Being required to remain in-village, Hiro learned, did not actually imply that he was any less busy. Kotoe-san's note on his file had kept him Konoha-bound for the last three and a half days, but that just seemed to mean that his missions were -- to his mind, at least -- less palatable, not any less plentiful. After two more debriefings (including one with that notorious Uchiha prodigy which left Hiro reeling and, frankly, a little nauseous), no less than five extended meetings with various of Kotoe-san's subordinates working on Genma and Raidou's case, and an Internal Ops mission that he really would just prefer not to think about, Hiro was more than ready to get back out into the field and do a little old-fashioned skulking in shadows.

Instead, he found himself with the recently-unprecedented luxury of an entire evening off.

The ICU wing of the hospital was not exactly the first place he'd wanted to revisit anytime soon, if he'd had any other options. Still, he found that having his hands full of street-vendor food rather than mission scrolls made a considerable amount of difference, not to mention being out of his unpleasantly conspicuous Intel uniform. The nurses were kinder, and the few other ninja he found roaming the halls gave him sympathetic looks instead of imperceptibly flinching away.

Loitering outside Ginta's hospital room -- Ginta was inside, twitching and reading a magazine, and Hiro was not thinking about the too-intimate scene he'd glimpsed across the hall with his chakra-filled vision -- Hiro pondered the likelihood that startling Ginta would lead to a repeat of Genma and Raidou's IV-stand-flinging disaster. Concluding that the probabilities were small, he reshuffled the takeout bag and two steaming cups of tea into the crook of his left arm, and reguided the thrumming chakra flow away from his eyes.

With a short breath and a small smile, he reached out and rapped on the door.

Ginta barely looked up. "I'm decent," he told the door. It was probably time for some pill or other. Or maybe Intel wanted another word with him, now that they'd debriefed Kakashi and had a story to compare to Ginta's. There were bits Kakashi didn't know, of course, from before he'd arrived to stage his dramatic rescue. And bits Ginta didn't remember from when he'd been out of his mind with septic fever.

And bits that didn't make it into either of their reports, because they had nothing to do with the mission. Long conversations made hazy by exhaustion and delirium. Pain that trumped a shattered leg and seared chakra coils, and had no place for either of them.

Ginta turned the page of his magazine a little savagely, ripping the edge of a starlet's smile. He waited for the nurse to say something about pills and uneaten dinner trays, or the debriefer to ask for clarification about how long Ginta had hidden in that air duct after he was separated from (abandoned) his partner.

The silent ghost that slipped into the room was certainly a ninja. A ninja accompanied by pungent, gingery scents and a stunning lack of questions. Ginta had to look up at last, to find...

"Hiro?" Scowling blond eyebrows lifted in surprise, and Ginta's fierce pout turned into a wide, delighted smile. "Wow. Wow, I totally didn't expect to see you. I thought it was someone from Intel again. Although you are from Intel, but you know what I mean. Unless they're gonna make you debrief me. Are they? No, you're field ops, you wouldn't be doing a debriefing. And I've been debriefed already. Shiratori's assigned. You know him? Probably. Everyone knows him, I think. Anyway, wow. So, hi!"

He paused for breath, glanced down at himself to be sure his pro forma assertion that he was decent had in fact been true, twitched the sheets a little higher, and grinned even more. "You have two cups, does that mean you brought me tea? You're a saint, did you know that? So you know that mission I had to ditch our conversation for, when I had to take my noodles with me? Yeah, so I ran into some little snags." He shrugged his shoulders and shot a wry look at his leg. "Anyway, hi."

Hiro settled into the faded armchair beside the bed, silently handing over one of the still-steaming paper cups. "Hi," he answered easily, going with the flow, and covered up his tiny curlings of relief with a relaxed smile.

Given some of the phrases in Ginta's debriefing report -- trapped in an illegal explosives factory (that had exploded), captured and suffered minor enemy interrogation, teammate tortured and broken and eventually terminated -- Hiro hadn't even been sure that the Ginta he saw in the hospital would be the same person that he'd met almost two weeks ago, who'd been cheerfully teasing and friendly as if it ran in his blood.

Apparently, Ginta was stronger than he looked.

Which was good. Because right now, enthusiasm notwithstanding, Ginta looked like any wrong word would bowl him over. His hair splayed in a twisted blond halo about his head, mostly-healed bruises clustered in florets across every visible expanse of pallid skin, and the layered sheets could only make a vain attempt at concealing the bizarre and awkward shape his metal-encircled leg carved out beneath them. His cheekbones were more prominent than they had been before, and Hiro held out the heavy bag of takeout food with something approaching relief.

"I guess they don't really feed you in here, do they? You'd think, in the ANBU wing, we'd deserve better."

Ginta peered inside the bag, broke into a delighted grin, and extracted a faintly steaming, pillowy white pork bun. "They don't," he agreed. "It's a crime. Someone should tell the Hokage and the village council. I mean look at this." He pushed the bed table still holding its tray of unappetizing dinner offerings, rattling the dishes. "I mean, sure, it's probably nutritious. Probably some Akimichi consulted on how much protein and how many carbs and fats an injured shinobi needs to optimize healing, and what's easy to digest, and what will mix okay with pain meds, but a guy's got to want to eat it for it to do him any good."

He bit into the pork bun.

"Ooh, you gof te oms wif gimgeh!"

Hiro's lips twitched up in amusement.

"You got the ones with ginger! These are the best!" Ginta said after he swallowed. "Did I tell you I like ginger before? Or did you just figure it out because I like my noodles extra spicy. Well, a little spicy. Spicier than yours, anyway."

He laughed at the memory. Too much pepper in his ramen, juggling condiments at the counter, flirting with Hiro in the street, trying to coax a blush onto those aristocratic Hyuuga cheeks. Discovering they'd met before, long before Ginta had ever met Hatake Kakashi. Kakashi who...

Who he didn't need to worry about right now. He had Hiro here. Hiro who had come to visit. His eyes lit with a spark that had been entirely missing since the day he'd left on that mission to Komatsuyama.

"You look good in civvies," Ginta said, waving the half-eaten pork bun in the air. Hiro's clothes were well-tailored, if subdued. A close-fitting black turtleneck with a sophisticated pattern to the weave. Black pants cut stylishly slim. "Did you dress up to come see me? How'd you know I was here, anyway? I thought the only ones who knew were my mom and grandma. Well, and Intel. But that's not your division, I thought."

"It isn't," Hiro clarified, after a pause to collect his thoughts and decide how much information he could share. "But someone seems to think it is, or that it should be." If he sounded a little wary about the prospect, well... it was only because he was.

Talking about it should be okay, though. The fact that he'd enrolled--been enrolled--in psych classes wasn't classified, nor would it be difficult for anyone to discover that he'd been running a few debriefing missions on the side, if they knew whom to ask (and he was sure that Ginta did). Hiro even had the uncomfortable feeling that Kotoe-san would approve of him talking about it, the discussion itself being yet another factor that would lock him into her preferred course of action.

Still, he didn't see any particular reason not to talk about it, if he knew all that. Maybe Ginta would have some insight.

Though he hadn't missed the brief flicker of pain in Ginta's eyes earlier; how they'd flashed out to the hallway for just an instant, unfocused, before they recentered on the pork bun and the here-and-now. If he wasn't mistaken, the angle of Ginta's glance had lined up surpisingly well with another quite occupied--and relevant--ICU room across the hallway.

Interesting, Hiro thought, and made a mental note for later. There was clearly something going on there, too.

First things first though: Hiro reached over and snagged one of the pork buns from the near-overflowing paper bag. Ginta's blissful appreciation of them was making him hungry. He'd made certain to buy plenty for both of them--and as it happened, he liked ginger too.

"It wasn't Intel I found out from, though--I was here to give a debriefing a few days ago, and I saw your grandmother as I was leaving." Silent, composed, and endlessly weary; she'd seemed like an impressive woman. "I would have come back earlier, to visit you, but, well... they had me kind of tied up."

One aristocratic gold eyebrow rose. "You were doing a debrief here? And you saw Grandmother? Why would they have a field agent doing debriefs? Was it on someone you'd partnered with before? Or are they trying to get you to switch fields? Or maybe you're trying to switch fields. Funny, I didn't really peg you as an interrogator type, and debriefers are just one step away from--" He stopped abruptly and burst into a fit of giggles.

"They-- they had you tied up," he snickered. "Teaching you interrogator's tricks from both sides of the table." That was rich; Hiro's reaction was richer: he held his hand to his forehead with the exaggerated drama of an old-school film star. That just revved up Ginta's giggles into full blown laughs.

His mirth dislodged pillows, one behind his back skittering sideways, and one under his broken leg falling halfway to the floor. "Oh. Oh ow. Can you grab that?" he asked, twisting to pull the pillow at his head back into place before it toppled into the bedside table and sent the vase of daffodils his grandmother had brought on her last visit crashing to the floor.

Hiro blinked and scrambled for the pillows, sliding one errant cushion back under Ginta's leg with a sympathetic wince, and helping him resettle himself with the others. Ginta's shoulders were still shaking with unsuppressed mirth, and Hiro thought the spur-of-the-moment set-up at his own expense had been completely worth it.

"I certainly hope they're not planning to send me down to interrogation--Intel is bad enough itself, in that respect." He sipped his tea speculatively. "But if they want to train me to better defend myself against their own schemes and tricks, I'd really have be an idiot to pass that up." Not to mention that the training would help a great deal in weaving through the intricacies of Hyuuga family politics; politics that he was certain he'd soon find himself thoroughly trapped in, as the very first (second) Hyuuga in ANBU.

"It's not that bad, I have to admit. Of course, I haven't been to any of the official classes, yet... but I'm sure it'll at least help with my field work." It was really nice to talk to someone about it, actually. Ginta was listening attentively, as if he was actually interested in what Hiro was saying in its own right, and not as some kind of leverage against him. Despite his uncertainty, it made Hiro glad that, this time, he'd chosen to err on the side of disclosure.

"Wait, classes? They're actually sending you to classes? I guess it makes sense, if they think you have the aptitude. I had some classes in field interrogation techniques. Never got sent to do a debriefing though. Observed a few, of course, and I've been debriefed too many times to count." Ginta sat up a little straighter. "You're not here to debrief me, right? Although if you were officially here to debrief me you'd be in uniform and carrying papers. So if this is unofficial then the nice civvies and the bribes make sense."

He reached for another steamed bun and grinned at Hiro. "Do they do undercover debriefs now? I really don't think so, at least not for this mission, anyway. It's all classified and hush-hush, but Shiratori has been in here going over details with me since the minute I woke up. I guess there's gonna be some kind of news, and Konoha doesn't want its name attached. Or probably there already is. I mean, it's kind of hard to miss a whole bomb facility going up in flames."

He watched Hiro speculatively. There was neither surprise--so Hiro had already gotten enough of the mission details that he knew the broad strokes--nor reproach--so obviously he didn't care (or he expected it) when Ginta divulged the classified information. That didn't really shed light one way or another as to whether Hiro was visiting to visit, or visiting to get more information, but seriously, how much more information could they get?

Unless this was a psych profile.

Yeah, right. Ginta laughed again.

Hiro waved his hands urgently. "No, no! It's not a debriefing. Really. You don't have to tell me anything about it, unless you want to." In the middle of one emphatic motion, something unpleasant dawned on him. "...I'm never going to be able to convince anybody that I'm not actually on a mission, am I?"

He knew that people generally had a problem with Intel, village or ANBU division alike. He'd run his share of debriefings before he joined ANBU, presumably to determine if he'd be any good at it, but as a field agent primarily, he'd been exempt from most of the vitriol.

Hiro had a sudden feeling that was about to change.

But, not, he hoped, with Ginta. "I don't think they'd send me on the undercover analyses, anyway," he considered thoughtfully. With a vague gesture towards his eyes, he shrugged. "Not that subtle."

That wasn't strictly true. As a field operative, he was quite experienced at using barely-detectible henges to hide the visible tells of the Byakugan--even, when necessary, from other shinobi. And, putting that together with the psych skills they wanted to teach him--most importantly for this application, putting people off-balance--he was not at all certain that they wouldn't want to send him on certain undercover internal investigative missions from time to time.

It would be an understatement to say that he was not at all enthusiastic about the prospect. Sneaking around in other countries, in other towns--that was fine. But you had to have limits; ANBU had already played fast and loose with his normal Hyuuga respect for privacy, and this was much worse.

Still, he'd signed up for this; signed his name over to the Hokage, and taken the tattoo. His name was on the rolls. All he could do was to gracefully do what they told him, and try to use the system to protect himself--and his teammates, and his friends--as much as he could.

"If you'd prefer, I could take back the bribe," Hiro offered, arching a delicate eyebrow. "That is, if you don't want any of the sakura mochi that I brought..."

"You brought me sakura mochi?" Ginta's delighted grin was even broader than it had been for the pork buns. "How can I say no to that?" He bit happily into his second steamed bun. "They're very subtle, aren't they? Starving me for a week, sending Shiratori all serious to do my debriefs, and then you show up with real food and..." He stopped himself before he finished the sentence. Companionship. The morning's events with Kakashi and Ryouma played over in his mind. How much did the higher ups know about that... About Kakashi and...

Fuck that. He sighed. At least Hiro said he was here for purely personal reasons. And if there was more to it, Ginta didn't really care. Really. Besides, he was pretty sure Hiro had meant it. That frantic reaction to the suggestion he was undercover, and his following dejection, seemed genuine. And if he put himself in Hiro's shoes... Yeah, that would suck.

"So they're really putting you in classes? If you end up working in T&I, you're probably not gonna have many friends outside the department. But I kind of get the impression you don't really want to work there. Although I doubt your assertion that you lack subtlety."

"Well, I never said I was unsubtle," Hiro tossed back, rummaging around in the brown paper bag and coming out with another pork bun and a smaller bag. He presented the latter to Ginta with a flourish and a small, pleased grin -- apparently he'd guessed right on the sweets -- and leaned against the left armrest of the recliner. "But they really just want me for my bloodline, and that's not easy to hide when active. I think, if they wanted an undercover debriefer, they'd ask someone else."

Hopefully, Hiro thought, that settled that. He didn't like people being uncomfortable around him, not after most of a lifetime training for undercover field missions and putting people at ease. Besides, like Ginta had said, he did want friends outside the department. And he certainly didn't want enemies.

"The thing I don't get," Ginta told him, "is why they'd even consider it. I mean, with your Byakugan you can see through walls and stuff, right? Why not just sit you in an adjacent room while someone who looks completely innocent does the clandestine debriefing? Although I guess it works better if the subject knows the interviewer, because seriously, if some random person came in and wanted to talk about my mission or my psychological health, and they didn't identify themselves as officially on business, I wouldn't talk to them anyway. So it has to be someone the subject thinks is a friend. Which means you either have to turn people's friends into double agents, or you have to spend time having the agent cultivate a friendship on the assumption you're gonna need to send an undercover debriefer in at some point."

He eyed Hiro speculatively as he popped the rest of his bun in his mouth. It was just ever so slightly too big a mouthful, and his cheeks bulged comically.

Hiro suppressed a sigh at Ginta having talked himself into a circle, and at the bizarrely adorable visage he was presenting, cheeks puffed full with food like an impossibly inquisitive chipmunk. "Don't you think, if they were going to run a proper debriefing, they'd need a way to adapt the course of the interview based on the subject's answers? I mean, earpieces work okay, but you need special training in order to use those properly too, without giving any indication that you're being prompted."

If Ginta was really going to insist on latching onto this undercover debriefing idea, nothing Hiro could tell him would dissuade him from arguing the point. As far as Hiro could tell, a sufficiently smart person could convince himself of anything, as far as Intel was concerned--and many seemed to make a hobby out of doing exactly that.

"Besides, I'm sure if I was really a clandestine debriefer, I wouldn't be sitting here arguing with you about this issue," Hiro pointed out. And if Ginta countered by saying that's what Hiro would want him to think, he might have to bury his head in his hands, then make a stop by Kotoe-san's office to actually make an undercover debriefing report.

Of course, given that this was ANBU, it was more abnormal for an agent to not have a marking of 'tendencies towards paranoia' on his record. But still, Hiro thought, the point needed to be made.

"Unless talking about it was a way to put the subject at ease. But I don't think you're doing a clandestine debriefing on me, because..." Ginta looked thoughtful for a moment. "Well, because for one thing, it would be a waste of your abilities, and for another, I know there are some brilliant, squirrelly minds in Intel, but there's no way they started grooming you to be some kind of handler for me by sending you out as a genin to keep me from getting crushed by the Fox at the last minute. And even if they'd decided I needed a handler now, how would they have known I was gonna go to that crypto lecture? And psych profiles are good, but are they really good enough that someone could have scripted for you the right kind of questions to ask at that lecture to get me interested enough to ask you out for coffee after, so we could discover we already knew each other?"

He nodded, as if that proved everything satisfactorily. "Anyway, I'm not that paranoid. And if I was, I wouldn't be talking about it with the guy I suspected was evaluating me, because that would just prove I was paranoid. So if I really thought you were here as a debriefer, I'd be totally avoiding even bringing any of this up." He grinned and opened the sack of sweets.

"So that means you're here because you're actually interested in me, not because someone sent you. Besides, you brought sakura mochi, which is my second favorite. If you were here because of some kind of conspiracy, then you'd have brought yatsuhashi, because that's my best favorite mochi, and any Intel good enough to set up the kind of conspiracy we're postulating would have analyzed my buying habits for sweets and determined what the best possible bribe for me was."

He finally stopped, pleased with himself and a little out of breath. "So that makes you a real friend, not a fake one. Which is awesome. Want one of the mochi?"

"Yes, please," Hiro said simply, and held out his hand. The important thing was, Ginta's wildly meandering train of thought seemed to have arrived at the correct conclusion: that Hiro had decided to visit of his own free will. (Though if Hiro ever did get assigned an undercover debriefing mission, he would, at least, be sure to never bring the target's favorite food.)

To reward Ginta's vote of confidence, Hiro cast about for an innocuous question, finally settling back on tradition. Couldn't get much more innocuous than that. "Your grandmother is doing well?"

That was the nice thing about having already read Ginta's recent file: he didn't have to ask the hard questions. Didn't have to ask (or silently wonder) about Ginta's horrifically splinted right leg, or the fever-seals spreading protective tendrils over the bits of his skin that Hiro could see (and more that he couldn't).

There were other things he could wonder about--like, why had Ginta been so desperately pleased to see him? Didn't he have other visitors? What was his problem with Hatake and Tousaki across the hall?--but Hiro didn't have to ask about that.

"You came all the way here, with pork buns and mochi, to ask about Grandmother?" Ginta handed Hiro a mochi, took one for himself, and stopped with the leaf-wrapped pink sweet halfway to his mouth. "I know you're a Hyuuga and I'm a Sakamoto, but we're way past that level of pretending to be politely interested in each other's family members that we don't actually know, aren't we? Or do you know Grandmother? But you said you saw her and she didn't say anything about any Hyuuga kids. She'd definitely think you were a kid; she still thinks I'm a kid." He bit into the mochi at last, letting delight at the sweetness spread across his face.

"Anyway, she's fine. Her blossom viewing party is tomorrow--I'm excused from attending." He grinned and pulled himself up a little higher in the bed. "Hell of a way to get out of going to a party, don't you think?"

OK, really, why was Hiro here? To see him, obviously. And not to debrief him (he was pretty sure.) But why? Well, it didn't really matter. His eyes flicked almost guiltily to the door across the hall, then back. Fucking Kakashi and Ryouma. Maybe literally.

"You know what we should do? We should go steal a wheelchair from the nurses and go have a cherry viewing party of our own. Yeah. Let's get out of here. Want to help me get out of here? I mean, just for a little while."

Hiro took a slow bite of the mochi as a bulwark against Ginta's too-fervent proposition, taking a moment to savor the juxtaposition of salty leaf and sweet red bean. Not answering right away.

"You know, don't you," Hiro observed, "that if you keep stacking your questions like that, I can only answer half of them at most?" It was the opposite of the well-known interrogation technique that Kotoe-san had used to such great effect: remaining silent until the target couldn't help but fill the space with words. Idly, Hiro wondered what questions Ginta was avoiding having to answer.

Ginta's pleading look had intensified; Hiro suspected that Ginta might have been bouncing in his seat if not for the ungainly--and most certainly heavy--metal trap encircling his leg, limiting his movements. Really, he looked about ready to attempt a careful bounce or two anyway, leg injury or not. Tempted to hold out and determine whether Ginta would actually begin to quiver with impatient anticipation, Hiro nevertheless felt pressed to relent on the grounds of basic human decency.

Relenting, of course, didn't necessarily mean actually acceding.

"Somehow, I don't think anything involving stealing a wheelchair from the nurses is going to go over particularly well on my record," he said, as if it were the lamentable yet unavoidable conclusion from an elaborate line of thinking. "You might be able to manage that kind of thing," he added, "but I thought Intel were supposed to be the smart ones."

"Was I stacking my questions? I didn't think I was doing that. Well not more than usual. I guess that's why I'm not in Intel." Ginta shifted his restless focus back onto Hiro, who was sitting almost unnaturally still, as if he could somehow be sedate enough for the pair of them. It was a technique Ginta'd seen his grandmother use--in fact as he'd started to recover his energy, he'd seen it quite a lot lately.

"I didn't mean steal as in theft, just, you know, borrow," he went on. "I'm allowed to be up. I was up a bunch yesterday, playing cards and stuff with Ryouma." There was almost no hesitation, no trace of anything other than perhaps a dry throat from the mochi, when he said the name. "And this morning I was over there again, and Kakashi finally woke up, so it's okay if I go out for a while, really."

Please.

"I actually do pretty well with interrogations, when they matter," he added. "But it's not really my best area. I had a mission a month or so ago with this rookie who got really grossed out by the process. He's not in Intel, either. I know torture isn't really the best method for extracting information, but in this case the target totally deserved it, and..."

His last distraction effort wasn't working. Hiro was looking at him as if he'd understood far more than Ginta had said.

Ryouma and Kakashi, then. Well, it wasn't as if Hiro's conclusions had needed a lot of additional confirmation, given what he'd glimpsed over there earlier. And though he hadn't quite mapped out all of the numerous and ample paths of HQ gossip yet, there were some rumors that one almost couldn't help but overhear.

He wondered which one it was for Ginta, though. Was it renowned but famously off-putting Hatake Kakashi, Copy Ninja and certified prodigy? Or Tousaki Ryouma, a warmer personality and convincingly a genius in his own right, but boasting a jutsu that had all but crippled two of his own teammates? (Another bit of gossip that Hiro felt he would have had to have been near-deaf to miss.)

Hiro's slim copy of Ginta's file had skirted around the issue; it seemed that Kotoe-san had given him the mission report, but kept the Psych analysis to herself. He supposed that was fair enough. It didn't exactly help much at this point, although there was certainly something to be said for first-hand information.

And actually, Hiro considered with carefully-suppressed internal chagrin, she'd probably meant for him to practice.

Right now, practice most likely meant looking past the label of 'tentative friend,' and instead seeing a stir-crazy ninja who'd been trapped in the hospital for far too long. A ninja with only the two recent lovers across the hall for company in the last few days (and one of them in a near-coma, at that), who were probably among the last people Ginta wanted to spend time with.

Kotoe-san would be proud of his analysis, Hiro thought, if she didn't just laugh him out of her office for obviousness.

"If the nurse says it's okay, then I guess it's okay," he allowed, feeling like he was agreeing to give a child a cookie. (Though a moment's thought on Ginta's last comment about interrogations dispelled that impression with alacrity.) "If you'll just wait a minute, I'll go and find a nurse."

Padding out of the hospital room on silent feet, Hiro wondered, for the thousandth time, why people couldn't just be simple.

While Hiro was gone, Ginta did the contortionist calisthenics to get his unwieldy leg wrestled free of the pillows and blankets (at least he was out of the wretched traction at long last) and get himself covered again. It had been an unending trial to maintain some sort of modesty around his mother and grandmother when they'd visited, since the injuries to his legs had meant no pants had been provided. And he had to admit getting even the roomiest pair of boxers on and off over that metal contraption on a daily basis would have been more trouble than it was worth.

Of course at first it had been Mother and Grandmother who had done most of the work on the modesty front, twitching the sheets higher and tucking them carefully in, covering that which Ginta was far too old now to allow them to freely see. He'd only taken over the job when he'd gained enough strength to care.

Although why he cared now was an interesting question. It wasn't like he had any parts Hiro would be unfamiliar with--doubly so since no anatomy was hidden to Hyuuga eyes. The psych profilers would probably tell him it was all a bid to regain control in an environment (the hospital) and situation (being relatively helpless) where he had lost so much.

Ginta preferred to think of it as his having hidden reserves of dignity. Fortunately Grandmother had provided a means to that end, by bringing a lovely iris-printed yukata. Unfortunately it was almost out of reach, but a week's worth of healing meant Ginta had some chakra to spare. He eased himself out of the bed, balancing his weight on his left leg (the healing wounds on his thigh barely hurt. Barely, he told himself) and keeping the right carefully elevated. A pirouette his old kendo sensei would have been proud of allowed him to pull the garment close.

By the time Hiro returned, Ginta was dressed, if you could call it that, since the arm still tied to an IV wasn't in the sleeve, and an open yukata over a too-short hospital gown was still somewhat shy of the standard Ginta would have preferred. But he was as dressed as he was capable of being, and definitely ready to go.

"The gave you one," he said with a grin. "See, I knew they would. It's because they like me."

Actually, Hiro thought that it was more likely because of Ginta's apparent tendency to try to bounce off the walls when he could scrape up the energy to do so, a hypothesis well supported by the nurse's instinctive flash of wide-eyed gratitude when Hiro'd asked if he could borrow a wheelchair for Ginta.

A moment later, she'd shut away the surprised relief behind a closed expression and a flat tone laying down the ground rules: 'no leaving this floor, no matter what he says, and for goodness' sake, don't let him out of your sight!' But the second one was impossible for Hiro, and she'd calmed down considerably about the first once he'd told her that he was Intel--apparently they were 'relatively safe.' (Which left Hiro wondering what the Hunters got up to--he had visions of ANBU agents in wheelchairs chakra-adhering themselves out of windows and careening down the sides of buildings. It must have been too far-fetched, but then again, you never knew...)

All of which came down to the fact that Hiro had the wheelchair and some amount of free reign, so he supposed it didn't make that much difference whether it was because the nurses liked Ginta, or because Hiro did.

"Anywhere in particular you want to go?" he asked, holding out an arm to help settle Ginta into the wheelchair, and trying not to wince at seeing him standing. "And don't say, 'home,' because that's unfortunately not in the cards."

"Home? Not yet. We have to go dancing first," Ginta said as he carefully lowered himself into the chair. He didn't think about other promises to go dancing he'd made and broken. Promises Kakashi had made and broken. Now was now, Hiro was Hiro, and... "Dammit. Ow. OK, wait."

The IV line was stretched taut, pulling from the stand by the bed. And his haloed ankle was resting against the floor. He lifted his leg from the hip and twisted in the chair. "Um. Ow. You know it's like working out with unequal weights. They ought to put sandbags on my other ankle or something. Ow. Okay. Can you grab that thing and hook it here?" He pointed to the IV. "Should of just taken it out or something. I mean, it's not gonna exactly kill me to let it run dry for a little while."

While Hiro set about unhooking the IV from the bed, Ginta sat down again and carefully--oh, so carefully--used both hands to try to lift his leg up onto the extended foot rest. It hurt a lot more trying to do it by himself than when he'd had help, and he scowled at it, intent on figuring out a way to make it work. If he was going to be allowed to go home--and by home he meant his own apartment, not Grandmother's villa--he was going to have to figure out how to manage...

"Ow."

"Need some help?" Night nurse number three. Oh thank the generosity of heaven. Or whoever was being generous. She adjusted the leg rest, added pillows, tucked a blanket over Ginta's lap and insisted he wear socks. One on the left foot, and one pulled as far onto the right as the metal allowed. Which meant he had a floppy stocking cap of a sock clinging to his toes.

"That is seriously not cool," he told her.

"Better than cold," she replied. "You be good now, Sakamoto-san."

Hanging the IV bag on the back of the wheelchair, Hiro stifled his amusement at the young nurse's firm mothering--and at Ginta's strictly five-year-old response. "You wouldn't want to get sick and have to stay in the hospital even longer, would you?" he added in, sharing a comrades-in-arms glance with the nurse, who flushed a little and looked long-suffering.

"Is there a courtyard or something that we could go to?" Hiro asked her before she could slip back out the door. He didn't quite know his way around yet, and while he could just look, asking was better.

She thought for a minute, hand on the doorknob. "There's a balcony on this floor, but..." Eyeing Hiro, she bit her lip. "Since you're escorting him, Hyuuga-san, I can give you permission to take him down to the gardens on the first floor. They're quite lovely!" She dimpled a quick grin, then headed back to her rotations, leaving them alone.

He pondered. It wasn't the same nurse he'd talked to. But apparently the first one had sent her, since she'd known to come here, and known that Hiro was considered a safe escort. (Whatever that meant.) And given two conflicting restrictions--the more flexible of which Ginta now knew about--it only made sense to choose the one he preferred.

"So, how do the gardens sound?" Hiro asked Ginta, already knowing the answer.

"Wow, the garden. You really must have made an impression, or else they think you're here as a handler. Which you aren't, as we've already established, but I'm all for letting them think you are if it means we get to go exploring." Ginta grinned and started wheeling the chair towards the door. "They usually get all antsy about letting us off the ANBU ward unless we have an Intel escort or are cleared, and I'm pretty sure I'm not cleared yet. I guess there have been some incidents with PTSD guys having big breaks where civilians could see them. Don't worry," he added breezily, "I'm totally not about to have any kind of break, big or little."

The going got suddenly easier, as Hiro hurried to catch up and started pushing the wheelchair. Ginta leaned his head back and gave Hiro a toothy grin. "So I get to ride and play pampered princess? I can do that, for you. Actually I'm really hoping they let me get up on crutches tomorrow, because this kind of blows, and I know there's no way they're letting me go home until I can get around on my own. I mean, I can't even put on underwear yet, until they give me a regular cast. Which I don't know if they're gonna do or not. Maybe I should get a fundoshi, except you really have to be standing up to wind one of those on, and it's hard to stand up. Of course if I had crutches I could stand up, but then I'd have my hands full of crutches so I wouldn't be able to wrap the loincloth on."

He checked for a blush, and was pretty certain there was a faint pink tint to Hiro's ears. By the time Ginta stopped babbling, they were well past Kakashi's door, past the double doors marking the ICU off from the rest of the ward, and headed for the elevator. Good. He was already breathing easier.

Underwear. Was it truly necessary to talk about underwear? And the fact that Ginta wasn't wearing any? Yes, he knew it, he'd seen it--that didn't mean he had to think about it. Ignoring things like that was the Hyuuga way, and the only way anyone had any privacy at all in a house full of all-seeing eyes.

For himself, Hiro thought that it might be a while before Ginta got his underwear back. He'd seen enough shattered limbs lately--too many--to know what a mostly healed one looked like. And this wasn't it. The edges were still too ragged, the bones locked together but not sealed. The fragile connections looked superficial enough to splinter apart with one solid jolt. Not to mention the killing fever, arrow wound, and lacerations that Ginta's original file had described in great detail.

Hiro didn't know much about medicine, but he wouldn't send Ginta home yet.

Maybe Ginta knew better than he did, though. Or maybe the doctors would weigh differently the risk of keeping a young, twitchy ninja cooped up. At least they were letting Ginta go out now, anyway, to get some fresh air and escape the weight of whatever was bothering him over in Hatake and Tousaki's room. The wheelchair already felt lighter to push.

Nodding politely to the impassive guards and waving to the familiar scarred desk-ninja who now knew him on sight, Hiro pushed the wheelchair over to watch the smooth plastic elevator button light up beneath Ginta's fingers.

"I hope they let you out soon," he agreed as they watched the floor-numbers illuminate in measured succession. He couldn't honestly claim he thought they would. But this, at least, he could truthfully say.