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Got That Mountain to Climb [Genma, Rina] [Jun. 27th, 2009|09:41 pm]
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[Backdated: Takes place a little over four years ago, on March 19th, about a year and five months after the Kyuubi attack, and a week after Genma's rescue from the Iwagakure prisons.]

Rina tagged along behind Ito-sensei, her head spinning delightfully, clutching a spiral-bound notebook already a quarter-full with clipped notations, sprawling diagrams, and enthusiastic exclamation points. The just-completed burn-repair surgery had been absolutely fascinating to watch--seeing glowing blue chakra-channels spontaneously reform themselves within the carnage of twisted fingers and torn flesh--and she'd noticed that Ito-sensei had used one of the modified sterilization scrolls that had brought her to his attention in the first place.

See, and they'd complained that she hadn't followed the blueprints! Clearly Ito-sensei didn't mind. Rina had been in the Seal Division for more than a year now, and had been making seals for years before that--certainly she knew enough to substitute the more powerful tri-point pattern for a quad-point, even if it wasn't exactly what the design called for.

Actually, if the tri-point was good, what if she used the double-stabilized quint-pattern she'd seen downstairs, instead? ...Awesome. Fumbling through her notebook, she pulled her fountain pen out from behind her ear and drew herself a quick sketch, then had to half-run to catch up with Ito-sensei as he pushed through the door leading to their last patient of the day.

"Genma," she heard Ito-sensei call good-naturedly as she slid in behind him, "there's someone I'd like you to meet."
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[User Picture]From: [info]fallen_senbon
2009-06-28 12:08 am (UTC)

(Link)

In the week he'd been back in Konoha, Genma hadn't spent a lot of time awake. When he had been, the kaleidoscope of unfamiliar faces parading past his hospital bed had included one constant: Ito Rokusaburo, the hand specialist. With a ninja's livelihood dependent on his ability to not just use his hands as a civilian would, but to channel chakra through them for jutsu, the doctor's skills were much in demand. Genma's was, Ito-sensei had told him, a career-defining case, even for a specialist like himself already top in his field.

It was cold comfort.

Nurses came and went on shift, in a pattern Genma still hadn't quite understood. Doctors came at odd hours when things were going well, at a moment's notice when things weren't. They came at the crack of dawn or nearly midnight, trailing students and associates, to discuss Genma's treatment and apply new jutsu or different drugs. Psychiatrists and Intel debriefers came in hushed pairs, to discuss what had happened on his mission, what the Iwagakure prison had contained, what questions Genma had been asked, and how he hadn't answered. How Kamiyama Kobo and Hoashi Seijuro had died, and Genma nearly so, to protect Konoha's secrets.

Hospital personnel--orderlies, janitors, dietitians, clerks, guards--drifted in and out, some pausing curiously to stare at him, having heard the rumors about his mission. All four members of the ANBU squad that had rescued him had stopped by. One of them had been Kobo's lover, her eyes holding a mixture of fury and grief that felt like an accusation. The commander of the squad was a man almost twice Genma's age, who'd called him son and told him Kobo would have been proud.

When they'd left him in his quiet nest of beeping monitors and carefully placed pillows and splints, Genma had turned a blank face to the wall and prayed not to dream.

ANBU's director Arakaki, and even the Hokage himself had been by. The director had been efficient and a little distant, telling Genma he was receiving a special commendation for bravery. The Hokage had been simply himself, the man for whom Genma would have done it all over again. The visit had been brief, the old man's hands had brushed the hair from Genma's bruised face; his smile had held a benediction. "You did well, Genma," he'd said. He'd brought a gift of tea.

When Sandaime had gone, for the first time Genma'd quietly wept.

Ito-sensei was the constant, though, day after day, spending hours and hours conducting surgeries, painting seals, painstakingly restoring the splinters and fragments of bony scaffolding, the electric wire nerves, the hair-thin chakra conduits, that made up Genma's hands. He was there when Genma woke the first time, there to ease him back into sleep over and over. There for the worst of the pain, for the depths of Genma's terrors, for the moments of elation when his pain was controlled and Genma realized he'd survived.

In a week the man had aged months, hunched over his patient with magnifying lenses hiding his steely eyes. The first time Genma saw his serious face relax into a soft smile, when he'd said quietly, "You're going to make it," it had been like a blessing from the Bodhisattva herself.

If Ito-sensei had someone for him to meet, Genma was willing to meet them. He didn't sit up--he couldn't. Both hands were encased in cages of metal and bandage that looked far more like instruments of torture than the mallet that had actually done the damage. Both feet were immobilized in plaster painted with seals. Every move he might make required coordinated effort, aid from a nurse, and a willingness to ignore pain. It was easier to lie still and simply turn his head towards the door.

There behind Ito-sensei, stood another medic, dressed in white, carrying an armload of papers... Or not a medic? She didn't have the medic's hood, just a lab coat over what looked like a standard chuunin's uniform. Genma gave Ito a puzzled look.
[User Picture]From: [info]fallen_rina
2009-06-28 12:09 am (UTC)

(Link)

Rina stilled herself, attempting to look suitably serious as she curiously met Genma's eyes, trying to keep her gaze focused on his face rather than letting it stray to the near-microscopic seals patterning the bandages on his hands and feet. She'd need a magnifying glass to view them, but she had one in the pocket of her labcoat. Her fingers itched to reach for it.

Ito-sensei turned to look at her, inviting, and she shifted her feet. "I'm Akiyama Rina, I'll be assisting Ito-sensei on your case." His face, not the seals. "Pleased to meet you!" She added belatedly, and bowed.

She'd been waiting a whole week to see those seals. A week since a hospital runner had rushed into the Seal Division offices in the middle of the night, requesting as many sterilization scrolls as they could make, as fast as they could make them. Rina had been one of the few people still there, along with the ninja on call, so she'd joined in on the frenzied effort, drawing ink swirls and sharp angled kanji as quickly as she could. And if she'd added a few improvements to the standard design, well, what was the problem? She'd still gotten them done, and it had only made them better.

She hadn't been expecting the visit from Ito-sensei the next day, bags under his eyes, demanding to know who had drawn the modified designs. All fingers had pointed towards her--they knew her well by that point--and she'd cringed, waiting for complaints. Instead she'd gotten an offer, terse and to the point: he needed an assistant on a short-term basis, to help with the seal-work on a particularly trying case. She'd been nodding enthusiastically before he even finished; later that day he'd sent an assistant over with a pile of books and records for her to study while she waited until the touch-and-go phase was over.

She hadn't gotten more than a few hours sleep every night this week, studying all the material he'd given her, but it was so worth it. Straightening from her bow, Rina tried not to look too eager.
[User Picture]From: [info]fallen_senbon
2009-06-28 12:12 am (UTC)

(Link)

Genma could see her eyes flicking almost guiltily to his hands, then back to his face. Pale brown eyes, as light as his own, but greyer, cooler. Another visitor who saw destroyed anatomy, an interesting challenge, a shocking survival, and not the ninja behind them. He was used to that, after a week of it. Used to students and medics and specialists--they were easier to deal with than the psychiatrists and analysts and the quiet-voiced woman from Intel who wanted to know about the places inside him a Hyuuga's eyes and an x-ray camera couldn't see.

This one was young. His own age, maybe. Bright and sparkling, practically bouncing in place. Pretty, a little bookish, maybe. Eager to please.

He didn't have the heart for a smile. A shallow twitch of his head towards his shoulder, slightly raised eyebrows over bruised eyes, a bare hint of a tightening of chapped lips, was all she got. "Shiranui Genma." He couldn't even come up with a pleased to meet you.

"I'm going to leave Rina-san with you for a bit," Ito-sensei said. "She has a real talent for seals. She designed some of the chakra-retracing seals keeping the tissue in your hands alive."

Genma shut his eyes, took a quiet breath, and opened them to look at the girl again.

"If you have any questions, Rina, I'll be right around the corner, updating charts."
[User Picture]From: [info]fallen_rina
2009-06-28 12:13 am (UTC)

(Link)

"Thanks, Ito-sensei!" She smiled big, and tried not to let her expression falter too much as the door clicked shut behind him, leaving the atmosphere in the room considerably heavier.

Turning around, she saw Genma still suspicious and dour-faced, looking ages older than his files had said--eighteen, only about a year older than she was. If he was eighteen, he should smile. She paused for a moment, uncertain--had she done something wrong?--before deciding to just plow ahead.

"You must get a lot of visitors, huh?" The bright grin was back, edging its way from under her serious-face. Flipping through her notebook, she pulled out a sheet of thick paper that she'd slid between the pages, and unfolded it until it was nearly as wide as both of her spread arms. "I hope you don't mind if I put this here," she asked belatedly, already laying it across his blanket-covered knees. She peered at him in her peripheral vision; he just watched her uninterestedly, eyes dull.

"It's a diagram, see," she pointed out enthusiastically, smoothing the folds until it lay flat. Maybe he'd be interested! She would be, if it were her hands. "It's copied big so it's easier to follow, and here, I've written in annotations and references for all the less-common patterns." She shifted proudly--it had taken days to find all the information within the unfamiliar medical texts. And coffee. Lots and lots of coffee. "Now I'm going to trace the flow through the seals on your hands, and make sure everything's integrating properly. If you want, I can--"

Looking up and seeing him still stoic and unmoved, her face fell. "You aren't interested at all, are you."
[User Picture]From: [info]fallen_senbon
2009-06-28 12:27 am (UTC)

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"My older sister was a medic," Genma said. "She used to get excited about stuff like this, too. And I'm an assassin. I took the same theory classes on chakra flow. She was learning how to keep it moving and I was learning how to stop it." He stared at the diagram, a broad, complicated tree in which he could see the outlines of hands. At far too many of the junctures where lines should have flowed one into another, there were abrupt breaks, sharp lateral shifts, angled nodes.

"Those are supposed to be my chakra maps? For these?" He lifted both splinted hands a few millimeters, then carefully eased them back down. He kept the pain off his face, but not entirely out of his eyes. "I know what the maps are supposed to look like. Those..." He glared at the papers. "Those are just sick."
[User Picture]From: [info]fallen_rina
2009-06-28 12:28 am (UTC)

(Link)

"Well... they are, now," Rina had to concede. "But look--if it's sick, we're going to make it better!" She pointed out the thin-lined spiderwebbing of kanji that traced over every magnified inch of the chakra-flow diagram. Some characters were in black, matching the chakra-stabilizers and stasis patterns that already sprawled fractal-like across Genma's damaged skin. But more were inked lightly in pale-blue chakra-sensitive ink, piled layer upon layer, often crossing or even overlaying the solid black characters.

"Watch," Rina told him, and her eyes shone. She wove her fingers together into a few quick hand-seals, and pressed them to the edge of the paper.

Ink patterns came to life. At first the drawn seals glinted, then more started to appear. Faded blue transitioned to solid black. Deft threads of chakra controlled the animation of the complex time-flow chart, and annotations written in typewriter-like spring-green text highlighted themselves when the seals they referenced popped into view.

Slowly, steadily, as more seals appeared, the underlying chakra-flow diagram began to change. Fractured and fragmented channels, coaxed and cajoled and sometimes wrenched by cages of powerful chakra-stimulators and suppressors, gradually altered their course. More seals flurried themselves over the thick parchment, appearing faster and faster, and the scenery shifted. Rina's expression spread into a fierce grin.

When the flux of chakra and ink finally came to a halt, it wasn't perfect, by any means. Their knowledge and techniques just weren't quite good enough, despite decades of research. (Though she could fix that, someday!) The chakra flow in the finished diagram was still broken, still angular and inorganic and sick, as Genma had said.

But it was whole.
[User Picture]From: [info]fallen_senbon
2009-06-28 12:34 am (UTC)

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Despite himself, Genma watched. He watched the changes, the rerouting, the healing to those charted hands with a growing sense of disbelief. Disbelief guarding a tiny, newborn sprout of hope.

"You can... You can do that?" he asked, when the lines had stopped moving. "You think you can really do that?" He wanted to reach out and lay his shattered fingers over their painted counterparts. "Ito-sensei thinks he can... you can...?"

But he'd said he could, hadn't he? He'd told Genma, You're going to make it. And he wasn't the kind of man to give a patient false hope. He'd told Genma it would hurt, told him it would be a nearly impossible recovery. But he'd sworn it was possible.

"How long? And you can't.... You can't really..." He stared. Even the most broken nexus, a shattered scramble in his right palm that was an unending void of pain, was restored in that drawing.

For a moment, just a moment, he wanted to cry.
[User Picture]From: [info]fallen_rina
2009-06-28 12:34 am (UTC)

(Link)

"Of course we can," Rina told him encouragingly, brightly. "I just showed you, didn't I?" She tied off her threads of chakra with a twist, leaving the diagram frozen in its final state. Genma was staring at it like it held the secrets to Nirvana, his eyes rapt and unbelieving.

"It'll take a while--your body needs time to recover and adjust after each step. But really, we can." Her breath caught for a long moment, vision skipping back and forth between her diagram--each step detailed and drawn out and possible--and the young ninja watching it, his flat and defeated expression transformed into childlike wonder.

"We can," she whispered again, suddenly suffused with rich joy and a fierce pride. Then, recklessly, she added--

"I promise."
[User Picture]From: [info]fallen_senbon
2009-06-28 12:37 am (UTC)

(Link)

"You promise," Genma echoed. "You promise?" It was almost funny. How could she possibly promise anything of the sort? But he'd seen her diagrams, seen the animated motion. He could stare at the goal laid out in shimmering, multicolored lines of ink on her scroll.

"You and Ito-sensei together, right? Made this. Can fix this?" It looked impossible; he couldn't even read the script for some of the more arcane seals that had flitted across the page. He still remembered the starting point, the desecrated lines and savaged linkages.

Staring at the inky chakra lines, for half a second he traced the pathways in his own body. It was almost an instinct to compare what he saw with his own experience. It was a mistake. A huge mistake. Fractured chakra pathways, crushed coils, echoed like a collapsing ruin after a massive earthquake. Genma went very still, very pale, and wrenched his eyes away from the papers.

"You can promise all you want," he panted. "Fuck... It hurts."
[User Picture]From: [info]fallen_rina
2009-06-28 12:38 am (UTC)

(Link)

Rina's eyes widened, and she tossed the diagram to the side, leaning over the bed. "No, don't--" He'd done something; the chakra restraint seals had flashed bright. Pulling out her magnifying glass, she bent over his closest-suspended wrist, fingertips hovering bare millimeters above angry, inflamed skin.

The overtaxed chakra routing seals could scarcely handle the flow as it was. If he'd flared...

One hand settled automatically on his shoulder, attempting to soothe--her little brother Takuya, trembling and burning with fever--and she held the magnifying glass with the other, her eyes racing down the twining seal-paths, searching for interruptions. She couldn't see the chakra-flow--she wasn't a Hyuuga--but with the faint luminescent glow and her full senses tracing along the line, it was easy to tell when there was a problem.

There was a problem.

"Hold still," she cautioned sharply, and lifted her hand away from his shoulder to quickly fish out a calligraphy brush and small bottle of ink from her belt pouch. Her focus still locked fully on the faltering light from a minuscule region of stop-gap guidance seals, she held the brush between her teeth and opened the ink bottle one-handed.

There--the broken seal. Setting the ink bottle down on the side table, she reached out towards his hand--oh so carefully--with the bare brush.
[User Picture]From: [info]fallen_senbon
2009-06-28 12:41 am (UTC)

(Link)

"Stop." Genma's voice grated through clenched teeth. If he could have grabbed her wrist to stop her, he would have. He was sweating, shaking. Seeing walls that weren't there, a shimmer of a blank white mask over Rina's face.

Not real. Not real. The pain in his hands was real, the ache in his feet, but that had been just as real a week ago, when the masked torturers and blank concrete walls had been real enough to echo his screams. What was real now, here? The earthy scent of the ink, medicinal and sharp. The whiteness of the sheets. The concern in the girl's eyes. The gentleness with which she'd touched him. That was real. And nothing like Iwa's prison.

He should be used to it. After a week, he should be so accustomed to having his body handled, his injuries examined, that it meant nothing. But up until now it had been only Ito-sensei and two nurses--one for days and one for nights--out of all the staff, who had touched his hands. At least while he was awake.

"What... What are you going to do?"
[User Picture]From: [info]fallen_rina
2009-06-28 12:42 am (UTC)

(Link)

Rina held herself back, speaking quickly. "Your chakra-surge modulated the flow in your hands. These are only temporary seals; they aren't stable against changes in pressure. A few of them failed--I need to replace them."

Marking the positions of the darkened seals, she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. He looked like a deer cornered and facing down a hungry wolf: pinned and trembling, pupils blown and unable to move. She flinched inwardly, but kept going.

"It'll hurt some--I'm sorry. But I have to remove the seal to fix it; that'll cause a chakra surge of its own. I'm quick, though," she told him with a quick flash of pride, "it shouldn't cause a cascade."

He looked like he wanted to say something in response to that, but she couldn't wait. Every second more chakra leaked through, weakening him and poisoning the surrounding flesh with uncontrolled energy. Flesh that really couldn't take any more damage.

I'm sorry, she told him again silently, and touched the brush down.
[User Picture]From: [info]fallen_senbon
2009-06-28 12:45 am (UTC)

(Link)

The sensation of dry bristles against his skin was almost delicate at first. For a moment, Genma stayed grounded, watching Rina touch soft, sable hairs to a swirl of script on the back of his right hand. The skin was translucent over purple-black; the ink, when it smudged away, blended with the bruises.

Just a medic. Just a brush. Genma held exquisitely still, nostrils flared, teeth grinding. His breath came in short, strangled pants.

She lifted the brush to dip it in the ink. Chakra surged through the breach she'd opened.

Lights flared in Genma's peripheral vision, then darkness. A high, grating sound that wasn't a scream--not giving them the satisfaction of making him scream--tore from his chest. There was a voice. A woman's voice. He couldn't make out her words. It didn't matter. He wouldn't answer her. She could break every bone in his body, and he wouldn't answer her.

A numbing chill sank into his hand, freezing chakra into a gelid slurry, icing bones to the marrow.

He gasped, surging against restraints. There was a girl painting seals onto his splinted hand with a grim terror in her eyes.

He took another breath, felt his heart beating like a wild bird against the bars of a cage. Felt the shaking spread from there, until his jaw started to quiver. Vision cleared at the edges at last. He groaned, shut his eyes, opened them again. She was still there. Hospital bed and hanging IVs, white sheets and the girl Ito-sensei had said would help.

"Fuck. What the fuck?" He felt like he might pass out or puke or cry, or maybe all three. "What the fuck did you do to me?"
[User Picture]From: [info]fallen_rina
2009-06-28 12:45 am (UTC)

(Link)

Rina finished cleaning her brush with a spark of chakra to dissolve the ink, hands still rock-steady until the job was done. She replaced it in her belt-pouch, settled back down in her chair, and wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead.

Reaching over to twist the cap back onto the ink, her trembling fingers almost knocked the bottle over.

"I fixed it," she told him, straining for an even tone. It came out higher-pitched than she would have liked. "Well--part of it." Shuddering a breath, she attempted to achieve scientific distance from her words. From the near-destroyed ninja in front of her, looking at her with wild, accusing eyes and asking why she'd hurt him.

"There wasn't any time to give you more painkillers. I had to do it now." She couldn't look at him as she explained, staring blankly down at her tensely-crossed ankles instead. At her hands, resting in her lap, white and long and delicate things. Fragments of chipped pink polish lingered on the surface of her short-cropped nails; she'd forgotten to remove it. It suddenly seemed a horrific neglect.

"What I did... it's just a simple thing. Replacing the broken links, and sealing up the temporary channels. I adapted them to meld a little better; it takes some finesse, but they'll last longer."

Ito-sensei had asked her to. To look through the artificial chakra-streams and make sure everything was flowing properly, integrating with the tattered fragments of Genma's natural channels. It wasn't a hard task; it didn't take any medical knowledge, or any real experience. Just a quick and precise hand with a seal-brush, which she had.

He had trusted her to do it, and she'd done it. Done it well, in under five minutes and with no chakra spillover or any cascading at all.

She wished, for just a moment, that he hadn't trusted her. That she hadn't done it--hadn't been the one to make this already-fractured ninja look like that.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, she closed her eyes and repeated.

It didn't help.
[User Picture]From: [info]fallen_senbon
2009-06-28 12:50 am (UTC)

(Link)

Genma tried to breathe. She'd promised she could help. Shown him the charts. And Ito-sensei had brought her here. She held her fists in tense balls against her knees. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her head bowed between tense shoulders--she was the picture of a child waiting to be beaten.

She'd tried to help. She had helped, Genma realized. The ache of what she'd done lingered, but there was a sense of things--stabilized. A feeling like having a sprained ankle splinted--not healed, but not quite so likely to wobble and turn.

A nurse poked her head in the door, all concern and efficiency. "Genma-san, was that you just now? Are you alright? No, I can see it on your face. Who's this girl? Where's Ito-sensei? You look like you're past due for a shot."

"It's okay," Genma interrupted her. He could hear how ragged his voice was. "She's Ito-sensei's assistant. He's-- He went--"

"Right here," Ito said. He maneuvered around the nurse, syringe in hand, and stepped close to the bed to slide the needle into Genma's IV. "That looks solid," he told Rina. "No hint of a cascade. Well done. I think you'll find working on his left hand will be easier going."

He held the empty syringe up. "Should be easier on you, too, Genma-kun. Sorry about that. I should have dosed you up before I had her start."
[User Picture]From: [info]fallen_rina
2009-06-28 12:51 am (UTC)

(Link)

Ito-sensei's words straightened her spine, calling her back into a more professional mindset. A medical mindset: sometimes you have to hurt the patient in order to help him.

His words to Genma made her cringe again, though, and she unconsciously hunched back down. Ito-sensei shouldn't have been apologizing, not when it was her fault. "I'm sorry--I was going to get you before I started anything, but there was a surge..." Trailing off, she stood and pulled her brush out again, gesturing with the blunt end.

"See here, and here, and here--" Looking up at Ito-sensei, she pointed to several freshly-painted seals, the ink still shining. "Since he's been off the chakra-suppressors, I think his chakra-flow is recovering; it overwhelmed the channels at these points, and I had to fix them right away. I didn't think I could wait..."

Ito stepped in and smoothly guided her brush away from Genma's hand, pushing up his spectacles and peering more closely at the seals she'd indicated. "I can see that. You did well, fixing it so quickly. There's hardly any peripheral damage." He straightened up again, answering her hopeful-eyed gaze with a benevolent smile. "Perhaps later you can tell me why you used Aizawa's channel-seals instead of Imamura's simpler ones."

"Oh!" She exclaimed, chagrin forgotten, enthusiastically launching into her explanation. "It's because--"

"--later, Rina-san," he interrupted gently, resting a hand on her shoulder. "Why don't you finish checking the seals on his other hand now, and come get me when you're done? That dose should take effect soon; he shouldn't feel any more pain."

She nodded and gave him an embarrassed smile, then slipped around to the other side of Genma's bed, turning her brush right-way-around with one idle flick.
[User Picture]From: [info]fallen_senbon
2009-06-28 12:54 am (UTC)

(Link)

There was a rhythm to painkillers that Genma had learned in the last week. Re-learned, since no ninja who had survived both the war and the Fox had done so unscathed. But this was worse. The pain worse, the treatment worse. The memories worse. It was hard not to see that approaching brush as a weapon. Hard not to tense up and flinch away every time a doctor or a nurse or this seal specialist came close. Of course there was nowhere to go. Both arms were held by slings and pulleys that might as well have been restraints. Both hands caged in splints. Both feet cased in plaster. And even after a week at home, Genma was gaunt, exhausted.

It was easier to let the drugs float him away from body and memories. There was a soft, thick sensation around his tongue, a shimmering quality to the air, as the dose took hold. He welcomed it. Welcomed the slowing of his heart and breathing, the edge of dizziness that made turning his head too fast unwise and any motion greater impossible. His eyes tracked Rina, but the fear was damped away with the pain. For now.

"Feeling a little more comfortable, Genma?" Ito reached down slowly and carefully, and pulled the sheet covering Genma's chest higher. "Can I leave you with Rina-san?"

"Mnmmm," Genma agreed. "S'better."

"Good. I'll be by after she's finished." Ito put his magnifier in his pocket and headed for the door. Genma could hear him talking to the nurse on his way out; something about chakra suppressor dosing.

"Is that gonna happen again? That whatever. Breaking thing?" Genma turned his head a few degrees to watch Rina, and waited for the room to catch up.
[User Picture]From: [info]fallen_rina
2009-06-28 12:54 am (UTC)

(Link)

"Mmmrmph!" Rina answered emphatically around the brush-handle she was holding in her mouth.

"I mean, it shouldn't," she repeated distractedly, reshuffling her brush, ink-bottle, and magnifying glass between hands, mouth, and table. "You'll have to be careful not to let your chakra surge like it did then, though--although that was probably my fault, I shouldn't have shown you that diagram." She never could resist sharing; according to numerous teachers, friends, and coworkers, it was a Problem.

But--now he'd asked, right? "I'm taking some extra precautions to even out and limit the flow, so it might feel a little tingly--when you can feel things again, that is. But everything else looks really good!" She smiled encouragingly. "The integration of the seals is going great, and pretty soon we'll be able to begin overlaying the first set of major guides. Maybe even early next week!"

She was going to have to make sure to sleep before then. Because steady hands might run in the family--or so her father said--but no amount of steadiness could fully counter the cumulative effects of the gargantuan quantities of coffee she'd been consuming. Now she was fine, though; adrenaline stilled her fingers. Smooth and feather-free ink traces, laid down by her tiniest goat-hair brush, darted agilely between solid barrier-seals and sweeping medical preservation-patterns. Finessing, as she'd said. It was almost an art.

One more to go, and...

"Done!" She announced cheerily. "Ito-sensei was right--this side was definitely easier." Catching the handle of the brush momentarily between her teeth again in order to put away her ink, she finally looked back up at Genma's face. "Hey, how're you holding up?"
[User Picture]From: [info]fallen_senbon
2009-06-28 12:58 am (UTC)

(Link)

"The woman was left handed," Genma said, almost a mumble. His eyes slid from Rina's cheerful smile to his right hand, and back to the girl. "It was a woman. And she was left handed. Easier for her to target my right hand when she was facing me." He blinked slowly, fighting the fogginess of the drugs Ito-sensei had given him, fighting the sense of being slowly sucked into warm sand.

The girl's smile had frozen, and something else lurked behind her eyes now. Fear, Genma thought abstractly. She looked afraid.

"Next time. Next week, whatever. When you start the... the thing you said. The major guides. You're gonna be helping Ito-sensei, right? It's gonna be you?" Suddenly that was important, although he couldn't put his finger on why. But this girl was...

She was honest. She was looking at him — starved, beaten, tortured — and she wasn't pretending it was normal. She wasn't pretending it was anything other than horrific.

That made her safe, somehow. Safe in a way the Intel agents and psych medics and even the gentle-voiced nurses weren't. Even though she'd hurt him with her treatment. She hadn't meant to. She didn't want to now. She was sick at the thought she'd done so.

"You can come back." He tried for a smile, for reassuring, and felt his dry lips crack, the bruises on his face tighten. "You should come back. When I'm less messed up."
[User Picture]From: [info]fallen_rina
2009-06-28 12:59 am (UTC)

(Link)

Listening to his drug-faded words, Rina found herself needing to blink her vision back into clarity. She leaned closer to hear him--his voice was rough and quiet. "Hey, will do," she told him softly. "I'll be around for a while, I think." Trying for cheerful, she probably just hit strained--but that was all right. He hadn't hit what he'd been aiming for either, his chapped lips splitting blood onto an awkward rictus grin, but she got the point anyway.

"I'll keep coming back until you're better, didn't I say so? I promised." She bent over and picked up her tossed-aside diagram off the floor, rolling up countless hours of work into a neat bundle so she didn't have to look at his face.

"Besides, Ito-sensei would never let me go now. Not when I can do the grunt-work, and he can sleep!" Her laugh didn't sound like much of one. "I'll be helping with the repairs next week, for sure, and the checks in between. Count on it!"

There was just something about him. Maybe it was only that he was around her age, and was kinda cute under all those bruises--but she didn't think so. He was broken, she supposed, sharp-edged and shattered--but not destroyed beyond repair. He was something she could fix.

She smiled at him as best she could, and reached over to brush a sweat-soaked strand of hair off his forehead--she couldn't help herself. "I'll see you in a few days, okay, Genma-san?" Pushing back her chair, she settled her labcoat and stood to leave.
[User Picture]From: [info]fallen_senbon
2009-06-28 01:03 am (UTC)

(Link)

Genma was too tired and too drugged to really flinch. The heart monitor chirped out an extra beat and resettled. His eyes flicked to her hand and away. By the time he'd realized he'd reacted at all, she was already holding her charts in her arms, heading for the door.

Glancing back to smile hopefully at him.

"Is it... is it nice weather yet?" Genma asked. "What... what day is it?" They'd told him. March. It was March something. It had been shitty weather on that mission, typical February gloom and sleet. How could it be March already?

"You could bring me tako yaki. Or steamed buns. I like steamed buns. With pork and ginger, not the barbecue ones. If the vendors are out in the park yet. You know, next time. If it's nice."
[User Picture]From: [info]fallen_rina
2009-06-28 01:06 am (UTC)

(Link)

Rina had to look away quickly, squeezing her eyes shut to soothe the stinging. He wasn't watching her anyway; his own eyes were dazed and drug-shining. "Tako yaki or steamed buns. Pork and ginger. Got it," she repeated.

He hadn't even seen outside. Didn't know what day it was. He was stuck here in the hospital, and would be for at least a month. If not more. Without seeing outside.

"It's nice out today, warm and sunny," she told him blindly, brightly. "The leaves are green and new and fresh, and the cherry blossoms are just starting to bud. It's still cold sometimes, but... it's nice today."

"It's March 19th," she added, because he'd asked. "The vendors just came out a week ago--" when they'd finally dragged him home, bleeding and fragmented and barely a ninja anymore. "They're here now--well, not now, because it's too late, but... they're here." She'd had sakura mochi that day, and laughed in the sun.

She twisted her smile wider, and tried to open her eyes again. "I'll bring you tako yaki, and steamed buns. Definitely!" The hospital bed blurred in her vision, seal-painted hands fuzzing out into unformed shapes of muddy brown. "Next time, I'll bring it," she tried to assert with confidence, but her voice sounded watery and weak, and it came out as more of a whisper.

Reaching desperately for the doorknob, she opened it and slid out, leaning her head back against the cool texture of the wall. Alone in the hallway for the moment, she closed her eyes, and let the tears leak unheeded down her cheeks.