Tsume dropped down to flat feet, startled at the sound of his voice. Then logic returned, and with a sideways twist to her grin she rose back up, snagging a mug off the upper shelf. "Suddenly, I think I understand men and their obsession with putting things high. Rotten trick." But she was still grinning, setting one mug down and stretching to reach for another.

"I'm not sure," she added after a moment of thought, "that your coffeepot holds enough for both of us." She tipped her head, eyeing it. "Or really even for you." But a smile spoke of teasing, and while coffee percolated happily at her elbow she turned and looked at Ryouma. Still sleep-rumpled, with the covers bunched around his waist, his wrinkled T-shirt soft and worn and a little frayed at the edges. His eyes were dark--they were always dark, but like agate now, still a bit unfocused and hoarding dreams. Black hair spiked into his face and stuck up in the back. It was the first morning they'd actually woken up together--before, one of them had been gone by the time the other got up. It was oddly familiar; as if this was all that was left to slide him firmly into her pack.

She stopped looking at him, and played with the mugs instead.

"We can ration it out," Ryouma said. "Probably should do it anyway; that's the expensive stuff. I got it at this cafe the other day. Ginta said--"

He stopped. Threw the covers back, checked the fit of his brace, and reached for his crutches. Yesterday's activities hadn't done much for his knee; it ached stubbornly, angrily. That was something else to focus on, at least.

So was Tsume. He hitched himself over to the kitchen, leaned the crutches against the wall, and hoisted himself up on the counter beside her. "So I told you about my success finally getting a shower last night, right? I was thinking I should probably apply to go back on active duty today. Get started with the Ninja Crutch Corps, and all that."

Her smile widened. Encouraged, he snagged an orange from the bowl beside him and dug his nails in. "You could be an honorary member. We'd have cool badges and everything. Maybe another tattoo."

Tsume laughed and leaned against the counter, able to feel body heat on one side and the warmth from the coffee on the other. "As tempting as that offer is, I'd be afraid. I mean, my coffee service was terrible. I should probably practice first." She eyed his braced knee, skin showing on his kneecap though the brace ran high enough under his boxers to hide more flesh that way. Not that she'd noticed.

"But you--you're doing pretty good on those things. Definitely think you should start with the Crutch Corps. I hear they lose members pretty regularly. Tragic."

The coffee finished with a hiss of steam, and she turned away, pulling the tiny pot off its base and pouring inky black liquid into two cups. Enough caffeine to give her a boost for the morning. It seemed she was busier off active duty than she'd been on it--even if most of that busy was spending time with Kuromaru. Which reminded her--

"Kuro was asking after you. He was downright sulky when I told him he'd been awake to see you go, and he was too drug-addled to remember." She set Ryouma's coffee mug down between them and debated putting more grounds in to get another pot going. Anything to keep from looking at him, to give him whatever time he needed. His scent spiraled, nearly but not quite banished by freshly brewed coffee and newly peeled oranges. She didn't want to smell if he was hurting--it didn't help. It seemed like everyone was hurting.

Tsume glanced sideways and stole an orange section from broad hands as one came free. Biting into it released citrus, and for a moment she couldn't smell anything else.

Hide from one demon, and another'd bite you in the face. Ryouma's thumbs dug into the orange, squirting pungent juice over his hands. A few drops flecked his shirt, spattering like blood. He teased one section free, stared blankly down at it, and then ate it. It squished between his teeth.

"Kuromaru...Does he remember?" He tore another piece of orange free. Thought of the smell of overripe oranges clotting in the air, and almost gagged. He shoved the fruit blindly at Tsume and reached for his coffee instead.

If Kuromaru was asking after Ryouma, he couldn't remember. Not even a dog could forgive that easily. Especially not a dog who'd been a man when Ryouma burned his eye socket clean...

Tsume still bore the brands of his guilt, hidden under white bandages at temple and ear. He hadn't seen what lurked beneath. He'd never dared look at Kuromaru long enough to catch more than a fleeting impression of pale skin and healing seals. He'd known he couldn't bear it.

But Tsume did. She spent her days in the hospital by Kuromaru's side, and if she flinched at mirrors now, she didn't speak of it. Ryouma laced his fingers around his hot mug, breathed in bitter steam, and found his voice. "I'll come today. If--if you don't mind."

With one hand full of orange and the other holding a coffee mug, she couldn't have scented his emotions pinwheeling even if he'd been a centimeter from her. It didn't matter, though. She could hear it in his voice, see it in the way his knuckles went white around his mug. She set the orange carefully aside. "He remembers," she said quietly. "But canines don't... they don't think like people. Not much other than his pack status being questioned would upset him. They forget pain quickly. Don't have flashbacks and he barely understands nightmares. The problems humans have when they--" She broke off, pausing to clear her throat without thinking about why it needed to be done. "When they lose a limb or--or an eye... he won't have most of those. Canines just move on with whatever the new day brings."

She stared into the inky dark of her mug, seeing the white bandage reflected but not much else. "They're lucky like that." She tried to steady herself, taking a breath and looking up at Ryouma. His skin was pulled tight over the sharp planes of his face, his usually smiling countenance somber. Carefully, she skimmed fingertips over his brace, letting her hand settle on his knee. "I think he'd like to see you."

Ryouma nodded jerkily. There wasn't much else you could say to that, after all. I'm glad he doesn't see it the way you do? If Tsume had flashbacks, she didn't mention them. She didn't cry in the night. She slept without drugs. That didn't mean she was lucky the way Kuromaru was.

He sipped his coffee--black and bitter, no sugar at all--and tried not to look down at her hand on his knee.

After a while, she took it away.

They dressed in as near silence as two people in a small apartment could manage. Ryouma cut himself shaving. He pressed his thumb against his jaw until the bleeding stopped, wiped away the red trail down his neck, and picked up his razor again. The eyes in the mirror stared straight through him.

If he pretended he was scraping the razor blade down someone else's throat, it went a little easier.

Tsume was pacing--rattling between four walls like a marble in a matchbox--when he hobbled out of the bathroom again. "Sorry," he said, before he remembered he wasn't apologizing; he hadn't been sure if he'd be able to stop, once he started. He blotted the back of his hand against his jaw. "I'm set."

She attempted a smile, failed miserably, and led the way out of the building. She couldn't stand anymore silence. "Yasuo and Takana got him canine again, yesterday. Without activating his chakra. He's happier." She walked too fast, slowed down for the crutches, and flicked one nail against the other. "Says my form is too small. Go figure. Think he'd like a human form more like yours." She closed her mouth on any more words. Babbling.

But Ryouma wasn't speaking, and someone had to. "Waki figures they'll manage the next surgery tomorrow, and then he just needs time to recover. His chakra levels are up, though, so that's--"

Not babbling.

"--good." She shut up again.

At least the hospital was noisy. A cacophony of smells and calls, intercoms and people running to and fro, babies crying a floor down. She lost herself in it, and didn't know how anyone could stand not to hear it all. People must go insane, in the quiet of their muffled worlds.

In the hall, Taro was arguing with an orderly. "You can't feed him Jell-O and oatmeal because he's canine. Look." He stepped out of the doorway and waved a hand within.

The orderly looked a little confused. "But the chart says--"

"Because he was human, but now--oh, blessed Wolf, Tsume can you explain this?" The last was with great relief as he spied her in the hall.

"Go to the butcher and get some breakfast for him," she told her nephew dryly. Then, to the orderly, "Just take it away."

With another doubtful look into the room, the man did so. Taro marched off, shaking his head and muttering about inbred morons.

Tsume took several large steps, pulling ahead of Ryouma to look around the doorway. "Kuromaru?"

He blinked at her, pupils dilated and tongue lolling out of his panting jaw. He was laying in a nest of blankets, looking pleased with life in general despite half his head being wrapped in bandages.

"Ryouma's here."

His single ear came up, his one eye brightening. With drugged imprecision, he pushed himself to a sitting position. His tail made loops rather than wagging. Tsume made a mental note to lower his pain meds, and stepped inside.

"Pup?" Kuromaru whined, lips drawing back in a smile. He looked, for a moment, like he'd leap off the cot. Tsume put a hand on his scruff to stop him.

"Just wait, he's coming," she murmured.

The room was smaller than the one Ryouma had left three days ago. Only one bed, here, pressed against the wall under a wide window. A straight-backed chair drawn up next to the bed, a table decorated with several garishly crayoned cards, an IV stand. There were more crayon drawings tacked up on the walls, a helium balloon tied to the bedstead, a blue plush puppy tumbled halfway across the floor. Ryouma splayed his crutches and bent, awkward as a young giraffe, to pick the stuffed animal up. It was missing one eye and a good deal of stuffing.

"You having trouble sleeping alone, too?" he asked, and could've kicked himself even before the words left his mouth. He forced himself to focus, finally, on the hulking black dog in his tangle of blankets and bandages.

More bandages than Tsume had. One ear pricked alertly; linen wrappings cradled the smoothness of Kuromaru's skull on the other side. Another layer of bandages swathed his near back leg, where the IV tubing disappeared. A palm-sized patch on his belly, shaved smooth, revealed a neat line of dark stitches.

Haruichi's jutsu had regrown Ryouma's flayed skin and most of his fingernails. He remembered drowning in green fire, remembered feeling his chest knitting back together. Remembered begging Haruichi to look to Kuromaru, instead. If he had--

"Sorry," he whispered, again. This time he didn't have to force himself to stop. There was nothing else to say.

Kuromaru paddled around in his bedding, digging at the top blanket. "I don't have trouble sleeping," he said, great jaws closing on several things, one at a time, and yanking them out. Three more stuffed animals littered the bed suddenly, followed by a light pink, three foot square bit of quilting. "Because I have these. And Tsume's cub blanket. And mine, too, around here somewhere..." He dug some more, standing and wobbling off-balance when his injured hip gave out. He nearly fell off the bed, but didn't seem to notice. "I have... there's..." He blinked slowly, jaw closing. His tail stilled, and his single ear flicked back. It took another contortion, giant paws slapping at the mattress as he moved, to angle back and see Ryouma.

"It's okay," Kuromaru said, bewildered.

Tsume relaxed, only then aware she'd been tense. Wordlessly, she started unwinding the IV from where it had tangled, set into one of Kuromaru's back legs.

"It's okay," he said again, more sure this time. "But you can keep that dog, if you want. It's a pretty good one." He slid off the bed.

"Kuromaru--" Tsume snapped, grabbing for the IV. It pulled out, though nothing bled. Waki had insisted on using animal catheters, just for this reason.

Kuromaru wobbled the few steps to Ryouma, lifting his head to lick at the hands still holding the dog.

He froze. The pupil of his single golden eye dilated until there was only the slimmest ring of color. His ear slicked back, haunches dropping toward the ground as his tail tucked between his legs. His whole body lowered, back feet sliding, and he began to whine.

"Kuro--" Tsume said in alarm, heart stuttering in her chest. He couldn't be--it had been bad, yes, but it hadn't been an actual challenge. Body language said submission, but Kuromaru didn't submit--he was alpha and there hadn't been a challenge--

The smell of dog urine filled the air. She clamped a hand over her nose as if that could make it go away, and tried to get over there before his ever-shifting back legs smeared it. His whine turned into a keen, shoulders dropping, tail whisking along the ground just before he fell entirely and rolled over onto his back at Ryouma's feet.

The plush puppy dropped. Ryouma managed one sharp breath and couldn't seem to find another. The acrid tang of urine bit at his nostrils as Tsume fell to her knees beside her writhing dog. A seizure? But Kuromaru wasn't seizing, just--

He'd smelled Ryouma's hands.

Ryouma took two faltering steps back before the wall smacked him between the shoulders. The iron bands around his lungs squeezed tighter. "He's not," he said. "I shouldn't--"

Kuromaru twisted beneath Tsume's hands, chest-ripping howl deepening to a fang-baring snarl, and lunged.

Tsume's hands tightened in Kuromaru's fur, even as he yanked her off her knees. The great body heaved forward, lips pulled back from dangerous teeth--and then recoiled a breath from tearing open Ryouma's gut.

The canine twisted and writhed, breaking her grasp with barely a thought. With a scrabble of claws he dove under the cot, struggling to get beneath bars and into the shadows.

"Sorry," he whined. "Sorry! I forgot--I didn't mean--I don't know!"

For a moment, Tsume sat, stunned. Ryouma was still plastered against the wall, skin ashen. Her familiar was hidden from sight. "Kuromaru," she called at last, skirting the puddle of urine to peer under the bed. "What is wrong?" He'd been asking about Ryouma. He'd been sharing his toys. And now--

Now teeth flashed as he whipped around, circling in the small confines and snapping at her. The click of jaws was audible before he pulled back, whining again, circling once more, tail tucked as he nearly collapsed trying to use his back leg.

"Tsume," Ryouma said. His voice cracked. Tsume didn't turn. Under the bed, Kuromaru's whine rasped into a growl.

He couldn't stay. Shouldn't stay, not when the mere scent of his hands drove Kuromaru mad. Dogs didn't have flashbacks, Tsume said. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe Kuromaru couldn't move on.

Not with Ryouma there, at least.

"I'll wait," he said. "Outside." His throat ached; his voice wobbled. If Tsume even heard him, she didn't turn.

The open doorway was a half-step away. Ryouma barely made it through. He did manage to slide the door shut again before he collapsed against the wall, chest heaving, lungs searing.

He could still, very faintly, hear Kuromaru whimpering.

The cafeteria had had the same bland food they always had, but it was at least sustenance before Yasuo took over the watch for Taro, waiting for Tsume to arrive. Aomaru trotted at his heels, a shadow two-thirds the size of Kuromaru. No one paid him much attention.

Then fear overpowered the scent of food lingering on Yasuo's hands, and emotional pain twined with the fear, and he saw the tall man on crutches leaning against the wall outside Kuromaru's door--

He didn't pause, eyes raking the shinobi before he shoved into the room.

Kurmaru snarled and lunged from under the bed, pushing past Tsume. When the canine saw who it was, recognition hit his single eye, and he turned to slink to his familiar, circling as if he could fit in her lap, licking at her jaw, nearly knocking her over while he whined.

"Out!" Tsume shouted, and Yasuo whipped back into the hall, closing the door behind him.

He stood there for a long moment, trying not to isolate each individual scent that had just hammered at him. Trying not to know what they were. Trying not to respond instinctively to an alpha whose status was so badly shaken, who was so weak, that every drop of blood in Yasuo's body told him to attack now. Kuromaru was a canine: not his concern. And Aomaru wouldn't be entering that room. Not now that Yasuo understood.

His attention found a different focus. Strong hands gripped the bars of the crutches, knuckles white. Throat muscles worked as the man swallowed. Stress roiled off of him in waves. Yasuo recognized scent before form.

"Tousaki," he said, gaze flicking up to the man's expression, but face staying level. "What happened?" It was not quite a growl.

"I don't--" Ryouma began automatically, and cut himself off. He'd never been very good at lying, even to himself. And Yasuo would know. Likely knew already, or at least understood better than Ryouma did.

Ryouma had envied the other man before, but never so much as he did now.

"Kuromaru," he said. "He was fine. Tsume said so, and--and he was joking about toys, trying to tell me it was okay, and--he smelled my hands. And he went, I don't know, he went crazy. I thought maybe a seizure, but it wasn't like that, it was just wrong. Tsume said dogs can't have flashbacks, but he remembers."

He tipped his head back against the wall. "You should go back to them. He's-- Tsume'll need someone to lean on."

Yasuo stepped away from the door, as if Ryouma could force him back in. As if it was the first bit of defiance he could find. "The last thing they need is me in there." He locked his jaw, crossing his arms and gripping his own biceps. "Or you in there. Of course he remembers. That's not--" he gestured sharply, as if he could cuff the door, "a flashback. That's--" He stopped. Glared down the hall. Tucked behind his leg, following shadow-like the whole time, Aomaru growled at the door. Yasuo turned and bumped the canine with his leg, forcing him back.

That was Inuzuka business. And Tousaki was--not Inuzuka. He was ANBU. He was who Tsume had chosen to spend time with, instead of her family. He was the reason Kuromaru was like this, the reason Tsume was hurt, he was why everything was broken. He was, personified, every nightmare Yasuo had had about Tsume joining ANBU.

A month in, and those nightmares were coming true in the locked rooms of a hospital. Somewhere deep down in the pit of his stomach, he knew none of this would be enough to bring her back to them. She'd self destruct completely, and only then might they take her home.

And none of that was Tousaki's business.

He inhaled deeply. "You should g--" His sentence choked off in his throat. Pupils tightened to slits, then dilated rapidly. He should have known. From the way she smelled, he should have known. He just... hadn't wanted to. But now he stared up at the man before him, the man who'd brought her so low, and he couldn't pretend he didn't smell it anymore.

His voice was a rasp. "Tsume's been sleeping with you?"

Distracted didn't always mean oblivious--and that pause, and the loud sniff, were obvious enough to make it halfway to offensive. Ryouma let his breath out slowly between parted lips. Dragged his mind away from Kuromaru writhing on the floor and thought of Tsume curled against his side, shivering around the space where Kuromaru wasn't. The tickling pathway her nails traced over his skin, the soothing skim of her palm up and down his arm. The grass-after-rain smell of her hair, the lightning-quick flash of her smile, the shadows of curves under too-big tee-shirts.

The way she'd run, because he was getting too close. The way she'd come back, because she couldn't stand to be alone. She had a clan--a family--but she hadn't gone back to them when the dark closed in.

He didn't know the answers, and he couldn't make them up. He could look down six inches at the man who'd fathered her son and say, quite clearly, "What's it matter to you if she is?"

Rage made his lips pull off his teeth--not as large as Tsume's, in his harder face--and it took him a moment before he snarled it back under control. Aomaru growled softly, a descant to Yasuo's own heartbeat pounding between his ears. Yasuo paced away, searching for the calm he was known for.

He whipped back, glaring up at Ryouma--regardless of the inches between them. "I don't know what game you're playing, but I lived with that woman for six years and I know she's too wolf to come to you for sex and not human enough to sleep alone. She might have some sort of misplaced trust in you, but I don't, and if I find out you hurt her--" He stopped, flinging an arm at the doorway, "--worse, I will--"

He would what? Growling, he eased away and stared hard down the hall.

He would do exactly what Tsume told him to do, because aside from his partner and the mother of his son, she was his alpha. She might have given up the clan leadership, but everyone still knew, instinctively, that she was in charge. Everyone would do as she said. Including him.

"Worse than what?" Ryouma demanded. "Than I already did? I dunno how descriptive your nightmares get, Inuzuka, but mine don't get much worse than that. And she came back to me anyway."

Broad shoulders flinched; thin lips peeled back again with a rumbling growl. Slit pupils narrowed into a glare that did its best to rip Ryouma's throat out all by itself. He grinned back, reckless, taunting, burning with a sudden wild hope that Yasuo would attack. Because Kuromaru was hiding under the bed, and Tsume was on her knees begging for her dog to come back to himself, and Kakashi had cried on his shoulder and Ginta hadn't taken no for an answer and the world was wrong and spinning out of control.

Blood would make it right again, even if it was his. Especially if it was his.

"Yeah, she did go back to you," Yasuo snarled, hands claws at his sides, muscles rigid. "Because you hurt her so badly she can't safely come home, and because you're not Inuzuka and you won't challenge her. You know what else that means? It means you're too fucking stupid to smell when she doesn't want to have sex with you, and she's too distracted to remember to tell you, and for all I know she's too tired to stop you jumping her Wolf-bitten bones--"

The man's adrenaline spiked in the instant before he moved. Aomaru began to snarl.

Yasuo moved. He didn't move fast enough.

Ryouma split his knuckles to the bone against the Inuzuka's teeth, knocking Yasuo two staggering steps back. The lean grey dog snarled and sprang; Ryouma spun, leaning on one crutch, and cracked the dog over the head with the other. His recovering chakra burned thin and bright, spinning itself out again into stability for his braced knee, strength for his weakened muscles, anger that flared just short of killing intent. Claws riffled the shoulder of his shirt. He ducked into the blow, driving his shoulder into Yasuo's solar plexis, and slammed both of them into the wall.

"If you think," he panted, "she'd let anyone hurt her like that, you don't know her. Can't know her. How the hell'd you father a kid on her and not know her? Why the hell do you get her like that when I can't even kiss her?"

Yasuo couldn't breathe, and Aomaru was slinking around the edges, alternately whining and growling. Yasuo's world spun, bright with pain and colored with the smell of his own blood.

Over the burn of his lungs dragging at oxygen, he heard Ryouma's words--and gave him a bloody, teeth-baring smile. "If you think she's invulnerable, you know her even less than I do." He kept his gaze level, over Ryouma's shoulder, head turned slightly to bare his throat. It was instinctive; he'd been outfought, out-angered--even if he knew the other man didn't have that instinct.

This, Yasuo thought bitterly, was why Tsume liked him.

Yasuo's gaze twitched back to the man's face. "What do you care, anyway? The silver haired jounin isn't enough? You need her, too? She has a family, and she doesn't need you panting all over her."

Every night, went unsaid. Every night that Tsume was there, instead of home. Every night she chose to spend curled up with her ANBU friend, rather than family. Every night she decided staying with a near-stranger was better than seeking help from people who loved her.

Why the hell should Tousaki have her like that, when Yasuo could barely even talk to her?

"Kakashi's got nothing to do with this," Ryouma said. His voice graveled in its lowest registers. "And Tsume's not invulnerable. She's human. But she's a damn good ninja, and she's my friend. She dragged me out of hell, and I owe her everything I've got to offer."

Yasuo's crushed lip curled in scorn. Ryouma added savagely, "And if I was screwing her, it still wouldn't be any business of yours. When I asked her if you were the reason she kept turning me down, she said you didn't matter."

That wasn't exactly the truth. But it would hurt, and at the moment, that was all Ryouma wanted.

He knew he didn't matter--not to her. He'd known that for years. Knew it when she'd begun to screw around after Kiba was born. Knew she'd no more than mated with him because their genes were good--

Knew he wasn't her first love or even someone she turned to for comfort. It didn't stop it from hurting. He bottled it up, shoved it down, aside, telling himself not to be surprised over something he'd been aware of.

He twisted, yanking away from the bigger ninja, sliding along the wall before nearly staggering. His split lips throbbed, a dull thunder beneath his skin. He told himself the fight wasn't worth it. He told himself to walk away. Instead, he felt himself smile, a bitter, angry thing, and jerked his head toward the door. "Funny way of showing your gratitude. A year from now, I will still be important in her life. I will still be the father of her children. I will still be able to talk and roughhouse with Kuromaru. So next time you think maybe she's interested, remember that she's turned you down, and even if we fight, we're still her clan. And she's still ours. You are not Inuzuka, and when she gets bored, as she always does, you will be easy to leave."

It was bitter, and angry, and mean--and he didn't care.

Aomaru whined softly. Within the room, Kuromaru echoed it.

"In a year," Ryouma said, yanking his crutches back, "I'll probably be dead." He released the last threads of chakra that had wrapped and stabilized his knee, and pushed himself away from the wall. Even on crutches, he could loom. Height helped; so did the sting in his knuckles and at the back of his throat.

"But I can do a lot in a year. I can win Kuromaru's forgiveness. I can make Tsume laugh. I don't care if you get the future; I probably haven't got one anyway. But I'm not giving up on her now."

Yasuo glared up past Tousaki's face, his own shoulders straightening to lift him to his full height. Still nowhere near as tall as the other shinobi. He didn't really care.

"No one's giving up on her now," he muttered, knowing they were useless words. He couldn't just say nothing.

He wouldn't have had time to say anything else, anyway. The door opened and Tsume stepped out, drooping body straightening as soon as she saw them. Sharp eyes flicked high to Ryouma, then slightly lower to Yasuo. Her brows drew down, nose wrinkling. "You two smell awful," she muttered, closing the door and leaning against it, as if defending what was inside from those without.

Aomaru growled at her. She didn't even bother growling back, just turned to look at him flatly. His rumble became a whine, tail swishing low behind his hocks, ears flicking back. When the canine was subdued, she glanced again between the two men. "I don't want anyone going in there," she said, and sounded beyond weary. She looked sharply at Yasuo, and he drew stiffly upright in response. "No one," she repeated.

He nodded once. "I'll... find a guard." One of the omegas, perhaps. One that wouldn't think to go in and challenge no matter how distraught Kuromaru became.

She stared at him for a long moment, the dismissal obvious. Finally, with a glare at Ryouma he couldn't quite stop, Yasuo turned and stalked away. His familiar slid like a shadow behind him.

Tsume took a breath, exhaled, fingers finding the handle of the door just to find something. "He, uh... he said he thought you might attack him. But he knew you wouldn't. But he thought you might, and he knew it was an accident and was sure you could--" There was something here. Something she was missing. She shook her head and scratched behind one ear, claws digging into her scalp so hard it hurt. "I don't know what's wrong. He doesn't know what's wrong. He said you could have his plush puppy still, but then he laid on it, so..." She tried a smile.

It had already been a long day.

"Sounds kinda like flashbacks to me," Ryouma said. He flexed his right hand, shaking out the sting; a little more blood oozed between his fingers. He took a deep breath.

"I'll come back later, maybe. When he's feeling better." When Kuromaru wasn't so weak, and Ryouma wasn't such a threat. "Probably the drugs're messing with him anyway, right? Give it a week and I'll be off crutches and he'll be--stronger. I can try talking with him then."

He hesitated, watching the flicker of emotions play over Tsume's pale face, the tightening muscles under the livid tattoos as she didn't quite manage another smile. "You staying with him?" he asked, quietly. "Want me to wait for you?"

Canines didn't have flashbacks. The protest died unsaid as she focused on his words. Stay, wait--he didn't seem hurt. That was good.

"Don't wait. I'm probably going to be here for the day, so... You should go and... do whatever you normally do." She tried another smile. This one fit a little bit better, though already her mind was flitting away toward her familiar. "And a week might be good," she added absently, gaze flicking back to the door. Her thumb skimmed over the handle again. "Sorry about this. Didn't mean to drag you all the way out here for--" She tipped her head toward Kuromaru, hidden behind walls. "But maybe we could catch up tonight?" Her idle comment made her pause, frowning, and glance up at Ryouma. "Assuming I'm still welcome?"

Sometimes people got funny when your familiar panicked and charged them and, in general, didn't act like a proper human. It was possible he wouldn't want her in his apartment again.

"You're welcome," Ryouma said. "As long as you want to be."

He gripped his crutches and took a halting step away from the wall, unwilling to turn his back on her just yet. "I'll be in my room. Or--around, somewhere." It wasn't like he could wander very far right now, anyway. Yesterday's hunt for Kakashi had exhausted him almost to his limits. Curling up in bed for a few hours of bad daytime TV sounded infinitely better.

Maybe he'd even manage some thinking. Kuromaru wasn't the only one who needed to figure things out.

Tsume nodded, mind already occupied with other things as soon as her place in Ryouma's apartment was assured. With things like Kuromaru and the impossibility of flashbacks, his panic and ongoing apologies. He was acting wrong, pure and simple. It had to do with scent, that much was obvious, but if Ryouma still smelled like rot it was too subtle for her to pick up.

There were others in her clan who knew more about the canine familiars than she did. She'd track one down and--

She was halfway through the door before she realized she hadn't said goodbye. Tsume caught herself, looking back. "Thanks," she said simply. "I'll see you later."

Akane. Akane knew more about scent triggers than anyone else. She held the lore for all things beast in the clan; she must have some ideas about this.

The door whispered closed, blocking sight of the broad-shouldered man braced up by crutches, black hair sliding to fall in his face. It left her with a great wolf beast, watching her with a drugged golden eye, black fur lackluster and marred with white bandaging. She gave him a smile. "Ryouma's gonna head home."

A single cupped ear flicked back. "I didn't mean to do..." his ear slicked back farther, forehead wrinkling, "all that."

"I know. And he knows. Don't worry."

Kuromaru thought about it. "Would he like a blankie?" But saying so, he clawed the bright patch of pink closer, tucking it beneath his body.

The bed dipped under Tsume's weight as she sat down. "I think he'll be fine without one." She ran a hand over soft fur, and watched her partner's eye fall closed.

It opened again suddenly. "You sure?"

"Ryouma has other blankets. He'll be all right. You can keep yours."

With a sigh, Kuromaru tugged it farther beneath him and settled down to sleep.