| The Little Things Give You Away [Ginta, Hiro] |
[Oct. 20th, 2009|10:05 am] |
[Takes place the evening of April 5, the same day as Welcome to My Morning, three days after Just Enough Rope]
By sundown Ginta was awake and really wished he wasn't. He'd woken in his own bed shortly after noon, gotten an update from the nurses -- Kakashi was fine, sleeping, but no longer in a coma -- and crashed back out again. Ryouma was still in there with Kakashi. Keeping an eye on him. Keeping the door closed. And as much as Ginta'd told himself a hundred times in the last few days alone, that he was letting it go...
He couldn't let it go.
Couldn't let go of the way Kakashi had clung to him that morning. Or the way he'd been caught painfully in the middle when Ryouma had returned to the room. Kakashi had wanted proof Ginta was alive--he'd gotten that. And then Kakashi'd wanted proof he himself was alive, and the only one he wanted that proof from was Ryouma.
Grandmother hadn't been by and wasn't expected until tomorrow. Ginta's mother was absent as well, busy with her own life. Now that Ginta was out of danger there was no further need to sit by his bedside. And he was, he told himself, just as glad she was staying away. It was harder to endure an hour of his mother's sighs and glances at her watch and weak attempts at conversation, than it was to sit in silence, reading the film magazine she'd left behind, and try not to notice the closed door across the hall.
( That's what he told himself. ) |
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| Welcome to My Morning [Ginta, Ryouma, Kakashi] |
[Aug. 29th, 2009|02:08 pm] |
[Takes place late morning on April 5th, almost a week after All We Know is Distance.]
A week in the hospital was enough to drive even the calmest man to extreme measures. Or at least that was Ginta's thinking. When they finally allowed him up from his bed, five days in, he immediately started making boredom contingency plans. Many of them, in fact most of them, involved finagling himself into a wheelchair and over to Kakashi's room with a deck of cards and a couple of cans of apple juice, to help Ryouma keep watch.
Shiratori had debriefed him and sworn that the docs said Kakashi was mending. The nurses and even his own doctor had said the same thing. Ryouma had gotten the same story, evidently. Chakra exhaustion and a soldier pill overdose were serious conditions, but they were known quantities. Kakashi would be in an uncomplicated coma for several days, and then he'd wake up. It had happened before, it would probably happen again. And it was happening now.
Patience, they said. Ironic that patient and patience were such similar words. Even his grandmother could get nothing more from the doctors. And, she'd told Ginta, she believed them. Of course Ginta believed them, too, at an intellectual level. Kakashi's vitals were stable, and his chakra readings were improving daily. Believing didn't make the wait any easier.
( On the seventh day home, the fifth of April, at a little after ten in the morning, Ginta talked his nurse into helping him get set up in the wheelchair again. ) |
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| All We Know Is Distance [Ryouma and Ginta] |
[Jun. 15th, 2009|10:37 pm] |
The message was waiting when Ryouma came home, pleasantly tired and only slightly splattered with drying black slime and blood that wasn't his. He shoved back his ram-faced mask and leaned hipshot against the mission desk, grinning cheerfully down at Reiko. "Guess who didn't even get scratched this time, eh? You can put 'COMPLETE VICTORY' in that little box up at the top. It was glorious. They didn't even--"
"Ryouma-kun," Reiko said very quietly, "you need to go to the hospital."
He blinked down at her. "Shuuhei isn't colicky anymore, is he? I know it's awful hard stayin' up all night with a crying baby, but I didn't think you could go deaf. None of this blood's mine, all right?"
( Reiko pulled a sticky-note off his file folder and held it out. ) |
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| Lullaby for a Stormy Night [Ginta] |
[Jun. 12th, 2009|12:00 am] |
[Takes place approximately 4:00 AM on March 30th, immediately after Death and All His Friends]
The Sakamoto estate was quiet and dark. A nightingale sang in the garden, unheeded by all but the household cats. Suki, the head maid, was the one to answer the knock at the door, the one to usher the grey-uniformed man into the receiving room. The one to rouse Sakamoto Chihiro.
"I'm so sorry to wake you, Chihiro-sama," she whispered. She held a lantern for her mistress, who opened her eyes and sat stiffly up, clutching a rich, peach-colored silk duvet to her chest. "There is a man. Shiratori-san, from ANBU..." Suki looked away. "I've given him tea, mistress, and told him I would wake you."
"Shiratori-san," Chihiro echoed. It had been a long time since she'd been wakened in the darkest hours by this man. Not since Gousuke had been alive, and then the man had always been here to summon her husband, not her.
( There was only one possible reason he was here now. ) |
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| Death and All His Friends |
[Jun. 9th, 2009|04:26 pm] |
[Set immediately after Fall to the Ground]
They had almost fifteen minutes' warning that there were two critically injured shinobi on the way in. Fifteen minutes, plus the ninja's registration numbers, so there was already blood typed and crossed and ready to hand. O-pos for one, B-pos for the other, eight units of each, almost enough to replace every red cell in their bodies. They had time to send for a chakra specialist, because the medics radioed in that one of the casualties had been poisoned with chakra pills. Technically an overdose, not a poisoning. And technically not even an overdose, so much as overuse. Massive overuse, combined with some kind of brutally draining jutsu.
They had time to bring in crash carts and chakra monitors. Time to order up pre-made seals for chakra support, sterilization of wounds, tissue repair. Time to set up the trauma room to receive two criticals, to assemble doctors and nurses and technicians. Time, even, for a grim faced agent from ANBU's mission control to arrive and set himself up in the corner of the room with recording devices.
Fifteen minutes after the call came in from the north gate, non-critical patients had been moved to side corridors, the man having a heart attack sent to ICU, the kid with asthma shunted off to pediatrics. There was a quiet anticipation, a nervousness underscored by the hum of fluorescent lights.
( Sixteen minutes after the call came in, the silence broke in carefully choreographed chaos. ) |
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| Fall to the Ground [Ginta & Kakashi] |
[Jun. 7th, 2009|09:55 pm] |
[set roughly six hours following Hide from the Sound]
Sunlight slanted in through the window, golden and warm. Hot, in fact. Ginta floundered awake, drenched in sweat and so hot he could feel the air in every breath try to catch fire in his chest. For a moment he was back in that burning factory, with orange flames licking at his skin and chemical smoke searing his lungs. He choked and coughed, tensing up with a gasp, and finally broke the surface of consciousness.
Hot. Searingly hot. Burns pulled on his shoulders, and his right leg was a maddening blaze of crushed bone. But it was the left that had his attention now, a pounding inferno that kept time with his pulse, racing in waves from the deep furrow an arrow had dug. He reached gingerly under the blankets to brush the edge of a damp bandage, and felt bile surge in his throat before he quite realized it was pain that caused it.
His own breath rasped in his ears, purple-black blotted his vision. When it cleared, he lay still for several long minutes, trying to gather the strength to move. Hot. So hot. If only there were a breeze, but the air was stagnant, as if it were midsummer. He remembered missions to Suna, baking in the oven-like desert air. His tongue felt thick and dry in his mouth, and his hands swollen and clumsy. Every joint and muscle sapped by the heat.
( Kakashi was there next to him still, asleep, or maybe dead. ) |
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| Hide from the Sound [Ginta & Kakashi] |
[Jun. 5th, 2009|12:36 am] |
[Immediately follows Can't See the Light]
The safe house creaked and swayed with the wind. Or maybe the sensation of movement was just a leftover from an overtaxed vestibular system, from pain meds and exhaustion. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered. Ginta rasped orders at Kakashi's clone--orders it probably didn't need--it would have seen to Kakashi anyway. It carefully carried Kakashi to a second camp bed, stripped him down, stitched and bandaged his bloodied hip, spread sweet-smelling balm across Kakashi's burned shoulders, and bandaged them too.
It was the same balm it had used on Ginta, from the same stash of medical supplies. It made their high-placed hideaway smell like summer grass, new tatami mats, a soft breeze.
"Lights," Ginta whispered, as the last of the twilight faded. The clone, whether on its own initiative or in response to Ginta's command, found a pair of oil lamps. It lit them both, setting one next to Ginta's bed, carrying the other back to Kakashi's prone form. After a moment it turned up the wick, casting strong shadows. Ginta glanced at the window and hoped the security seals concealing them were reactivated. It was how they were designed, he remembered, a sort of dead-man's switch--it took chakra to reveal a safe house, and only then if you knew the revealing jutsu. With no chakra applied, the native state was concealment.
( In the stronger light he could see more injuries. ) |
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| Can't See the Light. [Kakashi & Ginta] |
[Jun. 3rd, 2009|11:42 pm] |
[Set 27th March, six days after the Nightclub arc, four days after Dude, that was YOU?, and two days after Blind-sided.]
In the very early morning, two days after tangling with Kuromaru in the showers, Kakashi was yanked out of bed by yet another misguided soul who wanted to commit involuntary suicide. Growling, still dressed in the sweat-soaked training blacks he'd fallen asleep in, surrounded by half a pack of equally worn out dogs, he slammed the door open and contrived to laminate the harassed-looking Intel agent's eyeballs to the back of his skull with a look. "It's six AM."
The man broke eye-contact, found himself in the crosshairs of several intent canine stares, and studiously fixed his gaze on the ceiling. "Yes," he agreed, in the tone of a man not prepared to make that his problem. "It's also raining."
"What do you want?"
( A black-bordered folder presented itself for Kakashi's inspection. ) |
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| World's Oldest Painkiller [Tsume, Ginta, Kuromaru] |
[May. 17th, 2009|09:16 pm] |
[Backdated. Takes place March 22, ten minutes after Wild Dog in a Nest of Vipers, the evening before Carry Me Home (and the Tsume threads that followed), and two days before Dude, That Was YOU?]
"I told them to open the door so I could rip off their faces, but they wouldn't," Kuromaru growled. His growl rose into a snarl as they passed through the sublevel corridors, past more Intel agents. As far as he was concerned, they were probably all in on it, and therefore equally worthy of his anger.
"Well, hang onto that ripping of faces. When Botan gets out of here--"
"I'm going to rip off his face so much."
Tsume nodded grimly, shoving into the stairwell and hammering up. "Me, too. Bite off his other pinky."
Kuromaru's tail wagged enthusiastically. "I can't believe they just locked me in a cell. Why didn't they interrogate me? I'd have told them."
Tsume didn't point out that they were probably more worried about his ripping their faces off. The second floor came and went.
"And then, if they didn't believe me or made you smell upset, I'd have ripped their faces off."
( Tsume slammed through the third floor doorway. ) |
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| Dude, That Was YOU? [Hiro and Ginta] |
[May. 14th, 2009|09:09 pm] |
[Takes place Monday, March 24, approximately five and a half years after Rescue Me, five days after Ask Me Another, and Don't Want to Fight This War]
The cryptography lecture was, it turned out, reasonably useful. Although the speaker--some woman from Intel who wore no makeup, little wire-rimmed glasses, and her hair in a tidy bun that just screamed nerd--wasn't really that great at fielding questions. As long as she stayed on topic and on her slides she was fine, but as soon as someone interrupted her she got flustered, lost her place, and then her temper.
( After the first two times, Ginta asked questions just to see it happen. ) |
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| Wild Dog in a Nest of Vipers [closed to Ginta, Tsume, & Ibiki] |
[Apr. 6th, 2009|10:44 pm] |
[Takes place Saturday, March 22, three days after Don't Wanna Fight This War, and two days after Picking Up the Pieces]
Ginta was just on his way out his door when he ran into Tsume and Kuromaru. That wasn't unusual--they were neighbors. But seeing them in the company of Abe Jimon was. He knew the man more by reputation than direct experience. Officially he was one of Intel's debriefers, but rumor held that he worked Internal Ops, handling the sort of debriefings that followed mission failures, agent deaths, suspicions of treachery...
"Hey Tsume, Kuromaru," he said casually. "What's up?" He nodded a half-bow to Abe, who returned it with stiff-necked formality. "You coming in or going out?"
Tsume gave their escort a sharp-eyed glance. "Going out, apparently," she said. Her voice held nothing more alarming than irritation. Kuromaru, at her side, evinced a distinctly doggy version of the same sentiment, shaking his ruff and grumbling something so low it sounded like a growl.
"That good, huh?" Ginta asked. He gave Abe a cool look. "Something going on a friend ought to be concerned about?"
"Not at all, Sakamoto-san," Abe replied smoothly. "It just happens that I was delivering a request to Inuzuka-san to go over some details of her latest mission. Since she happened to be in, we agreed that there was no time like the present." ( His smile made Ginta itch. ) |
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| Don't Wanna Fight This War [Ryouma and Ginta] |
[Mar. 14th, 2009|03:32 pm] |
[[Takes place on March 19, thirteen days after The Safest Place You've Found and fourteen days after If the Door's Still Open--both of which you should probably reread for context.]]
Ryouma waited a week and a half before he let himself even think it. At first it was simply so he wouldn’t hobble down the hall and rip Ginta’s head off; then it was because nobody took a man seriously when he was on crutches, and if he wanted the man who never took anything seriously to do so for once in his life, it was going to be the moment when Ryouma punched Ginta in the face and then demanded what the hell he’d thought he was doing. Kissing Kakashi was one thing; if Kakashi had let him do it, obviously there would've been nothing for Ryouma to do but congratulate Ginta and offer to compare notes. But from the way Kakashi told the story, that hadn't been a kiss so much as an assault. And Ginta had lied.
Even so, Ryouma decided on the second day that he didn't really want to punch Ginta in the face anymore. An explanation--and, okay, a chance to do some yelling--would be enough. He figured he’d wait till he lost the crutches anyway, just so he’d have the option.
( In the meantime he tried not to think. ) |
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| Fighting Words and Dirty Talk [closed to Ginta & Asuma] |
[Mar. 12th, 2009|07:41 pm] |
Takes place Sunday, March 16, the morning after Pleased to Meet You, Won't You Lock Me in a Cage, two days after Keeping Secrets with the Koi.
Ginta was a well-connected gossip, so it was no surprise that he was one of the first to know that the Hokage's prodigal son was back. In fact, not only was Sarutobi Asuma back, but he had been sworn into ANBU almost as soon as the ink was dry on whatever abbreviated background check they'd done on him. Rumor was he'd had an ANBU tail the whole time since he ran away, anyway. He'd spent a while bumming around playing farmer and sword-sharpener and a few other things, then settled down and become a respectable shinobi, standing as one of the Twelve Elite who guarded Fire Country's highest-ranking Daimyou.
Blood proved true, was the word on the street. So it was no surprise at all that after that little coup attempt on his daimyou went bust, Asuma was back in Konoha wearing the leaf on his forehead like he'd never left it. Ginta had to wonder if Asuma's retirement from daimyou-sitting duty was by choice or edict. For that matter, there was every chance those twelve guardians had all been undercover ANBU to begin with. He was definitely curious to see how fresh the ink really was on Asuma's tattoo.
( Besides all that, they'd sort of known each other as kids. ) |
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| Keeping Secrets With The Koi [closed to Ginta] |
[Feb. 4th, 2009|01:35 am] |
[ Takes place March 14, three days after Justify My Reasons ]
The storehouse walls were cold and dusty, obscured by the boxes and bundles the building contained. The ceiling, Ginta thought, was absurdly high. They could have put in a whole additional floor where chains and draperies hung from a ceiling lost in darkness. On the grounds of a minor daimyou's estate, it was far from being a simple place to keep household items not currently in use. Thick, fire-proof stone kept dust, darkness, and sound in; robbers, flames, and inquisitive trespassers out. There were hooks embedded in the grey walls at regular intervals, some at a perfect height for restraining a man. It must have been built with holding captives in mind--a relic from an earlier age when every daimyou had maintained his own private army, before the rise of the great ninja villages.
Ginta was more than happy to take advantage of it now. He smiled at the man bound wrists and ankles to the wall. One red eye and one grey crinkled in an answering grin.
"You miss me?" he asked, and moved in close, rising on his toes, pressing his armoured torso against Kakashi's.
"Where were you, Jackass?"
"Mission, Genius," Ginta said. ( He pulled Kakashi's mask down. ) |
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| Rescue Me [closed to Ginta & Hiro] |
[Jan. 23rd, 2009|01:12 am] |
[ Takes place five years previously, the night the Kyuubi attacked Konoha. ]
The world was painted in shades of flame-blue and blood-blue and desperation-blue. (His eyes couldn't see that third but he knew it was there; he breathed it with every breath, thick and cloying.) Hiro's Byakugan took in the destruction around him, displaying a scene of monochrome catastrophe.
He was too tired for it to even affect him any more. Twenty-six hours since the first alarms had sounded--they still blared in the background unattended, repetitive klaxxons echoing through the fog and smoke--and Hiro had settled into a rhythm now.
First find the Kyuubi; he didn't need the Byakugan for that, following the screams would do. ( Screams were good, it meant someone was still alive. ) |
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| Justify My Reasons [closed to Ginta & Kotetsu] |
[Nov. 9th, 2008|11:50 pm] |
[Takes place approximately five days after If the Door's Still Open and three days after Hit the Bell Curve]
Ginta had picked up the mission assignment papers without even looking at them. He didn't much care, really. A mission was good. Any mission, he'd told the chuunin manning the assignment desk. Something to get him out of town and away from thinking about things that really weren't worth losing sleep over. People that really weren't worth losing sleep over.
It was straightforward; an easy B-rank. Take out some guy who might or might not deserve death at the hands of an ANBU assassin. Bring back proof of the death. Get paid. Go home. The perfect thing. Exactly what he needed.
He let himself into the briefing room, found it unoccupied, and set up shop with a bag of donuts and a steaming cup of coffee, loaded with enough sugar to make it nearly a syrup at the bottom before he stirred it. The donuts were good. He was halfway through the second one before he bothered to actually look at the mission brief.
Partnered with a chuunin. Hagane Kotetsu. That was the shaggy-haired kid with the bandaged nose who'd come to get him and Kakashi out of hot water back in December. Damn, he was kind of a doofus. But then this was an easy mission. And he could always cheat the kid at cards to pass the time. Speaking of which... He glanced at his watch. Did he have the wrong briefing room? Where the hell were Intel and Hagane? |
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| If the Door's Still Open [closed to Ginta and Ryouma] |
[Oct. 24th, 2008|07:41 pm] |
[Takes place the day after Just Promise to Keep Your Heart Broken and Heaven Forbid You End Up Alone]
The same medics who had discharged Ginta only an hour before were the ones to respond to Kakashi's clone. They found Ginta chakra-depleted and limp in the hall outside Kakashi's room, and couldn't understand how they'd managed to miss such a severe chakra deficit. It meant Ginta had no choice in the matter--he was admitted to the locked ANBU ward for tests and observation. He was there for a day and half before they finally let him go home.
Thirty-six hours was a lot of time to think about something. A lot of time especially if you didn't have any convenient distractions, as Ginta didn't. At first he'd sat shockingly still while medics examined him in the hall outside Kakashi's hospital room. Remained shockingly silent for hours, unable to sleep, in his own hospital bed on the locked ANBU floor after that. His silence, in fact, had so concerned the medics that they'd called in psych. It was uncharacteristic, they said. A sign that something was perhaps seriously wrong with Sakamoto-san.
Ginta was a good actor, though. And he recovered quickly. By morning he was winking at the male nurses, trying to set up dates for the females, acting like he hadn't a care in the world. It was enough to convince the brown-eyed woman from psych and the stern-faced Intel agent with the scarred lip that he was fine. Just suffering from overexertion on his mission. That he'd failed to report his ankle injury and the bruising evidence of a choke hold in a fight because he'd been tired and wanted to go home. Not because he'd been hiding anything.
( No one even suspected that choking had happened well after the ninja he'd fought on his mission was dead. ) |
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| Breaking Up Is Hard to Do [closed to Ginta and Kakashi] |
[Sep. 20th, 2008|09:00 pm] |
At a quarter past midnight, Ginta got back to Konoha from a ten-day mission. He checked in with the chuunin at the gate, stole coffee from one of them, agreed to go to the hospital to get checked out voluntarily so they didn't have to accompany him, and was mildly annoyed to notice that one of them shadowed him all the way to the hospital itself anyway.
"You can go back to your post now," he shouted at the apparently empty street. "I'm a man of my word. See? Hospital. Going in."
He didn't wait for a reply.
At nearly one in the morning he was being simultaneously stitched by a doctor on his eleventh hour and debriefed by an Intel agent who was far too perky for her own good. He was also on his third cup of coffee, and starting to feel awake again.
At one-thirty he was given a sling, a bottle of pills, and a lecture about coming back to get checked out before he resumed training from the medic, and a cheerful, "Good night, Sakamoto-san. Thank you for your hard work," from the Intel agent.
He could have gone home and crashed. He should have gone home and crashed. Instead he went prowling the silent corridors of the hospital, looking for Kakashi, Tsume and Ryouma, who were, according to sources, here, hurt all to fuck, and possibly all in the same room.
( He needed to give Ryouma hell about it, if he was hurt again. ) |
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| Barking Up the Wrong Tree [closed to Ginta & Kuromaru] |
[Aug. 7th, 2008|02:27 pm] |
Takes place at the end of January, the same night as Sacred Spaces
Ginta has enjoying a little midnight snack of canned peaches on toaster waffles. Actually perhaps, given the hour, it was more of a pre-dawn breakfast. But since he hadn't slept yet, it really wasn't breakfast. Breakfast was the meal you ate when you got up after you'd been asleep. This was more of a very-delayed midnight snack. Or a midnight snack several hundred kilometers to the west, somewhere in outer Wind Country, where the sun was farther from rising and it really was closer to midnight. Or something like that. Actually Ginta didn't care much about the definitions. ( He cared about his peach waffles, dripping with syrup and topped with a glob of whipped cream. ) |
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| Words and Deeds [Closed to Kakashi & Ginta] |
[May. 23rd, 2008|07:01 am] |
Set five days after Visting Hours Are Over
"Got your present?"
Kakashi glanced over his shoulder, looking down at a pair of amused brown eyes. "For the last time," he muttered, turning back, "it's not a birthday party. There won't be cake, I'm not taking a present, and... shut up."
Pakkun snorted and rolled onto his back, four paws held up in the air. "Yeah, right, brat. It sure sounds like a party to me. There's a birthday, you got an invite... And explain that bit to me again? Because I'm still trying to work out how you got over your anti-social weirdness long enough to say yes."
Kakashi rolled his eyes, and checked himself over again. "I'm not anti-social," he began, ignoring the chorus of disbelieving dog noises that filled his apartment. "I just have... refined people taste. I'm choosy."
"You're neurotic," countered Pakkun.
"And you're short," Kakashi muttered, kicking a foot back to roll him over. "Besides, it's not a party if there's only two people. It's..."
( A date! ) |
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anxious