For the first time in years, Raidou found himself losing track of time. There was no clock disgracing the pristine white walls of his sterilized room, no window to let him get a fix on the outside light, and the nurses would have rather stripped off and danced naked than put anything so potentially contaminating as a watch near a burns patient.

It was that more than anything that convinced him he was home. What was the point of trapping him in a genjustu if Sago was only going to torture him with neurotic medical staff and excruciatingly sporadic updates about his partner? There were much quicker ways to break a person.

Though, after the tenth hour of drifting in and out of drugged consciousness, waking to find no more news, sleeping just to dream of Genma's name on the stone, Raidou couldn't think of many.

The medics weren't stupid; they kept his wrists in padded cuffs, his ankles in foam-lined shackles, his blood full of morphine and carefully graded tranquilizers, trying to minimize pain and whatever damage they expected him to do after the thirtieth I'm sorry. We still don't know anything. It was its own kind of torture, but one he could almost understand.

Every few hours, a medic with scrolls and seals came in, dressed in sterile white from the neck down, and peeled away bandages to weave chakra through seared flesh. To scrub sloughing skin and weeping pus away, exposing deeper layers of red tissue. Twice the pain crested so high that Raidou passed straight out. Three times they held him down and drugged him unconscious. Once he managed to last through it, sweat-soaked and pale, half a breath from screaming himself silent, but awake.

It was, in a very small way, the only fight they let him have.

Sometimes, the green-eyed medic sat and talked to him. He couldn't see much of her behind the surgical mask and cap, the neck to ankle shrouding of achingly white clothes--just her eyes and a glimpse of red hair. It was from her that he finally found out what had happened. That Genma had translocated them (five miles, one handed; how?) and the safehouse ninja had brought them in. That Sago had been tracked down and slaughtered (he was dead; how could he be dead?), and a team dispatched to bring Yukaho and her kids home.

His right shoulderblade had been shattered, he learned. Cracks marbling out through the bone from the strike Sago had managed to get almost dead centre. It had been partially healed, his skin painted with an intricate web of seals that would promote natural healing to do the rest. Apparently it would leave the bone stronger, but for now it just ached.

The burns on his ribcage, carved through almost pristine flesh, were easy to heal--especially when half the job had already been done. After the third session with the medic bearing scrolls and seals, they scabbed and flaked and closed, melting into shiny purple scars, and the nurses left the bandages off.

His chest was harder. His face was worse. Already damaged skin resisted chakra, fought against the healing, sparked a welter of broken signals through degraded nerves. There wasn't much more they could do, the green-eyed medic told him, beyond fighting away infection, keeping the pain as low as possible, and letting things heal as they chose. He'd have to stay in the Burn Unit for a while.

She offered to let him see a mirror. He refused.

His teeth, after everything else, seemed almost inconsequential. And nothing could really be done for them until he could open his mouth wide and not black out when the movement made his cheek crease. He tried drinking water once, swore up a blue storm, and decided IVs were enough.

There was still no news.

It wasn't until the shift changed, long after the green-eyed medic had finally gone home, that Ito-sensei finally tracked him down, submitted to wearing the mandatory sterile whites, and woke Raidou up with a tired smile he couldn't see behind the surgeons mask.

"Genma pulled through."

Raidou stared at the little man, distantly heard him repeat the words, and found himself finally grateful for the cuffs on his wrists. Because nothing else would have kept him from grabbing the doctor, hauling him into a rib-crushing hug, and probably bursting into tears on his shoulder.

"Thank god," he managed finally, and swallowed down a gulping, throat-aching laugh when he realized Genma would have approved.

Two days passed in flickering pools and shadows of consciousness for Genma. He spent up to eight hours each day in a hushed and sterile treatment room, drugged as close to coma as the medics dared, as chakra coils in his abdomen were rerouted, and Ito-sensei made painstakingly slow progress on his hand. Millimeter by millimeter, the doctor threaded nerves and coils together, brought tendons back into place, coaxed collapsed channels to reopen.

There were very few places on the body with as many exquisitely sensitive nerves as the hand. And no part more important to a shinobi, save his brain. There could be no shortcuts if Genma ever hoped to return to active duty. And there was nothing to protect him from the agony of the treatments beyond keeping him so far under they had to keep him on the respirator just to keep him breathing.

When the drugs wore thin, and Genma woke, it was always with a racing heart, wild eyes, a struggling fight against hands that held him down and machinery that kept him alive. It was always with one thought in his head.

Raidou was dead.

They'd pulled his lifeless body away.

He wasn't sure where he was, although he remembered that last desperate race to get away. And now he was being tortured daily. Experimented upon, perhaps, by Sago's medic, the one who had half-healed Raidou's burns just so Sago could have another go at them.

Drugs and the fleetingness of the consciousness he managed only served to keep him lost in his terror.

It was early morning on the fourth day when the pulmonary specialist, the chakra specialist, and Ito, the hand specialist, had a heated conference in the hall outside Genma's isolation room.

"He's already showing signs of pneumonia from the prolonged ventilation and the damage that damned poison did him. If you keep him deeply sedated any longer, you're going to kill him."

"If we bring him around, the pain will kill him."

"He drew chakra from sources he shouldn't have been able to access, and the weapon that was used on him damaged his coils. He doesn't have the stamina to take any more treatment at this point anyway. Let him rest a day."

"If I let any more scar tissue form in his hand, permanent disability is a real possibility."

"Then that's just a possibility we'll have to live with." A woman's voice, low and commanding. "I'm sorry, but I'm overriding you, Ito-sensei. He needs to come off that vent and recover some chakra before we can do anything else. We'll keep him comfortable, and you can continue any treatments that don't draw on his chakra."

By late morning, the heavy sedation was nearly out of Genma's system. At noon they pulled the vent, replacing it with an oxygen mask.

At 1:30 Genma thrashed awake, found himself held down by cool hands once more. He stared into the dark brown eyes of the medic pushing him into the mattress, and croaked his first words in four days. "Where's Raidou?"

Raidou's dead, he told himself. But he had to ask.

"Your partner is downstairs, in the burn unit," the nurse said. Her face was as round as a full moon, her lipstick an unflattering shade of pink. "He's recovering. You need to rest, Shiranui-san. Try not to move..."

Genma's right arm caught her across the chest. His hand fisted into the cloth of her uniform, and he levered himself a few inches off the bed. The woman's scream choked and died as the cloth tightened.

"Prove it."

After far too long of doing nothing but staring at the ceiling, waiting for every scrap of news the medics could bring him, Raidou almost wished he was back in the damn bunker. At least then he could actually see Genma. And he'd only had to wear the manacles for a few hours.

He'd tried getting out of the restraints, but they were designed to hold recalcitrant ANBU, and nothing he did made much of a dent. He also tried yelling, swearing, threatening, pleading, bargaining, bribing, and generally just pitching a fit at the nurses in an attempt to get out and see Genma. Nothing worked, though he did see some fairly extraordinary colours whenever they sedated him to get some peace.

Sometime mid-way through the second day, lying down on his shoulderblade went from a slow-burning agony to its own, very special kind of torment. When he finally roared at one of the medics--probably green-eyes, though he couldn't remember later--they managed to work out a way to re-tie the restraints and prop him up, braced backwards so he didn't stretch or pull on his chest. It made overused muscles ache, but it gave him the wall to stare at, and the long glass window that looked out onto a nurses' station. There was also a double set-up of glass doors, built into a small cube, that the medics had to pass through to get into his room. Green-eyes explained it had something to do with decontamination, but Raidou couldn't stay awake long enough to hear the full story.

After that, for quick snatches of time, they released him just long enough for brief--if staggering--walks around the room, watched by two heavily muscled guards. It was important to move, according to the medics, the nurses, and even the guards, who apparently wanted to dispense advice along with looking threatening. Raidou still tried to get out, but wasn't greatly surprised when he woke up a couple hours later, back in restraints, with what felt like a nerve pinch still fading on the back of his neck.

The third day, his brothers tried to visit once, shepherded under the watchful eye of their foster-mom, but the medics refused to let them into the ANBU hospital wing, let alone the Burn Unit. Raidou tried to tell himself he wasn't glad, that they wouldn't care about his face, but nothing provoked brutal self-reflection like ninety-six hours spent chained to a bed, and he couldn't make the conviction stick.

He did manage to work out an agreement with two of the nurses, though; they set up a clock where he could see it on the other side of the glass, and Raidou got a good idea of exactly how long purgatory could last.

Ninety-seven and a half hours in, a commotion burst into life out in the hallway. He startled awake as the decontamination something-or-other hissed loudly and a frazzled looking medic practically fell into the room.

"Your partner's--awake," he gasped, as Raidou stared at him. "Doesn't--believe--you're alive. Need a--message."

"Let me see him," Raidou snapped, hauling himself up with the cuffs, braced back against pillows.

The medic flapped a gloved hand. "Can't. Too--dangerous."

"He's not going to attack me." Even with his cheek and jaw flaring pain, he was getting much better at yelling.

"For your burns," the medic panted. "Just give me--a message."

Raidou tried not to clench his teeth. "Tell him..." All he could think of was the cell, the run home. The last fight with Sago. There were no good memories there. He yanked on one cuff, wishing he could make metal clank as a soundtrack to frustration, but stiff cloth and stitched leather would never be noisy.

Wait.

He snorted a dry breath. "Tell him the safe-word's curry. And if he rips his stitches out, I'll never let him eat any ever again."

By the time the runner made it back to the ICU, Genma was flattened against the mattress by two bulky guards, and still struggling despite it. He was gasping for breath, there was fresh blood blotting the bandages over his abdomen, and his hand was twisted in its traction device, though still suspended.

A bedside table and an IV stand were knocked over, and the IV itself had pulled free from Genma's arm. Chakra and heart monitors screamed alarms. Two medics were hastily drawing up drugs into syringes. Another was tending to the nurse Genma had attacked.

A large crowd clustered the hall outside Genma's room. People shouted unhelpful questions and instructions. It was as much chaos as a critically ill patient in intensive care could possibly create.

The medic who had been to see Raidou forced his way into the room, elbowing his way to the foot of the bed. "Curry," he shouted. "Namiashi-san says the safeword is curry, and he'll never let you eat it again if you hurt yourself."

Genma went suddenly still.

The medics with syringes rushed in to inject their patient and make sure he was still breathing.

"Curry," Genma whispered, as his eyes drifted closed. He thought of ill-chosen prawn dishes, and Raidou's foolhardy insistence on death by equally fiery crab soup.

"Tell him--" He shuddered and struggled for air. A medic slipped the oxygen mask back over his nose and mouth. "Peri-peri crab..." The words were nearly inaudible in the noisy room.

"Mother of God, I hate these ANBU cases," someone swore. "Can we do something about this? Get him down where he can see his partner before he kills himself or one of our staff? Look at this mess!"

After the messenger bolted out again, leaving startled nurses staring at his disappearing back, there was nothing for Raidou to do but discover a brand new hatred for his restraints. Not to mention the airless room, the limited view, the ability to do nothing...

Just when he was seriously contemplating working out a way to garrote himself with an IV line (then they'd have to move him up to the ICU), the messenger came charging back down, danced an impatient jig in the decontamination room, and dragged a surgeons mask over his face as he staggered back in.

"Peri-peri crab!" he wheezed, catching himself on the foot of the bed.

Raidou stared. "What?"

"Peri--" the man gasped and waved a hand. "Crab!"

"I don't--" Raidou began, then abruptly strangled silent. He'd meant the safe-word crack as a reference to their last hospital stay, when Sumire had stormed in and kicked up a fuss, and Genma had almost dissolved in his own anger. When all they'd had to worry about was a fever, a minor poisoning, and Raidou's stabbed shoulder. He hadn't thought about it meaning anything... else.

He shoved the thought aside. Now was an even worse time to be thinking about a stupid kiss that Genma didn't even remember.

"Is he okay?" he demanded. "Is he still awake? I need to see h--"

"He's okay," the messenger gasped. "They had to knock him back out, but he's okay."

"Knock him out?" Leather creaked under tension as Raidou hauled at his bonds, ignoring the shatter-dance of pain through weary nerves. "What d'you mean, knock him out?"

The medic took a hasty step back. "He's fine," he said quickly. "Sleep is good! It's--healing!"

"I'll heal you," Raidou snarled, uncaring that--as threats went--that one made very little sense. "Let me the hell out!"

"We're going to," said a very calm voice near the door. More sterile air washed into the room as three medics stepped inside. "As soon as you calm down."

Raidou's head came up, eyes narrowing at the one who'd spoken. It was the man who'd done the original healing on his burns. "I'm calm," he snapped. "This is calm. Let me see Genma before I show you annoyed."

"Funny," said the medic dryly, and stepped around the messenger to lay four scrolls on the bed. The other medics flanked him silently. "In the interests of getting you both healed as quickly as possible--preferably without losing any of our staff in the process--we're going to try something a shade risky."

A muscle in Raidou's jaw flexed. "What?"

"Patience--"

"I've been patient for four damn days. Do whatever the hell it is and let me see Genma!"

Behind his surgeon's mask, the medic smiled grimly. "Very well. Try to relax, Namiashi-san. When you wake up, the world will be a much better place."

Raidou stared at him. "Are you out of your mind--"

He didn't see one of the flanking medics move until it was far too late; green chakra swept into his throat, coursed down into his pathways, and knocked him neatly unconscious.

"Right," said the first man, snapping out a scroll. "Let's begin."

Genma woke to a sensation of movement. He groaned and opened his eyes, and found that he was being rolled into the hallway, bed and all. Oxygen hissed from a green tank that nestled next to his feet, snaking up through a coiling tube that wrapped across his face and hooked into his nostrils. IV's had been hooked up again, with clear fluids and an ominously dark bag of blood dripping into a vein from a pole one nurse rolled alongside him. His left hand had been carefully reset, dangling from the T-shaped traction bar attached to the bed.

He couldn't remember a time when he'd hurt worse. Or when he'd been weaker. He whimpered again, when the bed rolled over some tiny imperfection in the linoleum and sent shock waves through his body. His eyes squinted tightly shut.

"It's alright, Genma." It was the woman from before. The one who knew his name and sounded like his sister. "It's alright, we're moving you to a bigger room with an isolated air supply. We're almost there."

A cool, long-fingered hand brushed his hair back from his face. Another jolt of the bed drove all thoughts away for a moment.

"Keep breathing. That's right. One more bump."

The bed stopped, moved backwards, shuddered to a halt. Someone reconnected his tubing to the oxygen supply from the wall, and took the heavy, cold, gas cylinder away.

"Turn him a little," a male voice instructed. "You can turn him towards his left, as long as you wedge some pillows in behind him. He needs to be able to see."

Genma couldn't follow it. Couldn't make sense of it. Couldn't even turn his own head.

The soft voice came back. The cold hands, easing him ever so slightly onto his side. Placing pillows under his left ankle, and another under his right knee. Pushing softness against his back.

Every motion made something pull and stab in his belly. Made his hand a blazing fire.

"It's okay, Genma. Open your eyes now. Come on." Cold hands. Cold, comforting hands.

Genma opened his eyes.

On a bed next to his slept a bandaged patient with russet hair and a chiseled profile. A fading black eye and pale tan skin. Genma couldn't see the scars and fresh burns from this angle. He didn't need to.

"Rai..."

The other man didn't stir.

Genma watched him, fighting exhaustion for almost half an hour before he slipped back under. He didn't sleep more than fifteen minutes at a stretch, though. Opening his eyes, watching Raidou's chest rise and fall. Listening to the symphony of two heart monitors going in and out of sync with one another.

Raidou was alive.

He slipped under again, only to drag himself back. He needed to be awake when Raidou opened his eyes.

They promised him Raidou would open his eyes.

When Raidou finally clawed his way back to consciousness, it was with the floundering gasp of a ninja who's just been attacked and is intending to make someone pay for it. He tensed, expressions shadowing over his face, then jerked up as his eyes snapped open--

And found no manacles to stop him.

Pure reflex--and well-placed bed rails--stopped him from tumbling off the mattress and smacking right into the floor; that and the hellstorm of pain that roared enthusiastically up to remind him in red-soaked detail why moving was a bad idea. He froze, angled awkwardly on his right side, fingers clenched in rumpled blankets, eyes squeezing shut against too-bright lights and too much hurt.

The medic had--there'd been a scroll--they'd knocked Genma out--

If he'd had breath in his lungs, Raidou would have snarled something foul. Four days of nothing but getting jerked around, hearing slivers of information about his partner, kept chained to the damn bed as if he'd broken the law by getting tortured.

A raspy voice said something alarmed. But Raidou was beyond done with listening to medics. They'd promised to let him see Genma and then they'd knocked him out--

Something caught against his chest as he braced carefully, putting his weight on his right elbow; it jarred his shoulderblade, but anything was better than yanking burned flesh. He bit his tongue in favour of clamping his teeth and forced his eyes open just enough to look down.

Seals met his gaze, painted thick and black over bandages that smelled sharply astringent; thick cloth lapped over his whole chest, stretching up the left side of his neck to lay over his cheek, pulling when he twisted his head slightly. As he stared, painted characters shimmered faintly in the too-bright light.

"What--the--hell?" he grated.

The raspy voice said something else. Raidou lifted his head, fully prepared to tell any nearby medical professional to sit and spin--and stopped dead.

Thin and pale, cheekbones jutting out under skin that looked waxen, shrouded by tangled, oily hair, trapped in a mesh of wires and tubes and chrome-bright steel, staring at him with amber-brown eyes that were about the most welcome thing he'd seen since he'd faced up to the nightmare and felt that hammer smash down on his back...

Raidou reached for words, found none that made any sense, and tried not to fall completely apart when ninety-seven hours of screaming tension spun and shattered into one fragile moment.

Genma was okay.

He wasn't sure he could breathe.

"Rai..." Genma desperately, desperately wanted to get out of that bed. To close the gap between himself and Raidou. To touch.

When Raidou stopped fighting, when he lifted his eyes at last, and shuddered to a frozen halt, with a stricken expression on a face suddenly so drained of color it matched his bandages, Genma felt his own heart catch and stutter, as time ground to a halt.

"Rai. Raidou. Rai." He breathed out his friend's name like he was casting a jutsu. He'd had two long hours of broken sleep, waking every quarter hour or so to see Raidou still breathing, the chakra seals painted on his bandages shimmering softly.

He'd hated how his suspended, seal-painted arm obscured his sight, so he couldn't see a segment of Raidou's midsection. Hated every time he slipped unconscious, and how powerless he was to resist when sleep stole over him. Hated the fear that thrummed through him every time the beeps of the monitors seemed to change pace. How he had to time his own heartbeats every time, to be sure it wasn't Raidou's heart stuttering out of sequence.

Now Raidou was awake, and looking more like he might break than Genma had ever seen him.

He needed to touch.

He didn't have the strength to lift his right hand more than a few centimeters from its place atop the blankets. Reaching for a bed a meter or more away. IV lines shimmied in the air, trembling in sync with his shaking hand.

"Rai." Raidou was the strong one. He shouldn't look so shattered.

Genma's eyes never deviated, locked on Raidou's wide, shocked gaze. Found his own sight blurring, his eyes burning and damp.

"Made it--home."

In twenty-four years of living, there had only ever been one person who could say half his name, twist it like a heartbreak, and snap the world back into focus. Who could sum up a day of torture, a night of running, a last-stand, shouldn't-have-made-it fight, and four days spent chained on his back, fighting pain and drugs and their own medics' hands, waiting to hear if any of it meant anything worth a damn.

Made it home.

Now he could believe it.

Raidou closed his eyes, breathed through a mouth gone dry, and shoved himself up. Caught himself before he could fall and swung his legs over the side of the bed, down near the end where the steel rail stopped short. The heart monitor chattered at him; the double lines of IVs yanked at his wrists.

Carefully, deliberately, and without any regard for anyone who would protest, he pulled each tethering line free and tossed them on his discarded sheets. Thin threads of blood snaked down each wrist; he smeared them impatiently away and set his feet on the floor. Steadied himself with both hands against the mattress and braced, gathering the scraped-thin lines of chakra left in his pathways. The strength he'd spent four days fighting to get back.

Genma, one working hand outstretched, shaking and bound with his other hand in that metal-and-cloth cage, couldn't move. Raidou could, and he'd gladly throw down with anyone who tried to stop him.

He stood up, staggered the three steps it took to get to the opposite bedside, and managed to grab the rail before his knees tried to buckle. It wasn't graceful, but his fall was controlled enough that he barely jarred anything worth more than a quick hiss and a skin-crawling shudder. He landed on his knees by Genma's head, cold sinking through the thin cloth of pyjama pants, and reached for the first thing he could touch.

Calloused fingertips ghosted against the knife-edge of Genma's jawline, finding warmth and the faintest touch of breath.

"Took you--long enough--to wake up," he managed, staring at eyes so bright they looked fevered. He swallowed hard, heard his voice shake. "Almost--had me worried."

Genma watched Raidou move like his gaze could keep his friend upright. He almost protested, told him to stay in bed, but he wanted this. He wanted it so badly. His last touch of Raidou's skin had been icy cold, with chakra diminished to nothing, with breath and life nearly gone. It wasn't enough to see him across a gap between two beds. It wasn't enough to hear his voice, or feel his chakra presence, diminished as it was, a palpable force again.

Genma gasped and held his breath when Raidou stumbled against the bed rails, part for his own hurts, part in sympathy for Raidou's. He gasped again when the rough skin of Raidou's large, blunt fingertips caught in the thin stubble that littered his jaw. When he felt the electric connection of chakra to chakra, like a circuit being completed.

Raidou was there. He was alive.

His jaw was set, chin dimpled with the effort he was putting into keeping it still, Genma saw. He heard the shake in Raidou's voice. Felt the tremor in his hand.

It took an astonishing effort just to pick his face up off the pillow, tuck his chin down, and turn his head so that his cheek was cupped in Raidou's palm. It was the best embrace he could manage at the moment. It was more than enough to make Genma's lower lip tremble, and his eyes spill over.

There wasn't much in the world that could make an ANBU cry, beyond the few rare individuals who preferred tears over sex or beer or training themselves into the ground--whatever coping mechanism worked. Torture couldn't wring it out of Raidou, and even hours of agony had barely scraped the saline surface. Four days trapped in limbo, furiously lonely and scared half out of his mind, had only been enough to shatter his temper.

But Genma, who'd held it together even in the face of seeing his worst nightmare repeated, who'd thought when Raidou couldn't, spoken when Raidou didn't have the words, moved when Raidou had frozen, and given every damn thing he had to drag them that last five miles to safety; Genma, turning his face into Raidou's hand, drawing a gasping breath like it was all he could take, and crying...

Raidou closed his eyes, leaned his forehead against the mattress, and dragged his thumb gently over the salt-wet arch of a cheekbone. Felt his ribcage squeeze too tightly against something that ached inside.

He was supposed to be the one who kept it together.

He wasn't sure he really cared anymore.

"It'll be okay," he rasped, trying to trap an idea that felt impossible in three limping words. Trying to convince himself. "It'll--just stay with me."

Heat burned under his eyelids and slid down one cheek. He almost laughed--almost choked--when he realized he could still be grateful it wasn't the left one.

It'll be okay. Stay with me. Genma would have sworn any oath you asked him to, to never let Raidou out of his sight again. In the space between death on the temple grounds and rebirth here, something had changed. Priorities had shifted. He didn't have time to whisper even a simple promise to stay, though, before the glass door slid open with a rattle, and a male voice uttered a curse.

The first nurse to rush to the isolation room to deal with a shrieking alarm didn't even try to cope with the situation without reinforcements. He came back with two of the strong-arm orderlies and three medics: Ito-sensei, the burn specialist Fujita-sensei, and the medical director of the ICU. A fourth came unbidden, a quiet older woman from the psychiatry department. Or possibly, rumor had it, from Torture and Interrogation.

It was her intervention that kept disaster at bay, when the first medics on scene tried to insist Raidou return to his bed.

"Are you people idiots? Push the beds close enough they can touch before you even try to get that man back in his. These soldiers were held in captivity and made to watch each other suffer across a gap about that wide. Don't reinforce their trauma. This is the most critical phase of bringing in an agent who's been detained by enemy forces."

Even after the bed was moved, Raidou refused to get in it. He snarled at a nurse who touched his shoulder, to get the hell away from him and his partner, and only finally consented to be helped into bed when Genma whispered an insistent, "Lie down--moron."

Genma didn't relax until Raidou was actually in the bed, and nurses and medics had replaced his wires and leads and IVs. Until two heart monitors chirped in a quiet duet, and they had Raidou tucked as carefully onto his right side, facing Genma, as Genma was canted to the left, facing Raidou. Until Raidou reached across the slight gap between their beds and put a hand to Genma's face again.

Fresh drugs had been introduced for both of them. Pain killers, chakra boosters, antibiotics. Another half litre of someone else's blood for Genma. He stared with detached fascination while the nurses set it up, then locked eyes with Raidou again.

"Not going anywhere." His eyes drifted closed for a moment; he forced them open again. "You either. Kay, Rai?"

That little piece of slurred idiocy earned Genma a flick against the corner of his mouth. "Couldn't drag me away," Raidou muttered, twisting his head just enough to cast a dark-eyed glare at the people still filling the room. Ito he knew by sight--and as the man who'd brought him some of the best news he could ever remember getting. Fujita he mostly wanted to slam into the dust a couple times, even if his jutsu was the only thing standing between Raidou and a potentially fatal infection. The third man he didn't know.

The woman, however, he'd spent several hours talking to, drifting in and out of darkness, recounting everything he could remember from the moment they'd left to the moment he'd woken up, strapped to a bed. She talked like a textbook, glared like a hawk, sounded like a sharpened knife--and he was pretty certain she was the closest thing to a real ally they had.

He couldn't remember her name.

"Show's over," he grated at them, and at the orderlies behind them. "Get the hell out."

Genma mumbled something against his hand, salt-crushed lashes flickering as he fought a losing battle against sleep. The urge to sit up, to shield him against the world, to demand a kunai and a soldier pill and a strong lock on the door was almost overwhelming. It was written into their training, into blood and bone and almost everything the armour stood for. Injured teammate. Fall back. Hunker down. Guard. Protect. And into something even deeper than that.

For the first time in days, with Genma resting by his side, Raidou felt like he could stand. Even if he couldn't.

"Get out," he rasped again, voice scraping down into a bass snarl, chakra shifting beneath his skin. Ito lifted an eyebrow. Fujita gave him an ironic little salute. The woman whose name he couldn't remember simply nodded, and gestured the others towards the door. They trailed out with soft footsteps and the click of the latch falling back into place.

Finally, Raidou let himself put his head down on the pillow. Exhaustion sank black claws into his muscles, tearing right down to the base of his soul. He could still feel his eyes burning, his hands shaking faintly; he wasn't sure they'd ever stopped. But Genma was alive and breathing and right here, falling asleep with the blade of his cheekbone resting against Raidou's calloused lifeline.

It was enough.

It was damn near everything.