Hardly unprecidented though it was, it seemed that Haruichi was having One Of Those Days. Having returned to the Infirmary in need of medical assistance - for himself, for a change - only to find it unstaffed smacked of the kind of irony that Haruichi suspected might wind up defining his life. Or ending it. The fact that he'd gotten his shoulder scored open and himself nearly decapitated while on a mission with two extraneous jounin idiots only made it worse. He'd gotten the injuries (and the gratis near-death experience) as a result of rescuing his 'superiors' during an ambush... had they not been there, he was quite certain everything would have been fine. Less messy, at least.

Of course, hindsight was an especially wonderful thing for a Hyuuga, so while he patched himself up Haruichi was busy indulging in an internalized diatribe about the stupidity of superior officers and the fiddlyness of stitching gut. He was sitting up on the cold steel of the autopsy table, mask and arm guards next to him, bloodied armour on the floor, black-booted feet swinging a telling distance from the floor and his entire attention fixed on the nippy business of sewing up the disinfected and five-inch-long gash in his left shoulder. His dishevelled dark hair was hanging down over his eyes as he craned his neck and turned his head in to carefully loop in the next stitch.

He was almost halfway done, and had moved on to a silent litany against everyone and everything that had given him any cause for annoyance lately when he thought he heard the sound of foosteps in the hall.

See? Even more proof that he didn't need an eye kept on him, he wasn't even using his Byakugan and he knew somebody was coming. It was impossible to surprise a Hyuuga, especially if he was this Hyuuga. Honestly... why did everybody insist that he had to be watched over like a helpless baby?

"Whatever it is, it'll have to wait until my arm stops gushing blood," he called factually, not bothering to look up at whomever might have just walked in the door.

There was only one person in the infirmary, and that was the agent sitting on the metal examination table, deftly stitching up an extended gash through--his? her?--ANBU tattoo. Then the agent snapped at him in a low, even voice, and the gender was clear--not least from the sheer level of flat irritation the words carried; women tended to take out their annoyance in other ways.

Was this one of the medics, then? Or just a first-aid trained ANBU using the infirmary facilities himself, while the real medics were busy? The tone of authority in the man's voice and the skill with which the needle slid through his own skin indicated the former, but either way, Hiro would just have to wait until he was free.

Sitting himself directly on one of the metal tables somehow didn't seem hygienic, whatever the other shinobi was doing, so he leaned up against the wall to wait, cradling his precious and hard-won medical records against his chest.

The situation made him wonder, though, if any basic medical training classes were offered for ANBU agents. What if, instead of having an administrative question, he had just now entered the infirmary straight off of a mission, bleeding in a dozen places? Resolving to look into that as soon as he finished up here, he waited patiently for the other ninja to finish stitching.

Oblivious to his visitor's musings as to whether he'd be left to ooze blood on the carpet until Haruichi felt like dealing with him (which was just ridiculous, he'd be dealt with immediately; Haruichi really liked that carpet), the medic continued placing a few more stinging stitches and daubed a small glot of blood away with a disinfectant pad. Then he stopped.

Some people got edgy when others read over their shoulder, Haruichi got the same thing when somebody watched him work. Usually that only happned in the field, where everybody was sufficiently edgy in the first instance for it not to matter, but right now it was annoying.

Haruichi added '...and people who silently eye me while I stitch myself back together' to his list of grievances for the day, steeled the ball of his hand carefully against his chest to keep the gut taut and level, and looked up to snap at his visitor.

"Fascinating as this likely is for you I--"

Silence knocked Haruichi's words to the floor. His eyes widened, his heart snapped a beat in his chest and his hand twitched and tore out a stitch. He didn't notice.

He hadn't seen him since he was twelve or so, but he knew those eyes and he knew that face. He hadn't forgotten any of his clan, and suddenly a blend of panic and concern threw his voice back up to him.

"Hiro, what the hell are you doing here!?"

White Hyuuga eyes looked back at him. Hiro froze, pinned. The manila folder fell through his numb fingers and crashed to the floor, the papers scattering all over the carpet, but he didn't even twitch.

It had been a long time--a very long time--but...

"Haruichi-sama?" Was that even possible? It was like seeing a ghost, clothed in a bloody ANBU uniform--Haruichi was supposed to be dead!

Hiro just managed to clamp his mouth shut before he uttered that last foolish sentiment aloud, but it was still an enormous roadblock that his thoughts could not pass.

"What am I doing here-- I'm in ANBU now," he finished quickly, swallowing down the question that he most wanted to ask, which was: what are you doing here?

Hiro had been to Haruichi's funeral. Seen his ashes, visited his grave along with all the others to pay his respects. But that whole time, Haruichi had been in ANBU, serving as a field medic?

Haruichi was a Main House Hyuuga, and Hiro had no place to question him, but--

The other Hyuuga twisted his head slightly, and his hair fell to the side. Exposing a livid green curse seal, acid-etched and vibrant.

Hiro's mouth opened, but all the words he wanted to say were stuck in his throat.

A stab of homesickness slipped like a knife between Haruichi's ribs. He'd remembered Hiro. He hadn't realized he would know him right away. His mud and blood flecked face paled even further, and he kicked off the table to plant his feet on the ground.

His knees almost went out on him, but they didn't. When did Hiro get so tall?

Haruichi shook his head, hands motioning firmly to emphasize the point. "No, you're lost. You're lost or I'm--" Hallucinating. "--you're not supposed to be here."

He was not supposed to be here. Somebody had made a mistake. Or played a trick. Haruichi reached up to knock some of his hair out of his eyes, and wound up just pressing the heel of his hand against his forehead as he stared around his wrist at the younger Hyuuga - who was in turn staring in just as much shock at him.

There was a distant tap-tap-tapping in the air; the sound of blood from his ruined wound dripping onto a scattered paper from the file Hiro had dropped. Haruichi didn't hear it. Hiro couldn't stay here. Somebody had made a mistake.

"Come on, Hiro-kun, I'll take you home."

He said it, he meant it. But for some reason Haruichi's feet didn't move.

He couldn't ask. There was no way he could ask. But Haruichi looked...

Broken.

Something must have happened, something serious. Something no one could know. But now Haruichi was here, with a curse seal and an ANBU tattoo, so... he'd have to deal with things the way they stood. Hiro took a deep, shuddering breath.

"I belong here, Haruichi-sama," he said clearly, if still a bit weakly, and deliberately tapped his left upper arm. He was wearing a casual long-sleeved shirt rather than the ANBU uniform, and his arm was still wrapped in bandages beneath that, but... Haruichi could look himself if he cared to.

"I'm in ANBU now, same as you."

He planted his feet firmly, shoulder-width apart--crumpling the unspoiled half of the records as he did so--and thought of the oath he had taken just a few days ago. Haruichi must have taken the same oath, all those years past. Hiro felt a strange kinship with his distant cousin now: despite all their differences, they still carried two of the same marks on their bodies, in blood crimson and violent green. He wouldn't pry into Haruichi's secret, whatever it was...

But neither could he leave.

Horrified shock stamped itself all over Haruichi's eyes. A disturbing display of carelessness followed, as his hands properly dropped and another stitch just tore out. He was numb to it, though. Hiro was in this, now? Another Hyuuga, a Branch Hyuuga was in ANBU, now? What the hell was Hiashi thinking!? He--

--he was going to kill him. There had been 'negotiations' with the Hokage, he'd said last time they'd spoken. Consideration of Hyuuga duties in Konoha. Progress had been made, he'd said. And Haruichi remembered now that during that portion of the dinner, Hiashi had not looked him directly in the eyes.

Haruichi was going to kill him. Last living relative or not, he was going to take his eyes out with a fork, that assinine git!

He realized too late that the sear of anger in his white eyes was all too obvious to Hiro. As he tried to control it, the homesick melancholy that just looking at the younger Hyuuga summoned took advantage of his attempts to quell his temper and swelled up again. The way he was looking at him, standing there in quiet, disobedient obstinance, just reminded him of himself and the way he used to be. Back when he'd shown up at the front door of this building, and demanded that he be allowed to do his part irregardless of where he'd come from.

Back when he hadn't known how horrific watching these people and this life with a pair of Hyuuga eyes could be.

He took a breath, and counted to three. Then looked over at Hyuuga Hiro and didn't look away. "You don't have to be here, Hiro. Was there a reason you joined?"

Observing the candid rush of emotion across Haruichi's face, Hiro adjusted his stance before he spoke, settling into a more appropriately respectful bearing; Haruichi now appeared to have transferred his focus--and current rage--onto someone other than Hiro himself. Hiashi-sama, incredibly, by the looks of it. After all, it could hardly be the Hokage, right?

"Sandaime-sama called me, and I came," he said simply. What reason did he need other than that?

The summons had come early in the morning, in the thin light well before true dawn. The bleary-eyed Hyuuga runner, a Branch House child clutching the scroll in a hand still pudgy with baby-fat, had said, 'messenger bird,' and 'urgent.' Five minutes later, Hiro had slipped silently out the door, careful not to wake his still-sleeping mother. Two hours after that, following a grueling interview that left his knees trembling and fingers barely steady enough to sign his name, he had been--oath and tattoo pending, of course--the very first Hyuuga agent in ANBU.

Or so he had thought.

He knew he shouldn't ask, it wasn't his place. But what was his place in shifting sands like these, when Main House Hyuuga could be etched with curse seals and pronounced dead to everyone who knew them?

Why are you here, Haruichi-sama?

The question echoed in his head, theories and implications clamoring to escape, but he clenched his throat closed around them. Instead he simply stood, eyes cast downward, and waited.

Hiro didn't have to wait for long, though for Haruichi it felt like an eternity. After a few seconds of swallowing down every single curse or worry that threatened to be spoken, the older Hyuuga managed to say what he should.

"Of course," he agreed quietly, his own eyes slipping downwards for a moment before he caught himself. A split-second war of old instincts had him pausing, snagged on the realization that he wasn't a part of the Main House... nor of the Branch, really. He had the seal, but he had none of the duties or claim to belonging Branch members bore. When he'd been cast from the Compound it'd been Hizashi's boot at his back. If anything, Hiro outranked him in the Hyuuga hierarchy. He was still a part of the family.

But he was also a part of ANBU now, and that meant Haruichi held his eyes level before giving a hushed sigh and crossing his arms over his bruised chest. He'd carved out his authority here, and there was a clip to his words that carried it as he spoke. "Which division are you attached to? I'll need to put a file together for you. And there will need to be an in-house physical, but that can wait until I'm not seeping haemoglobin all over your records..."

Speaking of which, Haruichi chose that moment to catch his mind up with his mouth and notice what was happening around his feet. With a quiet, if abormally distracted, 'tch', he ignored his aches and injuries and leaned down to swiftly shuffle Hyuuga Hiro's records up off the infirmary floor.

Haruichi-sama, returned from the dead, was picking up bloodstained and trampled medical records from off the floor. Hiro's mind stuttered to a halt on the incongruity of that image, but his body had already stooped automatically to help.

"I'm Intel field-ops," he answered quickly, latching on to the normality of these mundane details with relief. In-house physicals, administrative hoops, even bleeding medics--those were all things he could deal with.

"Are the records still okay? Because I can get new ones..." His headache spiked again at just the thought of spending another three hours dashing from one end of the hospital to the other, but... maybe it would be worth it just to get out of here. That way he could breathe, and have the chance to wrangle his thoughts into some kind of order. Which he couldn't do at all with Haruichi's Hyuuga eyes and ANBU uniform right there in front of him.

Hiro kept his eyes carefully lowered as he worked, gathering papers and trying to sort them by departmental header at least--because of course the hospital didn't use page numbers. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that Haruichi's hair had fallen forward again to cover his curse seal, to Hiro's great relief. But the lingering image of those stark green lines, cutting openly across a previously pristine forehead, shook Hiro's confidence in his family to its foundations.

The next page Haruichi lifted was gripped in slightly more rigid fingers. Intel field-ops. Could be better, but could also be worse: at least Intel's agents got into far fewer scrapes requiring medical attention or the morgue, but that was in part because when their missions failed one rarely found the bodies.

Haruichi would prefer that he was in codebreaking or cartography. Also chained to the desk by the ankle so he couldn't run off and get into trouble. But despite the slowly seizing worry forming in his stomach, Haruichi knew that right now there was nothing in that vein he could do to protect Hiro.

They both straightened, the last of the stray papers switfly gathered by their well-trained hands. Haruichi glanced away from the damaged papers and back to Hiro's subtly strained eyes.

"I'm sure it would contravene several oaths I've taken if I sent you back to the Circle of Hell currently masquerading as the hospital records office," he told Hiro, holding out a slightly bloodstained hand for the rest of the papers in the other Hyuuga's grip.

He'd just tried to make light of it, but he couldn't protect Hiro from what he'd been brought into. Even as much as it strained him to admit it, it was the truth and he'd serve nobody by backing away from it. He'd lived his life seeing that faith in honesty through, no matter what came of it - and he wasn't stopping now. What he could do instead was make this easier for him. Or at least try. It didn't matter how he himself felt about the fact that Hiro was there, he had to do what he could.

"You did well to get anything from that lot. It's like fetching blood from a stone just to get an X-ray from those people." He slipped his hand down into his pocket, pulling out a battered glasses case and flipping his spectacles up onto his face as he squinted down at the papers, flicking through them with a very well-practiced eye. "Looks like you got the lot. You really must be in Intel."

Spectacles? Hiro marked that down as one more piece in the puzzle of increasingly dizzying proportions that was spread out before him. At some point he would have to sit down and figure it out, but... for now he let it pass.

"Thank you, Haruichi-sama," he responded deferentially. Even if the Hyuuga family hierarchy was no longer relevant to Haruichi--and Hiro would need to know more before he determined whether or not that was the case--Haruichi was still his superior within ANBU. That was surprisingly comforting to know.

Now seizing on the presented opportunity for escape, Hiro stood up straighter, brushing hair out of his eyes with an uncomfortably sweaty palm. His hand lingered for just an instant to press against the cool metal of his hitai-ate, in an attempt to soothe his still-pulsing headache. "I'll return later for my physical, then?" His eyes flicked to the blood still sluggishly streaming down Haruichi's arm, then back up to meet the older Hyuuga's eyes. "Unless you'd prefer now, of course?" he asked politely.

I'd prefer never, Haruichi thought, but he carefully refrained from saying it. He'd lifted his gaze from the paperwork and looked at Hiro over the thick edges of his glasses. The younger Hyuuga looked like he wanted to bolt. Haruichi was very accustomed to prompting that reaction from patients, and though he always made an effort not to let it get to him... this time it did. He was horrified that Hiro was here, in a dangerous line of work that Hiashi had had no business volunteering such a young Hyuuga for: but he was also abruptly, harshly homesick. And even though looking at Hiro now was making it worse than it had been in years, it also somehow made him feel like a little part of his home and his family had come to see him.

Haruichi tried hard to be selfless, but it didn't come naturally and this time it showed. Instead of sending Hiro off, he set the papers up on the autopsy table next to his stitching kit and pressed a pad of gauze against his slowly bleeding shoulder. "No, we can wait a few days until there's time for a proper physical exam. I uhm..." The thought had occurred to him earlier, but he dared to voice it now just to say something. "I should have asked, how is your mother doing?"

He wondered. When Haruichi had joined ANBU it had been in part because he'd had no family left to lose (though he was old and wise enough to realize now that it'd really been because he had no family willing to claim him), and he was concerned that the same loss of connection might be part of why Hiro was here.

The question hit like a punch to the gut. Hiro kept his expression carefully blank. "She's doing... as well as can be expected," he answered warily. It didn't sound like a pointed question, coming from Haruichi-sama, but--

Still as lovely as ever, such a shame about her mind. The Branch family gossips spoke about her with such feigned compassion, and it made him want to punch something--Gentle Fist style or not. He always responded instead with simple platitudes, smiling bright and empty like she did, and they usually went away. Nothing of interest here.

But Hyuuga Hatsuyo was graceful, lovely, and unerringly good-natured. She happily completed the tasks she was set--including raising her infant son all alone, after the early death of Hiro's father--and never complained. She could never have been a ninja, or indeed anything other than what she was: a housekeeper around the Hyuuga Compound, doing chores along with the children. But what she could do, she did well, with all her heart.

Grandmother might consider them both a genetic disgrace--Hiro too sickly and weak, Hatsuyo too stupid--but Hiro was not ashamed of his mother. Whatever anyone might say.

Haruichi realized a beat after he'd asked why that was possibly one of the worst subjects to broach right then. The sharpness that edged into the corners of Hiro's eyes made it plain, even if his own memory had failed him. How had he forgotten that Hatsuyo was Hiro's mother?

And even if he hadn't, how had he forgotten that the Hyuuga simply didn't speak about those who weren't... acceptable. He himself was evidence enough of that. In their clan being flawed through your own fault was enough of a disgrace, but Hatsuyo-san had been born as she was and there was nobody to blame. Though Haruichi suddenly had little doubt that Hiro was the one who suffered the displeasure of the family, anyway.

"I only ask because most of the agents who wind up here don't have families," Haruichi said carefully, choosing his words a little late. Hiro had enough to worry about coming in to ANBU, people giving him grief over his mother wasn't something he wanted the younger man to ever worry about. "And I remembered it was just you and your mother, so... I just wanted to be sure." He gave Hiro what actually passed for a slight, geniune smile. "I'm happy to hear Hatsuyo-san's doing alright. My father was always glad to see her."

Which had quite a lot to do with the fact that Hatsuyo-san was the only one who could get him out of trouble with his wife when it came to leaving books and scrolls all over their home while she was away. It was another rememberance that made Haruichi wince in his chest, though he kept his expression perfectly level. Dealing with this was getting too hard, and it wasn't Hiro's fault even if it was him being there that was bringing it on.

"At any rate... this is all in order. I'll send a message to you when it's time for your physical exam, alright?"

Hiro nodded gratefully, the motion swinging his hair forward to help hide any visual signs of his relief. Probably Haruichi could tell anyway; it was an unfortunate fact that it was always easier to detect emotions than to conceal them, and that went double for Hyuuga eyes. But Hiro could spot the traces of a mirrored relief on Haruichi's face, too, mixed with a hint of lingering awkwardness and a wistful sort of sorrow--he felt certain that they would both let it pass. Sometimes Hiro felt that the complexities of inter-village politics had nothing on the unspoken codes of Byakugan-users pretending not to see.

"I'll wait for your message, then," he said simply and bowed, choosing the respect a rookie agent owed a senior medic, plus a little more for whatever else Haruichi was to him now. His thoughts continued to spin as he straightened and turned to leave, trying to piece together the bits of the puzzle. Had it been a youthful indiscretion? A betrayal of the clan? It must have been something truly dire, for such a highly-placed Main House member to be curse-sealed, utterly cut off from the family, and here.

A sudden thought occurred to him, and it made him stop for a moment in his tracks. Some of the meaning behind Haruichi's behavior twisted into sharp focus.

"I--" He stopped, and started again. "Thank you. For being kind to my mother." Because Haruichi had been, he remembered that now. Haruichi had been kind to everybody, back then, and he deserved some of that kindness back. "And if there's ever anyone... a message you'd like to take..." Hiro spoke haltingly, quietly, eyes still fixed on the door. Haruichi could fill in the rest.

For himself, getting away from the rest of the family was a welcome escape. But, he had realized, for Haruichi...

It was an exile.

He turned back to look briefly over his shoulder, and saw the expression on Haruichi's face. It was all too much--too much to handle right now. Later, he would deal with it. "Just... let me know, okay?" he finished quickly, and fled.