"Jell-O," Ryouma told the ceiling sleepily. "Bet she'd like some of that." Jell-O was fit food for a patient who'd just awakened from a coma, wasn't it? They'd given it to him, last time. He could probably cajole an extra cup from the nurse who brought his dinner tonight, save it for when he visited Tsume in the morning. Sure, she might not eat it--he remembered her nose-wrinkling scorn at the energy bar he'd offered her only a few days ago--but the thought still counted.

Sort of.

"You sure you don't wanna go place an order with the florist?" he pleaded with Shouma. "They're not too far. You could be back in twenty minutes. Even Tsume should like flowers."

Shouma shook his head, ears flapping, and let his breath out in an amused huff.

"Guess you have a point there," Ryouma admitted. "You can't talk. I can't write. We could get a nurse to write a note for us?"

The dog's lips curled off his teeth, and smoke erupted at the foot of Ryouma's bed.

He blistered his pathways, reaching for chakra that wasn't there as he threw himself up on his elbow. Kakashi's arm slipped down his chest, but Shouma still snapped at it, breaking the pale skin with gleaming white teeth in the instant before he whirled, slipping over blanketed bodies. Nails tore the sheet as he scrambled to straddle both Kakashi and Ryouma, heavy hackles bristling, teeth bared in a low, savage snarl. Ryouma couldn't see around the dog's bulk. He couldn't pull free of the re-implanted IVs. Couldn't even sit up. Couldn't see.

The smoke began to clear. Kakashi was already moving.

Some instincts are built in at bone level. Kakashi had a knife in his hand before his brain clicked on, fingers wrenching the blade from his armour. He surged up like a fire jutsu ripped from an Uchiha's lungs, breaking from stillness to movement in the beat between one second and the next. Chakra lashed out.

The sharingan, wide open and bloody red, showed him everything before he realized exactly why his wrist hurt.

There was a man in the room.

Holding Tsume.

Threatening Ryouma.

Adrenaline cut the future into fine shards of crystal. Kakashi bared his teeth and jerked left, falling into a crouch that shielded Ryouma's head and torso with most of his own body. One hand braced against the bed, the other tightened around a dangerous length of blackened steel.

The man was small, heart and throat hidden mostly behind Tsume. A head shot was the only option.

But if Kakashi killed him, and he dropped Tsume--

"Let her go," he snarled, letting the ice-bite of fear become nothing but killing intent and focus, "or I'll break you apart."

Well, at least he wasn't dead. Yet.

"Woman," Yasuo growled to the small form in his arms, as her eyes rolled back and her chakra seemed to sputter into nothing, "if I meet you in the afterlife I'm going to murder you. Alpha or no." Louder, he added, "I'm Inuzuka Yasuo--I'm her partner! Would you please not kill me?" There was more frightened annoyance in his words than real fear. The genius hadn't struck yet, which meant if Yasuo could get things sorted out he wouldn't.

Hopefully.

It would help if Tsume would say something. Not supposed to wake up for more than twelve hours more, she seemed to be catching up on that now. Transporting wasn't easy on a passenger's chakra, and she didn't have much left.

Yasuo wondered how dead she really looked, draped across his arms.

Shit.

He twisted his chakra around and down, trying to yank any fight or threat out of it, tugging it into injured frightened cub Pack. It was cowardly, and wouldn't work on anyone except another Inuzuka--or maybe Kakashi.

They said he was part. He had all those dogs. And Yasuo was in no position to do anything brave.

Whether or not it worked on Kakashi was moot, though. It worked on Tsume; her eyes blinked open, her head rolling up against his chest. So close to her, he could feel alpha bloom under her skin--even if it couldn't go any farther.

"Wha's wrong?" she slurred, blinking, and then, "'S fine." She blinked again. "Kuromaru?"

Watching Kakashi very carefully, Yasuo bent closer to her. "You just went to see him. You still smell like him."

She lifted her hands to her face and sniffed. The tension drained out of her body. "R'ouma?"

"He's here." Past the man bristling with killing intent.

As if just noticing it herself, Tsume turned and stared with ice-chip colored eyes at the shinobi. "Pup!" she growled, chakra surging weakly. "Stop that."

Yasuo tightened his grip on her as she went further lax in his arms--but not for any reason good. "Would you drop the killing intent?" he snapped. "If I'd wanted her riled up and using chakra I'd have left her where she was!"

If Kakashi hadn't been well-versed in operating on negative amounts of sleep, he wouldn't have been able to keep up. The situation danced around him, shifting fluidly as points of attention demanded his focus.

The man had clan tattoos.

Those could be faked.

Tsume looked dead.

She was still breathing.

Kakashi couldn't smell a lie.

He could barely smell anything.

Then the man's--Yasuo's--chakra ebbed down, coiling in on itself in submission. More than submission; the energy equivalent of a wounded child. Wounded Pack--just like Tsume's Pack-feeling, without the alpha.

Kakashi hesitated.

Then Tsume woke up and yelled at him.

He didn't blink in surprise--he couldn't afford to look away--but his chakra flickered. "How is this my fault?" he demanded, as Shouma bristled like a timberwolf. He glared at Yasuo. "Why the hell did you bring her? She's injured!"

The heavy bandage wrapped around Tsume's head was stark white, brighter under the hospital's fluorescent lighting. It made the shadows under her eyes look purple. Her skin stretched tight over fine bones, waxy and translucent.

One small, clear thought trickled through Kakashi's head: Ryouma was going to freak.

Again.

"Take her back," he growled, dark and furious. Ryouma was behind him; he couldn't see yet. And Kakashi wasn't going to let him. "Now."

"No," Ryouma said, even stronger. He'd pushed himself up on his elbows as far as he could, until Shouma's looming bulk stopped him, and he still couldn't see. A tuft of brown hair over the ridge of the dog's back, a pair of bare feet jutting out past Kakashi's shoulder. Yasuo had to be crouched, holding Tsume in his arms like a child. He'd done more than keep his word. He'd brought her so Ryouma could see for himself.

And he couldn't see. He shoved at Shouma, heedless of the heavy jaws and gleaming teeth. The dog, pushed to the brink, snapped. Kakashi moved even faster, lunging up to scruff Shouma and drag his head away from Ryouma's bare arm.

Beneath the straining curve of his ribcage, Ryouma saw Tsume's bandaged head.

Left ear.

Right temple.

Complications from a jutsu.

The sound that broke from his throat didn't resemble anything human. He bucked Shouma off, thrust his shoulder into Kakashi's belly and knocked him back. Monitors wailed as IV lines tore again; a needle dragged a bright line of fire across his arm before it ripped free. He ripped the nasal cannula away, tumbled off the bed, and dropped to his knees beside the Inuzuka.

Reached out, and couldn't.

And that was where the world fell down.

Kakashi lurched back, startled, as Ryouma's blow knocked half the breath from his lungs. Shouma struggled and snapped under his one-handed hold, drowning in the melee of scents. Kakashi tightened his grip, digging fingernails into the dog's soft throat until he stopped fighting. A snarl ground down to a whimper and trembled through Shouma's skin.

"Keep the medics out," Kakashi snapped, and shoved the shepherd off the bed. Shouma scrambled for the door. A distant klaxon shrilled, catching Kakashi's attention for the first time--something Yasuo had done, no doubt, when he'd translocated.

Kakashi sheathed his knife with a quick jerk and yanked his chakra back, pulling it into his skin. He couldn't wipe the killing intent away, but he could hide it. Threats wouldn't help anymore.

Ryouma was on the floor, blood beading down his wrists.

Tsume looked barely conscious.

Kakashi throttled the urge to break Yasuo's stupid interfering neck and shoved himself off the bed, dropping bonelessly down to crouch by Ryouma's side. The damage was already done; Tsume leaving now wouldn't fix it.

Very carefully, he put his hand on Ryouma's untouched shoulder, fingers spread over shaking muscle. A scent like blistered bone slid up his nose and made his chest hurt. "Don't you dare break over this, rookie," he said, low and glacially calm. "Not after everything else."

Ryouma didn't even glance at him.

Kakashi tried to think, but the red-black burn of the sharingan wasn't helping him. It knew a thousand different ways to kill people--and nothing about fixing them.

"Tsume," he said finally, without glancing sideways, "get over here and help me before I put a hole in your partner."

The world kept blurring in and out of focus, one second a cacophony of sounds and smells, the next dimming to almost nothing. Moving was difficult. Breathing was difficult. Her body felt sluggish and non-responsive.

Focus came with a struggle. Understanding with a bigger one.

Hole in her partner. She frowned at the masked man. "Don' hurt R'ouma."

"He means me." It was Yasuo's voice, rumbling under her bandaged ear, the bones of her jaw.

"Oh. You c'n defend y'self." She was more concerned about the other scent reaching her now--smelling like charred flowers and sugar-sweet iron. It smelled like Ryouma, but nothing like Ryouma. It was a battle to focus past the brightness of the world, but she finally saw a large, dark-haired shape not far away. She tried to point, but only flopped an arm. "Take me there." The muscles under her were shifting before she even spoke, carrying her closer.

Ryouma seemed to pull away.

She didn't have the coordination to reach out. When she tried, he was too far, and she fell.

Hands caught her. She trusted them to keep her safe and reached out farther, brushing careful palms over broad shoulders. There was only a pinprick scent of blood, and none of acid or pain. A sigh of relief made the world spin and lurch dizzily. "You're not hurt no more."

"Stop moving, woman!" Yasuo snarled, muscles twisting and bunching against her.

Tsume ignored him, feeling detached and boneless as she was manhandled around. There were words she didn't listen to, then new arms, not as compact as Yasuo's, drawing her closer to Ryouma.

Safe. They were all safe. Her head lolled against a new shoulder, unconsciousness creeping up. She forced it back and--

This wasn't Ryouma's shoulder.

She didn't have much strength, but she threw it all into finding him. He'd been there, just there, a moment ago. Not flayed or acid burned or--

There. There. She took a deep breath, letting his scent coil in her lungs. A smile brushed her mouth. "Smells good, huh?"

There was a beat before Yasuo answered. "I... haven't taken the time to sniff him, but I'm sure he does."

Tsume stretched to get closer. "You should sniff 'im. Smells good."

"...I'll take your word for that."

She kept talking. Touching him, even after he pulled back, even after she was safe in Kakashi's arms. Kept sniffing at him, and now he was trapped between the bed and wall and Kakashi, and he couldn't even run. Her head turned, nostrils flaring to catch his scent, wide mouth flickering in a contented smile. A few days ago he'd wanted to kiss her.

Now--

He would have given anything just to touch her without fear.

They'd bandaged her face.

Fingers dug into his shoulder, bruising knots of tension. Kakashi, still holding onto him, even as he cradled Tsume one-armed and awkward. Ryouma couldn't look away from the hidden wreck of Tsume's face, but Kakashi would give him truth. Reality.

"Did I touch her?" His voice wavered and broke. "I didn't--Kuromaru--"

His hands clenched into fists, ground against the tiled floor. "I didn't touch her." But there was the faintest seepage of yellow fluid through the thick white bandages wrapping her face, a thin whiff of decay...

"Kakashi," he pleaded.

For half an hour, he'd had somewhere to stand. Now he was falling again, and he couldn't see the ground.

There was too much to deal with. He couldn't focus on Ryouma's agony and Tsume's high and Yasuo's nearness all at once--especially not with the rising growl and frustrated voices echoing down the hall.

Kakashi let go of Tsume for one heartbeat, holding her close with chakra as he scrabbled for his belt. Gloved fingers managed to dig out a solider pill; he didn't look away from Yasuo as he slipped his hand beneath his mask and swallowed it. Bright new chakra burned into his coils, lighting him up from the inside. His head cleared a little.

Yasuo was talking, quick and firm and just a little frantic. About Kuromaru and his surgery; Tsume draining herself into panic about her familiar; the guards who would likely be showing up any moment--

Kakashi listened for handful of seconds, nodded once, then glared. "Get out."

The Inuzuka startled and gave him a disbelieving look. Then he kept talking, louder and faster as he stood up to pace, like a caged wolf. Tsume had to be kept here and awake, to stop her from panicking again if she fell asleep and woke up without Kuromaru nearby. Waki-sensei needed to be summoned as soon as Kakashi could. Kuromaru needed to be brought to them, or them to the familiar--

Kakashi listened, half his attention on the growing noise down the hallway, and the remainder on Ryouma and Tsume while information wrote itself down on the inside of his skull. When Yasuo began to repeat himself, apparently nearing the end of his tether and still determined to make Kakashi listen, the copy-nin reached a limit. Self-delusion washed away in the tidal wave of exhaustion he'd forced down and hammered into focus. Ryouma and Tsume were his. His pack. His to protect. And they were down and injured and this man, this not-his man, had to go away.

But Kakashi couldn't move with Ryouma against his side and Tsume cradled in his lap.

He clenched his jaw, grabbed at his chakra, and ripped it through the sharingan. Black spun into red, bleeding fresh tears down his face as he caught Yasuo's gaze and held it. One split second was enough to trap the Inuzuka in genjutsu and hold him.

Inuzuka were always vulnerable to genjutsu.

Yasuo froze, face slackening. Kakashi turned away and forgot him completely.

Tsume smelled like sedated bliss, wrapped up in a fuzzy cocoon of drugs. She was a lax weight against his chest, warm and contented, eyes half-lidded and sleepy. The rot was gone--his clone had brought that news hours ago. The rot was gone, and she was going to be fine. There was nothing he could do for her but hold her steady and keep her safe.

Ryouma was another matter entirely.

Kakashi changed his grip, wrapping his arm around broad shoulders. The peace of earlier, bought with a lie, was long gone. Ryouma smelled burned; charred on the inside by the guilt he was letting eat him alive. His head was ducked low, black eyes focused on the floor; every muscle braced, as if he expected someone to beat him down.

Kakashi moved Tsume, lifting her very carefully, until her shoulder was braced against Ryouma's side, her hand draped over his leg. They were both dressed in thin hospital clothes; Tsume in a a ridiculous cross-hatched smock, Ryouma in nothing but pyjama pants. It made them look impossibly fragile.

Or maybe that was the injuries.

"You didn't touch her," he said, low but firm, over the sound of Tsume's delighted murmur. "She's bonded to Kuromaru through chakra. It's an Inuzuka thing. The jutsu--" he hesitated, feeling Ryouma tense under his hand. "Bled through. But the medics took it out. From both of them. Look at her. She's flying, but she's fine." He tightened his hold on both of them, feeling weary muscles and worn out strength beneath his hands. "She'll recover, just like you will."

This time, he almost believed it wasn't a lie.

Nothing smelled good. Nothing sounded good. She kept catching snatches of conversation, whiffs of scent. She let her head sag against a strong shoulder, rolling to see Kakashi next to her out of bleary eyes. She had to think. Thinking wasn't easy. Ryouma was upset.

"What's--?" she managed to say, and her thoughts danced away, floating off on a lack of chakra and an overabundance of drugs.

She rolled her head, face pressing against warm, whole skin. There was the smell of heat. Sunburns and days at the lake. Hunting and warm forests. But it was overlaid so heavily with sour fruit and rust-colored steel that she almost couldn't pinpoint it. She lifted a hand carefully, patting it against a well-muscled chest. "S'okay," she murmured, even as the body under her shuddered.

He'd been tortured. She remembered that. She petted him again, trying to soothe despite drugs and exhaustion. "S'gonna be fine now."

Ryouma flinched beneath her touch, and only afterwards remembered Yuuko caressing his flayed chest, painting warm wet designs over his throat and shoulders. It wasn't that. Yuuko's hands had given pain and taken pleasure, and Tsume was nothing at all like her.

She tried to comfort him, and his chest ached with the deadly longing to touch in return. To take security and comfort and to give it, the way he and Kakashi had done on a riverbank in the warm afternoon sun. To lift the swathing white bandages and see the horror and the healing. To reach out and find solid ground...

But his hands held nightmares, now, instead of chakra.

"The whole time," he whispered. "She came to get me. To save Kuromaru. She said if I couldn't--"

She'd have killed him. Maybe she should have done it anyway.

"It was an accident," he said, clinging like a drowning man to the memory of Kakashi's words. It wasn't your fault. I still trust you. You're not a monster!

Kakashi was wrong. He was a monster; they all were. They killed in the dark and under the sun, without hesitation or mercy, for a uniform and an ideal and a paycheck in the bank. They sacrificed everything to complete the mission, and they left their dead where they fell. They were ninja, ANBU, weapons in the Hokage's hand, and they had to be monsters to live.

But if this was the price of survival, he wasn't going to pay.

He caught his breath on a gulp that might have been a laugh, or a sob. "I don't want to be a weapon anymore."

What else would you be? The thought slid through Kakashi's head like icewater, freezing out flecks of understanding. To be a ninja was to be a weapon. The village's blade, wielded by the Hokage for a decent price or the darker side of morality. Occasionally both.

If you weren't a weapon, then you were blunted. A civilian.

Useless.

Winter spilled down Kakashi's spine, biting through his bones. Ryouma wanted that? But he was--he was--

The thought seemed suddenly small and uncertain: He was strong.

Wasn't he?

Chakra spiked painfully; Kakashi blinked hard, refocusing. It took more concentration than he had to spare to keep Yasuo locked in illusions, silent and non-threatening. But still his mind turned back to Ryouma, magnetized by his words.

Don't want--

There wasn't a choice.

--to be--

You didn't get to pick it up and drop it. It was a life. You ran the path until you died.

--a weapon.

Ryouma wasn't a coward. He wasn't a quitter. Not after one bad mission, even if that mission had ranked as a day trip through hell. He wasn't a man who ran away, dammit.

...but he was a rule breaker.

Kakashi's tired mind tripped over a new thought, sparking a flash of insight. Maybe for someone like Ryouma, someone who saw the world as a bright geometric puzzle Kakashi could only guess at, things were different. 'Teammate' was a word with a new shape, thanks to Ryouma's logic. Sex had become, just the once, something with a kind of peace afterwards--and not the oblivion of simple exhaustion.

Maybe to Ryouma, shinobi didn't mean weapon. Maybe it just meant wanting to be someone who didn't have to deal death with his bare hands and hope his teammates didn't step in the way.

Maybe it meant being more than the ways you could kill someone.

And maybe Kakashi was losing his mind.

Tsume stirred in his hold, muscles clenching weakly as she tried to move again. He helped her sit up a little more, remembering Yasuo's warning to keep her from falling asleep, and listened to the angry voices outside their room. Someone had shut off the alarm, but Shouma's snarl was becoming desperate. He couldn't keep people away much longer.

And Kakashi couldn't keep Yasuo bound much longer, not with his chakra melting away like river water.

"So don't be a weapon," he muttered finally, letting his temple rest, just for a moment, against Ryouma's. "Just don't get killed by one, either."

Someone yelled in the hallway. Chakra flared distantly. Shouma yelped.

Kakashi's jaw tightened. "Sorry, Ryouma, I need to take care of that. You have to--here, hold her for a moment. Just for a minute." He didn't wait for the protest; very, very carefully he pulled away and lifted Tsume into Ryouma's lap, bracing her against wall and shinobi both. "I'm not leaving the room, I'll be in the doorway. It'll just be one minute. Keep her safe and don't let her fall."

He staggered upright, feeling the world tilt. He braced a hand against the wall and added, "Or sleep. Don't let her sleep."

Then he grabbed Yasuo's unresisting arm and manhandled the ninja to the door.

Tsume fought awake again as they moved her. Then she found herself on a comfortable lap, resting against a strong, broad chest, head lolling against the flesh covered steel of a shoulder.

It smelled like Ryouma. Unhappy, but not hurt. They'd been talking. Around her, over her. Words tangling in streams of exhaustion. There were things she should remember.

Kuromaru was gone.

No, she'd smelled him.

Ryouma had been tortured. Screaming, arching, falling into unconsciousness.

No, he was here.

She opened her eyes, gaze resting without seeing for a long moment. Then she reached up, palm flattening against warm, smooth skin. Her index finger traced the brilliant line of flesh where a tattoo used to be. "You're all healed," she murmured. "That's good."

The thought fled. She tucked her face against him, breathing in life and heat. "But you don't smell good." She rubbed her face under his collarbones, feeling bandages rasp and the salt itch on her cheeks ease away.

It was important. Important to think. Make sense of the words that had been floating around her. She grasped onto something she'd understood and spoke. "You don't want to be a ninja anymore? Jus' 'cause you got tortured..." She tried to smile, even if the teasing was horribly morbid and in bad taste.

Then she smoothed her fingers down his chest again, curling them into her palm, resting her fist on his heartbeat. "You did good, Coyot. Did really good. An' we all got home." And that was what mattered, wasn't it? She thought so.

She still felt like she was missing something.

Ryouma's thoughts shattered and scattered when Kakashi moved and Tsume tucked against him. He couldn't stabilize her. He couldn't let her fall. He couldn't touch her, and she wouldn't stop touching him.

She didn't have any idea what she was doing. Couldn't. She was drugged to the gills--

But even drugs couldn't make you say something you didn't mean.

He took a breath that seared his lungs and the backs of his eyes. "Still a ninja. Always. They can't take that from me. Just--"

want to be human, too. To be allowed to care.

To live the kind of life where I love you didn't always mean good-bye.

He found another breath, somewhere, and held it. His heart was still beating; he was almost surprised. Slowly, so slowly that the veins and tendons sprang out on his forearm as he fought against his muscles, he unclenched his right hand. His fingers trembled like aspen leaves in the breeze. Blood dripped down his wrist, and dried red smeared the pad of his index finger.

"Don't want to hurt my friends."

She chuckled, soft and low, and rubbed her face against him again as if doing it often enough might change his scent. Rub some of the anxiety away.

It didn't work that way. It never did. "S'good," she murmured, eyes drifting closed. "S'why people like you. 'Cause you actually care." There was something important in that. Something she was missing, something that had been a hole in her chest for years and years--every time she drove a friend away because they got too close, and every time she broke off from her clan because they asked too much.

"Some people don't care." Her words drifted on a haze. "An' sometimes you have to hurt friends." A startle made her aware, suddenly remembering carving her eye out with a blade--

Fingers brushed over her own lids, feeling the reassuring curve of eyes beneath, and she relaxed. Still two. She leaned against Ryouma, too tired to pull her hand away from her face. With a few more uncertain breaths, she let the drugs muffle anxiety.

She'd been saying something.

Ryouma didn't want to hurt his friends. Her hand slid from her face to his skin as she rubbed her cheek against his chest. "'Sides, you're not gonna hurt us. You're too... safe."

Safe enough to lean against, in a hospital room without familiar or family, impossibly weak and drugged out of her mind. And she still knew she wouldn't be hurt.

Tsume nodded slowly. "Defin'ly safe."

Even out in the hallway, Kakashi felt the surprised flicker in Ryouma's chakra. It wasn't followed by screaming, so he let himself ignore it for a few seconds more. The doorframe was a solid presence behind him--one he refused to let himself lean against. Showing any kind of weakness would get him swept aside by frustrated medics and itchy guards.

"No," he said for the seventh time.

A sea of faces watched his. One medic's eyes narrowed. "But Hatake-san--"

"No."

"But--"

"No." He dismissed the man with a glance and looked at another medic. Shouma sat by his heels, one front paw held awkwardly. He'd been kicked. Kakashi had restrained himself from killing the foot-happy guard, but it had been a near thing.

The arguments continued. He stood his ground, flattening everything with a low monotone. No, you can't come in. No, you can't have Tsume. No, you can't check Ryouma. No, you can't make me move. No, there's nothing you can do. No.

He barely twitched when Hoshika came careening around the corner, ears flat and teeth bared. She screeched to a halt by his heels, fur bristling. He cut off her bark with a curt gesture--he already knew Yasuo had taken Tsume, thanks--and felt a small twinge of relief when she settled on his other side. Two sets of long gleaming teeth packed a lot more punch than one wounded dog and one swaying master.

"Kakashi-san," began a guard again, pushing Yasuo gently into the arms of his comrade. "We really think--"

Very slowly, Kakashi turned his head and fixed the man with a red-eyed glare. "Oh?" he said softly. "What do you really think?"

The guard hesitated. "That... we should go get Waki-sensei."

Kakashi had to stop a tiny, hysterical giggle working its way out. Finally. "Good boy," he said, aware he was being rude; it was hard to care anymore. "When you bring him, make sure he comes in alone."

He snapped his hold on the genjutsu before anyone could respond. A spark of chakra twisted into a nasty shape made sure Yasuo came out of the illusions yelling. The guards holding him jumped, focus splintering as the Inuzuka staggered back.

"Don't arrest him," Kakashi muttered, as the medics sprang away and the guards closed in. "He's Tsume's partner. He's just got idiocy issues."

He signalled the dogs back into the room and slipped after them, shutting the door firmly. Most of the noise cut out, muffled by wood and sound-proofing. For half a second he let himself lean, and closed his eyes. Even with his reputation to barter on, it had been a near thing. Two injured ANBU shouldn't be trusted to the care of one clearly exhausted teammate...

Good thing he was persuasive.

Kakashi snorted softly and wondered if he could eat another soldier pill yet. The last one was still slipping burning fingers through his system, holding back the walls of sleep. Maybe another hour, he judged. He could last that long.

"Stay here," he muttered to the dogs, knocking one heel back into the door. "'f anyone but Waki tries to come in, eat them."

Hoshika barked a quiet assent. Shouma settled without a noise, licking his paw.

Kakashi shoved himself away from the door, dragging his eyes open, and headed back to his shattered little pack. Tsume looked the same; half asleep and curled into Ryouma's naked chest. Her hospital gown had twisted around her, baring too much leg, but the drugs were keeping her happy.

Ryouma was another story. Kakashi tried to read the dance of expressions flicking over his face and gave up. There was something startled, and something a little appalled, and something that was maybe almost a little comforted... but Kakashi would be damned if he understood any of it.

He crouched down in front of both ninja, bracing himself with a hand against the floor, and tried to pull his thoughts together. "This is very touching," he murmured to Ryouma, "but there's a bed over there getting lonely, and I'm pretty sure the needles hanging next to it are supposed to still be in your wrists."

He slid his free hand under Tsume's shoulder and met Ryouma's eyes. "So how about we get everyone off the floor before a ballistic nurse comes in here and kills me?"

Ryouma nodded. For a moment he couldn't speak; his lips shaped words his throat failed to deliver. When Kakashi pulled Tsume away, slipping his other hand under her hips and lifting her into the air, Ryouma finally found his senses and his voice.

"My drugs're no good. I want whatever she's got."

He pushed himself to his feet and stood wavering between the bed and the wall. His feet were cold on the bare tile, and his pajama pants were absurdly thin and cut a little too short. He shivered, and edged a little closer to the bed.

Tsume was so small. Sharp-edged, with delicate bones stretching the thin skin at wrists and cheekbones and chin. She smiled dreamily up at him, and the white flash of a long canine caught his eye.

"You're wrong," he told her quietly. "I'm not safe. None of us are."

They were shinobi, and that meant strength itself. It meant blood and pain and terror and surviving through all of it. It didn't have to mean not-feeling; Shinobi Rule 25 could drown in a ditch as long as the job got done.

He was a killer, and so were they. Something more than a weapon, less than human, and still together. When he'd given up, they kept going, pushing him on, dragging him past his limits. They were stronger than he was. Smarter. Faster. Better.

Maybe safe was the right word after all.

Ryouma leaned the very edge of his shoulder against Kakashi's, and sighed. "You're both dangerous as hell. Probably kill me before the nurse does."

He didn't have to work terribly hard to manage a smile.

Tsume roused with difficulty, twisting to give Ryouma a half-offended look. "I'm not dang'rous! 'm totally safe." She blinked at him, staring blankly at the missing parts of his tattoo, then straightened out to rest against Kakashi's whipcord chest. "'Least for you guys," she mumbled, and let herself relax in the younger shinobi's arms again.

Kakashi shifted half a step left, taking more of Ryouma's weight against his shoulder. His muscles trembled quietly, protesting the strain of carrying Tsume and bracing the taller ninja after everything he'd asked from them recently. He told them to shut up and stop whining.

Ryouma was smiling. Tsume was about as relaxed as it was possible for a person to be. For a head-rush second, Kakashi nearly staggered under his own relief. He caught himself before he moved--or worse; dropped anyone--and took a breath.

Then he rubbed his thumb gently over Tsume's shoulder, feeling muscle fade into bone. "You," he said quietly, "are insane. Very, very insane. But I appreciate the sentiment."

He glanced left, letting the sharingan slide closed, and memorized the curve of Ryouma's mouth with his own eye. "And you are a special kind of crazy if you think we dragged you all the way home to leave you in the ground," he said, letting the shimmer of a smile flicker behind his mask.

He really needed to get them both on the bed before someone fell over. But for an odd little moment, Kakashi let himself stand and hold up them up. Tsume was warm and sleepy against his chest. Ryouma was solid and strong against his shoulder. It was nice; a breath snatched in the middle of chaos.

He tilted his head and pressed his face against Ryouma's neck, catching scent through the cloth of his mask. Still upset, but not quite so bad. There was a splash of sunshine threading through the acid-toned hurt. "Get on the bed," he mumbled, speaking into skin, "so I can hand Tsume to you. If you could manage that before my arms snap off, that'd be peachy."

"She's not that heavy," Ryouma objected, turning sideways. The backs of his thighs hit the edge of the bed; he dropped onto a tangle of sheets, and spared one hand to sweep an abandoned IV line away. "Course, you're a light-weight yourself..."

He was still trembling. She said safe, and smiled, but if he touched her again--

If she could bear it, he could, too.

He reached up and took her. One hand behind the shoulders, pressing against warm skin through thin cloth. One under the legs, cradling the long smooth lines of her smock-covered thighs. She made a small, warm noise and nestled unexpectedly against his chest. His back hit the pillow; the bedsprings squeaked.

"You gained weight," Ryouma told her, through the first brimming tingles of hysteria.

"Did I?" she nearly purred, curling close as he rocked back. "S'all that hospital food." His scent bloomed around her, sticky sweet, like old coffee at the back of her throat. She petted him, stroking down his bare chest, pressing her face against the hard plane of his pectoral muscles.

It wasn't a good smell. She petted again, trying to soothe. "S'okay. S'okay, Coyot. We're--"

She hesitated, opened an eye, and peered at his chest. "You are not wearin' a shirt." She wasn't sure if that was a protest or a pleased discovery. Her hand rose, fingers tickling at the hollow between his collarbones before sliding down again, over the strips of color suddenly broken off, fresh pink skin, hard muscle, and lines where the tattoo reappeared, as if it were just hidden by flesh-toned bandages.

She tried to tip her head up. It sagged back against his bicep, and she left it there. "You smell better without a shirt."

Ryouma's face made a picture. Kakashi leaned against the bed and tried not to laugh himself apart; it was harder than it should have been, but that was just the exhaustion. He coughed roughly, disguising a chuckle, and nearly lost it completely when Ryouma flicked him a bewildered what do I do? look.

It was funny where you could find humour.

Kakashi managed to catch a breath, tasting the air, and let himself lean again. Ryouma didn't smell unhappy. Confused and a little unsettled, but nothing close to the panic of earlier. He'd be fine for a minute.

"Just don't lose your pants," he advised, "she might get the wrong idea."

Or the right one, he thought suddenly, remembering how Ryouma had talked about her on the riverbank. But there was a time and a place, and half dead in a hospital was definitely not it.

Particularly if Kakashi was still in the room.

He snorted, checked his weapons and gear with an absent wrist flick, and dropped himself bonelessly onto the bed, nudging Ryouma over. It was cramped, but Tsume wasn't a whole lot bigger than Shouma, and she was mostly sprawled on Ryouma anyway.

Ryouma without his shirt and a definite case of cold skin going on. Kakashi reached down and hooked the rumpled sheets with one hand, drawing them up and over the pair. He left himself on the outside, unwilling to get tangled. Judging by how the day was going, he'd need to move quickly at some point soon.

He braced his back against the white-painted steel bedframe, and fished in his armour until he located a tiny medkit; his wrist was still bleeding sluggishly from Shouma's wake up call, and Ryouma's hands were blood-stained.

Kakashi yawned, settled his hip against Ryouma's side, and pointed at the hand closest to him. "Lemme see that?" He grinned a little beneath his mask. "Be a shame for you to get all infected and nasty when you smell so good..."

"'m done with needles," Ryouma said, warningly. "If they want to give me nutrients or whatever, they can damn well go ahead and feed me dinner." But he held out his wrist, and wriggled the other hand free of Tsume's legs. She didn't exactly need the support anymore.

His touch had left no marks, hadn't even brushed skin. He flattened his left hand on the bed beside him, anyway, and hoped vainly that Kakashi wouldn't notice how his right hand was shaking. Maybe Kakashi would be stricken by a sudden fit of epilepsy, too, and in the general seizing his trembling would go unnoticed...

"This smell thing," he said, a little too quickly. "Think we might need Psych to take a look at the inside of your head. Didn't even get my sponge bath, an' you're calling five days of sweat an' blood stink good?"

"The nurses gave you a wash when they put you in your very stylish pyjamas," Kakashi answered, taking Ryouma's hand to balance it on his knee. "For which we were all very grateful. Mostly you smell like cheap soap." And stress giftwrapped in anxiety.

Kakashi studied the fingers trembling beneath his own, and rubbed his thumb absently over the back of Ryouma's hand; he'd only been awake for an hour; all things considered, they were probably lucky he hadn't tried to throw himself out of a window. Or something equally fatal. A case of the shakes didn't mean anything.

It didn't.

"I'm just glad I've finally stopped smelling me," Kakashi continued, tapping his stained armour as he unzipped the tiny medkit. "Try wearing a mask after running in it for eighteen hours and see how happy your life is..."

He found a tiny alcoholic wipe and stripped his gloves off to peel it out of its wrapper. Then, very carefully, he cleaned the dried trails of blood from Ryouma's skin, pausing at the puncture marks left by the needles.

Bandaid, he decided fuzzily, and found a small, circular one that did the trick. Ryouma was still shaking, but he wasn't pulling away. Kakashi rubbed the back of his hand again, calloused thumb tracing the branching pathways of veins beneath skin, and tried to work out what he needed to do next.

"Other hand," he decided finally.

"I could find out what kind of soap it is," Ryouma offered generously, stretching his left arm over Tsume's back to present his wrist to Kakashi. "Buy you both a carton of it for your birthdays." He paused. "First time I met both of you, there was washing involved. It really is the soap, isn't it?"

Tsume practically fell forward, her face in his armpit. She sniffed, shoved herself back, and looked up at him rather unimpressed. "Definitely not the soap. Maybe you should shower less."

Kakashi let his head fall back against the wall and laughed quietly. "Lucky you," he told Ryouma, giving the ceiling a slightly unfocused look. "You're nose crack. We should bottle you and sell you. We'd make millions."

But first there were more blood issues. Kakashi shook his head and set about cleaning Ryouma's other hand, using his nails to scrape away dried blood when the wipe failed him. It seemed so important to do it perfectly...

He was making Ryouma's skin red.

Kakashi stopped and blinked hard, then roused himself and dug out a few more bandaids. When that was done he tried to work out the next step. He needed to be doing something...

Keep Tsume awake.

Well, she was talking. That was probably a good sign. He packed the tiny medi-kit back into his armour and checked her pulse anyway; it was slow, very slow, but steady. He could barely read her chakra. He brushed her hair back carefully and glanced over the bandages wrapped around her temple and ear. No redness, no staining. No rot stench. Also a good sign.

"Waki-sensei's coming to check her out," he murmured, leaning back again. "Then... I don't know. Sleep, I guess." He glanced sideways at Ryouma, searching for words that weren't unsubtle or pride damaging. "You okay? You're shaking."

Close enough.

"Am not," Ryouma said automatically. His fingers jigged on top of the rumpled bed sheet, bare centimeters from Tsume's side. Kakashi raised a steely grey eyebrow. Ryouma scowled, flattened his hands on either side of him, and hitched himself up on his elbows. Tsume slid a little down his chest before she caught herself groggily. He wished she'd move. When her bandaged forehead rubbed his skin, he found it hard to breathe.

"I was in shock," he said. "Injured. Tortured. I thought I killed one of my teammates. Now I find out I just mutilated both of 'em." Kuromaru's ear had been half-eaten away before Ryouma had amputated the rest of it, and he'd never given Tsume any medical care at all... What lay beneath the bandages? How far had it spread, before help came?

Why hadn't they told him?

"I can think of more reasons, if you want 'em," he said, very low. "But that'll go for starting on. Dammit, woman, why didn't you--"

He broke off, panting, trembling. What could he have done?

Taken her eye out, too?

He needed to be more awake right now. Kakashi slid his fingers slowly around his bitten wrist, locked his grip, and squeezed. Pain jolted up his arm, startling a quicker heartbeat in his chest. He blinked hard and sat up a little straighter.

Ryouma smelled worse than charred flowers and blistered bone now; a scent rolling off his skin Kakashi couldn't even put a name to. It was just misery, scraped up and turned inwards.

And Kakashi couldn't think of anything to say. He searched his thoughts, riffling through the mind everyone said was brilliant, and came up horribly blank. The jutsu that had taken Kuromaru's eye had been an accident, but he hadn't been there to see it. He didn't know how much Ryouma was to blame; if the whole thing had been preventable. If Tsume should still have half her face.

Not helpful, Kakashi thought, and scrubbed his hands over his own face. He needed to think.

His head felt stuffed with cotton.

When had he taken that last soldier pill? He remembered thinking he needed to wait an hour, but when had that been?

Long enough, he decided, and fumbled another one out of his belt. If he had a heart attack, at least that'd give Ryouma something else to focus on. He shoved his fingers under his mask, only belatedly realizing the older ninja must have put it back on for him, and cracked the pill between his teeth.

The new wash of energy made his heart beat double-time, but it woke him up. Kakashi took a sharp breath and tried to get his head back into working order.

Inspiration utterly failed to strike.

"Well," he said finally, "I gave an eye for a guy that died on me. Least everyone here's still breathing. That's..." he waved an inarticulate hand, trying to shape the words from thin air. "Important. And I think Tsume's already forgiven you." He glanced at the Inuzuka curled against Ryouma's bare chest and felt his thoughts splinter. "Or you're just really comfy."

Tsume mumbled something under her breath. Kakashi slouched sideways, breathing through the bright burn of false chakra, and put his arm unthinkingly around Ryouma's tense shoulders, reaching to catch one of his hands with careful fingers. "Maybe forgive her, too?" He focused on not slurring his words; it was harder than it should have been. "Forgive us, I guess. For not telling you. Then no one needs to be guilty..."

No one was listening. Possibly because she wasn't talking very loudly. Tsume took a deep, deep breath, trying to summon the chakra needed to speak. "Didn' wan' you to panic. Couldn' do nothin', you said. An' y' so hurt anyway..."

Her voice drifted off, lingering between her lips for a moment before it was gone. Then her brain wound back up, and she started talking. "An' he couldn' think. We burned it, an' he couldn' think. I had to think, an' if you smelled like worry then I would worry an'... but if you jus' smelled like you..." It made things easier. If she could pretend it wasn't there, despite the pain in her face, it was better. She could focus on other things.

She drifted for a moment, hand curling against the strong muscles underneath her. "'Sides, you burned it out, an' I put it back. Slid right down the pathways, right into his eye... shouldn't have done the jutsu. 'S a rookie mistake." She shook her head, pressing into warm skin, burrowing under the blanket as if it could hide her from the world. "Stupid genin mistake," she murmured again.

Forgiving himself, Ryouma thought bleakly, would be a lot harder.

But Kakashi's arm around his shoulders and Tsume's hand pressed against his ribs, just under his heart, might make it possible. Their bodies echoed their words, reaching out, opening up. Pulling him back.

Rescuing him, like they'd done before.

"Thought I was the one supposed to be making the rookie mistakes," he murmured. His right hand was tangled with Kakashi's; his left still lay flat, chased with tremors. He closed his fingers and slowly opened them again. His skin was clean, reddened with scrubbing. The nails were short, neatly trimmed, gleaming pink. The nurses must have taken extra care with his hands, when they'd washed him.

He'd always taken care. He could probably take a little more.

"I'm a quick learner, though," he said. Barely breathing, barely thinking, he brushed his palm over Tsume's short, coarse hair, grazing the bandage with his thumb. One stroke. Two. She'd petted him as if it would soothe him. He could do the same for her.

"Never make the same mistake twice."

The tremors were beginning to fade.

Kakashi took a quiet breath, letting it trickle out through his nose, and relaxed a fraction. The air tasted sweeter now, just a little. Tsume's scent had warmed, Ryouma's had calmed. And more importantly, Ryouma was touching back. Touching Tsume. Refusing to flinch from his own hands.

"Quick learner," Kakashi echoed quietly, feeling the words slip out of his mouth without any real thought behind them. A tired smile twisted under his mask, backed by a completely inappropriate laugh. He bit the sound off before it got far.

Ryouma was a quick learner. Kakashi had a riverbank memory, filled with sunlight, that attested to that.

But now was probably not the time to say that.

He tightened his grip on Ryouma's fingers a little, feeling shivers ease beneath his hand, and watched Tsume relax beneath a careful touch, ice-blue eyes sliding closed. Her breathing settled down, slow and steady.

"Don' you dare sleep," Kakashi muttered, and wrapped his free hand over her sheet-covered shoulder, squeezing gently. "Doc'll hang me if you wake up yellin'..."

It was getting increasingly hard to focus, but that he remembered. He slid down a little, feeling warmth seep through armour and cloth as the narrow bed's two other occupants pressed against his flank, and let his head fall sideways. He could rest against his own arm, still curled up around Ryouma's shoulders, and keep an eye on the door...

"Don' let her sle'p," he mumbled, grabbing at the soldier pill's chakra and throwing it against the towering walls of looming unconsciousness. "Or me. Need to--to--" A yawn almost drowned the last word. "Guard."

The door banged open. A mental patient stood there, judging from the pajamas and lab coat combination, glaring at them all from skin-heavy eyes, white hair frazzled around his head like an errant halo. "You. Do you know what I was doing all night long?"

The Inuzuka whimpered and turned her face into a broad chest.

"I was overseeing your chakra surgery. And then your dog's chakra surgery. And then do you know what happened?"

She mumbled something.

"You woke up early! Almost eighteen hours early! I'm putting this in your chart. Non-compliance with being comatose and unconscious." He bustled into the room, stopping when the two large dogs growled at him unhappily. "Bad dogs! No growling!" he grumbled, then felt around his coat pockets. No newspaper. But he did have tablets.

He pulled one out, brushing the lint off of it, and peered down. Candy-coated anti-histamines. Good enough. He tossed it to the dog, then found another--penicillin--and tossed that to the other dog. In those doses, it wouldn't hurt them.

That was also a good way to wake up.

Kakashi bolted forwards, false chakra surging as he pulled his hands free from Ryouma and Tsume both and crouched in front of them, braced at the foot of the bed. Steel glinted between his fingers.

Then his head got in the game and registered doctor.

More specifically, Waki-sensei.

"Oh gods," Kakashi mumbled quietly, and flicked the blade away. He didn't move back. "Can you not drug my dogs? And quit yelling. There are sick people around, genius."

Waki glanced down at the dogs. One--he couldn't tell which, they all looked the same to him--was licking the anti-histamine, smearing pink coating all over the floor. Waki waved a dismissive hand. "Sugar-pills." Then he peered at the bristling ninja. "T&I paged me. They want their glare back. I have a scrip here for it somewhere..." He searched through his pockets again, came up with a fuzzy, and shuffled over to hand it to the man.

The man took it with an incredulous look. Waki turned away, focusing on his real patient. "Why are you awake?"

"I hate you," she mumbled.

"Good reason. Look up." He pulled her chin up, checking her eyes, then flashed his penlight into them. The pupils contracted at different speeds. "Hm," he said with vast annoyance. He checked her pulse, then pressed his stethoscope against the upper part of her chest, bared by the V of the hospital gown, and ignored that she batted at him. "Hm." He hung it around his neck again and leaned down, speaking loudly. "Your gynecologist was very excited to hear that you came to see her."

The woman whimpered and buried her face in the man's chest again.

"Yes, yes, good choice. If I were going to hide against someone, I'd choose the one that didn't look like he was going to fall over, too. How does your face feel?"

She lifted a hand and brushed claws over the white padding, as if surprised that it was there. It snagged. Waki pulled her fingers away and untangled the threads of gauze.

"Obviously, you're still high on morphine. Good, good." He leaned down and shouted. "You're going to pass out again soon." Then he straightened and looked at the two men critically. "Kuromaru is not stable enough to move. But there are some..." he paused. "Sanity concerns in keeping them separate. So, we're going to take you all there. It will be like a ride. IV's and tube things and all of it." He waved his hands in the air. "Exciting."

If Kakashi hadn't met Waki before, he would've given himself a discreet pinch just to make sure he hadn't actually drifted off with his eye open. But some things were really too bizarre to be a dream. Even one of his dreams.

"Exciting," he muttered, and moved to put himself between the doctor and his makeshift pack. He planted a firm hand on Waki's accordion chest, pushing the man back a step. Chakra meshed with willpower were the only things keeping him on his feet, which meant he didn't want anyone too close. Not even the medics.

He glanced at Ryouma, noting the shellshock even as the man focused on Tsume, still curled into his chest, and braced himself back against the bed. At least the bed was solid.

"Who's 'we'?" he asked, facing Waki again and trying for coherent. "An' how far d'you plan on dragging them?" Carting two injured ANBU through the open hallways, where anyone could get them, just didn't seem smart. "I h've a knife," Kakashi muttered, making his point clear.

Very deliberately, Waki reached out, placed his hand flat on the ninja's chest, and pushed back.

Not before the man grabbed his wrist, but the ninja still sat down hard on the bed. Both dogs stood up and slunk closer.

Waki's eyebrows rose as he took a step to catch his balance. "Very dangerous. As for 'we', I mean me and my hallucinations. They're amazing. Really. You'll see them, you'll smell them, you might even touch them. But don't worry! They're not actually nurses helping to push the cot down the hall while you three continue your love-in. In fact, we're not going anywhere at all. You're safe in here. Just lie back and think of Konoha. The motion of the ocean is all you're feeling. Now let go of my arm."

"How come I'm not getting any of the fun drugs?" Ryouma complained. He wrapped his arm around Tsume's shoulders and forced himself a bit more vertical. "Tsume gets morphine, Kakashi gets soldier pills, doctor gets--heroin and speed? Crack for sure."

Kakashi and Tsume seemed to know the man, at least, though apparently none of them took much pleasure in the acquaintance. Ryouma watched humor twinkling in the rheumy green eyes, and figured maybe he had a chance.

"They both need beds--this one's getting a bit narrow. I need coffee. Prefer my drugs oral, not intraveneous." He kicked at the tangled sheets, freed his foot, and hooked his ankle around Kakashi's waist, tugging him back. "If you can hook us up with that, we'll be all kinds of grateful."

His wide, entirely shameless grin hinted at exactly what form of payment that gratitude would take.

"Crack--HA! I must, to deal with these two. Shh--don't tell." He dug around in a pocket, feeling into the corners, and pulled out a pill. He eyed it, tasted it with the tip of his tongue, and decided it was a sugar pill. He handed it to the large man who'd yanked the genius back and forced him to let go of Waki's wrist.

"You," he told the man solemnly, "are my favorite patient. If you are very nice, then when these two give you a migraine, I'll give you vicodin. Now, my hallucinations will come in here, wheel us all to the dog's room, and you can each have your own bed."

"Don' want one," the Inuzuka mumbled, burrowing down as if she could crawl into the man's skin.

"I know." Waki leaned down close to her ear and bellowed, "That's because you're dog-people, and there's something fundamentally wrong with you."

He straightened up again and told the half-naked man, "When I was in ANBU, we knew better than to crawl into bed with them." Confidingly he mouthed, "Fleas." He leaned to yell at the woman again. "Have you taken care of that little crab problem?"

"hate you," she growled back.

"We should go before the gynecologist gets here. I signed you all up for pelvic exams." Waki turned and shuffled purposefully past the dogs and toward the door.

Even geniuses can reach a limit.

Of course, doctors, gravity, and teammates ganging up on them didn't help. Kakashi hit the bed, felt Ryouma's leg hook round his waist, heard the conversation spin into some dizzy nightmare about drugs, dogs, and gynecology, and decided he'd had enough.

They were in Konoha. There were two shepherds and several heavy-set guards around. None of the nurses smelled suspicious. And Waki might be crazy, but it was only in the ways that made sense.

If any assassins wanted to get in and murder them, well, they'd have damn well earned the privilege.

Kakashi summoned up all his remaining energy, gave the one brave nurse poking her head around the door a warning glare on final principle, and half-crawled, half-dragged himself up the bed. His chakra caved in on itself, burning down to a bare flutter near his core. He crashed flat on his stomach next to Ryouma, threw his arm over the older man and Tsume both, and shoved his face into the pillow.

"'f anyone comes 'nywhere near me with a pelvic wh'tever," he mumbled, "'m gonna bite 'em. Tsume, don' fall 'sleep..."

Tsume was vaguely aware of the annoying doctor from the crotch-sniffing regions of a rectal splinter calling out orders. Then Ryouma moving around, inanimate objects piled on the bed on top of and around them, and movement.

She kept her eyes closed, dozing against warm skin that smelled more than perfect, dragging herself awake every few minutes as unconsciousness loomed.

Then she smelled her familiar. She jerked awake, eyes opening, and was suddenly aware that she couldn't sense him-- "Kuromaru?"

"Yes, yes. He's here. Just there," Waki said impatiently.

A quick look around showed her familiar in human form, so still he was almost dead, chest rising and falling with the beeping from a machine and tubes snaking down his throat taped in place.

"There, dear," someone female cooed. "Let's get you onto your own bed, shall we?"

She tightened her grip--weak as it was--on Ryouma and tried to curl closer. "'m fine here."

"Waki-sensei says you can sleep, sweetie. That it would probably be best. You won't even notice, and he'll still be here when you wake up."

Hands tugged at her. Tsume slitted one eye and growled, as deep in her throat as she could.

Kakashi barely paid attention to the swift transfer from room to room. He felt the nurses toss things onto the bed around them--IV lines, more blankets, things that smelled medicinal--and heard the tack-tack-tack of dog claws on linoleum as Shouma and Hoshika kept pace, but the feelings were distant. All that really mattered was the small curving shape he could feel tucked under his elbow, breathing slow and steady, and the muscled shoulder next to his face. If he turned his head slightly to the right, he found warm skin to breath against...

The world drifted away for a moment. When it came back, strong hands were sliding under his arms, gripping his armour. Not Ryouma's hands.

"C'mon, lad. You'll feel much better when you can stretch out in your own bed. Up we get..." The voice was deep and male. Callouses rasped over his skin.

Kakashi tensed, arm locking over both people pressed against his side. "No. Lemme stay--need'ta guard--"

"Don't be foolish, shinobi. You're in no fit state to guard anyone. Now let go of your teammates and be sensible." The hands tightened, gripping his armour straps and lifting. "You'll only be in the bed next to them. It's barely five feet away."

Kakashi's chest came off the bed. Exhaustion twisted into something else. He reached back with his free hand, hearing a growl rumble to his right, and found a wrist. His fingernails dug in deeply between stretched tendons. "Lemme go."

Ryouma really could have used an adrenaline rush. His body refused to give him one. He fought his way semi-upright with more of a wallow than a surge, seized Kakashi's wrist in turn before he gave the male nurse permanent nerve damage, and divided his best attempt at a forbidding glare between the burly man and the middle-aged woman tugging at Tsume.

Its effectiveness was badly undermined by the glimpse he'd caught of tan skin and writhing seals. Kuromaru was still in human form. Battered, bandaged, breathing through a tube. Ryouma's throat ached.

"She bites," he told the woman, forcing his gaze back to her. He couldn't quite focus properly on her kind, lined face; his vision swam oddly, and his eyes burned. "She'll bite you. And he'll--fall over on you. Look, just squish the beds together or something, can't you? They've got this thing about smell. And--"

If I fall asleep, I don't want to wake up alone.

He blinked hard, and rubbed at his eyes. "I could do with that Vicodin now," he told the ancient doctor pottering around the room. "Or, better yet, a soldier pill."

His eyes slid back to Kuromaru. He jerked them away again. Tsume was okay, and she seemed satisfied that her dog was okay, too. There was nothing he could do. Not even apologize.

He's missing half his face.

Kakashi's hold on the medic was based more on sudden, violent desperation than it was on strength. Ryouma's grip around his wrist, weak though it was, still made his fingers jerk and slacken. The medic's other hand snapped down, using the flash of respite to peel Kakashi's fingers back.

Exhausted to the point of seeing things, Kakashi could only manage a feeble twist and a growl that was more of a whimper. In his mind's eye, wounds spilled like oil over Ryouma's skin. Over Tsume's face. Flesh peeling back and blistering away. That wasn't real. He yanked at his hand; the medic let go and stepped sharply back.

"Three in a bed it is, then," he said, apparently deciding to take things in stride. The nurse attending to Tsume murmured something vaguely disapproving, but relinquished her hold on the Inuzuka. Waki was talking in the background.

Kakashi had already stopped paying attention. His face was still against Ryouma's shoulder; his body rolling automatically closer. His arm locked tighter around Tsume, hand fisting into rumpled sheets and thin hospital clothes, trapping all three of them neatly together.

Ryouma smelled like misery again.

"Don'." Kakashi didn't have the strength left to open his eyes. He just pressed closer, rubbing his face blindly against warm skin. Twisting his wrist in Ryouma's hand, trying to touch back. "Don' do tha'. Need t'... need t'think good thoughts..."

Waki watched with vast annoyance as Tsume roused again, summoning up the dregs of her willpower to see her through it. "S'fine," she murmured. "He smells fine. Jus' need some time, s'all. S'okay..."

"Yes, yes," Waki said, wishing they'd all sleep. "Everyone is fine. We're all here. You--" he pointed to the male nurse, "--and you--" the female nurse. "Get those beds and put the sides down. Slide them up along this bed. Keep the dog in reach! No, no, not there! Over here!"

"What dog?" he heard the woman ask.

With great exasperation, he pointed to the human male hooked up to wires and tubes. "That one!" Did he have to explain everything?

The Inuzuka opened her eyes to stare around blearily as their bed was moved yet again, but in the end there were two beds crushed together, within an arm's length of the comatose dog. The large man kept chattering, asking for coffee or pills, gaze flickering to and from the beast.

He'd have to come to terms with that on his own. Waki wasn't a psychologist.

"No coffee. No pills," he said, pausing when all was said and done and the nurses had left. He reached out with one age-spotted hand to check the boy's pulse. Then he glanced over the Inuzuka and the genius, clipped a chakra monitor to each of them, and stepped back.

All three adults were crowded into the double bed. The dark haired man was on the bottom, bolstering the other two, as strong as slate and just as fragile. Tsume had slipped into unconsciousness again, cradled on a broad chest spattered with the gore of a half-decimated dragon. One of her hands rested on his stomach, curling gently into a paw. The silver haired man was on the other side, long slim arm reaching across all of them to anchor everyone in place, even in sleep. To keep them all where they belonged, for the time being.

To one side, machines beeped and hummed, and with the hiss of a respirator the dog-man's chest rose and fell.

Waki nodded once. "The Inuzuka are a pesky clan," he said to the only conscious guardian in the room. "Enjoy the quiet. They'll be in shortly." Then, muttering about pills and dogs and chakra amputees, he turned and tottered his way from the room.

It wasn't quiet, exactly. Tsume snored a little in her sleep, and Kakashi's breath rasped through his mask. The dogs paced, claws ticking restlessly on the floor, and eventually curled up together between the beds. Machines beeped softly as they kept Kuromaru breathing. Footsteps tapped briskly down the corridor outside the closed door. Somewhere down the hall, a woman wept.

It wasn't quiet. Silence clogged Ryouma's ears anyway, thick and heavy, laced with the slow rhythms of sleeping breath. He caught himself counting--first Kuromaru, then Tsume, then Kakashi, because he couldn't focus on more than one of them at once--and stopped. But there was nothing else to listen to, and no way not to hear it...

Sleep tugged at him. He shook himself awake, spent thirty seconds entertaining himself with a fantasy about clambering out of bed and sneaking down to the cafeteria for coffee, and almost drifted off again in the middle of it. This time, he clenched his jaw. Pain speared through the fog of exhaustion, clearing his vision and quickening his heart. Tsume turned her head against his chest, nuzzling closer. The soft gauze of the bandages rubbed against his skin.

"Nightmares'd have a ways to go to make this worse," Ryouma whispered. "But I betcha they could do it."

An arm's length away, Kuromaru's respirator rasped a steady agreement. Ryouma set his jaw, ground the dull throb into a stabbing ache, and stayed awake.