Raidou had just gotten back to his apartment when a clone came trotting up the hallway and accosted him. He paused with his key in the lock and directed the frown he'd been wearing all morning directly at the construct; it failed to wilt.

"Message at the main desk for you," it said with a brief salute. Then it exploded in a crack of smoke.

Raidou blinked. "Right," he said, and locked his door again. With any luck it would be about Kaito--and nothing to do with bodybags. After four hours spent fruitlessly searching for the kid, Raidou planned to be the one who got to drag him down to the morgue and zip him up. How could a chuunin vanish so thoroughly? Maybe he should have gotten a tracker...

Message. Main desk. He shook his head, hung his key back around his neck, and translocated.

The short civilian wearing a medical uniform leapt about a foot when Raidou appeared by his elbow. Raidou arched an eyebrow at him, then turned his attention on the desk-chuunin. "Message?"

The chuunin hooked a thumb at the civilian without looking up. "Talk to him."

Kadan pulled himself up straight and took three big steps away from the giant ninja. That was just good sense. "Are you Namiashi Raidou? Do you have ID?"

The chuunin stopped to look at him, snorted, and went back to his paperwork.

Kadan shuffled from foot to foot. "It's just, y'know, policy..." He waved the scroll around, hoping the guy with the horrific scars would stop looking at him. "Personal, private information and all that. Sensitive. That kind of thing."

That couldn't be good. Raidou hooked his dogtags out from under his shirt and dangled them in front of the dancing civilian's nose; they were scrutinized with a surprising amount of intensity.

"Good enough?" he said, eyeing the scroll the man was waving around. Couldn't be a mission--they didn't leave those in the hands of medical civilians. Couldn't be about his brothers, either; if family got hurt they sent ninja out to inform ANBU, just in case they reacted dangerously. "Or d'you need me to track down my birth certificate? Because I'm a little busy right now..."

If Kadan caught the humor, he ignored it, settling away from the dogtags and peering up. "Yeah, well, just gotta make sure." His gaze skid off the ninja's face. Balls, no wonder Kaito preferred the psych ward, if this was what he had to look forward to. Probably this guy could use a few sessions, too.

"Here." He handed the scroll over without looking. "Let me know if you need directions." Then he leaned against the desk, arms folded over his chest, and waited for the guy to get through reading.

"Thanks," said Raidou, desert dry. He scanned the official looking kanji quickly, then paused and read it more carefully.

Agent Namaishi, 009717.

Your charge, Morioka Kaito, 013984, is being held as a patient at the Minimal-Security Facility For Mental Health 34B, under voluntary sectioning. You are to collect him before 1800.

Sato Ikumu, 009984.

Kaito had checked himself into the psych ward. Raidou pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Right," he said, and jammed the scroll into his back pocket. The desk-chuunin gave him a curious look. The civilian was watching him a little more warily. "Forget directions. Just take me there."

Kadan wasn't getting paid enough for this crap.

It was a twenty-minute walk to the psych hospital. Doubtlessly a ninja could have done it faster, but he wasn't a ninja. He was an orderly, and he was missing lunch. Well, maybe that wasn't so bad. One of their newest patients didn't appreciate life at the moment, and lunch was a bit of an endeavor.

By the time they got there the worst of the meal was over. He turned to the ninja--he hadn't bothered to make small talk, really, in part because it required looking over and his eyes kept twitching over those scars--and pointed down a hall. "The common room's in there. He's probably inside. If not, just ask anyone for Kaito and they'll point you in the right direction." He grinned and gave the scarred man a thumb's up. "Good luck!"

Kaito wasn't in the common room. There was a man who wanted to tell Raidou all about his shingles, rickets, and dicky ear in excruciating detail, but the soon-to-be-dead chuunin was conspicuously absent.

Raidou tracked down a harried looking nurse and got directed down a complex maze of hallways to a game room. Slightly disbelievingly, he navigated his way through the clearly civilian facility--there was only one guard, and a drunken cat could have outrun him--and hit upon a small room tucked far back, out of the way of human traffic. There was a pool table pushed into one corner, and an ancient arcade video game making distressed sounds. The whole place smelled of mothballs.

Kaito was seated at a small, empty table by the barred windows, sunglasses pushed high on his head, finger painting. His back was to the room.

Raidou leaned against the doorway and counted slowly to ten.

"So," he said, and watched tension leap into still-growing shoulders. "Are you here for the food, or d'you just really like the scenery?"

For a panicked moment, he debated playing possum. But Talei had left (to find her dog, who'd been dead for years but no one could convince her of that), and Kaito was the only one in the room. He couldn't pretend he hadn't heard or wasn't really there. Caught between utter mortification and extreme anxiety, he hunched down and glanced back.

Before he had to say anything, Sachi came bustling in in her clean white scrubs, right past Raidou. She beamed at Kaito out of a round face. "Kaito-lovey, we're having chocolate milk. Would you like some chocolate milk?"

He flushed red at her overly simple speech, knowing she just got used to talking that way, but embarrassed that Raidou had heard it. "Uh, no thanks."

"How about your friend?" She turned and smiled up at Raidou. The man couldn't have been a patient--everyone else was dressed in soft blue drawstring pants and baggy shirts with little white flowers. Kaito included. Only Raidou looked different.

Very different, Kaito supposed as the woman startled at her first real look at him. She recovered quickly, though. "Well, uh, ninja-san, would you like some chocolate milk?"

It was tempting to put his head in his hands. But his hands were covered in purple finger paint.

It had been a while since he'd seen that flinch--and now he'd had it twice in one day. Raidou rubbed his hand over his mouth and settled, forcing himself not to look for the angle that would put the side of his face to the wall. "I'll take coffee, if you have it," he said.

The nurse smiled at him. "Luke-warm, I'm afraid. We don't give out hot liquids here. Sugar?"

"No thanks. Black is fine." He wouldn't drink it anyway, not without knowing who'd made it. But it would give the nurse something to do.

"Wonderful," she said brightly, turning to go. "I'll be back in a second. Oh--ninja-san. I'm afraid we don't allow touching here. House rules, I'm sure you understand. Feel free to call for an orderly if you need something."

Ah.

"Of course," he said. She smiled at him again and swept out.

Raidou stayed by the door for a moment, hands in his pockets. Kaito wasn't looking at him. Red-faced, shoulders tensed, hands soaked in wet paint, he looked all of five in his loose hospital clothes. Even from across the room, Raidou could feel that familiar catch as his chest tightened. He felt for the poison-coated senbon Genma had given him, and nicked his fingertip on it. Kaito's bloodline effect snapped.

"No touching," he echoed, and headed over to pull out a free chair, making sure to sit himself out of arm's reach. He picked up an open pot of green paint. "Must be nice. Got some spare paper?"

Kaito looked at the larger man from under a fall of disheveled brown hair. "Pap--? Uh, sure." He scrambled to pull out more newsprint, finally shoving the whole pad over, smearing purple paint across it in the process. He tried to wipe his fingers off on his own sheet, surreptitiously hiding it from view as he did so. No one needed to see his pathetic attempts at lavender kittens. It was just, y'know, they always said to draw things that made you happy and playing kittens were hilarious, all bundles of fluff and over-large ears...

"So, um, what are you doing here?" He shoved the sheet aside, debating tearing free another one. If Raidou really did, then he could too, but he didn't want to look like a baby...

He started to chew on his cuticles, then made a face when his tongue encountered paint. He licked the back of his wrist to get it off.

Sachi came back in with a plastic cup filled with chocolate milk, and a styrofoam cup with luke warm coffee. "There we are. Now--Lovey, you have--" She grabbed a paper towel out of her pocket with one hand, Kaito's chin with the other, and started to scrub his face.

Kaito pulled away. "Sachi! Geez!" He grabbed a paper towel of his own and rubbed the paint off, blushing furiously. So much for not looking like a child.

Sachi tsked. "Everyone all right? Okay? Good." She turned and sailed toward the door like a ship at full mast. "Oh, Talei! Why don't you come with me, deary. I hear there's an animal show on the television." A moment later they were alone again, and no one was going to come back in and rescue him. Damn it.

Raidou won a proverbial medal when he managed not to fall under the table and laugh himself unconscious. Being understanding was one thing, but watching an eighteen-year-old chuunin get himself mothered half to death would have been resolve-testing even for a man without an over-developed sense of humour. He cleared his throat and ripped a sheet of paper off the pad. "Nice lady."

Kaito's blush could have fried steel.

Raidou bit the inside of his cheek, schooled his face straight, and dipped two fingers into the green paint. With a little effort he managed to sketch out a reasonable approximation of the kanji for 'ANBU'. "Setsurou--my kid brother," he clarified, catching Kaito's expression, "used to love this when he was younger. 'Course he used to do it on the walls if we didn't watch him..."

With his free hand he pulled the summons scroll out of his back pocket and skimmed it gently towards Kaito. "You know you don't belong here, right?"

Kaito took the scroll carefully, as if it might explode. Purple paint smeared across it as he read. He placed it on the table between them and didn't look up. "I didn't think it was possible to get kicked out of psych." He attempted a smile, but the joke fell flat.

Tearing off another piece of paper, he set it in front of him, wiping his fingers off on it first. It left rough streaks of broken purple over the off-white. "'S not like I was gonna stay forever or something." He tried to think of appropriately manly things to draw, and finally settled on just doodling shapes. Long streaks, little scratches. "It's just... y'know... it's nice here." He shifted his arm, sketching out a house behind the random lines that were linked together with sharp loops and whirls and sweeping marks. "I mean, everyone's already got funny emotions, so... An' none of the staff mind if I'm... not..." He tried to find the right words, and failed.

If he wasn't... what? Normal? Trustworthy? Unable to stop from manipulating emotions whether or not he meant to?

"And the food's pretty good." He drank his chocolate milk, still without looking up. Behind the house, behind the lines, he added a tree.

The senbon in Raidou's pocket dug into his thigh--which was probably a good thing, considering the kid looked a step away from complete misery. He wiped his fingers off on his paper, underlining the rough kanji, and laced his hands together, leaning his elbows on the table.

There was a code in ANBU. It didn't appear in any of the rules, and it probably wasn't well known amongst the rookies, but for the veterans it was as basic as breathing. You didn't judge your teammates. You just didn't. Whatever got them through the day, made the missions easier, kept that final break under lock and key--if no one got hurt, you looked the other way.

But he'd never heard of anyone volunteering for psych before.

"Look, kid," he said carefully, "I get that you didn't ask for this. ANBU's not the easiest gig around, and you're having it harder than most, but rabbiting the moment things start to weigh on you isn't going to make it better--"

Kaito's head came up a fraction and Raidou's voice strangled silent. In the shadows beneath the kid's sharp-edged jaw, someone had left behind a handprint marked in bruises.

Raidou's breath hissed between his teeth. "Who did that?"

It took Kaito a moment to realize what Raidou was talking about. Then he lifted a guilty hand to his throat, ducking his head again to hide the marks. "No one. It was nothing. I mean--it was something, but it's okay now, and it's not like it's gonna happen again." If only because he was going to avoid Hatake Kakashi like the plague--and he guessed the feeling was mutual.

He kept his hand there, smearing purple bruises with purple paint, as if he could hide the evidence that his limit had flown out of control. He stared down at his painting rather than look up at Raidou and tried to change the subject. "And I wasn't rabbiting. I mean--I like ANBU. I applied, right?" Coming here was just... well, Madoka-sensei said that if Kaito felt safe here and he needed a secure place away from--from everything, real or imagined, he could always come.

Of course, Sato-sensei, Madoka-sensei's boss, had sent Raidou that scroll. Maybe he'd worn out his welcome.

He rubbed his throat, smearing more paint.

Surely Kaito was too old to need this lecture--but apparently not. "Kid, if it bruises than it's not nothing." Kaito was already opening his mouth, probably to protest that he'd already said that. Raidou cut him off. "If you're getting in fights with other ANBU, I need to know about it. I told you that you'd be safe with us, right? Well I aim to keep it that way. But you've gotta talk to me, not bolt off without a word."

He glanced over the room, taking in the pool table with its cracked cues, the depressingly out-of-date arcade machine, the chuunin in front of him, painting cheerful purple over blackened skin.

"Look, if you really need to come here, then fine, I can deal with that. We've all got places where we hole up and think. But if you're going to ground because someone tried to strangle you--" He broke off, frustrated and trying not to be. "I'm supposed to have your back. And I want to. Not because they told me to, or because you can break my heart with a thought. I'm good at this." Solid, Genma had said. "But you've gotta let me, okay?"

He dragged a hand through his hair, accidentally leaving green streaks. "Hell, if only so I can stop talking your damn ear off."

Kaito sat in silence, not sure which to respond to--or even what he was thinking. Raidou wanted to have his back. Not because of orders or Kaito's bloodline, but because ... well, because. He scratched at the old table with one fingernail, watching formica chip away. Just because. It was ... nice.

He dropped his hand away from his throat and tried to smile up. "Not talking my ear off'd be a change," he murmured. But from Raidou's expression, that wasn't going to be enough.

He applied his other hand to scratching at the chip as well, watching what he did. "It wasn't a big deal." The words were a mumble. "My fault. 'Cause my bloodline went, and I didn't realize it, and he, y'know, didn't react well. Some people don't, right?" He flicked a glance up at Raidou, who was still listening. "It just happens, sometimes. My fault, and I don't wanna be the chuunin brat with a stupid protector. C'mon, you went to school. It just makes things worse. I don't want everyone to avoid me 'cause I might rat 'em out." He looked, pleadingly, at Raidou. "If I thought it'd happen with him again, I'd say something. I swear. But it won't."

The kid had a point. Raidou hated to think it--mostly he wanted to get a name and leave some handprint bruises himself--but... the kid had a point.

Dammit.

He breathed slowly through his nose and nodded. The tension clouding up the air broke, easing back down to almost tolerable. Kaito's shoulders stopped looking like he was trying to balance a world on them. The pin-scratch line between his eyebrows, pretty much there since Raidou had first met him, vanished. Even with the paint still on his hands, and his muscles hidden by baggy clothes, he looked a lot closer to his own age. Less like a kicked dog.

Almost made it worth it, really.

Raidou pushed his chair back. "C'mon, grab your clothes and your stuff. I'll buy you dinner." He hooked up a grin. "Unless you'd rather stay and paint kittens?"

Kaito's relief shifted to hot embarrassment, though he laughed. "Shut up! Kittens are totally acceptable. You draw things like... like ANBU symbols and stuff, an' they wanna know what it represents and if you're afraid or feel safe because you're drawing the local boogeymen."

He pushed upright, glancing down at what he'd painted. The ragged lines looked like flame, he realized, staring down. The house and the tree were in imminent peril. Barred from safety? Home burning down? Madoka-sensei's voice echoed. What does it represent? Ahh, it was all a bunch of horseshit anyway. He crumpled it up and tossed it toward the wastebasket, glancing up at Raidou. Who wanted to help. Who was still here. Who'd offered to buy him dinner. "My stuff's in my room. I mean--not my room, but where I slept last night." He wasn't here that often. "I'll just--just get it. And change. I gotta change." A smile quivered hopefully on his face, and he backed toward the door--as if turning around might make the other ninja vanish.

"One sec," he said quickly. "Gimme one sec." And then he'd get food. Free food! And without his bloodline, even. Kaito turned and raced down the hall.

Raidou scratched the back of his head and laughed softly, four hours of worry forgotten. He picked his drawing off the table and tilted it towards the light, watching the rough lines of paint run down the paper. It was probably the first time the local boogeymen had ever been represented in green fingerprints...

He snorted, wadded it up, and tossed it into the trash with Kaito's purple masterpiece. The kittens were still on the table. He picked them up, started to crumple the paper, and then paused. They really weren't that bad...

He folded the drawing carefully and tucked it into his back pocket, along with the summons scroll. Then he grabbed one of the cracked cues and set up a game of one-man pool while he waited for Kaito to get back. The clack of chipped balls rattling off green felt didn't quite wipe away the echo of half-embarrassed, but very real laughter.

Raidou grinned and spun the cue cheerfully. Maybe Genma was right. Maybe he really could do this.