“Don’t worry,” Genma said, still slightly slurred. “Got blood pills in you. You’ll be alright. I’ll fix you up in just a little bit.”

Ryouma’s eyes were already closed, chest rising and falling in the steady rhythm of sleep. If he heard the lieutenant, he gave no sign.

“Get some rest first, Tanuki,” Katsuko said. Exhaustion clawed at the inside of her skull, dragging down her bones like quicksand. “None of us are going anywhere.”

Genma made a little hissing noise when the assistant swabbed at his cut belly. “Yeah. You rest, too, Rat.”

Katsuko remembered she had only one working arm when she tried to tap her fingers against her tattoo in a salute. The pained grunt that escaped her was involuntary but quiet enough not to alert Genma, which was the best she could hope for at this point.

Across the room, two wet towels landed on the floor with an inelegant plop. Katsuko blinked, forcing the blurry edges of her vision away.

Kakashi had found a set of spare clothes from somewhere: generic cloth pants and shirt, one size fits all. Ryouma didn’t even twitch as Kakashi dressed him with the professional efficiency of a hospital nurse, wrestling Ryouma’s long limbs away from the edge of the mattress and pulling the blanket up over his shoulders.

With one last glance at Genma, Katsuko hauled herself upright and shambled over to the bed. After giving Kakashi a nod, she leaned in to press two fingers to the pulse in Ryouma’s throat, finding quiet reassurance in the steady rhythm of his heart. She pulled away after a second and scrubbed her good hand through her hair, yawning. Then she turned to Kakashi.

“You know what, hotpants?” she said. “You’re alright.”

He glanced at her. “You’re not. You should eat something.”

“You could get me something to eat,” Katsuko suggested.

“I could,” Kakashi said, almost agreeably.

Katsuko eyed him. “But?”

"Do I look like a vending machine?"

She considered this. “Which answer will get me food?”

He reached over, tugged an uneaten rat bar out of her belt without looking, and handed it to her.

“It’s not the same,” Katsuko said at last, mournful.

“Life is hard,” Kakashi told her, and tucked Ryouma’s blanket in a little more firmly. Then he straightened, slim and sharp-shouldered in his dark clothes, and visibly drew his thoughts together. It was fascinating to watch the wheels turning in his spiky grey head, but entertainment morphed into alarm when his one grey eye turned its razor-sharp focus on her. “You’re shaking and you stink. We should get you into the shower.”

The extreme willpower it took not to slide straight into innuendo nearly gave Katsuko a seizure. “We should,” she said, quite amiably.

Kakashi raised his voice. "Tanuki, you okay for a minute?"

“Yeah,” Genma said, voice strained. He twitched a shoulder as the doctor poked at his wound with something sharp and surgical-looking. “Don’t faint in the shower. Either of you. And someone needs to make sure Moon is okay.”

“Next on my list,” Kakashi said, and then offered Katsuko his arm. “But you first.”

Katsuko took it. “What a gentleman,” she said dryly, but leaned on him as they shuffled their way out the door. A metal chair stood inside the bathroom shower; Katsuko slid off her mask and stared blankly as Kakashi switched the water on. He turned to her as steam filled the tiled room.

After a moment, it clicked. Katsuko sighed, the itching need to get clean trumping any modesty she might have had left. “Fine. But I’m taking my own pants off.”