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."