The sound of a raised voice was shocking in the strange solitude of the ICU. Chihiro looked up with a start from the book her daughter had brought her, and exchanged glances with her. Yukari turned to look past her sleeping son towards the door.

"Stay with Ginta," Chihiro said, rising to her feet.

"Mother?"

"I believe it's the Hatake boy's... friend. Ginta asked me to send for him." She reached out and touched Ginta's hand. He didn't stir. Then she turned and stepped into the hall. At the side of the bed in the room across the hall, a tall young man stood stooped, face in his hands, as if in grief. He wore hospital scrubs, but Chihiro had no doubt it was the man Ginta had told her to send for. She'd seen Shibori's wife standing exactly the same way, looking at the corpse of her husband in a hospital ward.

Had Sakumo's son died with so little fanfare? No rushing medics, no urgent attempt to resuscitate him? She could see the monitor through the glass, still trailing a greenish blip over the screen, still counting out breaths and heartbeats, measuring chakra. Not dead.

Thank heavens. She hadn't wanted to bring the news to Ginta if it were otherwise.

"Young man," she said, standing in the door. "You are Tousaki Ryouma, I believe? I am Sakamoto Chihiro."

She frowned at Kakashi's still body, and the strange addition of a tissue over his nose and mouth. What was the purpose of that? Perhaps to monitor his breath? It fluttered delicately with each exhalation. Otherwise he appeared unchanged from the last time she'd stood at his doorway, the last time she'd stepped outside Ginta's room to stretch her legs.

"My grandson asked me to send for you."

The quiet, age-smoothed voice behind him tapped raw nerves like a jeweler's hammer. Ryouma stiffened reflexively, hands dropping to his sides. There was no threat he could defend Kakashi against, here in the guarded halls of Konoha's hospital; there were only a limited number of ways an old lady could be a threat to them anyway. He still had to force his hands to relax out of fists.

"You're Ginta's grandma?" Stupid question, even if she hadn't named herself and practically named Ginta. She was tiny, faded blue eyes barely level with the bottom of his breastbone, but no stoop would dare bend those straight shoulders. She was the kind of old lady who could fill a room by herself, he'd bet. Ginta had that gift, too.

And if she was here, willing to leave Ginta's side to look for him...

"Is Ginta okay, then? I mean--" He waved a useless hand at the still body in the bed, the cluster of IVs, the hiss of machines measuring Kakashi's tenuous hold on life. "He's awake? They told me he was in critical condition. I didn't even know they'd gone out together. Kakashi only left a few days ago, right before I did. I was gonna brag to him, when I got back; I didn't even get scratched this time..."

He cut himself off. The words didn't stop; they bubbled up faster and harder, questions, prayers, curses. None of them fit for this severe old woman's ears, most of them meant for Kakashi's. A few for Ginta's. You told me not to get messed up. Why the hell didn't you listen to yourself?

Why'd you have to get him involved?

"Son of a bitch," he said, and wheeled to kick the corner of Kakashi's bed. The whole bed jarred. Kakashi didn't stir. "What the hell happened?"

Chihiro stiffened, gave Ryouma a venomously cold look, and entered the room all the way. "I am not privy to the details of their mission," she told him archly, "as you should well know." One frail, blue-veined hand shot out to still the faint motion of the bed. "And this boy is injured."

This was Kakashi's lover? She considered Sakumo lucky not to be here to see what had become of his son.

"Ginta is very ill. As is Kakashi. Ginta insisted you be fetched." Her nostrils flared as she glared up at Ryouma. What kind of man kicked the bed of his gravely injured lover?

A violent one, she told herself. Memories of Ginta's bruised face in the aftermath of his break up with Tomoya came unbidden. But so did images of Gousuke, angrily tearing a wall in their garden to pieces, in the wake of a mission on which his good friend Aotsu had lost both legs.

She folded her hands into her sleeves and stepped back a pace. "Ginta is sleeping, but if you can agree not to assault him, I'm sure when he wakes he can tell you what happened to your friend."

"He sure as hell will," Ryouma said savagely. The old lady stared up at him coldly. Already he could feel her pale gaze labeling him, dismissing him: Violent hoodlum. Worthless. She'd been barely humoring her grandson by summoning him, and she was clearly regretting it now.

Ryouma'd spent his entire life thumbing his nose at the well-fed villagers who saw him only as gutter trash. Tight muscles trembled with the desire to do it now. You want to see assault? You want to see how violent I can be? Careful what you wish for, lady...

But she was only wishing for Kakashi and her grandson to be safe. And Ryouma, who was supposed to be the one lying bruised and unconscious in that hospital bed, couldn't argue with that.

He shoved his hands into the deep, loose pockets of his borrowed scrubs. Ginta's grandmother glared up at him like a tiny, kimono-clad lioness; to get to the door he'd have to pick her up and move her out of his way. And his chances of seeing Ginta would die a quick and painful death, if she didn't scream bloody murder and get him thrown out of the hospital altogether. Once upon a time he'd been a master at charming old ladies into giving him rice balls, leftovers, a grandson's hand-me-down sandals. He was too tall now, too tattooed, to look like anything but a threat. If he tried flirting with her, she'd probably just clobber him with an IV pole.

Of course, she was Ginta's grandmother. She might flirt back.

He didn't try it. Instead he rolled his shoulders in a futile attempt to work out the knots, pulled his hands out of his pockets again, and summoned up a shadow clone.

Somewhere, an alarm went off. Ryouma's clone cursed mildly as it extricated itself from the tangle of cords where it had landed. Chihiro stiffened even more, glancing sharply between Ryouma and the clone. One of the nurses who had helped Ryouma wash his hands poked her head around the door, sighed, and padded over to press a button. "No jutsu in ICU," she said reprovingly. "Tousaki-kun, you're losing your pants."

Ryouma's clone hiked up its too-big scrubs and scraped together a disarming grin. "I'm just here to keep a look-out. I'll be good. Look, I'll even keep my clothes on!"

The nurse laughed, shook her head, and patted Ryouma's shoulder as she headed out. Her fingers were warm. Ryouma's hand dropped down to graze over a bare slice of Kakashi's upper arm, and found his bruise-darkened skin cold as fear. He tugged the sheet up again, and then the blanket that lay folded at the foot of the bed. The clone dragged a tall yellow-vinyl recliner a little closer and settled down comfortably to watch. "I'll pop when he wakes up," it assured Ryouma. "Stick around."

"I'll be back," Ryouma promised. He didn't have to say it; the clone knew, engraved in its jutsu- and smoke-born bones, that he'd be there when Kakashi woke. It nodded anyway and then forgot the world to focus on Kakashi.

Ryouma turned back to the tiny, rigid woman in the center of the room. "I don't reckon Ginta ever told you," he said quietly, "what happened the last time he was in Lightning Country. Who got him out. I'll kick his ass for bein' an idiot, if he was one, but I've saved his life more times'n Kakashi has. And I didn't come just for Kakashi."

Chihiro looked Ryouma over slowly, re-evaluating him. The nurse had seemed to know him, and what's more, like him. And what he'd said about Ginta--what happened the last time he'd been in Lightning Country... Ginta didn't talk about his missions in any identifiable way, but last July, when he'd been in this same ICU with a savage belly wound, she'd gathered that Lightning Country was where he'd been.

If Tousaki had been the one to bring Ginta back from that... But why hadn't Ryouma been here then?

She looked at Kakashi again, poor hurt child who looked so very much like his father. And at the clone that sat there staring as if its presence could keep the green pulses tracing over that heart monitor. And at Ryouma, who wasn't here just for his lover, but for her grandson as well.

"I don't know what happened on their mission," she said at last. "The doctor told me that Ginta's heart had stopped, and if he had gotten here any later, they wouldn't have been able to get him back." It felt like cold iron in her chest every time she said those words--to Yukari, to Suki, and now to this fierce-eyed young man.

"Ginta was only awake a few brief moments, but when he was, he told me Kakashi shouldn't have run so hard for him. And told me to send for you."

"Running hard is what Kakashi does," Ryouma said bleakly. He glanced back at the shrouded form in the bed, and then away. "He saved me a month ago. He wouldn't do less for Ginta."

It looked, though, like he'd done more. Last time had ended with Kakashi exhausted and chakra-drained, but not comatose. Last time, he hadn't needed any painted seals to hold his chakra and his life in. Last time, he hadn't been chasing after a man who'd stolen a kiss and earned a strangling...

We already fought that out. Ryouma shook the thought away. He and Kakashi were none of Ginta's business; Kakashi and Ginta were none of his. And they were both his friends, dammit, no matter what had happened out there in hell.

"I won't even yell," he promised, low-voiced.

Chihiro nodded, slowly, and turned to leave. Ryouma didn't let himself throw another glance backward. He followed close on her heels, out the door and across the hall. Another woman, thin and pretty in the height of society fashion, was standing by the bed. Ryouma ignored her.

Ginta looked...like hell, really. He hadn't sustained Kakashi's massive bruising, but Kakashi hadn't had a steel cage surrounding his leg, with long metal pins piercing flesh to hold the bones together. And though he wore nothing beneath the thin draping of a sheet, he couldn't exactly be called naked when half his exposed skin was covered in bandages and seals. Like Kakashi, he was breathing with the slim aid of a nasal cannula, hissing cold oxygen into his nostrils. His thin arms were studded with IV lines: antibiotics, fluids, nutrients, blood. Even his face was bandaged, and the lines of pain and tension around his mouth hadn't relaxed in sleep.

"Hey, you runty little bastard," Ryouma said softly. "When you give advice, you're supposed to listen to it, too. How come you got your trash kicked this time, instead of me?"

Ginta didn't answer, either.

Chihiro watched Ryouma like a tiny falcon, eyes glittering and fierce under crepe-thin lids. She listened for threat, and heard instead the same sort of regret-filled grief she'd heard in Gousuke's voice at the side of a friend's hospital bed.

So this rough young man was Ginta's friend.

"This is my daughter, Yoshioka Yukari. She is Ginta's mother," Chihiro said. "Yukari, this is Tousaki Ryouma-san. He is a comrade of Ginta's."

Yukari bowed. "I'm sure my son will be glad you stopped in," she said softly. Her eyes flicked tiredly up to Ryouma, then back down to Ginta's face. "He hasn't been awake since I arrived."

Chihiro reached out a hand to twitch the sheet covering Ginta's chest higher, then smoothed back his hair. She could feel Ryouma's eyes on her. From across the bed, Yukari looked up at Ryouma again, then at her mother. There was something like apprehension on her delicate face.

Chihiro turned to face Ryouma. "I realize you hope to speak with him about Kakashi-san." She looked at the vacant recliner still holding her book, and a second wooden chair where Yukari had been sitting. "You are welcome to wait with us. Please sit, Tousaki-san."

Yukari's posture stiffened at that, but a glance from her mother kept her still.

"Thanks." Ryouma folded up on the floor, close enough to reach Ginta at a lunge if he had to, and leaned against the side of the recliner. "I'm guessing you been here a while, then?" Except it sounded as if the mother had arrived after the grandmother, which was a few kinds of weird. Most single guys with families had their mothers down as next-of-kin, didn't they?

Maybe they didn't get along. Ryouma couldn't see why the grandmother would be any better, though. Chihiro and Ginta had their (lack of) height in common, but that was about it as far as Ryouma could see. Ginta'd complained at length about his grandmother's refusal to accept his preference for muscles instead of boobs, but he hadn't said anything about his mother. Maybe she was worse.

She didn't look like it. Mostly she looked like any of the dozen grieving mothers probably sitting vigil at their sons' hospital beds right now: reddened eyes, clumping mascara, coffee-blotted lipstick she hadn't bothered to touch up. She was a pretty woman, startlingly young. A little too well-dressed for Ryouma's tastes, but he'd always known Ginta came from old money. The grandmother's silk kimono and the mother's designer dress just confirmed it. Old money and high society, and the heir to their name had ended up in ANBU.

Ginta wasn't an orphan, like many ANBU were. He didn't need the money. He didn't seem to be in it for the thrill, either; he was vividly alive in whatever he did, whether he was playing with lives or hearts or cards. So what was he doing in ANBU making his mother cry?

The boy was sitting on the floor? Chihiro raised one perfectly plucked eyebrow at him, then took her seat in the recliner. Yukari remained standing at Ginta's bedside, picking blood and dirt from beneath Ginta's ragged nails with her own manicured fingertips.

"According to the man I spoke to, Ginta and Kakashi-san arrived late last night, but I wasn't sent for right away," Chihiro said. "I suppose they were busy trying to decide what we could be told." She sniffed disdainfully. "I've been here since--"

A noise from the bed stopped her mid-sentence. A low moan, as Ginta's head thrashed from side to side. He jerked his hand away from his mother's.

"Shh, shh, Ginta, shhh," Yukari soothed, trying to hold her son's head in place. He stilled.

Ryouma was on his feet again, hovering next to the bed uncertainly.

"It's been like this," Yukari told Ryouma. "The nurse said she thought maybe they weren't giving him enough morphine. She was going to talk to that doctor..."

"They gave him some half an hour ago," Chihiro said. She frowned at the clock, then back at Ginta.

He'd opened his eyes.

"Mom?" His voice sounded rough and rusted. "Where's Grandma?"

"Here, child," Chihiro said, climbing to her feet again. "I'm right here."

"Is Kakashi okay? Is he okay? Where is he?"

That was Ryouma's question to answer, and no one else's. He leaned in over Chihiro's shoulder and forced his mouth into something more like a smile. "Hey, runt. If you're playing for sympathy points, I can tell you it's not gonna work."

Ginta blinked up dazedly at him, obviously struggling to fit this new arrival into his coalescing world-view. Ryouma tapped the old woman's frail shoulder; she bristled and glared up at him. Impressive as the effort was, he had better things to focus on.

"Your grandma had me hauled in. I already checked on Kakashi, left a clone holding his hand. He's good."

He paused. "Well. Actually he's on the far side of comatose, but I did that before and it's really kinda nice. You can sleep through all the catheters and the ouch. I haven't got the official word yet on when he'll wake up, but you bet I'll badger the doctors till I know when to schedule the party. If you'd stayed asleep a bit longer I could've pulled one together for you, too."

Ginta blinked slowly, squeezing his eyes shut, then open again. Just focusing was an effort--coordinating ears and eyes and brain so that he could be sure he was really seeing what he thought he was. Hearing what he thought he was. "Ryouma? Grandma?"

There was a hand squeezing his right hand. Cold, slender fingers with soft skin. He turned towards them. "Mom?"

"I'm here, Ginta." Her voice was soft, like her touch.

"Grandma?" Ginta's head swung back towards his left. It was really Ryouma right next to her. No telling what time it was--what day it was. But Ryouma was here, looking like he hadn't slept in days. What time was it? What day was it?

"I think perhaps you should leave," his grandmother said, leaning in to press one age-creased hand against Ryouma's tattooed arm.

"No." Ginta rasped. "No, I need to talk to him. How bad's Kakashi?"

"Ginta--" his grandmother interrupted.

"I said no!" He shook his mother's hand off. "I need to talk to Ryouma right now."

"Ginta, please..." His mother this time, reaching out for his hand again. If she was here, if grandma was here, then it was bad. How long had they been here? He remembered seeing his grandmother before, for a moment. Remembered her being here, and asking her to get Ryouma.

"I need to talk to Ryouma. Go... go out for a minute. Let me talk to him," he pleaded.

It was his grandmother who relented first. "We'll go tell the nurses you're awake," she said. She gave Ryouma a glare, then looked across the bed towards Ginta's mother. "It's fine, Yukari. We'll be back in five minutes."

Ryouma waited till the women were gone, the door left conspicuously open behind them. Five minutes, hah. What did they expect him to do? Did they even realize how much time five minutes was, for a ninja?

Of course, Ryouma wasn't here as a ninja. He hesitated, then perched on the narrow edge of the bed, hopefully still within the range of vision of eyes that kept drifting unfocused. "Dude, you didn't hear anything I said, did you? Kakashi's across the hall. He's not awake yet, but I got a clone watching him. He looks like hell--so do you, by the way--but he's stable. Your grandma said you just barely made it back." He glanced towards the heart monitor, which droned on steadily. "She also seemed to think you were ravin' out of your head when you asked for me, but I'm glad you did."

He paused again, chewing the inside of his lip. "How bad was it?"

"Bad," Ginta said. He licked at the scab splitting his puffy lip and winced. "It was bad. He's stable? That's good at least. Good you left a clone. Didn't want him to be alone. That's why I told Grandma to get you. Told her she had to get you. He shouldn't be alone." The words piled up inside, a disordered chaos. "He OD'd. They said he OD'd. Soldier pill OD. Said he'd recover. I think they said he'd recover. Think so. Don't remember..."

He tried to shift, to raise his head, but it was too hard. Too painful to make even tiny movements. He whimpered and gave up the effort. "My mission partner died. Tsuyako. Kinjo Tsuyako. Did you know her? They're doing something nasty in Waterfall. Explosives. Something huge. She got caught. I tried to get her out. Kakashi... I don't even know why he was there. I don't know. He got us out, but it was too late for her. Too late."

The more awake he became, the more of his body he could feel. Hot heaviness in every joint, a catch in his breath, an ache in his sternum as if he'd taken a kick to the chest. His legs trumped everything else, thrumming with something a step beyond pain. He stared at the one, suspended at an angle, caged in an exoskeleton of steel halos linked by slender metal rods. At least it was straight now.

He looked up at Ryouma again. "It hurts."

"No kidding." Ryouma looked up at the IVs, clustered like party balloons on their stands. "You've gotta be on the good drugs already, or you wouldn't be talking like that. I want the you details, not the mission ones. How about a drink?"

Ginta's chin dipped in a tiny, painful nod. Ryouma stretched for the half-full cup of water on the bedside table. No straw, but Ginta probably wouldn't even have the muscular control to manage one at the moment. Instead, Ryouma slid a careful hand under the back of Ginta's neck, feeling crusted hair stiff and coarse against his fingers. This time, Ginta made it nearly two inches off the pillow before he whimpered again. Ryouma spread his fingers, bracing the heavy head, and tilted the cup to chapped and swollen lips.

A little water spilled down the side of Ginta's chin. Ryouma hoped more was going down his throat, but he managed only a sip or two before he turned his head away. "Coffee'd be better," Ryouma agreed at random. He set the cup down, lowered Ginta's head again, and wiped away the spilled water with the side of his thumb. "Caramel double latte with whipped cream and sprinkles. I'll have to remember that, for the party."

"They do one with chocolate, too," Ginta said. "At that place. Is there gonna be dancing? At your party? It might be a little while before I can dance." Water helped, cold in his dry throat. He gave Ryouma a weary nod.

"They talked to me a while ago. Didn't debrief me yet. I was too out of it, I think. Kakashi didn't get hurt too bad fighting. It was mostly from the fire. And running. Had to run with me on his back. Or a clone's. He used up all his chakra and then he just kept popping pills..."

And running.

"We almost got to a safe house, and then... Had to fight. But then we were in the safe house. He passed out. I passed out. Slept a long time, but this..." A tiny hand wave, indicating his legs. "Got a fever."

And what had happened after that? Why had they run? Ginta didn't remember anything clearly after that strange confessional in the swaying tree house. "I don't know why we ran for it. I don't... I remember him translocating us, and being chased..."

And it didn't make sense. The only person who could really explain how they'd gotten home was lying comatose across the hall, holding a clone's hand.

"Bein' chased is a pretty good reason to run for it," Ryouma said dryly. He fiddled with a loose edge of the draping sheet, folding it into the tiny ribs of a useless fan. "And soldier pill overdose'd explain the coma. I was under for two days, last time..."

He hadn't looked nearly that bad.

"I woke up just fine and dandy," he said forcefully. "Worse thing that happened was the nurses cut my hair. And that'd be a good thing, for Kakashi. He's starting to look like a sheep-dog. Maybe I should give it a try. I could practice on you, eh?" He tousled the straw-pale hair lightly. "Although giving you a bath'd probably come first, and I'm sorry, I'm not gonna do that. I might go far enough to ask for a hot guy nurse for you, though, instead of a cute girl."

Burns. Fever. A leg smashed so badly they'd had to rely on technology as well as jutsu to piece it back together. And Kakashi stripping away his chakra and replacing it with chemicals until he burned himself past the point of empty... The overdose would keep him under, even without the injuries. Ryouma remembered overdosing, the bleeding that wouldn't stop, the crash and concussion that'd dragged him into two days of blackness.

Kakashi had kept watch, then. And Ryouma had been plotting to set him up with Ginta, then. How had the world changed this much, and not at all, in only three months?

"Hey," he said, soft and fierce. "I'm glad you came back. Both of you."

"Yeah?" Ginta flicked his tongue at his split lip again, unable to leave it alone. "Yeah. Me too. I was.... I..." There were no words. He looked up at Ryouma's sharply angled face, his almost savage eyes. He thought of card games in a Lightning Country hideout, and bitter words over too-sweet coffee. Bitter words and making up... Not really making up at all. Papering over, more like.

But Ryouma was here, insisting he was here for both of them, not just Kakashi.

Ginta shook his head a little. "He does that, too. Everyone does that. To my hair, I mean. You can cut his hair. I told him he needed it done."

That wasn't what he wanted to say. It was getting harder to concentrate. Hard to stay awake. There were voices in the hall, his mother and grandmother, and someone else, maybe a medic.

"You should go... Keep an eye on him. I can't right now. If he wakes up, tell him..."

Tell him what? He had a strange sense of deja vu.

"Tell him I'll be there as soon as they let me up, so I can kick his ass. ODing is a rookie mistake." He shut his eyes, felt the bed shimmering around him, sucking him deeper. "He shouldn't have made it for me." His words were mumbled and slurred. "Tell him--m'glad. Sorry 's'hurt..."

He didn't hear Ryouma's reply.

"I'll tell him," Ryouma said, mostly just to hear himself promise it. Ginta was already fading, unfocused eyes drifting closed. The painful lines drawn in his face didn't slacken, but sleep suppressed the animation that drugs couldn't. Ryouma'd heard that people were supposed to look younger in their sleep, but Ginta looked like a frail old man, worn out with living. That's where the wrinkles would carve themselves, if he lived to be old...

Ryouma couldn't imagine it.

He pushed himself up off the bed. "Sorry," he said to the women clustered in the door, Ginta's fierce little grandmother and his red-eyed mother and the curious white-uniformed nurse. "He fell asleep again. You'll have to start putting caffeine instead of morphine in his IVs if you want him awake much longer, I think."

The nurse covered her hand with her mouth, her cheeks rounding over a smile. Ginta's grandmother frowned, but the hint of a sparkle in her pale eyes betrayed her.

"Thanks," Ryouma told her. "I'll be just across the hall, if he asks for me again. I'll be sending my clone out for supplies--snacks, movies, my T.V. You need anything?"

"Thank you, but no," Ginta's grandmother said. Yukari slipped past her to take up her spot at Ginta's bedside, but Chihiro stayed in the doorway, watching Ryouma thoughtfully. "We'll be here as well, Tousaki-san. I hope Kakashi-san...does well."

"He will," Ryouma said. "He's convinced I'll die first. He won't prove himself wrong." He ducked his head and slipped out.

Across the hall, the clone was still glancing between Kakashi and the monitors as if looking away would send the green blip flatlining. Ryouma had to snap his fingers to get its attention. "I'm setting up fort here," he said. "You're making supply runs. See if Morimoto'll donate a pie. And tell Kuromaru where I am, so he doesn't leave hamsters dripping at my door."

"D'you want the tapes for the Five Rings trilogy?" the clone asked, unfolding itself reluctantly from the chair. "That'll keep you a while."

"Sure, bring 'em all," Ryouma said. He wrestled the ancient vinyl-covered recliner even closer, almost to the edge of Kakashi's bed. "And ice cream. I could use some ice cream."

"Dark chocolate mocha flavor, right," the clone said. It glanced back once more at Kakashi, wrenched its gaze forcibly away, and went.

Ryouma curled up in his chair, close enough to reach out and touch, and waited.