Rina finished cleaning her brush with a spark of chakra to dissolve the ink, hands still rock-steady until the job was done. She replaced it in her belt-pouch, settled back down in her chair, and wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead.

Reaching over to twist the cap back onto the ink, her trembling fingers almost knocked the bottle over.

"I fixed it," she told him, straining for an even tone. It came out higher-pitched than she would have liked. "Well--part of it." Shuddering a breath, she attempted to achieve scientific distance from her words. From the near-destroyed ninja in front of her, looking at her with wild, accusing eyes and asking why she'd hurt him.

"There wasn't any time to give you more painkillers. I had to do it now." She couldn't look at him as she explained, staring blankly down at her tensely-crossed ankles instead. At her hands, resting in her lap, white and long and delicate things. Fragments of chipped pink polish lingered on the surface of her short-cropped nails; she'd forgotten to remove it. It suddenly seemed a horrific neglect.

"What I did... it's just a simple thing. Replacing the broken links, and sealing up the temporary channels. I adapted them to meld a little better; it takes some finesse, but they'll last longer."

Ito-sensei had asked her to. To look through the artificial chakra-streams and make sure everything was flowing properly, integrating with the tattered fragments of Genma's natural channels. It wasn't a hard task; it didn't take any medical knowledge, or any real experience. Just a quick and precise hand with a seal-brush, which she had.

He had trusted her to do it, and she'd done it. Done it well, in under five minutes and with no chakra spillover or any cascading at all.

She wished, for just a moment, that he hadn't trusted her. That she hadn't done it--hadn't been the one to make this already-fractured ninja look like that.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, she closed her eyes and repeated.

It didn't help.