| Like You Wanted to Go and Give Yourself Away [closed to Ryouma and Kakashi] | [Sep. 26th, 2008|10:54 pm] |
[[Takes place the morning after Breaking Up Is Hard To Do]]
The late morning sunlight gleamed in Tsume's hair, picking out chestnut threads in the dark brown, burnishing the bandage a blazing white. Ryouma narrowed his eyes against the glare as he watched the mob of tattooed men, women, and children--and several dozen barking dogs--funnel away down the street with his former mission partner walking unsteadily among them. Half the Inuzuka clan had come to collect her from the hospital, it seemed.
He would lay even odds she'd have given up half the clan in a heartbeat, if she could stay with the one.
But Tsume's injuries were mostly healed, and Kuromaru's would require hospitalization for weeks yet. Ryouma had tried not to listen very hard to the the doctor delivering his solemn prognosis at the side of the other bed, this morning; he'd concentrated on getting dressed in the ill-fitting jounin blues the nurses (finally!) brought him, on shaving himself for the first time in a week, on figuring out what had happened to drive Kakashi so silent and grim. He'd woken up this morning with Kakashi curled in a chair across the room, and Kuromaru whimpering and clawing at his bandages, and Tsume crooning meaningless reassurance at her familiar as she tried to hold him still.
The tiny hospital room had become far smaller in the last twelve hours. Ryouma, for one, was damn glad to be leaving it.
He leaned heavily on his left-hand crutch, and looked over at Kakashi. The replacement uniform from hospital stores didn't fit Kakashi any better than Ryouma's did, but he'd found a new mask somewhere. A black one, too big, that bunched over his nose and fluttered slightly when he breathed. It was still tight enough for Ryouma to see the thin line of set lips, the beginnings of a scowl.
"Hey," he said. "C'mon, you can't tell me you're gonna miss hospital food all that much. Or that you aren't looking forward to not getting kicked in your sleep. What're you planning for your first day out? Hit up the hot springs? All-you-can-eat barbecue?"
Ryouma had spent several hours plotting his, but at the end he hadn't come up with anything much better than Coffee. And possibly Pie. |
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