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The Weight of the World [Ryouma, Hayate, Katsuko][Jan. 6th, 2009|07:47 pm]

fallen_ryouma
[[Takes place 8 days after Blood Will Make It Right and 5 days after Sunburst]]

The crutches fell victim to a katon jutsu in the hospital courtyard on the fifteenth of March, exactly ten minutes after Ryouma's examining doctor told him he could resume training with only a supportive brace for his knee. He marched back to HQ without limping at all, changed from jeans and a hoodie into shorts and a tee, grabbed a water bottle and a towel, and slid down the banister for two full flights of stairs. The teenage agent he met on the first floor landing looked shocked, and then mildly envious.

"I'm supposed to stay off my feet," Ryouma told him.

"Uh," the boy said. "Right. You go ahead and do that, senpai."

Not rookie, Ryouma noticed. Not even though the kid had probably worn the Hunter's mask a year longer than he had. Was the deference due to age, height, injury? Or just to the mistaken assumption that the only ones insane enough to slide down the banisters in ANBU HQ were the veterans who'd already cracked?

He took the last flight down to the basement the normal way, just in case.

At this time of day, in the lazy hours between lunch and dinner, the weight room was almost empty. The two ANBU using the equipment, a bear-like man doing chin-ups at the far wall and a woman performing bicep curls in front of a mirror, ignored Ryouma with the totality of athletes utterly absorbed in their own work. That was fine with Ryouma. He hadn't managed even a light workout in over two weeks, unless you counted crutch warfare as exercise, and his body was crying out for the joyful strain.

So he pushed himself, as hard and as fast as his weakened muscles would allow. He'd lost strength as well as mass, in the ordeal of his torture and recovery; he started off at his pre-mission weight levels anyway, and forced himself not to back down.

At some point, the woman left. A little while later the man followed her. Ryouma moved on to the bench press. His tee-shirt was soaked with sweat, and his water bottle empty; his muscles burned with fatigue. He added three hundred-pound plates to the bar, anyway, eased down onto the bench, and started lifting.

By the tenth rep, he wondered if maybe he should have looked for a spotter.

By the fifteenth, he knew he'd been a fool.
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