"Delightful to see you again as well, Inuzuka-san," Haruichi replied sharply, sparing no soft words for either of them - even if he'd spent the better part of the last fortnight wondering if they'd survive, or more to the point, be glad that they had. The very newly qualified doctor (there was a badge clipped to his labcoat which had never been there before) lifted one hand from a deep white pocket and beckoned them both forwards as he turned and strode more fully into the room.

He didn't give any outward sign that he remembered so clearly the panic he'd caused them, or that his nightmares had superimposed their hurts onto his beloved, but there was evidence of those stresses in the shadows that had formed under his eyes as of late.

Eyes which had been cautiously, meticulously and repeatedly checking this room from corner to corner for the last twenty minutes to be sure that every seal was correctly placed for what he was about to attempt. Cutting chakra paths was easy if you were a Hyuuga; you learned how to do it as a child with the jyuuken, but reconnecting them was the preserve of a very skilled few - most of whom were also very dead.

Haruichi pushed that thought away, and regarded Tsume and Kuromaru with a healthy amount of caution. He had no idea what they thought of him after the severing, and he would have rather not been forced to find out. Unfortunately a medic - a doctor - had to see the patients in his care, especially if he was entirely responsible for repairing damage done by his own treatments.

"I'm sure you can guess why we're here. Can I put some faith in the idea that you won't start in on a screaming fit or believe I'm trying to kill you this time?"

Around them, the white walls hummed with energy held in silent stasis - and Haruichi was quite aware that this time Hatake Kakashi wasn't around to pin down either her, or a fully-fanged Kuromaru so that he could do what had to be done. Or so that they wouldn't go for his throat. A part of him was still concerned that they'd never trust him to do this, or anything for them, after the last time... and it was a concern that grew louder now.

"Well," Tsume drawled, inching warily into the room, "it's not like you can sever any more chakra links." She paused, considered, and corrected, "Any more important ones."

Kuromaru was still in the hall, his tail tucked between his legs, the white bandage standing clear against his dark fur. He was getting white hairs in his black coat, both across the scars of his muzzle and on his chest. His summer coat would have even more white; over the years, his stomach had turned pale, though most people couldn't see that.

And thinking about the patterns of his fur wasn't getting either of them closer to being whole, again. She took the first step into the overly blank room, then a second. "Kuromaru, get your tail in here."

He whined and slunk inside, keeping to the walls, a great hulking shadow looking for anything dark.

It smelled... funny. Like a lightning fire long burned out. Lightning fire and Hyuuga, that was. She eyed the medic--no, doctor--and felt utterly naked under that pale gaze. Others could sense her chakra was low. He could see what, exactly, was wrong. He could see her pathways twisted and snarled and useless, could see the scarring that others just felt. He knew how truly powerless she was, isolated from her familiar.

He was supposed to help. She found herself tucking her chin anyway, everything she'd ever learned about the dangers of Hyuuga bristling at her spine. Not that it mattered now. He'd done all the damage he could. He was supposed to help. She took another wary step forward, knowing she looked more like a cornered dog than a ninja and unable to stop. He wasn't much taller than she was--a single handspan, perhaps--and slight. His black hair was cropped short, annoyance pulling the sleek lines of his face taut.

Kuromaru reached the other wall and slunk forward on his belly, stopping only when he got to the boots beneath the white lab coat. He sniffed them carefully.

It was impossible that he'd remember Haruichi. He'd been unconscious. But scent did funny things. Tsume held her breath and hoped the medic didn't move too fast. He might come away unscathed, but watching Kuromaru bolt off in terror wasn't something she wanted to see repeated.

This was entirely pathetic, and Haruichi was hardly happy to know he'd played a part in the state these two were in. Though he reminded himself, with a sharp jab right to his own wits, that they'd be dead if he hadn't been there and they'd all do well to remember it. Triage was an ugly business, requiring the ruthlessness expected of any ANBU, and that was enough to say on the matter.

He looked away from Tsume and her creeping wariness and down to her cringing companion. Kuromaru was sniffing at his sneakers, and Haruichi sighed quietly despite himself.

"It's alright, Inuzuka-san," he murmured lowly to the dog, lowering a hand slowly for the dog to sniff if he wanted. Pika considered it good manners, so hopefully Kuromaru would too. "You'll be fine in an hour or so."

Kuromaru pulled back hesitantly, then crept forward again and lifted his muzzle to nose at loosely curled fingers. Female and soap and girl-dog-spayed. He turned his head, whuffling between fingers to the palm, callused but not like Tsume's. His tail swayed briefly behind him, tongue flicking out over skin in a hesitant offer of friendship. His single eye lifted to the man, head tipping in exaggeration as he tried to compensate for his altered vision. "Kuromaru-san," he rumbled, deciding that maybe this man was all right, since he'd remembered the -san suffix. Most people didn't.

Except... he still smelled... familiar. "I don't know you." It was somewhere between his usual growl and a confused whine, and his whole head swiveled between Tsume and the medic.

"Hyuuga-san came and got us," Tsume told him.

He stepped forward slowly again, giving the man a thorough sniff-over, starting with the feet and working up, straightening slowly as he shoved the coat out of his way, inching around to the man's front rather than side. If Kuromaru stretched, with all four feet on the ground, he could just about reach Tsume's collarbones. He could only make it to mid-chest with the Hyuuga, but it was high enough to get a quick whiff of breath--some sort of roughage and underlying toothpaste--and much more than he normally needed.

It didn't, quite, trigger any memories. Pain, he thought, and the smell of blood... He checked the medic's hands again, but no, no blood there. Just in his head.

Kuromaru plopped his butt on the ground and twisted his face sideways to peer at the man. "You're gonna fix us?" His single ear rose, peaking, and the bandages across the hole that was his other ear shifted over fur. "'Cause it's a lot harder to open doors with my chakra funny. And get in and out the window. And hear people coming. Or see them coming." His wide brow furrowed. "Or get food from the cafeteria when I can't take human-shape..." Then his ear flicked back, gaze dropping as he continued in an unhappy mutter, "And I don't think Hoshika will like me all bandaged up like this, or with a bunch of holes in my face." They'd been playing the bandages/no-bandages game for days, now, putting them on or taking them off depending on how self-conscious Kuromaru was feeling.

Behind him, Tsume had relaxed and leaned against the now-closed door, arms folded across her chest, watching her familiar. It was easier than watching the Hyuuga, after all.

Good gods, the things he did for the patients. Haruichi managed not to squirm while Kuromaru snuffled at him, but it was a close thing when the huge dog sat down in front of him and actually spoke.

Just as well he had some experience with talking canines, or else he'd be starting to wonder if the job was getting to him. It took a moment's concentration to follow the rumble and grumble of the huge dog's voice, human words from a canine mouth, but Haruichi managed it.

"Yes. I'm going to repair your chakra coils, Inu--Kuromaru-san." He'd been invited to use the giant dog's own name, so Haruichi thought it best to do so. Especially when the invitation had passed so many large teeth to be made. Haruichi lifted his licked hand (don't wipe it on your lab coat, it's only dog drool, you don't have to be neurotically tidy at the cost of offending a gigantic ninken...) and beckoned Tsume closer with a small gesture. "This room was specially prepared for the procedure, so if you'll both stand here and here," he pointed to two spots on the floor - near the middle of the room - which to them would look no different than the rest. To Haruichi, however, they were swimming with chakra beneath the white surface, as was the spot he took up to form an equilateral triangle with them.

"This won't hurt, but given the... distress the notion of this sort of procedure caused last time, the fuuinjutsu specialists came up with a way for you to see what's happening. Do you need anything before we start?"

He was still using the '-san' suffix. Whether he was just overly polite or knew that much about Inuzuka--which Tsume doubted--was debatable, but it made Kuromaru happy. And anything that made Kuromaru happy made Tsume happy, so...

Strange little Hyuuga, with the tattooed green across his forehead plain as day. He smelled wary. As she stepped away from the wall, crossing the floor to where he'd gestured, she wondered if that was because he didn't know what he was doing, or if there was another reason.

"You weren't trying to put them back together last time," Tsume muttered under her breath, taking up an uneasy stance. As for whether or not she needed anything... Pain had been such an overriding factor before, and then drugs, that she couldn't remember what it had been like. Just the fear that he was going to rip apart their chakra centers and leave them helpless and catatonic.

Now, given his scent, she wondered if there was something she should be worried about. She couldn't very well ask if this was going to hurt with Kuromaru standing there, though. Or maybe she could. He was a big boy.

"Is there anything we should know? They put us under for all the other chakra... things." Surgeries, she supposed. That seemed a little creepy.

Kuromaru spoke with great exasperation. "This isn't going to make me weak again, is it?"

Eyes moving between the two of them, Haruichi lifted his fingers into a crane seal and shook his head slightly. "I doubt it. On both counts," he replied, though there was a chance he himself might not be feeling so great once this was done. He closed his eyes. "Though in the interests of frankness..." and not getting his head bitten off "...you both should know this kind of thing hasn't been done since before I was born."

Which was pretty much all there was to say on the matter, so Haruichi activated his byakugan behind closed eyes and released the seal he'd been holding. There was a little burst of refined chakra that hovered in the air for a moment, and then plunged the whole room into darkness.

It was entirely possible that Tsume and Kuromaru hadn't noticed that there were no lightbulbs or halogen strips in the room they had entered, nor that the shadows cast by their bodies fell faint and counter to the norm. The white walls themselves had been the source of illumination, even and clear from end to end. Now that the light was gone utter darkness permeated everything the two of them could see.

But it wasn't so with Haruichi, whose hands were flitting through seals like the beats of a hummingbird's wings, and who needed no light to see what a Hyuuga's true sight could find. After ten seconds of silence, during which the build of chakra was near palpable in the very air, he lifted his pale hands - framed that crane seal again - and suddenly the air was springing lines of green throughout it like grass on dark soil. Three circles, equally spaced and sized, appeared around the feet of each of the room's occupants in turn, and a webwork of angular lines began to interconnect them along the floor. A glittering green cryptography of lines, waiting for power and commands to move along them.

The green glow cast upwards was strong enough to illuminate everybody's faces, not that the physical surface of the body was where Haruichi's attention was any longer. His hands shimmered pale violet-blue, and his eyes now focussed on the stunted gnarl of chakra paths that stood alone in each of the Inuzuka's places.

"Going to start now," he said quietly. "Just hold still." He had to choose the right place to start...

Tsume didn't have time to react to learning that no one alive had done this before the room went dark. If she hadn't been busy bracing for the unknown, she'd have had a few words to say. They probably would have started with her own brand of insult and degraded from there, so perhaps the darkness was a boon. The eerie green light wasn't exactly soothing, turning them all to under-lit horror movie stars. Her pupils dilated swiftly, and the strange not-light didn't reflect in her or her familiar's eyes, leaving them dark shapes with faint lines.

Chakra lines, she realized, and looked down.

The ran in smooth liquid trails through the inky black of her body, warping and stretching out where normal pathways would travel upward--only to stop suddenly, bluntly, twisting back on themselves and connecting in ugly patches to pathways they shouldn't naturally connect to.

Amputated and re-connected suddenly took on a new meaning. Touching her chakra was like biting into tin-foil, Raidou had said, looking like he was ready to vomit. She understood.

Standing on the other disk, Kuromaru whined. He looked very alone. Instinctively she reached for him. Not with her arms, but with her chakra. It lurched through her body as uncoordinated as it had been since they'd split, and the pale glow brightened along all the lines of broken and patched pathways. In surprise she looked up, and saw Kuromaru's do the same.

The space between them remained a blackened void. Each of them locked in their own body, powerless, helpless, as neither had been since cubs.

Any Hyuuga could look at their chakra pathways. Any Hyuuga could see the clan secrets that allowed the Inuzuka their jutsu. Any Hyuuga could trace the path of chakra from human to familiar, understanding in an eyeblink how the pathway worked--and how to use it against them. Any Hyuuga could sever the links, making both human and canine nearly useless. Only one Hyuuga could put them back together.

Her gaze flicked to Haruichi, his own chakra bright and perfect. Smooth, sleek lines spun through his body with a quicksliver glow, sharp and graceful. If he couldn't fix them...

She didn't know whether to fear him or hate him. Kuromaru whined again.

After three long minutes of strategizing and preparing himself, Haruichi had chosen a way forward. The other medics at the hospital had strictured that the two Inuzuka not be fully restored to their original bonds out of concern that there was no way to know if Kuromaru was entirely free of Tousaki's jutsu; which they had all decided meant not reconnecting the seven core chakra points they shared. This would give them the fullest sense of reconnection to one another possible, but prevent them from either performing ninjutsu or from exchanging chakra in amounts that would redistribute the rot if it flared up again. They hoped.

Haruichi had argued repeatedly against doing anything to jeapordize them right now, including this entire procedure, but the hospital medic nins had convinced themselves (and more to the point, Tsume and Kuromaru) that the risk of Tousaki's rot jutsu persisting in Kuromaru's system was slight enough to be overwhelmed by the benefits of rejoining the two of them. Nothing was ever so simple, in Haruichi's highly cynical worldview, but once he'd been told that the Inuzuka were promised their chakra would be linked together once again, there was nothing to say or do. Guilt bettered him, and not for the first time.

Along with the memory of their ravaged bodies lying limp in that winter field, Haruichi still held the picture in his mind of the order in which he'd snapped one hundred and twenty-three lines of chakra between the two of them. However, now it was more than a matter of going back over his steps and repairing the damage. All the points, less the seven core chakra points - without which little could be done in the way of jutsu, but which he'd refused to take the risk of reconnecting - lest the infection sprint down those highways of connection and finish them both off. The work was delicate, precise and cut to the very core of their beings - and now he had to do the repairs differently to how he'd planned when he initially made the cuts out in the field.

He also had to try and do it when their chakra systems were coiled like dull, filthy silver worms - sluggish and blind in their bodies. It was starting to hurt Haruichi to look at the massive contortions to their chakra, but he ignored the sting in the back of his eyes and lifted his fingers - arms slightly outstreched in the directions of each of them. His pale fingertips seemed to feel for something in the air, both nothing and everything in a gossamer gasp of energy, and when he found it suddenly the entire room seemed to spark to twice brightness against the dark.

"Mind your feet," he said quietly, wondering if the charms and chakra in the room really were letting Tsume and Kuromaru see what was going on. Because if that was so, they'd be seeing something interesting right now.

The stunted worm shapes of their chakra paths, listless and dark, were suddenly tugged gently by the tiny thin threads which had been caught from the air at the tips of Haruichi's fingers. Tsume's toes and Kuromaru's back paws probably tickled a little, but what they'd be seeing was much more interesting. It was as though the thick worm shapes were spinning away in little silk-thin swirls, finding their true shape and lengthening out along the thin lines Haruichi held. Eventually, a minute after beginning their journey through the air, the newly silk-spun blue lines completed their climb along the original threads Haruichi had plucked from the air and met when they reached his fingers and were linked in a simple handseal.

One of the green lines on the floor flashed brightly, a flash picked up by the newly unwound and re-formed chakra path, and then the green strip vanished. Eventually the floor would be blank black, and the air would be full of pale blue strings of light, but right now they'd only just begun.

And there were one hundred and sixteen more to go.

Her feet itched. How still was she supposed to stay? Tsume watched with fascination as chakra lines silvered together once more, and for the first time in weeks she could feel Kuromaru. He was alive.

Her gaze flew up, meeting his single bright gold eye. He rocked back on his haunches, forefeet lifting up in excitement--though his hind remained right where they were. His bark boomed through the room, deep and sharp, filled with energetic glee.

Chakra pulsed down the new pathway, rocking from one to the other of them as it had done, as it was meant to do--

The sharp scent of pain filled the air, and Tsume clamped down hard on the lines, remembering Kuromaru writhing in agony as he changed human. Remembering rot pouring down their pathways and watching decay spread on his face--

Except it wasn't his scent.

Chakra nearly quivered in the new link, ready to streak down and back again, tasting Kuromaru on the other end. The Hyuuga didn't look happy. Tsume crouched, as if that would help her hold her energy back, and watched him with equal parts concern and frustration. Kuromaru was there, right there, and she couldn't touch him. At least not until she knew what was wrong with the Hyuuga.

Needle-stings of pain glittered through Harucihi's nerves, causing him to gasp but not to move, not to for an instant break his guiding hold on the Inuzukas' chakra. He couldn't even wince his eyes against the flash of ugly colour swamping his vision in conjunction with the pain.

"Fuck!" he whined, hissing through clenched teeth. He sounded like nails dragged down a chalkboard inside his head. "Stop! Stop! Don't use it!"

What the hell were they doing!? They could see it couldn't they? The room should be showing them! It couldn't be more simple! It was like telling someone not to stick a fork in an electric socket, you didn't even have to say it. Inuzuka and Hyuuga were like water and oil, capable of touching without blending, that was what their chakra looked like as he pulled it into proper alignments and reconnected it. They couldn't blend the way an Inuzuka human and dog could, and for Haruichi the attempt they'd just made to do so through him felt like the Inuzuka's chakra had just had an electric current stabbed right through it.

"Don't!" he snapped again, the word sounding less like a plea this time. "Just hold still." Hold everything still, chaka and body. That was what those words meant when a Hyuuga said them... how hadn't he made sure they understood?

She trembled. Trying to keep everything clamped down, kept still, while the air filled with the smell of pain and the high, keening whimper of a great canine. Every muscle screamed to do something. Her energy was clamped as tight as she could get it, even as she saw it glow every so slightly brighter from Kuromaru, out the thin line toward the Hyuuga. That was where everything was getting messed up.

She could see it, she thought. Where their chakra slid into and around the medic's, where he was trying to reconnect the lines, where their energy was hitting him.

Where Kuromaru's chakra was again sliding down his pathway--

Tsume snarled.

Kuromaru dropped to his belly, ears flat against his head, chakra whipping back into him and clamping down.

Sweat broke out on her back, between her breasts. "You know," she said carefully, "we can't actually keep it from exchanging for more than a few minutes at a time. Any more than you can stop your chakra from going down the pathways into your arm." They could keep it to a minimum, but...

Already her heart pounded as if she'd been running a marathon. Kuromaru's pathway was brightening again.

Oh gods on parade, they were freaking kidding! They had to be. Haruichi's eyes didn't move (didn't have to, with the Byakugan) but his attention focussed on the creeping light at the root of Kuromaru's newly repaired chakra path. The two of them couldn't stop their chakra cycling automatically, and he couldn't do anything to prevent that with the jyuuken until all of their paths were reconnected.

This had not been mentioned at the pre-surgical meeting. He was going to kill Waki. Kill him with a shoe. No, actually. He was going to kill him with whatever was left of that condolence basket the old git had sent him for bringing these two chakra-kinked idiots home alive. Choke him to death with a straw weave. Yes. That was the answer.

Another flickering wave of pain informed him that he had more pressing answers to find, and forced another gasp out. Haruichi bit his lip, forced himself not to make such pathetic displays ever again in this, and knew what had happened.

Once again, his own assumptions had backfired on him in glorious technicolour. He hadn't been able to tell from watching them that the Inuzuka were unable to control their chakra exchange with each other, he'd thought that they simply chose not to because they were rambunctious, uncontrolled Inuzuka. To a Hyuuga, who learned to adjust and control their energies from the moment they could walk or talk, the idea of existing like that made no sense.

And the reality of Tsume and Kuromaru needing to exist like that was hurting him. It was a quieter hurt for the moment, as though the needles stabbing through his paths and into his tenketsu had been withdrawn until they rested as shallow pangs of pain. It wouldn't last. When they lost control of their chakra and it lanced through him to complete their circuit the pain would stab deep again.

Concentrate. It's too late to stop. I have to fix this for them, it doesn't matter if this is part of it now.

A breath. He pulled himself together, felt his heart struggling to beat evenly in his chest and the cold sweat pricking at his curse seal, and took another.

Have to get this done. Have to be able to walk out of here. Have to make it to dinner at seven. Have to kill Waki.

Haruichi stopped biting his lip, and tried to will himself to ignore the swell of painful colour which seemed to be emmanating from everything he could see. It would have been creeping at the edges of his vision, except his vision didn't have edges when he used the byakugan and so it was simply pervading everything with an indescribable tint which pained Haruichi to look at.

He was not happy about any of this, and it showed when he spoke. "We're going to synchronize this. I'll reconnect ten chakra paths, then you can let it go. Then hold back the exchange and I'll reconnect another ten. There are one hundred and sixteen left to connect, we can't waste time. There's no going back once this proceedure has started."

The weakness in Haruichi's posture from the piercing ache in his chakra paths was pushed away as he straightened his back. "Exchange it again, then we start."

Gods, he was begining to understand why he'd been told to stay the hell away from the Inuzuka... how galling to realize the Elders had had a point.

She took him at his word. Let her chakra go, felt it shiver through her and slide down the new pathway. Took a breath, and another, trying to relax, to recharge as the air filled with the smell of pain, and the Hyuuga turned paler.

Then she swallowed hard, forcing the energy back again, barking, "Stop," at Kuromaru when she saw his pathways brighten as if to send more power her way, in response to the tapering energy.

He whined, growled, slunk farther to his belly and laid his head on his paws. All the excitement of a moment before had vanished. It was like being given food after a week of none, and then being told to give it away. Weak and shaking and handing sustenance to someone else.

Ten points. She clamped down harder, and wondered how she was going to manage blocking a hundred and fifty of them as they got closer and closer to done.

Her nostrils flared, catching the odors in the room. Unconsciously, her eyes rose to the Hyuuga's pale face. He smelled like agony. She wondered how he was going to manage.

They were going to manage. They had to. Couldn't stop once they'd started, he'd said. Too many possibilities danced before her eyes, offering themselves up as what would happen if...

None of them were going to happen. Muscles twitched and shuddered under her skin, a physical reaction to trying to stop chakra from following it's natural course. "Please tell me you can work fast," she muttered.

"I'd rather prove it than say it," Haruichi muttered back, clenching his back teeth against the receeding echo that lastest exchange. It wasn't getting easier to deal with, like a physical pain could become. Haruichi knew why - it was the same principle that made the jyuuken so deadly - you couldn't tense, sheild, or prepare your chakra paths for assault. It happened, and you coped or you didn't.

He forced his fingers out of the clenched fists they'd twitched into, flipped them through the seals, reached out and grasped the Inuzukas' chakra and went back to work. Tease it back to it's true shape on the microscopic and macroscopic levels, fix their systems and then fix their connections, lead their links back to one another and reattach the bonds he'd severed. Then start again until ten, and survive the hurt they couldn't help inflicting, and begin again.

There were no more words exchanged as he fell into the flow of the work, every scrap of concentration dedicated to strategizing and manipulating and perfecting his timing. Haruichi stepped back into his training as a boy, where his sensei forced him to perform katas as well as mathematics and timed exercises all at once. She'd only make him go for longer if he made a mistake, until the days had come when he could calculate down to the instant, the angle and the number of steps what his path would be as he perfected the Hakkesho Kaiten and the Hakke Rokujuyon Sho. It was the same here, save that if he made a mistake with the timing the consequences would be worse than anything she'd ever done to him.

"Well, little one, that's why they call it growing up."

So he didn't make any mistakes, although by the time they reached the sixth round of ten he was starting to appreciate why everybody else who'd ever been able to do this was dead as a doornail. His vision felt like it was collapsing into that luminescent putrescence that wouldn't lift from his sight, and the only thing that was keeping him on course was the glimmering, vivid rightness of Kuromaru and Tsume's chakra paths as they were repaired and reconnected. The light from that outshone the dark from the pain, so he had to be winning.

She'd lost count of the pathways he'd reconnected, but kept careful watch over how many times she'd been able to relax. Halfway done. They were halfway done.

Reconnecting pathways made no noise. It was only the sound of three people breathing, and the near-continuous whine seeping from Kuromaru's massive throat. Once in a while the silence was broken by a sharp word, Tsume trying to keep her familiar focused.

She'd sat down, finally. Locking down chakra centers was nearly impossible. Only years of learning how to make it whistle through her and Kuromaru, warping its flow to keep some here or send extra to him for jutsu, made her aware enough of her pathways to actually close them. But without life-energy circulating, she could feel her muscles growing weaker and her heart beating harder against impending exhaustion.

Haruichi was working quickly. It couldn't have been more than twenty minutes, for all that it felt like forty-five. When he released--as much as he ever did, a pause of gracefully twisting fingers and a pale-lipped nod--she let the iron grip on her chakra snap free.

It was like breathing after being underwater. Her lungs expanded, blood vessels rushing and muscles trembling with the sudden surge of energy. The world spun and once more she could feel Kuromaru, like feeling her own arms or legs--there but not. It was tempting to let it flow, let it keep snapping between them. But with every breath the smell of pain increased in the room, bitter sour like old vomit and sweat. "Cut," she said, and felt Kuromaru clamp down, too.

For a few minutes after, it was easier again to just live. Haruichi, whatever else she thought about the Hyuuga, seemed to know just when to time it to let them break before their control shattered. Slowly, the floor below them darkened and the air lit with bright lines. Haruichi's pale skin glowed, but it only seemed to make him more translucent. His own chakra, visible due to the room, seemed to dim as he worked. She hoped he had enough.

Couldn't stop once started.

Another twenty minutes and they were almost there. Dizziness was dragging at Haruichi now, along with the effort of the jutsu and the redoubling intensity of those instants when the Inuzuka raced each other's chakra to each other though lines bound in his grasp. Worst of all, though, was the foul colour blocking the rest as it grew stronger. He could barely make out the vivid blue in the air, had long ago lost sight of the green on the floor, but his own pale Hyuuga-blue chakra was still in focus. He could still do this.

He paused, nodded, and for the final time the stabbing shock of their chakra shot through him. He tried to force his mind away from the pain, the worst bout so far, but failed. It would have made no difference at any rate, he gasped in another breath, picked up the hundred and sixth chakra lines in fingers he could see were starting to shake, and reconnected them.

Then did it again. Again. Again. Don't stop, almost there. Again. Again. Breathe evenly, ignore that uneven heartbeat. Again. Again. Couldn't let his fingers spasm. Again. Faster, faster, if they engaged again he was going to pass out. Again. Properly, no mistakes at the end.

Again - the end. Let them go.

Now there was no green for him to be blinded to upon the floor, and the air was singing with Inuzuka chakra lines repaired to joyful reconnection. Haruichi dropped his hands, and it took all the energy left to him not to drop to the floor.

"The first... the first part's done," he told them, closing his eyes at last and feeling them scratch dryly against his eyelids. He forced them open again, and looked at what he'd done without the tinge of pain and ugly colour marking his view. They looked... like they could be okay, one day.

His byakugan crashed as he thought that, making him nearly puke all over the floor at the sudden vertigo of his perspective changing. As it was he just slammed his hand over his eyes and sat down on the floor, not seeing the room's colours invert from black to white and leeching the glow of the blueness from the air.

Gods... that had not been what he'd signed up for. He had to stop. Just for a minute.

"Give me a minute, then I'll seal the points," he muttered into his palm, not much caring if they heard him. He was far more concerned about getting his hands to stop shaking.

All Tsume heard was the rush of blood in her head as she released the hold on her chakra. Her heart raced in her chest, breath coming too hard, too fast for a long moment. Then it began to clear, leaving her weak but not broken.

The room meant she could see see the pathway she and Kuromaru shared; human and canine melded until they were one system. Tiny threads of light, soft as moonbeams, stretched between her and her familiar. Tsume and Kuromaru each had bright spots down the centers of their bodies--the main chakra points--still unconnected. She tested, felt chakra come. It came in significantly less amounts than she'd expected, but it came.

Kuromaru leaped to his feet with a bark, dashing out of the circle he'd been put in. He paused on his way to Tsume, licking the curled form of the little Hyuuga before running to her and jumping.

She caught his front paws on her chest, staggering back into the wall and laughing as he licked her face. They were back! Whole again, if still weak. She sank her hands into his ruff, feeling his coat soft between her fingers, still with a residue of grime. He hadn't had a bath since before the mission went so wrong, but she didn't care. Fur fluffed out around them, and where he'd been lying there was a little mess of it. Stress and warming weather added to his shedding. She just laughed at that, too, and slipped his paws from her shoulders to the wall behind her, stepping close against his chest and wrapping her arms around his torso.

His tail flagged behind him, his tongue scraping through her hair, across her ear, her temple, anywhere he could get to. She pulled on the chakra and felt his respond, felt it slide and slip between them as it should have. It made her stronger, if still not as strong as she had been. Soon. Soon.

"Kuromaru--wait--" she laughed. Ducking under him she peered around to see Haruichi still curled on the floor, his face in finely trembling hands. Behind her, her familiar slid to the ground and padded closer to the medic, sniffing his shins delicately.

"Sensei?" Tsume asked cautiously, kneeling beside Haruichi and reaching out, but stopping just shy of touching his shoulder. "Are you all right?"

"Veritably peachy," Haruichi answered, hoping his voice didn't sound as strained as it felt. He hadn't seen, had barely heard, the scene of their overjoyed reunion, and it was a shame. The sight of that would have done him good, and closed the door on the silent hurts in the back of his mind that had been changing his dreams lately.

He was too busy getting control of himself to have noticed anything beyond his heartbeat (slowing, but still off-kilter), his hands (trembling no matter what he did, but it would pass) and his eyes (sore from over-use and exposure to things best unseen). The vertigo was gone, the floor was always good for that, and the rest would calm down soon enough. He just needed time to rest, and to let his body accept that he wasn't about to be chakra-shocked again.

Haruichi dropped his hands, one to his knee and the other to the side of his neck to measure his pulse. Tsume and Kuromaru were looking at him, and he automatically wished they wouldn't. Pride pushed him to sit more acceptably, push his feet out so his knees were away from his chest and his lab coat could be seen properly... even if it was half-off his right shoulder. Authority. He had to hold on to it whether he felt like curling up in a ball and passing out or not.

But now he was looking at them, the woman and the dog, and they were a lifetime removed from the skulking, cowering creatures who'd walked into the room less than an hour ago. They were vibrant, bold and reassured. They had their confidence returned.

He'd done that. And the small shadow of the fact that he'd taken it away in the first place was cleared by the stress and reversable hurt of the repairs. He was back to even zeroes on his account with the two of them. Clean slate.

"How do you both feel?" he asked. He wanted to know, and he wanted to wait a moment longer before unbalancing the equation with the two of them again.

He was pale, a little green, but obviously trying to pull himself together. Tsume rocked back on her heels, giving him space, and watched Kuromaru stretch to try and lick him again without crowding closer.

She smiled, still watching her familiar closely but unable to stop the bright bubble of happiness that burst within her chest. "I'm all right. We're all right. Kuromaru?"

He sat, statuesque, and let his tongue loll out happily. "I feel much better. I think my ear even hurts less."

Tsume reached out to scratch his neck again, trying not to chuckle. "So, see, we're both fine." She grinned at Haruichi. It faltered slightly. "And, later... you're going to be able to reattach the rest?"

Wolf, she hoped he didn't keel over trying. They needed to be reattached, all the main pathways, too. Her jutsu that needed heavy chakra--

She'd worry about that when and if it became a problem.

More licking. Haruichi silently put up with it, still trying to track his wayward pulse and closing his eyes on their happy Inuzuka faces. He listened to Kuromaru - whose voice was deeper and stronger now - and to Tsume, who sounded like she was smiling.

"Later," he affirmed. Much later, but he didn't say that. This was a wait and see game, now. The kind of process he seriously doubted any Inuzuka, let alone this pair, would be happy about seeing through to the correct end. His heartbeat was correcting itself, and his pulse was slowing; he could finally tell because his fingers had stopped trembling.

No more putting it off. He opened his eyes, looked between the two of them, and then got up to his feet. It didn't make him dizzy, and he didn't feel any more aches. He could only feel tiredness, his low chakra, and the searing of sour adrenaline in the back of all his veins. A normal way to feel in this line of work, he was discovering. The irony of it didn't escape Haruichi just then... given that he was the medic he certainly did spend a lot of his time feeling like he was the one needing a doctor.

"Alright. Time to finish your surgery. I need you both to stand four feet apart. The tenketsu that were just reconnected need to have seals placed on them to regulate your chakra exchange." He looked at their faces, and didn't relent. "You'll still feel the connections, you'll be able to exchange small amounts of chakra, but for your own safety these seals need to be placed for a little while."

Tsume stood when Haruichi did. Kuromaru did as well, ear pulling back. He spoke before Tsume, his voice a low grumble. "It's already low. It'll be lower. I don't think that's a good idea."

She reached out and settled a hand on his broad shoulders, bending her elbow to do so. "What's the purpose of that?" She could feel him again. She had chakra again. If it was dangerous, surely they wouldn't have reattached everything. And if it wasn't dangerous, then why were they waiting?

Waki had explained it before, and she'd thought she could deal with having the pathways stitched--as he'd said--until it was safer. But now that they were open, she found she was wrong. It was safe enough, wasn't it? If there was rot, surely Haruichi would have seen it.

"It's the only way," Haruichi said firmly, as if those words and that fact would simply make the argument he almost felt too tired to put into words again. He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from sighing, and met Tsume's eyes firmly. "What you feel right now is proof that you'll be alright," he said, gesturing to the swirl of chakra links between them that they all knew were there. "But it's too early to risk prolonged and full-strength exchanges between you. It isn't just the potential for the rot jutsu to still be malingering in one of you, it's a risk of over-stressing your systems after they've been separated for so long."

Haruichi held out his left hand into the air between the three of them, and let the bluish-lilac of the jyuuken glow on his hand. "I'll partially seal the points with the jyuuken, then I'll apply medical chakra stitches to hold the seals on a time release over three weeks. One by one they'll break away, as time goes by and we're more certain that you're safe. And while these are working, there'll be no chance of a flare up of the rot jutsu seriously injuring either of you before you can get to a hospital and be checked. You'll be safe."

They had to listen to him, and believe him. Or else all of this would be one of the most collossal mistakes in his medical career. Haruichi glanced from Tsume to Kuromaru, then back again to the woman before he silenced the light on his pale palm. "I'm your doctor, trust me."

Both Inuzuka scented warily. Neither of them could catch the faintest whiff of a lie. Tsume glanced at Kuromaru. His ear flattened farther against his skull, the bandaging over his missing ear shifting with the skin and fur. He took several steps back, lowering his head.

Haruichi was asking for trust. She had to trust her teammates, other ANBU, or she couldn't do her job. Had to trust the doctors, or she wouldn't heal. He knew more than she did, even if he didn't necessarily know more about Inuzuka--

Which was a point. What if he was wrong? What if their systems could handle it just fine, and there was no rot? Her muscles tensed.

Then, she realized, she'd still be able to handle it and there still wouldn't be any rot in three weeks. But if she were wrong...

Proof that they'd be all right. Partially sealed. Three weeks. They'd still be able to feel each other. Still exchange some chakra.

Kuromaru growled and backed up several more steps.

Tsume glanced at Haruichi, eying him from under her hair. "You're sure about this?"

"It's my duty to be sure," Haruichi replied. It was his life's work to be sure. He looked to Kuromaru, who was rumbling ominously and retreating further by the moment from Haruichi and any possibility of placing trust in him. "Kuromaru-san, you have to be patient. You've gotten this far on what your doctors have said and done, and you will get back to how you should be as long as you listen to us."

It would always stun Haruichi, how patients thought that the effort that went into healing them was free. It wasn't. The cost was trust; and irregardless if he was a Hyuuga and they were Inuzuka that trust was required here. From both of them.

The weariness inside Haruichi coiled outwards for a moment, reminding him that he didn't have forever to stand here and argue sanity to the pair of them. He had to go lie down before he finally fell down.

"This is what I do," he told them both. Even if he was only doing it for the first time.

A brief, humorless smile flickered across Tsume's face when Haruichi spoke to Kuromaru. The canine trusted only warily, and usually only if the person was more powerful than he was. Canine common sense said that only those stronger than him could protect him best. He'd been unconscious for Haruichi's display of strength.

She took a deep breath, ignoring for the moment the way Kuromaru continued to back up, his tail low and his gaze deadly serious.

"All right," Tsume said, just as firmly as Haruichi had spoken a moment before. She couldn't do her job if she couldn't trust her teammates. He was a Hyuuga--but he was a medic, and he wore the black and bone, and he'd already started the repairs.

Three weeks. She clung to that knowledge almost desperately, and didn't let it show.

"Kuromaru, get your flea-bit tail up here. You heard him. We'll still feel each other, still have some chakra flow. And he's right: if there's rot in one of our systems, passing it on to the other would only mean we have to start all over again. So you tell me if anything feels funny."

Unhappily, growling low in his throat, Kuromaru sidled back up. "This is stupid."

"Stupid or not, we're doing it." Tsume nodded once at Haruichi and braced.

Haruichi sighed, and placed his fingers together to help him summon the focus for his byakugan and the jyuuken. "That's the spirit, if in doubt the ANBU motto always sees us through."

Bloodflow snapped out the veins around his eyes, his vision plunged again into the Hyuuga reality, and Haruichi took one moment to gather his strength and look at the work he'd done. It was almost perfect. Were it not for the slowly resolving glint of his stitchwork circling the pathways with their chakra you would believe they'd never been apart. That tiny glimmer of binding and repair would dissapate in an hour, and as much for his own sake as theirs' Haruichi was wishing that woud be the end of it.

Pale hands lit paler blue, and he zeroed in on the first twin tenketsu to strike. Time to carry on, they were nowhere near the end, yet. Recovery was a long and difficult process - often worse to endure than the original injury itself - and it had long been Haruichi's lookout to be sure the agents who made it home survived it. Even if they felt like making it as hellish as possible.

He stepped between them and paired fingers darted out to gently tap and instantly seal a tenketsu apiece on their right shoulders, a following flick of his thumb applying the green glimmer of medical chakra that would hold the seal like a dissolvable stitch. Before that touch was finished being felt he struck again, gently brushing a point above each of their hearts, then to their abdomen, their knees, necks, backs, elbows, feet...

It took him a minute. Then it was done. There wouldn't be a bruise on either of them, but he'd boxed their chakra once again and done the kind of damage any Hyuuga's enemies should fear. He gave them another once-over with the byakugan and was satisfied, if less than thrilled.

"Done," he told them. And then to stop them from falling straight off into pity, he started giving them instructions. "You can still feel each other through the links, but you can't exchange more than a minimum of chakra right now. As time goes by, the stitches binding the seals will drop away and you'll gain more control." His hands went into his pockets, eyes sharpening around the exhaustion in them. "Which means that in the meantime you cannot play silly buggers and try to use anything beyond a gennin rank jutsu. You'll burst the stitches and you'll kill yourselves. No missions. No Inuzuka ninjutsu. No overt physical exertion. None of that, or I'll save the village the cost of your medical bills and dispatch you myself, understand?"

Tsume's face screwed up. "Overt physical exertion? You're not expecting me to sit around all day, are you?"

She pushed at the bonds with her chakra, feeling the earlier sluggish movement slow to a crawl. She could still focus it--she pushed it into muscles and felt it respond--but it was difficult. Like sucking tapioca through a straw.

Still, he hadn't lied. She could feel Kuromaru, even if she was only barely more powerful than she'd been when they'd walked in--and not half as powerful as she'd been moments ago. Tsume clung to that presence, even as it faded once more to an unconscious awareness.

The rest of what Haruichi said she filed away: most of it she'd expected. Hard to do ninjutsu of any sort, when your chakra didn't flow quickly.

A pair of rolled white eyes were what greeted that remark. "Of course not, given that we are at the Hokage's beck and call I'm sure Arakaki-taichou can find you work painting the walls of the palace a fetching new shade of indifferent blandness. But if you try using chakra to scale the walls instead of a ladder you're going to fall and crack your head open like a cantaloupe."

He straightened the collar of his lab coat and knocked his hair back away from his eyes. At least he was feeling a bit better as the minutes wore on, but he needed to go sit somewhere at least. Drink some coffee. Close his eyes. Resist the urge to crack into the pharmaceuticals and self-medicate himself away from a stress-related episode. The regular thing.

Haruichi glanced at Kuromaru and Tsume. They looked so much more like themselves now, and he could see it in every way. His own eyes were half-lidded, showing the strain he'd put them (and himself) through, but behind the sarcastic sheen there was relief.

He hadn't realized he hadn't felt that for weeks. Not about anything; until now. The medic shook his head a little, clearing the thought until later, and paced - only a little unsteadily - for the hidden door. "Come on. You probably want to go home."

The words were out before he thought about them and felt a sting at the fact that they still had one. After all of that Haruichi would have given nearly anything to be able to walk back to the Hyuuga Compound and sit in the courtyard while he listened to the peaceful and ordered calm of his clan going about their business. Away from the uncontrolled chaos he'd let sear through his chakra paths, and free from any concern that he wasn't being watched over. Safe from the horrible idea that he was alone, and everything was his responsibility alone.

He suddenly missed them all like an empty echo in his chest, and even though he knew it was because he was tired and stressed and weakened it didn't change the fact that he wanted to see a pair of white eyes just like his. Tsume and Kuromaru had their chakra connections; once upon a time Haruichi had had something that made him part of a whole as well.

Not anymore, he reminded himself sternly, pushing hard on the door. His sensei had never allowed him a moment's self-pity and at least she could still have that tiny glimmer of satisfaction in him over the fact that he refused to indulge himself in it either, all these years later.

Tsume glanced at the little Hyuuga, wondering what had made his scent whirl into pale blueberries, not quite ripe. She thought about asking, but... she didn't know him. He was Hyuuga, and even if she was feeling rather friendly toward him at the moment... there were years of animosity there.

Still, she couldn't just leave him, smelling like that. He'd saved their lives, and even if their lives had been miserable for a while, he'd fixed everything.

Or almost. With promises that it would all be fixed... in three weeks.

Tsume felt pressure along the pathways, and glanced down to see Kuromaru walking with one shoulder pushed out, single eye squinting, as though that would help him move his chakra. His forepaw lifted, paddling the air for a long moment.

She stuck her own foot out, bumping his hip. He stumbled and turned to give her an injured look.

Tsume ignored him, heading down the hall. They were coming to a junction, and she didn't know which way the Hyuuga was going. If she wanted to say something, it was now or never.

"Haruichi--" She paused, one hand just shy of brushing the elbow of his labcoat. Hyuuga were stuffy--they liked '-san' or '-sensei', didn't they? She wrestled with it for a moment, then finally left it at his name. The Inuzuka were informal; if you liked someone, you didn't bother with suffixes. Hopefully he'd get it.

She pulled her hand away, scratching rapidly at one ear with hooked nails. "Thanks."

He looked at her, head tilted just slightly away as he took a half-second to consider that. Found his mind sidestepped from hollow thoughts of being unable to go back and tell anyone who'd understand about what he'd done to save these two. It took a moment, but he got it under control by watching Tsume's icy blue eyes.

Then the miserable little ball he always forced his longing for home into sank further away from his thoughts, and he gave her a weak, honest little twitch of a smile. She was going left, he was going right. They'd be back here again.

"Any time..." He paused, and tried. It wasn't as hard as it might have been. "...Tsume."