Most of the others had already collected their rations by the time Ryouma and Kakashi made it back.

Usagi still stood stiff-backed and alert near the main entrance to the cavern, on watch. The remaining members of Team Thirteen clustered near her. Abe leaned against the cavern rock, staring into a silver foil pouch; beside him, Kasumi methodically shredded a rat bar wrapper. Only Ginta seemed to be eating with anything like an appetite.

Then again, healing took a lot out of a man. And Ginta's eye was markedly less swollen than before.

Genma and Raidou had claimed their own little patch of dry ground, not far from Ginta. They'd spread cloaks on the cold stone. Genma had one around his shoulders, too. He was eating with the dogged persistence of a man who knows he should be hungry, while Raidou scowled at a metal canteen until it steamed. He pushed the canteen into Genma's hand and said something, too low to hear. Genma frowned, but he took the canteen.

Kakashi pushed Ryouma's shoulder. The two Intel agents had unpacked a tiny gas burner from a sealing scroll, and an aluminum pan of rehydrated curry sat next to several foil packets of heat-and-serve rice. Kurenai caught Ryouma's eye, and offered half a smile. "You're just in time. Already cleaned up?"

"Wouldn't turn down a hot shower if you've got one," Ryouma said.

"Towelettes are the best I can do, I'm afraid." She passed over a package. Ryouma's hands were theoretically clean, but he'd never missed an opportunity to scrub them again. He accepted, gratefully.

Kakashi tapped the side of his masked nose. Ryouma stared at him.

"You have a smudge," Kurenai said, helpfully. "Have you not yet learned the language of brooding and significant glowers?"

"That wasn't a glower," Ryouma said, obscurely offended on Kakashi's behalf. He swiped the towelette over his nose. "Do we have more water?"

"A little. Satomi's got the scroll." Kurenai glanced between them. Her thin black brows rose, very slightly, over contact-brown eyes. But she said only, "Curry?"

Kakashi accepted two pouches of curry-over-rice and bore them off to stake out a spot on Raidou's other side. Ryouma lingered while Satomi unsealed the scroll with its heavy jars of fresh water. On a mission like this, where they could not rely on the possibility of finding clean drinking water, each team carried its own supplies. Fortunately, water endured the chakra-charged ordeal of sealing better than food, which inevitably spoiled after only a few hours in a scroll. Ryouma refilled his canteen and Kakashi's, and then hesitated a moment longer.

"Uchiha. About that rockfall. Kakashi's not— He didn't mean for any of us to get hurt."

For a woman whose eyes weren't quite level with his collarbone, Satomi had an unpleasant way of managing to look down her nose at him anyway. "Hatake explained himself to you?"

"I'm getting to know him," Ryouma said. "Enough to know he'd never endanger a teammate on purpose. Not unless he knew you could defend yourself, at least."

"That might be a convincing testimonial, if it came with fewer caveats." Satomi folded her arms.

Fewer what? Ryouma tried again. "He cares about people. He's just not always good at showing it. But he'd put himself in the blade's path for any of us. Setting off that trap was a mistake, and not even a careless one. He—"

"He nearly blinded you," Satomi said harshly. "He can't afford many more mistakes like that. Careless or not." Her chin jerked up. "Have you noticed, yet, that it's always the people around him who suffer the most?"

"I dunno what happened with your cousin," Ryouma said, "but I jumped in this time. He didn't make me."

Red flickered in Satomi's eyes. "Yes," she said, in a voice like ice. "I imagine that's what Obito would have said, too. Of course, it didn't matter for him, in the end. No— Hatake doesn't need your defense, and I don't want to hear it. Go eat." She shoved the opened water jug into his hands. "And pass this around." She turned, abruptly, to join Kurenai and Fukuda over the last of the curry.