The nurse's second stop was just across the hall, where she found another deeply sleeping patient. In fact Ginta was so soundly asleep it took her two attempts calling his name, a gentle shake of the bedframe, and finally a hand laid on his shoulder before Ginta's eyes cracked open to red-rimmed blue slits.

"I'm sorry I have to wake you, Sakamoto-san," she said quietly. "And I have to turn the lights on, you might want to shield your eyes."

Ginta made a small noise of assent that turned into a broad yawn punctuated by a wince and a whine as the overhead fluorescents flickered to life.

"Sorry," the nurse apologized again. "I need to pull your covers back, too, and take a look at your legs."

"It's okay," Ginta told her. He stretched and squirmed, trying to untangle the IV line he'd manage to roll onto in his sleep, while the nurse carefully peeled back bandages from his thigh. "Is it time to get up already? My friend Hiro brought me mochi last night. If there are any left over can I have that for breakfast?" He looked hopefully towards the bedside table, pleased to find the bag of sweets still exactly where Hiro had left it.

"Oh! No, I'm sorry, but no." She pushed the table away from the bed, as if Ginta might disobey and reach for the forbidden breakfast in defiance of her instructions. "Don't you remember? You're scheduled for surgery on your leg this morning, and if it goes well, you'll be getting a regular cast."

"Oh. Yeah." Ginta sighed. Having now thought about breakfast, he found his stomach grumbling and hollow-feeling. "So no coffee, either?"

"Nothing by mouth. Not even your meds," she told him. "You get it all in the IV this morning. But the good news is they're doing your procedure first, so you might even be able to get up on crutches this evening if it all goes well." She smoothed a slightly chemical-scented ointment and fresh gauze over the wound on Ginta's thigh. "And this is looking much better. Much, much better. You've made amazing progress, Sakamoto-san."

Ginta recognized the attempt for what it was: look at all the shiny things you have to look forward to, isn't that worth a missed breakfast? If it had been his mother or grandmother saying it, it would have just pissed him off, but this nurse... "You're good at your job," he told her. "Mae-san, right?"

She flashed Ginta a bright, pink-lipstick-accented smile. "Yep. That's good to hear. Okay, are you ready for me to have a look at the other one?"

"Be my guest," Ginta told her. When she pulled the bandages back from the places the fixator's steel pierced the flesh around his broken leg, Ginta's expression barely wavered. He just took a deep breath and looked out the window. Sun coming up. Grandmother would be by later. And Hiro said he'd be back.

He didn't look towards the door. Didn't wish he had Hiro's eyes to see what was happening in Kakashi's room, not even for a second. Didn't think about the half-whispered talk he'd overheard from the night-shift nurses, about Kakashi's excursion, and Ryouma's subdued exit and surprising disappearance on a mission.

Didn't give it a thought at all.

When the medic came, he was swift, brusque, and efficient. Kakashi liked him, if only because he had to spend less than five minutes in the man's company.

"Your chakra coils aren't quite where I hoped they'd be," Hikaru-sensei told him, leaning by the door. "But they're better than I expected, so that's progress. All in all, you got pretty damn lucky."

Behind his mask, Kakashi quirked an unfelt smile.

"More rest," the medic went on. "More sleep. More taking it easy. I'm putting you on medical leave for at least another week, and I expect you to spend the first three days lifting nothing heavier than a shopping bag, capiche?"

Kakashi arched an eyebrow. "A shopping bag?"

"Mm-hmm," Hikaru agreed. "Maybe two. Preferably full of all the food you're going to buy. And eat. I'm also prescribing you iron, multi-vitamins, a few supplements to boost your immune system, and eight glasses of water a day. At least."

"Anything else?"

"Don't tempt me. You're off training until I say so--" A hand cut Kakashi off before he could open his mouth. "Two days at least. And you're to do everything Akimichi Masuru tells you. He's a smart man."

"Lovely, I heard," said Kakashi dryly.

"That, too." Hikaru juggled a clipboard and stethoscope quickly between his hands, glancing through notes. He gave Kakashi a hard look. "This is your fifth serious hospitalization this year, Hatake-san, and we're barely past spring. I appreciate that you do a difficult, dangerous job, but none of ANBU's other agents are injured so frequently."

"You could swap with me for a day?" Kakashi offered, deadpan. "I'd look very good in a white coat."

"Ha." The medic pulled the door open. "Take care of yourself, Hatake-san. And I mean that sincerely."

And he was gone.

Kakashi sat on the bed, rubbing absently at the red marks the blood pressure cuff had left behind, then got up to shut the door. He had to lean against it for a moment, just to catch his breath. Which was ridiculous.

Frustrated, he snapped the blinds closed and ripped Ryouma's hoodie off, bundling it up and tossing it on the vinyl chair. There was stuff everywhere. Video tapes, clothes, two stacks of CDs, a CD player, the damn coffee cup castle...

That went first. Kakashi dismantled it, crumpled the cups, and stuffed them viciously into the overflowing trash bin. Then he shoved every piece of Ryouma's abandoned clothing into the half-full sports bag left behind the door, folding everything into ruthlessly efficient and space-saving shapes. Ignored the scent of warm thunder that clung to his hands. Next were the CDs; he stuffed them into the bag, too, along with all the videos that would fit. A few of them remained. Kakashi located a ragged-looking plastic bag and used that, then kicked both bags towards the door.

The CD player he regarded for a moment, then found a pen and paper, and scrawled a quick note. 'FREE TO A GOOD ANY HOME'.

Ryouma could track it down later, if he cared enough.

And that just left Kakashi. The clothes he was wearing were still good enough, if a little cold. His hair needed a serious wash and cut, but he could do that at home. The doctor would have left his prescriptions with the nurse's main desk. So there was only the Akimichi to see.

And shoes would help.

He caught his breath again, then headed out into the corridor to grab the first available nurse.

Across the hallway, Ginta's door was closed. For the moment, Kakashi didn't look at it.

By the time the orderly came with a gurney to fetch Ginta off for surgery, he was bathed and shaved with his teeth brushed and his hair combed. Dressed in a fresh hospital gown as shapeless and unflattering as all the others, but smelling of detergent instead of pain-infused sweat. Medicated to the gills, so his balance was precarious and his vision blurred.

"Hold on there, Sakamoto-san," the nurse told him, catching him under the arms when his attempt at transferring himself from bed to gurney nearly landed him on the floor. "Can you get his shoulders, Yuuji, and I'll take care of his legs?"

"I can do it," Ginta protested.

"Yes, but you're going to let us do it for you anyway, because you wouldn't want us to get in trouble if you fell. And don't try to use chakra for balance. One of the pre-meds we gave you is a suppressor so they can do the surgery without worrying about re-routing."

Large male hands substituted for Mae's slender ones, while she moved down to Ginta's feet. "Left leg first, that's the easy one," she said, lifting Ginta's left foot and easing it onto the gurney. "Now shoulders." Yuuji lifted Ginta's upper body as if Ginta weighted nothing at all, settling him onto the cold, stiff mattress of the gurney.

"Eyes open, Sakamoto-san," Mae continued, forceful but light. Ginta obeyed, looking up to see Yuuji's grinning face and white hood bending over him, wavering as if Ginta were seeing him through the glass of an aquarium. "Don't close y'er eyes. Just makes the spins worse. Trust me on that," he told Ginta with a wink.

"All right. Now the other leg. Let me do the work, you just go limp."

Easier said than done, because despite the intoxicating cocktail diluting his bloodstream, Ginta could still feel the jarring through spider webs of cracks in his shin bones when Mae lifted his leg and placed it on a waiting cradle of pillows.

"Tha's right, keep y'er eyes on me," Yuuji told him. He tucked a pillow under Ginta's head.

If Ginta hadn't been quite so thoroughly drugged up, he'd have considered hitting the man.

And then they were going. Rolling out into the hall, where there was life and movement. The door to Kakashi's room stood ajar, and for just a moment Ginta caught a glimpse of another nurse gesturing sharply at a thick folder in her left hand. And Kakashi, towering over her but looking like he might fall at any moment, glaring at her with so much ferocity it gave Ginta a chill.

He didn't have time to ask about it.

"When you come out of recovery, they'll be moving you to the regular ward," Mae said, stepping to the head of the gurney and blocking Ginta's sight of Kakashi. "But I'll come see you, or you can come see me. As soon as you're up on crutches, you come visit us and show us how you're doing, okay?"

"Uhn," Ginta agreed. It was too hard to keep his eyes open. Too disorienting to try, as Yuuji started pushing the gurney again and the overhead lights rolled by.

"--just monumentally stupid, Hatake-san. You've only been awake since yesterday."

"I'm aware of that," Kakashi said, forcing patience through his gritted teeth. "But I'm also perfectly capable of taking care of myself at home. Unless you're so flush with resources that you can give them away to any free-loader?"

"You're not a free-loader," the nurse hissed, clearly struggling to keep her voice down. "You are a patient under our responsibility, and you nearly died last week!"

"Ninja," Kakashi pointed out. "And I don't need a nurse to assist me with vitamins and bed-rest."

There was a brief, soundless struggle as the woman clearly resisted the urge to stun him with her folder. Kakashi stood his ground, knees locked against the urge to buckle.

"If this is about Ryouma-kun leaving--" the nurse began, trying a new tactic.

Kakashi's brutalized chakra flashed outside his control for the skin of a heartbeat; he yanked it back, locking it down again, and breathed through the rush of pain and new information. Chakra signatures that had just lit up to meet his. The nurse's mouth was hanging open.

"It isn't," Kakashi told her, flat. "And I'm leaving whether you want me to or not. Save yourself some time and get the paperwork."

She took a deep, deep breath and spun on one heel. Kakashi watched her go, then steadied himself against the wall and looked the other way. Down the hallway. Where he'd just felt...

It couldn't have been Ginta.

Five minutes later, when the nurse came back, she had a ginormous Akimichi in tow, a stack of paperwork the width of Kakashi's arm, and a triumphant smile.

"Hatake-san, this is Akimichi Masuru-san. He'd like a minute of your time."

A hand the size of a small family ham engulfed Kakashi's and shook it firmly. Kakashi's visible eye widened.

Masuru leaned forwards, filling the universe. "Delighted to meet you," he rumbled gravely. Concern filled intelligent brown eyes. "Are you always this thin?"

Kakashi shot the nurse a venomous glare. She smiled at him.

The recovery unit was a place Ginta knew as much by sound and smell as anything. The lingering scent of gas anesthetics, sharp and bittersweet, made him want to reach for a mask to protect himself from a chemical attack. It had been like that in the war, sometimes, especially when they'd squared off against ninja from Rain. Men and women, ninja and civilians, grandmothers and school-children, choking on clouds of orange fog. The ninja had masks. The lucky civilians escaped with a cough, or took deep breaths and died where they stood. The unlucky...

But the soft beeping of a heart monitor was far from the desperate cries of battle. The squeezing of a blood pressure cuff wrapped around his biceps, hiding a crimson tattoo, hauled Ginta towards the surface of consciousness and away from best-forgotten dreams of the past.

He groaned and tried to open his eyes, and was immediately hit with a crushing awareness of his right leg.

"--moto-san, back with us? Sakamoto-san? Ginta-san?"

The breath caught in his throat. The groan stuttered to silence. The beeping continued, and the cuff started another cycle of inflation.

"Good. How are you feeling? I'm giving you a little more morphine now. Surgery's all done. Are you cold?" the nurse didn't wait for an answer, just carefully layered a pair of hot-from-the-dryer blankets over Ginta.

He was surprised to realize he was shivering.

"Good," the nurse said again, as if Ginta had answered her. He wondered what was good. There was a sound of swinging doors, and a scent of hot food cutting through the chemical atmosphere. "I brought pizza for lunch," someone said from across the room. Ginta felt suddenly ravenous and nauseated all at once.

Lunch time. It was lunch time. How long did that mean the surgery had taken? At least three hours, right? Maybe longer? Probably longer. If it had taken that long, was that a good thing, or a bad one?

The scents grew stronger, and Ginta choked on half a retch.

"Morphine making you feel a little sick?" The nurse again. Cold hands on his forehead. "I'll give you something for that, too. You just sleep a little more. We'll have you back in your room as soon as you've stabilized, alright? Your grandmother's waiting for you already."

Grandmother. He was late to see Grandmother. She didn't like to be kept waiting, but he couldn't seem to open his eyes.

Kakashi fought not to lay his head down on the table and--something. Cry, maybe. Or sleep. Or burn the furniture to chakra-scorched cinders.

In Masuru's massive hands, the seventh flip chart was entirely dwarfed. He held it delicately, fingers stroking along the edges as if it was made of some precious material, and began pointing out all the selling points of complex carbohydrates with enthusiasm.

They'd covered Kakashi's typical diet already. Masuru had been unjustifiably horrified that the bulk of it included ration bars, protein powders, anything Kakashi (rarely) felt like cooking, and whatever ANBU's canteen had in stock. He'd been even more horrified when the nurse had presented Kakashi's medical chart with a flourish, including the detail that he was fourteen pounds below his last weigh-in. Of two weeks ago.

If Kakashi hadn't already been soul-scorched on the topic, he might have seriously considered murdering that nurse.

Or Masuru, if the man hadn't been so unfairly nice.

Masuru had even gone out of the way to make his soul focus in life interesting. The flip charts were colourful, his lectures were thoughtful, everything was entirely geared towards the lifestyle of a hard-working shinobi...

And Kakashi was about to do some grievous bodily harm if Masuru gave him one more concerned glance.

"Okay," he said, for what felt like the millionth time. "Understood. Thank you. That's very usefu--"

"Mm-hm," Masuru interrupted, with a look that was far too knowing. "Tell me, Hatake-san, have you ever worked with an Akimichi before?"

Kakashi paused and thought. "Probably," he hedged, trying to remember.

"Then you were not paying attention," Masuru said with a grin. "Because if there's one thing we Akimichi excel at, it's the ability to re-build ourselves. Fourteen pounds, wasn't it?"

"Uh," said Kakashi, watching the man uncertainly. They were in a small office. Masuru was between him and the door.

Brown eyes gave him a look that was suddenly sharp, measuring. "That'd put you at about one forty-eight normally, am I right? Maybe one forty-nine."

Kakashi's eyebrows arched.

"Still too thin," Masuru chided. "Far too thin. With your height you should make one-sixty easily, especially with the muscle weight. Who an earth fostered your nutritional education, Hatake-san?"

Kakashi shrugged uncomfortably.

"Vegetables," Masuru said forcibly, whacking a hand down on the table. Kakashi jumped. "Meats! Carbs! Fats -- lots of fat in your case, Hatake-san. I'm talking about a proper, healthy, balanced diet! Containing actual food."

If Kakashi edged his chair back quickly, he could make a break for the door...

"And these," Masuru added, spreading out a fan of multi-coloured packets on the table. Kakashi blinked, paused, and then leaned closer.

"Are those...?"

"Yes," said Masuru, with rumbling satisfaction. "The Akimichi clan's secret to success. The Hokage--" here the man's tone coloured with deep respect, "--asked me if I wouldn't mind paying you a visit. Apparently you are trust-worthy, and also deserving."

Kakashi was starting to feel hot behind his mask.

"Blue, purple, red, yellow, green -- in that order," Masuru said firmly, pointing at the packets with the correct corresponding colours. "Five meals a day -- and I mean proper meals, Hatake-san -- with these powders included, and you'll have the weight back in time for your next mission. Not to mention the chakra reserves. I've drawn you up a two week list of meals--"

A heavy folder dropped down in front of Kakashi's nose.

"--and you will follow them, Hatake-san. Or I'll know about it."

"How--?"

"You don't want to know."

"... right," Kakashi said slowly, and flipped the folder open. The first page contained an index. The second page held neatly written, precisely detailed instructions on how to make some kind of nourishing rice porridge. With fruit. There were pictures.

He looked closer.

Annotated pictures.

When he looked up, Masuru was regarding him with the fond, beatific expression of a man observing a pet project. Kakashi almost didn't have the will to glare at him.

"If that's everything...?" he began, with something like hope.

"Ah! Of course, forgive me. I'm taking up all your time, I expect," Masuru boomed. He stood up, almost knocking his chair over backwards, and grabbed Kakashi's hand again before the copy-ninja could dodge. "It's been a pleasure meeting you, Hatake-san. A pleasure."

"Don't mention--"

The hug happened before Kakashi could fully appreciate the looming threat. Masuru's eyes twinkled, his arm moved, and Kakashi found himself swept up and crushed against a meaty chest; half asphyxiated, yanked up onto his tip-toes, the ham-sized hand still clutching his. From a distance of nothing, Masuru smelled of honest sweat, kitchen spices, vibrating sincerity, and some mix of subtle chemicals.

Kakashi made a strangled sound and very pointedly did not stab the man through his kidneys.

Masuru thumped him heavily on the back, apparently in a gesture of good cheer, and released him. Kakashi tried not to sway on his feet. Sparkly black dots were gathering around the corners of his vision.

"Well!" said Masuru, beaming. "I'll leave you to it, then. Good luck, Hatake-san! I hope I don't have to see you again."

"Mm," said Kakashi, who didn't quite trust himself to speak.

Masuru nodded, gathered his flip-charts, and made for the door. Kakashi waited until he was around the corner and gone before collapsing into an abandoned chair. When he dropped his head down on the table, little coloured packets scattered and crunched.

There was a sound, curling around the edge of hearing. It took Kakashi a second to realize it was him. And a second longer to realize what it was: not quite laughter, nothing close to crying. A shaky, ragged, raw kind of breathing. He swallowed it down, crushing himself into silence.

Slowly, he shoved himself back upright, and swept the packets into a neat stack. Shoved them into the folder. Staggered back to his feet. Made for the door.

It was a shame Ryouma wasn't here, Kakashi thought bitterly. He'd have loved this.

Sakamoto Chihiro did not like being made to wait, but there were good reasons to grant an exception every now and again. Today she'd arrived at a little after eleven, expecting to find her grandson just waking from some kind of complicated surgery on his leg. It had been explained to her the day before, by Ginta's sharp-faced doctor, in detail which she really didn't retain. The important thing was that Ginta's leg was healing. Ginta was healing. The infection was gone, which meant surgery to graft bone into some of the nastier breaks could proceed. Which meant Ginta would be out of that ghastly skeletal framework, that looked more like torture than treatment. He'd have a normal plaster cast. He'd look more like a man who was going to recover.

The doctor had assured Chihiro and Ginta both that as soon as Ginta'd built up his reserves and the bones had finished mending, he'd be able to return to active ANBU duty. It had cheered Ginta, even if it had appalled Chihiro. But all she had to do was look at her grandson in that hospital bed, and she saw Gousuke. She could feel the ghost of her husband whispering in her ear: being a ninja was Ginta's birthright. He would never be happy any other way, just like Gousuke himself.

Ginta's hospital room was empty, but one of the nurses found Chihiro and told her the good news: Ginta was being moved from ICU to the regular ANBU ward. He should be back from surgery soon, if Chihiro wanted to wait. The new room held two beds instead of one, both unoccupied. The one by the window was designated for Ginta. Chihiro hoped he wouldn't have to share the room. She settled into one of the visitors' chairs and pulled out her needlework.

At noon, with Ginta still not back, she went to inquire. He was in recovery, they told her. Surgery had taken longer than expected, but it had gone very well. At twelve-thirty, they finally brought him to his room. He was terribly pale--paler than he'd been the day before--but the doctor with him swore it was just the effects of anesthesia, and everyone always looked bad right after surgery. Swore it had gone fantastically well, better than expected. They'd taken longer because they were able to do more work with chakra acceleration of the bone and tendon healing than they'd planned for.

Ginta just whimpered while two medics lifted him onto the bed, propped up his leg, now encased in gleaming white plaster, and covered him with layers of blankets. Chihiro waited until they were finished before she moved to his bedside and brushed fine blond hair back from a cool forehead. The fever was gone. Ginta turned his head towards her hand, mumbled something indistinct, and went back to sleep.

For another forty minutes, Chihiro watched her sleeping grandchild and waited. Then the nurse came back to hang new medicine on the IV. When she left, Chihiro followed her out of the room, closing the door softly behind her. If she was going to wait, she could do so with a cup of tea. After years of waiting for the men in her life to wake up in this very hospital, she knew exactly where the break room was.

Paperwork took forever.

After the eighth form Kakashi was required to sign in triplicate, he began to seriously suspect the nurse was just messing with him again. When he protested, she pulled a medic aside and Kakashi was required to sit through yet another quick physical, just to make sure he wasn't about to drop dead on the spot.

The medic tutted over his blood pressure, checked his sugar levels, and told the nurse to order a high-calorie lunch.

With great effort, Kakashi restrained himself from punching a hole in the wall. Why was everyone suddenly obsessed with giving him food?

Macaroni and cheese was the dish of the day. He ate it with chopsticks and a side-salad, standing over the nurse's desk, signing slowly through paperwork with his free hand. Every third second someone tried to catch a glimpse of his face; Kakashi considered it a mark of significant personal improvement that none of them succeeded.

Then Intel wanted a word.

He sat through a second interview with his battered patience slipping rapidly through his fingers. But he answered their questions, kept a lid on his temper, and clarified the few points they wanted to double check. When you first reached Sakamoto-san, what kind of state was he in? (Tortured, injured, falling towards a vat of molten metal.) Where, exactly, did you bury Kinjo Tsuyako-san's body? (In the southern mud bank of the Kintama river, twenty-three miles outside of Komatsuyama-city proper.) How are you feeling in yourself? (None of your business.)

When that was done, the nurses had begun their early afternoon rotation, and Kakashi was long past ready to go home. He collected Masuru's folder, retrieved the two bags of Ryouma's stuff from his former-room, and finally signed himself out at the nurse's desk.

He was halfway to the door when he caught sight of Ginta's empty room, the bed being re-made by an unfamiliar nurse, and almost had a heart attack on the spot.

The nurse leapt quietly out of her skin when his hand dropped on her shoulder. But she was quick to explain that Ginta had not, in fact, relocated to the hospital's morgue. He was getting surgery on his leg and--

She paused to check her watch.

--he should have been done an hour ago. Maybe more. Kakashi would probably be able to find him in the regular ANBU ward, if he was inclined to look.

It was a decision that took less than a millisecond to make, motivated almost entirely by the shotgun beat still rattling behind Kakashi's aching sternum. He threw Ryouma's sports bag over his shoulder, hung the plastic bag from his other wrist, jammed the folder beneath his arm, and absolutely didn't limp on his way down the hall.

Ginta's room was easy to find, in the end. Kakashi met it gratefully with a shoulder against the laminated wood, catching his breath yet again, and dropped his hand to the handle--

Skinny, steely, blue-veined fingers wrapped around his wrist.

It was another mark of personal improvement, he thought later, that he didn't add another broken neck to his record. Or maybe that was just a learning curve.

"Hatake-san," Chihiro said quietly. "Ginta is sleeping, and you hardly look fit to be out of bed yourself." She looked up into a gaunt masked face--so like his dead father, and yet so unlike. His coloring and build were all Sakumo, but that doe-shaped eye and delicate jaw had come from the mother the boy had never known.

And now here was the son. She remembered him from that hospitalization in December, when he and Ginta had both come home with pneumonia and assorted other ills. She remembered the way Ginta had talked about his new friend. The delight he'd taken in meeting a true intellectual equal.

The way Ginta had talked about him that had sounded just a little bit too much like the way Ginta's mother had once talked about the boys in her life, when she'd been young and flirty.

"Perhaps you should sit down." She gestured at an empty wheelchair, standing in the hall. Across the back of the blue vinyl was stenciled, 'ANBU ward, F4'.

She remembered Ginta's early morning visit to her koi pond a month ago, the devastation in his eyes. She remembered the way he'd told her to send for Ryouma. The way his gaze had flinched away from Kakashi's door after Ryouma arrived, the hard edge that had crept into his voice when Ryouma was there.

You have hurt my grandson, she thought fiercely. I'm grateful to you for saving his life. But you shame your family and mine.

If he'd been younger, more selfish, and less controlled, Kakashi might have taken a look at the proffered wheelchair, reached his absolute limit, and thrown an apocalyptic fit. But he wasn't, and even the most hard-edged ninja wouldn't lower himself to screaming at old ladies who were presumably relatives, so he just drew a long, slow breath.

And smelled bitter fury on the air.

Slowly, his spine straightened. He gave the woman a second look: perfect hair, classical clothes, exquisite posture, the subtle flavour of old-world money. No callouses, no scars, but some ninja-steel anyway. Too old to be Ginta's mother...

Grandmother, probably. And not remotely happy to see him.

Kakashi let Ryouma's bag slide off his shoulder, dropped the folder on top of it, the plastic bag on top of that, and then turned to lean both shoulders against the door. Casual but braced, entirely immovable. Behind the white-painted wood, he could sense the slow, muted flicker of sleeping chakra. Ginta's chakra.

"Thank you," he said neutrally. "I can wait."

There was an element to showdown to Kakashi's posture. A finality that said 'these are my cards and I am calling your bluff.' Chihiro had to admire that, at least a little. "Well, Kakashi-san..." She almost called him -kun. Almost. As if he were a boyhood friend of Ginta's and not a comrade in arms. But that word would have been too familiar. Implied a closeness between Sakumo's son and Gousuke's grandson that she she didn't want to even contemplate.

Couldn't help but contemplate.

"Your mother is not with us, but I knew her. I am sure she would tell you to take a seat, if you are going to insist on waiting until Ginta wakes." She sniffed and gestured at the wheelchair again. "And I am equally sure Ginta will be upset if he learns you have exhausted yourself once again on his behalf."

She'd listened to Ginta's fever-dream talk. Listened to him call for Kakashi, listened to him curse himself, curse Kakashi, for driving himself nearly to death to bring Ginta home. How could one skinny, silver-haired boy mean so much to Ginta? Have such a claim on his heart and not even know it? Not even care?

"Sit, Kakashi-san. We will both wait."

His mother?

Despite every cunning tactic used by nurses, medics, Intel agents, and oversized Akimichi, no one else had managed to quite so neatly yank the fight out from under Kakashi's feet. He blinked, snapped his mouth closed, and stared at the tiny woman in front of him. Canary-boned, paper-skinned, slim, delicate, almost white at the temples -- she barely reached his ribcage. But she was ordering him around with the comfortable ease of Arakaki himself, using Ginta's name...

Talking about his mother.

Belatedly, Kakashi schooled his expression back to a neutral place, retreating behind mask, expressionless skin, and a half-lowered eyelid.

"Ladies first," he said, with a nod at the wheelchair and a good stab at sincerity. The woman's mouth hardened, lines deepening at the corners. Kakashi tilted half a false smile at her, and slid stiffly down the door, finding a seat on the cool tiles. He hooked a leg up and braced his arm on it, inhaling again.

Irritation. Something like frustrated surprise. A good dose of half-crushed uncertainty.

Long-forgotten manners waved a grubby grey flag.

"You have the advantage of me, ma'am," he said, re-studying her. "Who are you?"

Obedient disobedience. That was one more thing the Hatake boy had in common with Ginta, Chihiro thought. At least he was sitting down now, if not where she'd instructed him to. She arched one perfectly-shaped eyebrow and quirked her lips in a politely frosty smile. "Sakamoto Chihiro," she introduced herself. "Ginta's grandmother. Forgive me for not introducing myself immediately, Kakashi-san." Her bow was made of self-possession and pride. Of dignity and assurance, and a solid sense of exactly where Chihiro stood in relation to Kakashi--his superior in age, in social class, in experience, and authority.

She waited for him to nod back, stiff-necked and awkwardly from his crouch on the floor, then floated gracefully to sit in the vacant wheelchair.

"I am surprised to see you leaving the hospital so soon. When last I looked in on you at Ginta's request, the day before yesterday, you were unconscious with an anxious... friend... waiting for you to wake. Ginta was worried about you."

In many ways, it was strangely like facing down an enemy ninja. Albeit one he could have snapped like a toothpick. But the tension was there. The lurking undercurrent dance that meant not breaking eye-contact, not allowing a hit to land, searching for a weakness...

Which was exactly why Kakashi didn't flinch when Chihiro stumbled over Ryouma's title. Instead he inhaled again, stone-faced, and caught the waver in her scent. The little uncertain-anxious-scornful flicker that made one eyebrow lift. Was that it? She didn't like Ryouma?

Or didn't like Kakashi and Ryouma?

Well, it wouldn't be the first time he'd run into an upper-echelon snob with an aim to keep Konoha's bloodlines pure. Girls with boys, boys with girls -- and everyone else out in the field where they could die unremarkable deaths and keep their peculiarities to themselves. Though it wasn't often he found that particular bigotry-bite in the relative of a man he'd almost killed himself trying to drag home.

Of course, he didn't often meet relatives.

Kakashi braced his chidori-burned hand under his chin, fingers curled over his jawbone, and smiled like ice. Took a shot in the dark.

"Tell me, Chihiro-san, when Ginta confessed his reasons for liking sparkly shoes as a kid, did you kick him out straight away, or were you just relieved when ANBU took him in?"

Chihiro went utterly, seamlessly still. The chill in Kakashi's expression mirrored in every fiber of her being. How dare he sit there blocking Ginta's door and say such things, as if he were the one protecting Ginta? As if Ginta needed protecting from her?

"Ginta is my grandson," she said icily. "He has a room in my house whenever he wants, and he always has. It was his choice to join ANBU, and he serves his Hokage with honor."

How dare he speak to her like that? Look at her like that? "If your father were here to see you... To see what you've become..." She shuddered, conveying as much distaste in the gesture as it was possible to do.

"But of course it can't be helped in your case. For my part, I will always regret my failings, and the failings of my daughter, Ginta's mother, for his aberrance. But I will love him just the same, and hope he comes to his senses."

"Noble of you," Kakashi murmured. "Perhaps one day you can can go a step further, for the sake of pride, and pay for your failing with a clean death. I know several places you could buy a tanto."

Mother and now father. Soon he was going to run out of family tree for her to insult.

Chihiro's blue eyes narrowed and flashed, stick-thin fingers biting into the arms of the wheelchair. "Disloyal child!" she snapped, as if he was a boy to be cowed. "Your father was a great man, and a great friend to my husband. Say what you will to me, but do not disrespect his memory."

Or perhaps he was the one breaking branches.

Kakashi regarded the furious woman through a silver-grey curtain of overlong hair, then raked it back and strangled a rusty laugh. "I wouldn't know where to start. Your ungratefulness, your inconsistencies, the fact that you'd rather sit out here and argue with me than be in there, holding your grandson's hand." Chihiro's spine went rigid; Kakashi leaned forward, watching her intently. "Or how about your sheer arrogance at using my dead parents for a life lesson without letting me do the same."

Even if he'd already done that, standing in front of Ryouma and a stone carved with fallen names. Done it so well, in fact, that Ryouma was already halfway to the border and Kakashi was here, with his back to a door, arguing with some godforsaken stick of a woman about old wounds he had no particular desire to revisit yet again.

Waiting to see Ginta, who'd undoubtedly pick another kind of fight, and were any of these people worth it?

On the other side of the closed door, in a room filled with sunlight that cast bars across the bedding, Ginta woke. He drowsed a bit, hearing familiar voices in unfamiliar cadences, then snapped his eyes open. Disloyal child! he heard clearly, and the threat underlying his grandmother's voice was plain. Kakashi's voice was lower when he answered, harder to make out through the closed door.

Kakashi. And Grandmother. Why? Why was she raging at Kakashi? Why was Kakashi here? Ginta shoved himself up, hauling the heavy weight of the cast through the bedding with a heartfelt groan.

"Kakashi?" His voice was still raw from the anesthesia, hoarse and whispery. "Grandma? Kakashi?" It made no sense, but it felt like a battle was raging right outside that door. Ginta's hair stood on end, his heart raced, as if enemy attack were imminent.

"Kakashi? Grandma?" His voice came out stronger. Shriller. Full of alarm. He grabbed for the bedside table to pull himself up, and managed to tip it over on its side with a mighty crash.

The door burst open, and there was Kakashi, shaking on his feet, and Chihiro glowering like a sharp-toothed fox. Looking like she'd taken a bite of something disgusting.

It was a look Ginta had seen once or twice before, and he was fairly sure he knew the cause. He drew himself up in the bed, pale and imperious. Feeling half sick. "What did she say to you?" he directed at Kakashi, trying to catch that singe fierce eye with his own gaze.

"Ginta!" Chihiro cut in sharply.

"Shut up," Ginta told her. Sick. He felt terribly sick. "Let me talk to Kakashi."

Kakashi had never had siblings as a child, or peers his own age, but he was getting a sudden object lesson on what it might be like to actually tell on someone. It was kind of a head-rush.

Or possibly that was how fast he'd stood up.

By his side, despite the way she was almost vibrating with fury, Chihiro's scent had grounded itself in a painful place. Ginta smelled mostly of nausea, acid-sharp, like a bad wine, but also of anger and throat-closing bitterness. Despite whatever Chihiro claimed, it was easy to guess there was more than a little bad blood here.

But a man freshly released from surgery was not a man ready to take on the dragons of his family, despite whatever nasty thing she'd said. And certainly not on Kakashi's account.

He tipped one shoulder in a shrug, kicked his bags inside the door, and stepped around Chihiro to crouch down and haul Ginta's fallen bedside table back onto its legs. For a small piece of furniture, it was surprisingly heavy; he grunted and shoved it back against the wall. Then rested down on his haunches, breathing just a little hard, and took the chance to give Ginta a closer look.

Dead white, with hectic flags of colour marking sharp cheekbones -- anger, probably; he didn't smell like fever. His eyes were almost all blue, the pupils constricted with whatever painkiller they'd given him. Just the faintest trace of old, yellowing bruises still fading at his temple and jaw. Faint chemical burns still reddening skin.

He looked better than the last time Kakashi had seen him. Light-years better than the time before that.

Kakashi felt himself breathe.

"Your grandmother was expressing her opinion of the hospital food," he said dryly. "I pointed out that the jello had merit. She disagreed. You didn't need to start breaking things, y'know."

Ginta cast his grandmother a sharp look. She didn't contradict Kakashi, but her expression said there would be a discussion with Ginta soon. "Grandma has never been very fond of sweets," Ginta said quietly. He sank back against the pillows, exhausted and still queasy, and eyed Kakashi just as closely as he was being scrutinized.

ANBU blacks, mask over his too-thin face, but bandages in place of his hitai-ate covering the all-seeing Sharingan. He was pale, but the terrible bruises were all but gone. He was shaky, but he was there on firmly planted feet, crouched next to the bed and holding on to the edge of the mattress without making it look like he needed the support.

Clearly he needed the support.

"Sit on the bed, Genius. Or on the chair." He turned to his grandmother again, meeting her eyes with unflinching directness. "I'm sorry, Grandma. I'm sorry I told you to shut up. I'm sorry I'm not the kind of man you wanted me to be. But this is who I am, and Kakashi is my friend."

And fuck it if Kakashi had an anaphylactic reaction to the word. Fuck it if his grandmother disowned him for being a deviant. Fuck it if Ryouma was Kakashi's choice, and fuck all of it. He'd survived hell because Kakashi had pulled him out of it. He was sick of all this fighting and tiptoeing around and trying to please people who couldn't be pleased.

"I'm talking to Kakashi now," he repeated. "Can you come back a little later?"

His grandmother shivered. Shivered and then did something he'd never seen her do before. She bowed to him first. "I'll come back at supper time," she told him. "With your mother."

When she left, she closed the door behind her.

For a long, quiet moment, Kakashi stayed in his crouch. He could feel Ginta's eyes flicker back, watching him, but didn't meet them.

Friend.

This again. And if he was honest with himself, Kakashi didn't have the will-fire to say no. Or bolt for the door. Or anything equally dramatic. He'd tried it both ways, now. Every way. Cut Ginta out, kept Ryouma in, and both of them had ended up flayed (interrogated) and shattered (tortured), and hauled home by Kakashi's hands. It didn't seem to matter what Kakashi did -- someone always ended up in hospital.

But not dead, and that was the thing to hang onto.

Unless you counted Tsuyako.

He dragged his hand over his face, heel of his palm grinding into his visible eye, and got back to his feet. Bed or chair, Ginta suggested. Kakashi chose the unoccupied bed next to the window, not-quite-falling on it. He sat himself cross-legged, back braced against the wall, and finally looked at Ginta again.

Blue eyes regarded him just as curiously. Propped awkwardly up in bed, Ginta looked about as comfortable as an abruptly woken, recovering-from-surgery ninja could look. Over his right leg, the blankets were almost smooth; they must have taken away that external fixitor, Kakashi guessed. He was probably in a cast, now.

Good. That meant walking was a future probability.

"So," said Kakashi finally. "How're you?"

"Fabulous," Ginta said, utterly deadpan. "I see you met Grandmother. I'm so pleased you and she hit it off. Let me guess, she called you a deviant pervert and suggested you were bringing shame not just to your ancestors, but to mine as well, and to all of Konoha?"

Kakashi regarded Ginta for a moment, then brought his knee up, braced one elbow on it, rested his head against his palm, and made a strangled noise that might have been a laugh, if it hadn't sounded quite so broken. He laughed until his voice cracked and his eye teared, then wiped his face and looked at Ginta. "Yeah. Something like that."

"That's what I thought," Ginta said, nodding. He eased himself back in the bed, trying to find a comfortable position. Cursing at the sheets that tried to tangle his leg, and the pillows that had once been cradling it and now were in the way.

"If it's any consolation, she probably thinks I'm the one who corrupted you. You'd think she'd be more understanding: after all, we know she likes men. Enough to marry one and make a kid with him, right?"

Ginta tried for a laugh, but it came out just as broken as Kakashi's had. Broken and sick. He choked and shuddered, tucked his head down, then back, covering his face with his hands. "Fuck."

Kakashi slid off his bed and crossed to Ginta's, bracing his knee against the mattress as he bent down to try and get a look at the smaller man's face. Ginta's hair was all over the place, wheat-coloured strands obscuring his hands. Kakashi raked it back without a thought, steadying Ginta's head. He still didn't feel hot...

"Need me to get a nurse?" Kakashi asked.

"Oh, hell no." Ginta's hands dropped. Kakashi didn't even get a chance to blink before one slim-muscled arm wrapped around his shoulder, yanking him off balance. He grabbed the bed, trying not to crash into Ginta, and felt another arm go around his opposite shoulder. "Just sit, before you need one, too."

It was a hug. Kakashi felt his spine go rigid, fingers clenching on the mattress, even as something internal warmed and wavered and keened with need. He crushed it ruthlessly back down. He was just feeling lonely, and guilty, and--

Abandoned.

For god's sake, he was a ninja. Awkwardly, he patted Ginta's back and refused to grab any part of him. "I'm fine," he said roughly. "Really. Um. Thanks. You can let go."

Ginta almost let go. Almost. Because that rigid posture of Kakashi's so clearly said 'let me go, I don't want this from you,' but... But Kakashi had been the one who approached first. Kakashi had been the one to brush Ginta's hair back, to hold his head in gentle hands, and it wasn't just because Ginta had looked ill. He was sure of that.

Twenty-four hours ago, Kakashi had been the one clinging to Ginta like he might disappear.

And Ryouma had disappeared. The bastard.

The bastard.

Ginta slacked his grasp slightly, but just enough that he could slide one arm down Kakashi's long (thin, far too thin) spine.

"Yeah," he said hoarsely. "I could, but that would be the wrong thing to do. Genius."

It wouldn't have taken much to break Ginta's grip: a twist, a jerk, a step back. A sneeze could've done it. But Kakashi didn't. Didn't have the will or the want or the damn strength. He'd been awake less than seven hours -- less than a day, total -- and there seemed to be nothing but fighting in the world. Guilt, burning muscles, paying your debts--

If he didn't stop thinking about Ryouma soon, he was going to scream.

Ginta's hand ran down his spine again, firm but gentle, entirely sure of its place; Ginta's breath tickled the side of his neck, whisping through silver-gray hair. Kakashi held himself perfectly still, lips pressed together, and tried not to inhale. Tried not to come apart.

Hated himself, inside and out, for being so damn needy when Ginta was the one who'd really lost a teammate. Had actually been in surgery. Had nearly died.

"Bastard jackass," Kakashi whispered; it was almost a groan. He shut his eye, dropped his forehead onto that knife-blade shoulder, and wrapped his arms tightly around Ginta's lean ribcage. Hugged him back, because at least he could do that much. "I hate you right now. You should know that."

The embrace didn't feel like hate. It felt shaky, hesitant, a little desperate. Ginta held on and let his cheek rest against Kakashi's head. Smelled oily hair and hospital cleanliness. His hand continued its circuit up one side of Kakashi's spine and down the other in an elongated oval. Slow, steady. Because it was the right thing to do, as long as he didn't think about it too much.

"It's one of my charm points," Ginta whispered into coarse silver-grey. "I always make people hate me eventually. I knew it was only a matter of time with you."

The painful truth buried deep inside that joke was almost too tiny to see. Almost not there, but it caught a flinch of one shoulder just the same, stilled his hand for a fleeting moment. He felt Kakashi's ribs expand under his palm, heard the edge to the breath.

Heard the edge to his own breath.

His hand continued. Kakashi's grip around his body stayed just as tight.

Ginta's throat closed on a breath that wasn't a sob. That wasn't anything at all.

Enough. A lifetime past enough. Ginta smelled like rainwater and newborn snow, like one step away from cracking right down the middle. This wasn't fair to him -- wasn't even close to fair. Kakashi couldn't drag him close and snarl him away and come running back when Ryouma turned around and copied the copy-ninja. Stole Kakashi's own vanishing trick.

Couldn't take a gift when he had no way of returning it.

He pulled back, felt Ginta's arms tighten, and twisted free. Grabbed Ginta's hands before Ginta grabbed him back, and forced them down. Calloused fingers tightened around his chidori-seared palm; Kakashi winced, jerked away.

There wasn't a word for the expression that washed across Ginta's face, sharpening bright blue eyes before they went flat and dead. His mouth broke into a straight, white line.

I always make people hate me.

Kakashi's hands lifted before he had time to think, palms pressing flat either side of Ginta's narrow jaw. Something like a grab and a hold and a god-knows-what. Fly-away blond hair tangled around his fingers.

"I'm sorry," he said, quiet and grating. "I didn't mean to do this. I was-- I was going to go home, but I wanted to make sure you were okay first. And you're not. And I don't know why I expected you to be." He stopped, throat hurting. Dragged a breath and kept going. "I don't hate you, not even close. You're--"

What?

Sakamoto Ginta. Smartass, whip-clever, too pushy, too wired, the son of truly awful people. Rape victim, torture survivor, damn good ninja.

The only person still breathing who wanted Kakashi around.

"My friend, okay? For whatever that's worth. You're my stupid, irritating, doesn't-know-when-to-quit friend." An agonized, shatter-glass smile, mostly hidden by black cloth. "And if you cry on me I'm going to kill you dead."

Ginta took a breath again at last. A two-stepped, shallow inhale, broken in the middle. Took a breath and echoed Kakashi's concealed smile with a not-quite-steady one of his own. Salt-rimmed and sharply tanged.

How long ago had it been that Ginta had done the same thing? Stopped by a hospital room to see if Kakashi was okay, knowing he couldn't be. Pushed him up against a darkened corridor wall and demanded that Kakashi stop running away.

There was something achingly acute about the way the roles played out now. Kakashi held Ginta's face between his palms. Held Ginta's eyes with a storm-cloud grey gaze. Watching. Waiting.

"Big boys don't cry, didn't you know that?" Ginta whispered. Another breath. Another shaky sound that wasn't laughter, wasn't weeping. Ginta lifted his hands and cupped them over Kakashi's, curling slender fingers around sturdy wrists.

Kakashi choke-laughed. Tell that to Obito.

But that was too much history packed into too small a space, and nothing he wanted to bring up now. Especially not with Ginta's double-grip around his wrists, holding them like handcuffs. Like a muscle-and-bone support, keeping Kakashi's hands close.

Carefully, he twisted into the weak part of Ginta's hold, breaking free. Then ran his fingers though that bed-tangled blond hair, smoothing it back, putting it in order. Ruffling it wild again when it looked so very wrong. Ginta tolerated him, eyebrows arching quizzically. Kakashi offered an awkward smile, touching the line of Ginta's jaw, the rise of one bruised cheekbone, the pulse at his throat. Still here, not leaving, God, I don't know what I'm doing...

Petting Ginta like a dog, apparently.

What did friends do, anyway?

Ginta's hands caught his again, pulling them down before Kakashi got completely lost and poked him in the eye. Kakashi wet his lips, trying to find something, anything to say that wasn't cut close and personal.

"I have a question," he managed finally, and was startled to realize he did. "Your Grandmother -- did she, ah, did she ever mention my parents to you?" His hands fidgeted in Ginta's. "My mother, specifically."

Okay. Almost not-personal.

That was unexpected. The petting. The question. Maybe if Ginta had been a little less worn out from surgery and painkillers; from too much tension, and the constantly shifting landscape of his relationship with the man sitting there awkwardly, hands twitching in Ginta's hands... Maybe he'd have a better handle on the situation. On himself.

"Your mother?" he echoed back. "My grandmother talked about your mother?" Of course she had. Of course she had reached for that formidable weapon in her arsenal of shame. She'd even said as much to Ginta while Ryouma kept his vigil. "She said your parents were lucky they didn't have to see their son grow up to be a deviant." He winced. "But she also got Ryouma for you when I asked her to. And yelled at him for kicking your bed when you were asleep. I think... I think she thinks you're sort of her responsibility, the same way I am."

That wasn't an answer. He tried again.

"My grandfather was friends with your dad, I think. Comrades, anyway. I mean, I remember hearing about him every now and again, but mostly in that... In that you don't talk a lot about Sakumo, and isn't it a shame about his son." Ginta looked down at his hands clasping Kakashi's, guilty at the memory. "They said your dad was in an impossible situation, and what he did was wrong, and what the village asked of him was wrong, but that he died with honor. I was too young to really understand it then."

"The village wasn't wrong," Kakashi said numbly, but even he could hear the doubt behind the words. And he couldn't start thinking that, he couldn't -- there'd be nothing left to fight for.

He jerked his head sharply, cutting Sakumo away. Isn't it a shame. It was a great damn tragedy, but it had happened and it was over, and there was no wisdom to be found in the pity of dead nobles. Nothing he could take from there to strengthen the walls of his own loyalty.

Knowledge was what he wanted. Knowledge was a comfort and a help -- it was useful. Like learning Ryouma had a bed-kicking habit. Already Kakashi missed the man less.

And he didn't find it almost unspeakably funny that Ginta's grandmother had felt the urge to rush to Kakashi's defence, whilst calling him a deviant. Inconsistent, he'd snapped at her. He'd been right.

Ginta was watching him cautiously, expression somewhere on the line between worried and weary. Kakashi yanked his thoughts back into line; left his hands in Ginta's, for all the good they were doing.

"I know about my father," he said. "I know almost everything about my father, actually. But your grandmother -- she said she knew my mother..." He stopped, hesitating. The whole conversation was already too personal. But he'd never asked Minato, even when he'd had the chance. And he wouldn't ask Jiriaya, couldn't ask the Sandaime. Which left a grand total of no one.

Except Ginta, who probably knew nothing. But he wanted to be Kakashi's friend, and what the hell else did you use a friend for?

"I was wondering if she'd ever mentioned her to you?" he asked slowly. "Said what she was like, maybe."

Ginta looked up again, licking dry lips as he considered Kakashi's question. "I think we have a picture of her, actually. I mean Grandmother has a picture. It's of Grandmother and Grandfather, and your dad and a woman... Your mom. Yeah, she has to be your mom. She's got kind of the same eyes as you. Shape, I mean. Only female. And Minato-sensei."

The hungry look he saw in Kakashi's eyes shouldn't have been startling, but it was. The hungry, anguishedly hopeful look of a starving man staring at a bowl of rice.

"I'll get it for you. It's in an album of stuff from way back, you know? On the picture it says Gousuke and Chihiro, Minato, Sakumo and Kyouko, at Hizuren's blossom viewing party. I remember it, because of that, because it called Sandaime-sama by his given name, like he was just a guy, you know? I mean, Minato-sensei, too, but I was used to calling him Minato-sensei, even when I was little. But Sandaime-sama was always Sandaime-sama to me."

Holding Kakashi's hands in his own, holding out this tiny piece of a memory, as if it were something useful, Ginta was overwhelmed with the awareness, suddenly, of just how entirely alone in the world Kakashi really was.

Not entirely.

Ginta was going to make damn sure it wasn't entirely.

"Grandmother said she was.... she was lovely," he said, groping for half-remembered answers to the questions he'd asked as a child. Who are these people? Is that you, Grandma? Is that Grandfather? Who's that lady? Who's that man? Is he a ninja, too? Is that my dad? (Not his father. His father was dead. The man in the photograph with hair as shockingly golden as Ginta's own was Minato-sensei, didn't Ginta recognize him?)

"She said your mom was very good at the poetry card game, and that they beat the men playing it."

How could that be anything close to enough? But Kakashi looked grateful.

Kakashi was grateful, in a tight-feeling, throat-hurting sort of way. In a way he almost didn't recognize, beyond relief at the fact that Ginta hadn't laughed, or looked at him cross-ways, or done anything other than answer his question. Given him something measurable to take away. New knowledge. Something real.

My mother was good at poetry card games. Someone once thought she was lovely.

It wasn't much to know, but compared to the distant memory of a few old photographs, the dusty voices of half-remembered conversations, it was something to hold onto.

Like the way Ginta was still holding onto his hands.

Kakashi looked down and watched his fingers twitch, almost like they belonged to someone else. Watched Ginta's grip tighten, just a little. He had small hands--smaller than Kakashi's--with slender fingers and square nails, scarred knuckles. Compact hands, functional, perfectly designed for a calligraphy brush or a kunai. Pale, but still darker than Kakashi's. Talented hands, but not steady.

Not remotely steady.

Kakashi stilled himself, swept both thumbs across the backs of Ginta's hands, then let go and pulled away. Gained a little thinking distance. Ginta's blue eyes watched him sharply, the colour of arctic skies.

"My father--" Kakashi began, hesitated, and then realized he did want to say this. Wanted to explain. "My father never talked about her very much. I think it was too painful. And I can't exactly blame him." One shoulder hitched in a bare shrug. "She died giving birth to me, but... He never did blame me."

Ginta's eyes widened, and Kakashi realized he'd said the wrong thing. Probably several wrong things. He switched the topic.

"What were your parents like?"

In a few short months of knowing the man, Ginta had learned to read Kakashi far better than he might have thought. Especially here, at such close range, with the pulse of Kakashi's chakra ebbing and flowing in synchrony with Ginta's own, with hands that caressed and pulled away, the mask Kakashi wore couldn't hide him. Ginta saw hurt, chagrin, the tinge of something -- fear? regret? -- fleet behind Kakashi's eye, before it was winced away with a falsely-bright question.

"I..." He paused. What was there to say to a confession like that? To say to someone whose very coming into life had resulted in a tragic death? "It couldn't have been your fault. I remember during the war, there was a civilian woman who had just had a baby and was..." He choked the words away again. How could his story of death and loss, of medics who couldn't help, of watching the life ebb from the woman's face while her husband cradled their squalling newborn, possibly ease Kakashi's pain?

"I never knew my dad, either," he said instead. "I don't know who he was, but when I was a little kid I used to pretend to myself it was Minato-sensei, because of my hair." His laugh was dry, embarrassed, falling into the quiet room like a baby bird falling from its nest.

"My mom had a lover and got pregnant when she was seventeen. Brought shame on the family. My grandfather kicked her out of the house. She always told me my dad was a great ninja, and that he'd died on a mission before I was born, but she never told me who he was, and I've never been able to find out."

"Ah," said Kakashi, almost sub-vocally, as if that explained something. Because it did. More than one thing, even, because no one had the kind of drive Ginta embodied unless they came from a background with a missing piece. Like a missing father.

Or mother, Kakashi thought, with a twinge of something he couldn't identify.

Ginta had sprung from a teenage mother, a lost father, and a family that had shunned them both. But somewhere along the way he'd been welcomed back -- almost welcomed, anyway, judging by his grandmother's fierce love and even fiercer condemnation. Was he the only grandchild? Kakashi would have bet a year's wage on it. It was amazing the kind of compromises a family could make when they realized you'd be the only one left.

Or the kind of disappointment they'd face, if you refused to settle down and have children.

"Your grandmother must have had a fit when you joined ANBU," he murmured, resting an elbow on one knee and cupping his chin in his hand. Fingers spreading wide over masked lips.

"She knew from the time I was a chuunin that that's where it was going. Because of Grandfather," Ginta said, with his eyes fixed somewhere in the middle-distance. Detached unhappiness flattened the usual curve of his mouth. "Anyway, when I joined up, it was right after I..." Silence stretched out, so long Kakashi thought about filling it. Then Ginta drew a breath. "I separated from a lover she didn't approve of. She probably hoped ANBU would 'cure' me."

Behind a guard of black cloth and caged fingers, Kakashi's mouth cut a dry, brief smile. "Did it?"

"Cured me of him." Ginta's laugh was sharp, his eyes were bleak.

One of those relationships, then. Probably with the kind of man Kakashi would have used cheerfully, painfully, for an hour and been grateful to never see again. Like most men.

He didn't share this thought. Or the sideways tagalong thought that Ryouma had never been that kind of man. They had no place here, in the complex, painful silence of this room. And they'd do nothing to ease the white-edged tension lining Ginta's jaw.

Kakashi leaned forward a little, still resting on his hand, and shared a point of connection instead. Despite how close it cut, and how much it still hurt.

"When I first met him, I wanted Minato-sensei to be my father, too." His smile was faint and crooked, balanced wrong. "Later I just wanted him to look at me like he looked at all those pretty women. But that didn't exactly work out."

He almost couldn't count the ways in which that hadn't worked out, beginning with a too-kind blue-eyed smile, a careful 'It wouldn't be right, Kakashi-kun', and ending with a body in the ground.

He let the memory slip through weary fingers. Looked at Ginta again, and tried to find something else worthy of saying. Something that was actually good, for once.

"If you're still looking for your father's identity, I know a few people in Intel who owe me a favour. Access to records, if nothing else." He waited until Ginta looked at him, all blue eyes and bone-white face, and added: "I'll trade you for that photograph."

Ginta digested Kakashi's words, carefully packaging and repackaging the things he knew, the things he'd guessed, the rumors he'd heard, until it all lined up evenly. He met Kakashi's gaze steadily -- I see you. I know you. -- and let the corners of his mouth twitch up into a wry smile. "You like to be efficient with things, don't you, Genius? I should have taken a lesson from you. I did the crush on a married man, the crush on a straight man, and the crush on my sensei all separately."

Kakashi sat back abruptly, with a look of... of surprise, Ginta realized. Then he ducked his head down, hiding faintly-flushed, masked cheeks, dragging one strong, scarred hand through his hair, over his eyes, and laughed. A rough chuckle that held more irony than amusement. "I'm very special," he said quietly.

"You are," Ginta agreed. He reached out for the other man's arm, tugging Kakashi's hand away from his face. "It's one of your charm points." Ginta's laugh had a similar complexity to Kakashi's, full of irony and self-awareness, tinged with genuine humor.

Kakashi's hand closed around Ginta's forearm in a grip as strong as a sailor's on the spar of a storm-tossed ship. The grip of a man trying not to be swept overboard. His expression wavered, almost lost, and his eye creased, turning bright under long lashes.

"Didn't we just have that conversation about what big boys don't do?" Ginta asked hoarsely. He was acutely aware of his heartbeat, of a knot in his throat that he couldn't quite swallow. He took a deep, sighing breath and scooted over on the bed a little more, making room for Kakashi next to him, if Kakashi wanted to take it.

"If your Intel buddies can get any closer than mine have, I'll be surprised. I'm pretty sure Sandaime-sama is in on the whole conspiracy. Anyway, it can wait. It's not like I'd be a better ninja if I knew. Maybe I'd be worse. Maybe it's better if I just hold onto the fantasy that you and I are half-brothers. Sort of." He laughed and looked at the empty space next to him. "That didn't make sense, did it?"

"About as much as you normally do," Kakashi said, when his breath steadied out enough for words. Ginta snorted, a self-mocking kind of sound, but his gaze stayed to the side. Then he seemed to shake himself, and looked back at Kakashi. There wasn't any demand in his expression, no insistence, there was just...

Hell, at this point, Kakashi didn't even know.

"Half-brothers is a hell of a jump from friends," he heard himself murmur, and didn't know what to do with that thought, either. Didn't know if there was anything to do, beyond mourn that the father-figure they'd both wanted had died turning his real son into a demon.

With Ginta's arm still held fast, Kakashi let his thoughts cut loose and run.

Ginta had never had a dad, Kakashi had never had a mom, and both of them had been yanked around by the kinds of families that left normal people bleeding. But it didn't even matter, really, because they'd both still survived and grown up and made it to ANBU, and now they had a real cause to bleed for. And keep breathing for.

They had a village to defend. Even if it had kicked them both in the balls more than once. That didn't matter; it was still home.

And if Kakashi was tired enough to make his soul ache--if Ginta was so shattered that he couldn't walk, could barely sit upright--that didn't matter either. Because they'd done the job. Done it sideways and backwards and wrong--

Nothing would bring Tsuyako back.

--but done it in any case. And Kakashi thought that maybe, this one time, it was okay to stop kidding himself and admit that he just wanted to lie down, right here, with a man he had no intention of sleeping with any time soon, and just... do nothing. Exist. Breathe. Think a pain-free thought.

And, well, maybe give Ginta's grandmother a stroke. But that was just a bonus.

"I was going to go home," he said, and the words came out smeared with exhaustion. So quiet that Ginta cocked his head to hear them. "But now I think I... want to stay. S'that okay?"

The flip answer, the easy answer, the answer that sprang first to Ginta's mind was, Duh, of course. But it would have been the wrong answer. Wrong when Kakashi was trembling there, holding on, naked in Ginta's gaze. Wrong when Ginta was just as stripped before Kakashi. Instead he lay carefully down, tugging at Kakashi's arm, easing the heavy cast on his leg deeper under the sheets. Making sure there was room on the pillow for two heads.

"Yeah. That's okay. I'd prefer it," Ginta breathed.

Kakashi only hesitated a moment before fitting himself into the empty space. Ginta could feel Kakashi's ribs expanding with every breath, feel the heat from his skin radiating through uniform blacks and the thin grey-blue hospital pajamas Ginta still wore. Ginta's arm snaked around broad, too-thin shoulders in an open embrace, and he waited for Kakashi to turn, to get comfortable.

"You can stay here, Genius."

Ginta turned his head, felt his hair brush Kakashi's face, earning an exhausted snort.

"Yeah, I know. I have the world's most annoying hair," he murmured, and shut his eyes.

There was a slow, settling beat of quiet. Then Kakashi inhaled.

"Jackass," he agreed, somewhere on the line between cautious and companionable, and let his head drop down to rest on Ginta's slimline shoulder. Black cloth moved against blue-checked as he exhaled; mask and hospital gown -- each, in their own way, a kind of armour.

Ginta's arm tightened. "Jackass," he corrected, soft-voiced, without ever opening his eyes.

Kakashi felt a laugh rumble deep in his chest, like the warm afterburn of a sparring partner's kick, or the heat of a sake shot. Almost comfortable, almost familiar -- dangerous if he didn't watch his guard or stop at the first glass.

Ginta's arm was still gripped in his hand; Kakashi released him and laid his hand out flat over Ginta's blanket-covered stomach instead, feeling the open-weave material catch against callouses. Feeling the rise and fall of Ginta's torso, lifting with each slow breath.

Nothing like a dog, nothing like Ryouma. Ginta was only himself, fiercely and completely. His own unique puzzle. Strange and wild, sometimes savage, sometimes unbearably kind, defiant of anyone who tried to drop him into one neat category.

A friend?

Kakashi closed his eyes, breathed in the scent of warmth-and-sweet-and-blond, and relaxed under the weight of that encirling arm. It didn't matter what they were to each other, he decided. For now, Ginta wanted nothing from him. And Kakashi found that was exactly what he had to give.

He unwound, let everything go, and slept.