, I—what he said,” Raidou managed, before regaining traction. “I mean, this is more than I—”

The woman’s mouth curved. “You’re quite welcome, ANBU-san. Please return the dishes when you’re done.”

She swept away with her son, back into the cluster of people who were still there, keeping silent vigil in the lantern-lit, misty alleyway. The crowd had thinned a little; the weeping man and his young boy were gone. But the mayor was seated on a set of narrow stone steps, talking quietly with a bearded man whose eyes were red-rimmed. Most weren’t crying, they were just standing, or sitting, waiting for—

Raidou didn’t even know. It couldn’t be hope.

Quietly, he closed the door, and turned to find Kakashi had forced Katsuko awake, upright, and was apparently insulting her into drinking a mug of tea.

“—still not taken your pants off,” Katsuko was grumbling, which was the point Raidou decided to stop listening.

He doled out three bowls of soup, one each for her and Kakashi, and one for himself, and settled down with his own mug of tea. The food was delicious, and he was ravenous, he discovered. Two bowls went down without even touching the sides of his stomach. And three bean buns, which Kakashi tossed over without looking.