“It’s something,” Raidou agreed. “Doing okay, Hatake?”

Kakashi regarded him with a distinctly anesthetized look. The pupil of his visible eye was tiny. “Heeey, captain,” he said. “You hit Tousaki.”

“I did,” Raidou said.

“I don’t have a shirt on, either,” Kakashi said.

It was hard to tell whether that was commentary or actual concern, but what Raidou could see of Kakashi beneath rumpled blankets was still just bandages and underwear. They really did need to get the kid back into actual clothes.

“You have a doctor’s note,” Raidou said, more gently. “Gets you a free pass. Think you can manage breakfast?”

“Smells like miso fish,” Kakashi said, which wasn’t exactly an answer. He swung his head around to look at Katsuko. “Y’should eat,” he told her seriously. “You smell hollow.”

“I smell what?” Katsuko said blankly.

“Hollow,” Kakashi said. “Too much chakra, not enough fuel. S’making you thin inside.”

“That’s how it is all the time, though,” Katsuko said, still moving her hand carefully over Kakashi’s ridiculous hair. She gave him a closer look. “Are you worried about me?”

Unconvincingly, Kakashi said, “No.”

“Uh huh,” Katsuko said. “Of course you aren’t, petal. Will you eat if I eat?”

Kakashi sighed. “Okay.”

Katsuko had apparently picked up Hatake-handling as a skill when Raidou wasn’t looking, which made one of them. Maybe two, if you counted Ryouma, though Raidou was less sure about that. It was a general trend he approved of, though the true test would probably come when Kakashi was sober again.

Ryouma returned with a ragged collection of tin bowls and spoons, and a touch more flex in his mood. The kitchen break had given his ears a chance to cool down. He helped dish out five bowls of the stew, which contained Raidou’s best dawn effort at something tasty and quasi-healthy, and handed them out. Rice, mackerel, miso, and mushrooms were prominent features. A little shuffling on the bed-platform allowed Raidou and Ryouma to retake their places, though they changed the seating order to more of a rough, communal circle. Kakashi remained bracketed between Katsuko and Ryouma, who helped brace him up; Raidou sat between Katsuko and Genma, and Ryouma staked himself a safe place on Genma’s other side, protected from any more captainly head-slapping.

Raidou, Katsuko, and Ryouma managed to sit cross-legged, with varying degrees of stiffness. Genma leaned his back against the wall, beneath the shadow of his hanging IV line, with his bad leg still extended. Kakashi slouched in a manner that suggested his skeleton might actually be hinged, but his stew vanished slowly and steadily, and his face never quite revealed itself, so he was feeling at least a little better.

Katsuko ate four bowls.

Partway through his second, Raidou checked his watch. “If luck holds, we’ve probably got another day before a team shows up. More likely two.”