Yanagi looked at Genma blankly. Had he -- what? There were too many ways that question could end. And if Genma was looking for information on family or friends, possibly still out in the field -- any one of those undercover agents, stuck out there now with their extraction plans in ruins--

"I--" He broke off, not sure what he was going to say, just suddenly wanting to fill the silence. He looked anywhere but at Genma, feeling his twenty years. "I've been gathering intel. Telling people what Konoha wants them to know. Been busy, but I guess I'm better informed than some of the other guys who're out..." He scratched at make-up on the pillow. "Manako -- my handler -- she checked on my dad, so at least..." He felt like he was tap-dancing. He'd never been very good at tap-dancing. "There's still guys out here that don't know much more than civilians, and they can't leave their posts." He frowned, remembering. "Not that orders stop them all from leaving, anyway."

He hadn't asked Manako about his friends. He was afraid of her answer. He told himself she had better things to do than run down names for him, anyway.

It took effort to shake the thought loose. The morphine helped. "But my news is weeks old, now. Did the Fourth's jutsu hold? I mean, I guess we'd hear if it hadn't, but..."

"It held. I mean it's holding. I didn't see it. Didn't see him cast it, I mean. I was on the south flank, trying to hold the fox off until Yondaime-sama could come, and I got taken out of the fight before he got there. It was... It was terrifying." He curled his hands into fists, brought his knees up to his chest.

"You're about my age, right? You were in the war." It was a statement. Everyone their age was in the war. You didn't have to ask. "After the Fox, it was as bad as that. I remember this border town up north that got completely destroyed by fire during the war. It was like that. Worse, maybe. A lot of Konoha is still... It's still all charred. Burned down. Knocked down."

He stared past Yanagi, seeing the chaos he was describing. The scent of ash and death still hung over the village, muted now by winter rain. There were still funerals being held every week. They hadn't even accounted for all the missing yet.

"Your dad... He's okay?" Genma asked, words tumbling out before he could call them back.

"Yeah," Yanagi said quickly. "Yeah, he's..." He laughed a little wryly. "Well, I haven't seen him in three months, but Manako says he's fine. He's not a ninja, so he wasn't in the fighting, and the farm is on the northeastern side, outside of the village itself, so..." He paused, small reserve of energy draining away. His stomach was really beginning to settle, finally, even if he still felt hot all over. He had the suspicion that the morphine was partly responsible for the settling. Maybe it'd take care of the heat, too.

Genma was sitting on the floor beside the bed, shoulder bumped up against the mattress. His face was in profile as he wetted the strip of bandaging again, straight hair tucked behind one ear. Yanagi reached out for it, watched the IV for a moment as it followed, and then skimmed one fingertip over Genma's head.

Genma looked at him.

He put his arm back down, hand hanging over the side of the bed. "Is your dad okay?"

Was that sympathy? Delirium? Yanagi's words were coherent, but the gesture surprising. Genma cocked his head to the side and sponged Yanagi's face again. "My dad died when I was a little kid," he said softly. "When I was seven. He was a ninja. So was my mom. She died when I was thirteen." It felt strangely easy to sit in the semi-darkness and talk about the ghosts of his parents. At least they'd died long enough ago the pain wasn't fresh.

Not like Yumiko and Haruko.

"My older sister's a ninja, too. Was a ninja." He took a halting breath. "She and my baby sister both died when the Fox--" His voice guttered out and he looked away, past Yanagi. "My older sister, she was a doctor. Not just a field medic like me. The last time I saw her, I was on a stretcher screaming, with my shoulder torn open. The city was on fire. She had blood on her face. Someone else's, not hers."

Yanagi stretched his fingers out again, running them through the closest edge of Genma's hair. It was soft, if not perfectly clean. "I'm sorry," he said quietly. His muscles loosened, the hand laying on the bed relaxing. He hadn't been there for the Fox.

It was moments like this he was glad.

"Saw a lot of that in the War," he continued. "I mean -- I don't have sisters. But... teammates, friends." He trailed his fingers down Genma's hair again, looping a strand so it slid between his index and middle. "Got really tired of watching everyone die." He smiled faintly. "S'why I'm in Intel."

Out here, you didn't fight. You snuck, you hid, you spied. You tricked and lied and might get yourself killed, but rarely did you engage in out and out battle. Rarely did you see teammates get carted off the field, or hear them moaning in pain because no one could get to them.

He blinked slowly, drawing himself back to the here and now. "I'm sorry about your family."

"Yeah... Thanks." Genma leaned in towards the bed, towards Yanagi's hand. After their night of feigned intimacy, it almost felt natural to let Yanagi touch him. As if they really were the lovers they'd pretended to be.

"I know what you mean about watching people die. You think you'll get over it, but then you don't. You do and you don't. I can look at my mom's and dad's names on the Heroes' Stone. Look at my friends' names there, and it's not that bad. After a while, it's not that bad. And then something will just... Remind you."

Yanagi let the strand of hair fall, and lazily picked another one up. "Yeah. And sometimes weird stuff, too. I was eating green curry shrimp a while back, and had this memory, clear as day, of laughing over food with--" he hesitated. "--with a friend of mine." He continued, quieter, "We used to eat green curry shrimp a lot. There was a take-out place nearby..."

A friend who'd died, when Yanagi had finally been able to return a complete report of who was in that political niche. Konoha had sent their Hunters in and killed the whole squad. Very effective. Very clean, he'd been told. No survivors, thanks to his work. Not even their contacts had escaped.

Those hadn't really been his friends. He pushed it aside and ran the backs of his knuckles down Genma's hair. His voice sounded strained when he spoke again. "I guess everyone lost friends and family in the recent attack, huh? I mean, from what I heard the casualties were pretty high."

"Yeah. Very high." Genma reached up and caught Yanagi's hand, holding it in his own for a moment. Studying slender fingers with broad calloused tips--fingers marked more by playing guitar than handling weapons. The strength was there, though. And the faint thickening of skin over buried meridians, from years of chakra channeling.

He thought about green curry shrimp and dead friends. Friends Yanagi couldn't even bring himself to talk about. "For a while I couldn't eat butter corn ramen, because it reminded me of my sensei. But then I got where I could. I mean, right after Kazuma-sensei died, I just couldn't face it. But now every time I get ramen I get butter corn. It's like... I don't know. Like an offering."

He let Yanagi's hand go. "He'd probably like it. He's probably a kami of cigarettes and corn ramen, now. Or ninjutsu."

Yanagi chuckled, letting his hand dangle off the bed. His mind was drifting on the morphine high, every limb seeming to grow heavier and heavier. "Man, I bet you'd come back as a sex kami. Kami of... of erections or something." He grinned, knowing it was loopy but unable to bring himself to care. "Good thing you didn't die when I threw you over that waterfall, or I'd probably never get another hard-on..." He paused, then added thoughtfully, "And I'd be dead."

He lifted his hand again, with great effort, and ran a line down Genma's arm. Touching for the sake of touching. Enjoying life and flesh, even without any sexual aspect to it. His hand came to rest just below Genma's elbow, feeling the pulse there under a thin sheath of skin. "Oh, man," he breathed. "I'm so high. You should have some morphine, too." The world spun slowly, and he didn't mind at all. Distantly, he was aware that poison and antidote were duking it out over his body, but he didn't mind that, either.

Genma smirked. "Maybe when you're not completely fucked up, I'll show you what I can really do. It was fun, sure, but it's hard to enjoy making out with a guy when you're worried he's about to yack in your mouth if you don't cast your jutsu faster."

God of hard-ons. Yeah. He liked the sound of it.

"You wouldn't have died, though. I mean, they'd have sent some other medic for you." He chuckled softly, resting his chin against the mattress. "'Course that wouldn't be much of a life for you, really, if your dick was dead because you'd killed me. But lucky for you, I survived."

Yanagi chuckled, feeling like he was melting slowly into the mattress. "I'd find a way around it. Which is stronger, kami or aphrodisiacs? Would a kami even work on me? I mean, maybe you'd be all trying to kami-whammy me, an' I'd just be sayin', 'I don't believe in kami,' an' it wouldn't work."

He lifted his hand again, settling it on top of Genma's head, so near him. The IV line moved, too, looking like trails of ethereal chakra somehow pulled from his body. He tapped his fingers on Genma's skull. "But I'm glad you lived anyway. An' now you're in ANBU. Isn't that nice." He smiled. "You're like... my first ANBU friend. Except for Manako. An' that guy who taught me the codes. He was real nice, too. An' my first mission partner. Well. No. I didn't like him, even though he sorta gave me some tips."

Then a sobering thought occurred to him. "If I pass out, you're gonna make sure I don't vomit and choke to death, right? That's just no way to get on the hero's stone..."

"No, dude, I just did all that shit to save your ass, including taking a dose of those damn spores myself, and then I'm gonna let you choke on your own puke." Genma rolled his eyes. "I'd be some kind of shit medic if I did that. Not to mention a shit friend."

Friend. Was he Yanagi's friend? Maybe. They hardly knew each other, but friendships born on the battlefield were like that. A guy you hardly knew one minute was your best buddy the next. Genma chuckled, reached out, and brushed Yanagi's hair back, mirroring the gesture Yanagi had used on him.

"Go to sleep. Neither of our names are going on that damn stone, got it? I'll make a deal with you: you don't throw me off any more waterfalls, and I'll make sure you survive the night. Besides, I think you owe me a date now, or something, and I don't do corpses."

Yanagi smiled dopily. "No zombie-sex. Got it." He could still feel Genma's touch on his skin, comforting in the swirl of drugs. His own hand slid off Genma's hair, and he let it rest on Genma's chest, instead.

It slipped.

With great effort, he picked it back up and settled it on Genma's shoulder. This time, it stayed.

His eyes slipped closed. "I'll totally take you onna date," he mumbled, thoughts sliding from one to the next on random synaptic bursts, growing slow as his mind fell quietly under. "An' I'll give you a better song. 'Bout how we met when you screwed up m' mission... an' I twisted your shoulder... an' then you saved my mission... an' we played lovers... an' we were inna War... and the Foss is dead inna kid... an' I really thin' I should hava poisony head thing... like a kitty summons..."

"You do that," Genma said, chuckling. "I'll hold you to it." He didn't know what a poisony head thing was, or why Yanagi wanted one. Or how it bore any relation to a cat summons. Maybe when Yanagi had slept off the drugs and poisoning, Genma'd ask.

He waited a long, quiet moment, watching Yanagi's face relax further, his breathing deepen and slow. Then he carefully eased Yanagi's hand off his shoulder and onto the bed. Checked his pulse, checked the IV. Made sure Yanagi was well braced on his side, tucked into the recovery position, just in case.

Yanagi murmured something, and his fingers caught at Genma's arm, but he slipped back into sleep. Genma got up and started re-packing his med-kit, counting used syringes and empty vials. Started composing a mission report in his head. How weird that it was the same guy from that mission back in August. You really are Karma's bitch, aren't you? he thought. He wasn't sure whether he meant Yanagi or himself.