Raidou wasn't wrong. Something had gone wrong.

For Genma, the whole trip to the hospital had been one of pure misery on several levels. There was physical misery, of course, with nausea and shaking, cramping, twitching muscles and a special kind of fire in his abdomen, thanks to Suna's well-crafted poison. There was the deep wound on his hip, the more minor gash on his chest, and the deep bruises from his fight with the Suna jounin adding their own tender notes to his suffering.

Then there was the chagrin of the last collapsing shards of denial. He was sick, he was injured, he was poisoned, and he was not going to be able to convince any competent medic--starting with himself--that this was simple fatigue and a need for a decent nap.

And then there was Raidou. Raidou laughing like a madman, babbling, flailing, gone from himself.

It was fuel for Genma's darkest imaginings. The infection had invaded Raidou's bloodstream and then his brain. Or the head injury had finally blossomed into some kind of latent horror show. Or even if it was just feverish delirium, it took a high fever to make a man sound like that, a fever high enough to be dangerous. And retching and shivering and curled on his side on a stretcher being raced through the streets by a group of chuunin medics, there was nothing Genma could do to help Raidou. Nothing.

But that wasn't what had gone wrong. No, things going wrong came later, after they had Genma and Raidou on separate casualty beds, in separate treatment rooms. After they stripped off armour and mask and uniform and soiled bandages. After they hooked up intravenous lines and chakra and cardiac monitors. After Genma told them where they could find the senbon he'd been hit with and a preliminary analysis had been done on the poison residue still on the needles in question. After the first dose of poison-specific antidote was injected directly into a vein.

What went wrong was it wasn't the right antidote.

What is an antidote, really but a poison itself, carefully designed to counterbalance another poison? Oh sure there are simple neutralizers like activated charcoal, but the things ninja dealt in, and the medics who treated them, were much more specific. And much more deadly. And that wrong antidote, which had looked like the right one, from the preliminary analysis, went in and acted just like a poison itself.

Genma had a seizure. And another one.

The medics working on him had a collective panic attack.

The right antidote was found, along with a sedative to stop the seizures and another drug to neutralize the first, wrong antidote.

And five hours after they'd started what should have been a one hour treatment, they finally rolled Genma--curled up on his side with his freshly bandaged hip in the air, shivering under blankets that were too thin, hooked up to monitors and IVs, and clutching an emesis basin in two white-knuckled fingers--into the room with Raidou.

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Tying down a ninja--especially an ANBU--is never an easy thing to accomplish. They are masters of the arts of escape, even one-handed and delirious. The jounin held Raidou down carefully with a hand on his chest and the other pinning his good arm, and ordered the medics--who were used to the sort of thing--to forget the leather restraints because a genin could break them. Instead they locked Raidou's ankles and good wrist into padded steel cuffs etched with seals that would bind his chakra. Between his fever and the amount of drugs already flooding his system, the doctor overseeing Raidou's case hesitated to add more and risk a cross-reaction by simply knocking him out.

The jounin suggested a nerve pinch, and was puzzled when the medics glared at him.

Raidou's right arm posed a problem. They couldn't leave it free for him to worry at his restraints, but neither could they chain it down and risk him ripping his shoulder wound open again. In the end they strapped the sling across his bare chest, immobilizing the arm completely with a several tight loops of bandage. They told him, several times, that his partner was being treated for poisoning. He was in critical condition but he was still alive. Raidou, lost in his maelstrom of fever and drugs and fear, simply didn't hear them.

Thirty minutes later, when Genma was wheeled into his room, he hadn't stopped struggling.

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The sounds of clanking metal restraints fixed to a bed rail is distinctive and memorable. Genma had heard it enough to know that whatever was going on with Raidou wasn't good. He'd been restrained himself, back in those dark days after the Iwa mission, and he'd seen other ninja restrained. Delirium, paranoia, PTSD, acute psychotic conditions, pernicious genjutsu injuries, even some kinds of poisonings could earn a shinobi those cuffs. Hearing that on Raidou was just the end of the line for Genma. After a truly horrific day, he had no patience for any of it left.

"Rai?" he rasped. His voice was barely more than a raw-throated whisper. He pushed himself to be louder. "Rai? Raidou? What the hell is going on with him, what's wrong? Why's he tied up? Raidou?" He was halfway off the gurney before the attendants could stop him. "I'm going to fucking well kill every last one of you if I don't get some answers and now!" Genma demanded. Shouting now, and pulling on chakra he could ill-afford to be spending to set up a jutsu. The chakra monitor alarm shrilled, the heart monitor beat out a wild rhythm of anxiety, and the jounin medic who'd so lately restrained Raidou came hurrying back to the room.

There was a reason they tended to house ANBU patients on a separate floor.

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Genma's voice did what none of the medic's had even gotten close to. It stopped Raidou cold. His hand stilled, his aching muscles ceased their struggles, and for the first time in what felt like hours, he focused. Genma was there. He was right there. He was alive and okay and breathing--definitely breathing because he was shouting at medics. From the agitated flock of people around his angry friend, Raidou guessed someone had done something wrong. He didn't care. Genma was okay. As far as Raidou was concerned that made everything rosy.

And then the jounin pinned him down.

Raidou made a noise that began deep in his chest and snarled out, as deadly as a lion's roar, and threw himself against the chains. Metal rattled, the bed creaked, and a medic shoved him back down before he could dislocate something. Raidou's fight was short-lived. Between the fever cooking him on the inside, the bruises wearing him on the outside, his long struggle with pain and panic and everything that kept going wrong, he just didn't have the reserves. Raidou went still and watched the struggle between his best friend and the people that wanted to help him. The jounin that he really, really wanted to leave a shoe print on. He found his voice a long way off and crushed it around some words. "Leave him alone."

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"Raidou?" The question came out from under the weight of the jounin and two chuunin medics holding Genma flat. It was a voice full of pain and worry and outright fear. Over the top were calmer voices, more soothing voices. "What's his name?" someone asked and another person checked a chart and answered "Genma. Shiranui Genma."

"It's alright, Genma-san, You're buddy's just been a little trouble to keep in bed where he needs to be, because his fever's making him a little irrational. Just lie down. We just want to get you in the bed and then you two can see that each other are really just fine." There were other, quieter murmurings of a similar nature. Another medic went to Raidou, brushing a hand over his forehead, cool and soft, and told him quietly, "Your friend's alright. He's gonna be fine. Just let us get him settled. Do you want a sip of water?"

Genma recognized that tone. He'd used that tone himself. It was the tone you used with panicked civilians when you were evacuating them from the path of a flood. It was the tone you used with a ninja who'd just lost his leg from the knee down to an exploding tag. It was the tone that said,"trust us, relax, we are in control, everything will be alright" even when there was no way that was true. And it worked. Genma was much too ill to keep fighting. He couldn't even resist that soothing tone of voice.

The medics got him settled in the bed next to Raidou's, reconnected beeping monitors, rehung IVs, helped Genma get curled on his right side, facing Raidou, with his injured hip bolstered by pillows and his shivering body covered in freshly warmed blankets. Then they did the same for Raidou, even loosening one of the restraints so that he could lie on his left side, facing Genma, with his injured arm well protected and a pile of pillows to wedge him in place.

And then they stepped back and waited. Because either these two were going to settle each other down, and they could chalk the whole thing up to partner separation anxiety, or one or both of them were going to go off the deep end, and then there'd be harder work to do.

"Raidou?" Genma tried again, and stared through the bars of his bed, past the bars of Raidou's, at his partner. He looked so weak it hurt. "Are you okay?"

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Raidou let out a shallow breath of relief and studied Genma with dark, weary eyes. His vibrant friend had been replaced with a pale shadow of himself, thinner now without the ANBU armour to cover what two days of vomiting had cost him. White and drained looking around his bruises, tangled in a spiderweb of wires. He was the single best thing Raidou had seen in five hours, drugs vision highs inclusive.

There was a collective group sigh of relief from the medics when Raidou managed to get his mouth into an echo of his usual crooked smile and rasped, "That wasn't even six seconds, mother-medic."

Genma was here. Of course he was okay.

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"I haven't asked you that in at least a couple of hours," Genma protested. Oh thank the Yakushi Buddha for his merciful healing intervention, Raidou was okay. Not great. Obviously not great. He still looked too flushed, he was still shackled to the bed and an IV line, his eyes looked too pained and too dazed, and white--the white of the hospital blankets--was not his best color. But he looked better than he had outside the gates and he sounded lucid. At this point Genma kind of thought he'd be pushing his luck to ask for more.

"Sorry I'm late," he added. "Had some issues." Couldn't really remember them, per se. Well he remembered telling them where the poisoned senbon were, and he remembered their happy confidence that they had a good antidote. The next thing he remembered was a heavy weight on his chest, and someone shouting in his ear, "Breathe, Genma! Breathe!" And then there was waking up hooked to every fucking machine known to man. That had been unpleasant. But that was in the past. Hours ago. Probably. Actually he had no idea at all how much time had passed since he'd last seen Raidou. It could have been days, although it didn't feel like it.

"Um... Am I very late?"

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Had some issues probably translated to someone fucked up. When this was all over, Raidou would find out who and make that person eat floor. He'd began the mission that way, after all, it was probably some sort of karmic balance to end it in the same manner. Either that or Genma had done what Raidou had spent the last two days fearing he would, and gotten a whole lot worse. But he looked okay now. Mostly okay. He was awake and breathing and talking. His current array of machines were beeping a quiet, gentle rhythm rather then a shattering clamor that spelled Bad Things. He looked exactly like a ninja who'd faced a tough mission and dragged himself through to the other side.

"You're always late," said Raidou, still in the low rasp that was all his voice could manage. "One day I'm going to put a bell on you so I know where you are half the time." That wasn't really the question Genma had been asking, though. He wanted to know how long he'd been gone. How much time he'd lost. Raidou would've been delighted to tell him, but he didn't have the answer. He hadn't particularly cared about the answer, either, until Genma had decided to show up and make it important. "I don't..." His eyebrows drew down in a frown as he tried to think around the fog of fever. "I'm not sure."

One of the medics came to his rescue. "You were both checked in at..." he consulted a chart, "1832. It's now 2340."

Five hours.

Raidou blinked slowly. "Definitely a bell," he said finally.

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"When I get nailed on a mission because some asshole Kumo genin heard the shadows ringing, you'll know it was your fault," Genma said, and a flicker of a hint of a smile ghosted across his weary face. His eyes locked with Raidou's. Smallish, dark brown, deeply penetrating eyes in a scarred face on which Genma had long since stopped seeing the scars. He could see in Raidou's eyes a perfect mirror of his own thoughts: Thank fucking gods you're alright. Do you have any idea how frantic I've been about you? How the hell did we lose five hours? Are you really going to be alright now? You fucking well better be, or I will come to the afterlife and kick your sorry ass.

Not a word passed. The machines beeped, a medic checked an IV, a couple more quietly shifted to positions where they could more easily asses whether this new silence from the formerly agitated pair boded well or ill.

Genma locked eyes with Raidou, thought about that odd night--was it just the previous night?--spent sleeping side by side in nothing but underwear and bandages, with hands clasped. Had that really happened? Had he really let Raidou not just touch, but hold his hand? And he laughed. A quiet laugh, a weak laugh, hoarse and whispery, but with something a little like mirth, a little like bemused astonishment, and a lot like relief.

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Sometimes Genma was prone to small moments of insanity. Raidou knew that in the same way he knew that Genma liked oranges and would quite cheerfully bathe in tea if he could--and probably would if he ever managed to find a way to do so that would leave him clean but scentless. Considering the state they were both in, he wasn't terribly surprised when Genma skidded through one of his weirder mental curves and ended up in a place that made his eyes glitter and his mouth widen into a grin that looked nothing like a knife edge. As he began to chuckle and then outright laugh as something tickled him.

The medics were briefly alarmed--unsurprising considering where Raidou's earlier laughing fit had taken him--and a quiet flurry of conversation resulted in a chuunin moving quickly over to lay a careful hand on Genma's forehead, checking the laughter was true mirth, rather then the edge of a brand new deliruim. Once satisfied, he stepped back again, returning to his team.

Raidou simply answered a smile with a smile, and fought the suddenly hard battle to keep his eyelids from sliding shut. Apparently Genma's soft, slightly raspy humour was a siren song. "Should... lemme in... on th' joke," he said quietly, with his broken-glass voice.

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Genma tolerated the medic's hand, quieted a little, but not entirely, until Raidou spoke. "Yeah.... Yeah. Should," he agreed, and tried to find a way to put into words the complicated set of thoughts and emotions that had led to his laughter. His usually quick mind was mired in the syrupy confines of sedatives and painkillers and exhaustion, though, and while something had gone skipping over the surface like a flat pebble and triggered his laughs, he couldn't really find a way to say it in a way that made sense.

In the end he settled for, "We're not the ones dead this time." Which wasn't really it, but he didn't know what else to say. And he couldn't ask about that Night. Even if he and Raidou had been alone, it would have been a hard topic to broach. Did we seriously hold hands all night like a couple of teenage lovers? Hands? Seriously? No, seriously? Hands? He certainly couldn't ask when he felt so close to the edge of something resembling delirium himself, with Raidou already over it.

Raidou was fighting sleep. Genma could feel himself fighting it as well, especially now that he was warm and calm, with pain eased and nausea depressed by the same jutsu he'd cast on Raidou the night after the disastrous birthday party. He blinked slowly back at Raidou, still smiling softly.

"Go to sleep, Rai. Promise I'll still be here when you wake up. No bell."

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Eyelids were a pain in the ass, Raidou decided. They wouldn't listen to his demands to stay open. The fourth time they slid closed without his say-so, he gave up the battle, turning his head slightly to hide the left side of his face against the pillow. Genma was there, Raidou could hear him breathing. Knew he'd be able to see him if he could gain some mastery once more over his stupid, stubborn eyelids. He was right there, less then ten feet away--the distance felt like a gulf and nothing all at once--and safe. They were both safe. Alive and out of danger because they were home. "When were we... ever th' ones... dead?" he asked, trying to comprehend.

They'd never died. He'd remember, surely?

Maybe that was the joke.

Raidou fought the soft shroud of sleep long enough to say, "'kay. Hol' you to tha', Gen." Maybe he'd get Genma a bell anyway. That could be a better joke. Raidou slipped into fever dreams without a murmur, truly relaxing for the first time in a week.

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In the moment of silence before Raidou spoke, Genma dazed into something not quite sleep, but close. Raidou's voice got his eyes open again, heavy lids not lifting all the way to look at Raidou, burrowed into his pillow just like always, face relaxed as he mumbled his question.

No, see. It's not that we died, it's that the other guys did and we didn't, Genma thought. The words couldn't quite find the way to his mouth. The sight of Raidou so close and so nearly asleep couldn't quite keep his eyes open. The anti-seizure medicine didn't have to work particularly hard to pull Genma back under the softly reflective surface of consciousness in the next bit of silence.

Raidou spoke again, a mumble even less distinct, and Genma's eyelids strained to open a bare slit, then fell shut again. "No bell," he muttered again. You don't even have to put a bell on me, because I'm not going anywhere until you're up and out of bed and going there with me. The thought shimmered like a light silk scarf blown by a March wind. Genma followed it into a weird dream of Raidou drifting closer, of a hand reaching out for him.

A medic came close. Checked his pulse, checked his breathing. Checked the monitors and made notes. Did the same for Raidou. The others had gone, for the most part, quietly leaving when it was clear the danger was past. There were other patients to worry about, other jounin waking up in a sweat-stained panic, screaming themselves hoarse with mission flashbacks. Genin with amputations, facing the end to a career they'd only just begun. Chuunin plotting quiet suicide as they realized they'd gone out in a team of four and come back alone.

It was, in other words, like any other day at work for the medics at Konoha's hospital.

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