Sitting on the desk, feet still swinging in his black uniform boots, Haruichi started slightly and blinked.

For the first time in several hours.

His eyes winced shut, fingers reaching up to rub the dry and bloodshot mess they'd become. The motion pulled at the stitch-job he'd botched and then abandoned in his shoulder, and it was then that he remembered where he was. And that he was in company.

"Hm?" he murmured, straightening his back and the collar of the shirt he'd put on under his lab coat before deciding he wasn't going to turn around.

He was facing this way for a reason. It helped him to remember where he'd come from... even though he didn't dare look with his Byakugan and have to see the family he'd lost. Haruichi's gaze dropped to the file in his hand and he folded the name over before putting back on the desk. Hyuuga Hiro. The evidence of all the things he'd tried to believe he had moved beyond; and of how untrue that belief had been.

"Haruichi, what's wrong?" Genma asked. He was across the room in an eyeblink. Haruichi was wearing his medic's coat, but his lower body was clad in ANBU field dress. Black boots, black leg wraps. A glance to the side showed an untidy pile of weapons, ivory vest and armour, black jersey top, and a dropped mask, face down. The shoulder of Haruichi's white coat was stained crimson, not with some poor patient's blood, Genma realized with a sinking horror, but with Haruichi's own.

"Are you just off a mission? How badly are you hurt?" There was no answer. Head injury, Genma thought frantically, facing his friend and reaching out carefully to touch one shoulder. Blood loss? How bad was it, and where the fuck was the regular staff? If Haruichi had been on a field mission, then there should have been someone else down here on call.

"Haruichi, look at me. Do you know where you are?"

White eyes blinked again, drawing dampness over inflamed whispers of blood vessels as Haruichi let his hand drop from where he'd been pinching the bridge of his nose. It took him a long moment to realize that it was Genma (of course it was) who was questioning him (wasn't he always?) and eyeing him as though he'd found him unconscious on the floor with a knife sticking out of his anatomy. The last time Genma had looked at him like this had been two years ago... and Haruichi remembered that he had almost died not long after. Would have died, if Hiashi hadn't saved him. Saved him, but not brought him home.

Haruichi blinked again, trying to refocus on the present. He wasn't sure why it was so hard. Genma touched his shoulder and Haruichi gave it a dissinterested glance before looking at Genma's tense expression and harried brown eyes.

Why does it always have to be you? Haruichi thought quietly, meeting Genma's eyes.

"I'm right here," he informed Genma, not realizing how tired he sounded. "What's gone wrong now?"

Genma counted the length of time it took Haruichi to answer in heartbeats. Five... six... he got to seven, and could feel them picking up tempo as his alarm grew. There was no obvious bruising, but a head injury seemed a distinct possibility. The last time he'd seen Haruichi this unresponsive, he'd been bleeding from the eyes, spinning towards a coma as his unstable curse seal deteriorated. And then he'd disappeared. For two years.

"What's wrong? Haruichi, shit! I have no idea how to tell if your damn pupils are equal. Did you hit your head? What the hell happened to you? You're bleeding, you're out of it..." Genma pushed Haruichi's coat off his shoulder, unbuttoned his shirt and pushed that off, too, and found the half-finished stitching job still trailing untied suture.

"Fuck." His eyes darted back to Haruichi's face, searching blank, milky irises for any sign. His fingers found the pulse under Haruichi's neck, slow and steady. Not blood loss, then. "What happened?"

It was a telling trait of Genma's that the more worried he became, the more he touched things. Haruichi had noticed it long ago, and resolved not to ever tempt the onset of Genma's touchy-feely healing. Not that it had worked. Even then, he'd usually have twitched away by now. Said something sharp, boxed whatever weakness had elicited concern away, forced Genma to leave him alone.

Haruichi hadn't done much more than silently eye Genma while he went through the rigmarole, and try not to let it show how alienating it was to be unreadable in the simplest medical exam. Genma couldn't tell if he was cross-eyed, staring him out or high as a kite; and just a short while ago he and Hiro had been speaking volumes without more than glances. All that silent, sight-bound etiquette and the understanding that went with it... another reminder of a world he couldn't go back to.

Haruichi shrugged for Genma's question and gave his bloody shoulder and arm a disturbingly unconcerned look. What did it matter, anyway? "I was stitching this up, a patient came in and... then I decided to sit and watch some paint dry." He swallowed and felt the added pressure of Genma's warm fingers on his pulse. "I'm fine, by the way. Can't recall if you asked."

"I asked. Several times. The fact you don't remember is proof you aren't fine, Haruichi." Genma swallowed his alarm. Whatever was wrong with Haruichi, his vitals seemed okay. His chakra thrummed through his coils, unblocked. His lips and ears were pink, finger-tips warm. The laceration on his shoulder was barely oozing, already starting to scab. His breathing was quiet and regular.

"Tell me the last thing that happened before you decided to watch paint," Genma said. "What patient came in? You don't seem chakra-exhausted. Are you drugged?" He sniffed at Haruichi's breath, but there was nothing there. No sweet scent of almonds, no alcohol, no bitter hemp or crushed roses.

His chakra had seemed normal, but maybe this was some subtle genjutsu? "Were you on a mission?" With his hands in the rat seal, and a surge of chakra through his own fingertips into Haruichi's sternum, Genma cast a dispeller, just to be safe.

There was no change. Haruichi looked mildly annoyed, mostly blank. Despondent, Genma thought suddenly. It was chilling, and he couldn't stand himself for asking the question, but he had to. "Is Hoshi okay?"

He'd been trying to find the wherewithal to smack Genma, but at the mention of Hoshi, Haruichi's leg twitched and cracked his heel back into the flimsy wooden desk. His thoughts broke the surface from beneath the flood of homesickness and hurt that had swamped him, and if possible, things suddenly felt worse.

Haruichi was used to feeling things, it had been his weakness all his life. But usually he felt angry, or tired, or worried, or exasperated, or - if it was Hoshi - love. He had mechanisms for all of those, knew how to act it out.

He didn't know how to be what he was right now, save that now he knew he was guilty on top of it - because he hadn't gone back to her yet.

"She's... I don't know. I didn't go back." Haruichi slid of the desk, shrugged his shirt back on and his lab coat off. He had to go home. His eyes snagged on the time displayed on the wall clock. "That's the time? I have to go." And with that, he was headed for the door.

"No, you don't." Genma barred the way, moving even more quickly than he had before. "You need me to stitch and bandage your shoulder, which you've just started bleeding again. And you need to tell me what you mean, that you didn't go back. Sit down, Haruichi." His tone was sharp, his posture tense. That non-answer was as alarming as anything else.

If Haruichi and Hoshi had fought physically, Genma had no doubt who the victor would be. He didn't want to think about that. Didn't want to even admit that he could think it, but Haruichi wouldn't be the first ANBU to crack under pressure...

He stared Haruichi down. "When is the last time you saw Hoshi? Was she all right when you left her?" He was already making plans in his head--Pop up a clone to fetch help. Immobilize Haruichi if he had to. Watch for Jyuuken moves--and praying that he was wrong. That whatever was wrong with Haruichi was mission-related, and had nothing to do with his fiancée.

Having almost walked right into Genma, Haruichi was now back to blinking in bemusement at Genma's tone and stance and words and...

"....what are you on about?" If Haruichi had ever sounded more confused in his life, it was because the sky had just fallen on his head. Genma was practically glaring at him now, and all Haruichi wanted was to go and tell Hoshi he was home safely.

He didn't understand, and couldn't have even if Genma was saying it in so many words. Haruichi knew he got in people's faces when they needed treatment, but he didn't look at them like that. With fear, hidden under the demands.

"Move, would you?" Haruichi said, looking up at Genma's set brown eyes. "She doesn't know I'm home safely, yet. I haven't seen her in a week. And you are in my bloody way."

Genma let go of a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding. Thank god. Thank god, it wasn't Hoshi. His posture eased, his face fell from mission hard to merely worried. Whatever was wrong, it wasn't Hoshi.

"You're injured. You'll frighten her if you go home like this, Haru. Let me help all right? I can send a clone back to your place and let her know you're with me. We'll tell her I needed your help on something, all right?"

It had to have been the mission. The mission, or that patient. What patient would send Haruichi into a tailspin like this? "What happened to you, Haruichi. I know you. You're not... Something's wrong. Sit down and let me help. Please?" He waved at the examining table. "I can clean up your shoulder for you."

Despite having thoroughly confused Haruichi, now Genma was making a reluctant sort of sense. Haruichi looked at his arm, and the dribble of blood staining his fingers before it hit the floor. He was a medic, for pity's sake; she should never have to see him bleed.

He sighed, wondering why that was the only reason he could think of for finishing stitching his arm. Why didn't he care? Intellectually he knew what had to happen, but his will to get it done was gone. Probably gobbled up by how alone he suddenly knew he was, and how much he had been forced to realize he had lost when he'd been exiled. His mind replayed his words to Tsume, his observation that ANBU was its own clan, really.

Even in his head the words sounded hollow enough to break. About as empty as his reply to Genma as he made his way back into the Infirmary proper.

"It's nothing, Genma," he said. "I'm just tired. It's... I've been away from home for too long."

"You had a long mission?" Genma asked carefully. He got out gauze and peroxide, and a fresh suture kit. There was an emptiness to Haruichi's voice that was chilling. Could it have been a mission death? Genma'd seen Haruichi furious and despairing over losing a patient. But never so still. Never so broken, save for that one time, two years ago.

"How long has it been?" He watched as Haruichi sat on the examining table and almost mechanically removed his blood-stained shirt. It wasn't a terrible wound, and it looked fresh. If Haruichi's mission had gone bad, he'd have expected more blood.

He sloshed peroxide over the partially closed gash, watching it foam in the wound. Blood-pinked antiseptic dripped down Haruichi's arm. Genma sopped it up with gauze, then used the kit's tiny scissors to snip out Haruichi's torn stitches. "I'll numb this up for you, all right?" Handseals and a soft glow of green. Ordinarily Genma would have been apprehensive casting a medical jutsu under Haruichi's eye, but not this time.

"Thank you," Haruichi said, just to say something. He'd never felt less like talking, or less like being left entirely alone. He watched and felt Genma work on his arm for a minute, then let his eyes drift away back to the wall he'd been staring at. The one facing the Hyuuga Compound.

It was funny, almost, how dedicatedly he'd thought of this little room as home for all those years - and then how it had felt to come back just a few months ago. Stranger still to realize how the life and place he'd built up for himself here could suddenly feel like nothing when he'd have to share it with another Hyuuga.

A real Hyuuga, maybe that was part of it. Hiro could still go home. But he couldn't expect Genma to understand that, and he didn't want him to have to.

"The mission was all right, everybody made it back in one piece. Got to go home." There was no sense in Genma worrying about that. Or about him, but Genma tended to do that anyway. Haruichi looked back and watched a few drips of fizzing peroxide fall off his fingertip. "Can't ask for more than that."

"Everybody made it back in one piece," Genma echoed, frowning skeptically. "Except you. You can't go home to Hoshi messed up like this. You'll scare her. You're scaring me." He placed stitches as tidily as he could, closing the somewhat jagged edges of the wound. Ten in all. When he was finished he smeared healing salve over it, and covered the whole thing with gauze and tape.

He rested one scar-covered hand on Haruichi's shoulder, staring at the contrast between Haruichi's milk-pale skin and his own work-roughened fingers. Feeling chakra surging like snow-melt under ice, faint violet, tinged with brown. Healthy chakra, but diminished a little, as if Haruichi's emotional state was damping his very life essence.

What the hell had caused this? If it wasn't Hoshi, and it wasn't the mission... He'd said the last thing to happen was a patient stopping by. Genma looked over at Haruichi's desk and saw a half-hidden medical file sitting there. It would break every protocol for Genma to read it. He didn't hesitate for even a second, just strode over and picked up the folder, flipping it open.

Hyuuga Hiro.

A Hyuuga had been allowed into ANBU's infirmary to see Haruichi? It didn't make sense, how would he have gotten in? That might explain what the hell was wrong with Haruichi, though. Was the family cracking down on him at last? Maybe over Hoshi?

"You can come up to my apartment, and I'll lend you a shirt. Make you some tea, all right? Maybe something a little stronger." Genma's fingers twisted through hand seals, producing a clone. "He'll go check on Hoshi, make sure she's okay. Make sure she knows you're with me."

The clone tapped out a salute and left. If it found anything amiss--anything--Genma was finding Raidou and whoever else he could round up, and going after her. Clan politics be damned.

White eyes had followed Genma's progress over to the desk, to the file, to Genma's face as his eyes sharpened. Haruichi felt his back tense, fingers balling up as his own eyes narrowed.

Then the shifting of his muscles under his newly stitched cut stung sharply, and he frowned and settled for hopping off the table and crossing his arms instead. Genma was going to find out about Hiro at some point; it wasn't as though Haruichi could hide him and keep him safe from everybody. Genma would probably look out for him, anyway. Maybe they'd be on missions together.

Haruichi looked at Genma's mutilated hands as the clone saluted and darted off. And maybe he was going to try not to have a panic attack over what might happen to his little cousin on missions now. It was harder than he'd thought to drag his focus back to Genma's reassurances after that, and as a consequence he wound up nodding before he realized what he'd agreed to.

"Thanks," he murmurred, looking back to Genma's face. If Genma had a plan involving making sure Hoshi was okay, and knew he was too, it was one he'd follow right now.

It wasn't as though he had any idea what else to do with himself anymore.

Getting Haruichi up to his apartment was easy. More a matter of steering than anything else. The way Haruichi's eyes kept flickering towards that wall was creepy, the way Genma could see and not see what he was focusing on. See and not see the movement. In the elevator Haruichi's head turned towards that same south-east corner, and in Genma's apartment. Haruichi didn't have his Byakugan activated, but he might as well have, for the way he seemed to be looking through masonry towards...

What the hell was there? Haruichi's apartment was more directly south, so not Hoshi. The big Hyuuga compound though. That was it, wasn't it?

"Sit on the bed, Haruichi. I'll make tea." Genma rummaged in his closet, reaching way into the back for a faded blue sweatshirt. It was fraying at the cuffs, stained with what was probably blood, and printed with a logo for a foreign candy, in a script Genma couldn't read. "This should fit you. It's clean." He wasn't sure why he still had it. Sentiment, he supposed. It was tight across the shoulders and short in the sleeves on him now, but Haruko had given it to him for his seventeenth birthday.

Thinking about his own lost family made him acutely aware of Haruichi's orphan status. Exile status. Was there any other Hyuuga from the first family demoted to the second? As far as Genma knew, Haruichi had almost no contact with his clan. He'd spent their early years in ANBU together hiding from them, until the fracturing curse seal had nearly killed him. And after that, when Haruichi had been simply gone and Genma'd gone looking, some of Haruichi's first family cousins had answered Genma's questions with the curt statement that Genma could consider Hyuuga Haruichi dead, punctuating it with sharp jyuuken blows.

Genma looked at his friend, back from the dead.

"So... They sent someone to give you a message?"

Haruichi's eyes drifted over to Genma's, saw the comprehension, and then closed. "No," he said. "I'm sure they didn't think of me at all."

It actually hurt to say it, and Haruichi very much hoped it didn't show. He had his eyes closed, the only way Hyuuga had of hiding their thoughts and feelings from each other, a tell all of its own. He opened his eyes and fidgetted aimlessly with the cuff of the too-big sweater enveloping him. He hated this, all of it, but he didn't have anywhere to go. He didn't have a place to go and hide, he had an apartment with a girl and a dog in it.

He had a home, and a person in it who he couldn't hurt with all of this. Haruichi's stomach finally flipped and his eyes dropped. He had to fix himself. Wasn't there a turn of phrase for that?

"Tell me you're putting something in that tea," he muttered. Yes, that was how it went. Physician, get plastered, stat.

If there were any clearer sign that Haruichi was in trouble than him asking for alcohol, Genma didn't know what it would be. "I've got some stuff a buddy brought me from a trip to Wind Country. It's got some serious kick, kind of flowery tasting," he said, reaching for a bottle of rose-colored liqueur. "Goes best in black tea." He found a red and blue canister decorated with cranes, shook out a measure of tiny black leaves into a small iron teapot, and added hot water from his countertop boiler. Thank the god of tea for whoever had invented that marvel.

Setting cups, bottle and pot on a tray, he carried it all back to his low table, poured a generous measure of alcohol into Haruichi's cup, somewhat less into his own, and filled them with tea. The syrupy liqueur swirled heavily in the bottom of the cups.

"When's the last time you actually ate a meal?" Genma asked. He got up again, rooted in his small refrigerator, and was delighted to find a container of takeout gyouza from the night before. He dumped them onto a plate and returned to Haruichi. "Cold dumplings go better with beer, probably, but after you have a couple glasses of that tea you won't care."

What Genma returned to was an empty cup sitting next to the tea pot, its contents already having shot straight down Haruichi's throat in one go.

If he was going to do this, he was going to be professional about it. It was like taking some unpleasant medication, you just endured it until it did its work and you were well again. Hopefully at some point you started to feel better as well. Though given what he'd just downed, Haruichi doubted he'd be feeling anything more impressive than hellish for the forseeable future.

His stomach, newly drowned in tea and alcohol, growled at the sight of the gyouza. Haruichi spared a moment to look down and scowl at his navel before accepting the food with a nod. "I don't care already, Genma, it's been a week since I've seen actual food."

Haruichi's pale fingers picked precisely at one of the dumplings for a moment, and then in a flash it was down the hatch after his drink. He glanced over to Genma, who probably hadn't seen somebody he was eating with do that since he was two years old, and then looked back to the food as he started to open out another of the dumplings.

"Sorry," he muttered. "I like to see what's inside first, and usually I'd look properly but..."

But he thought it might drive him mad to activate his Byakugan right now. So he wasn't going to. Haruichi shrugged slightly, and ate another. They were cold and muted, but still good by his reasoning.

Look properly gave Genma a moment of pause, and then he figured it out. His heart sank. "Is something going wrong with your curse seal again?" It was a blunt question, but Haruichi usually responded better to directness than tact, in Genma's experience.

He poured a fresh cup for Haruichi, a little heavier on the tea and lighter on the booze this time. At least Haruichi was eating, even if he was tearing apart the gyouza with his fingers before every bite like there might be metal shavings hidden inside. Mission paranoia could do that to you, and Haruichi had only just gotten back from one.

Genma took one of the cold gyouza himself, and pondered what he could do for a proper meal. There was always the rice cooker and an egg, if he had any eggs. He'd spotted a carton when he'd hunted up the gyouza, and eggs took a while to go bad, right?

Of course if Haruichi's curse seal was deteriorating again, a meal was far from the most important concern. What had been the symptoms before? "Are you getting headaches when you use your bloodline again?"

"No more than the usual," Haruichi answered, picking up the refilled cup and downing this one even faster than he had the last. It didn't seem to numb his throat as the last one had, but that was probably a sign in itself. He shook his head slowly as he replaced the cup neatly on the tray and began disecting another gyouza. Why wasn't this working faster?

Haruichi swallowed his picked-apart food, then looked over at Genma. He was worried, but he seemed to be diagnosing everything except the problem. Haruichi wondered if that was just how hard it was if you weren't a Hyuuga. Or maybe the problem was just him. Haruichi knew he'd never been anything but defensive around everybody he'd known since the clan had exiled him... save Hoshi.

He thought of how Hiro had looked at him once the initial shock had begun to fade, it had been as though he was looking at a shadow of the person he used to know. Well, he could trust what Hiro's eyes had seen - they were Hyuuga eyes, they only saw what was really there.

"There's nothing physically wrong with me, Genma. Don't worry. I just had a... bit of a shock."

Understatement of the year, but Haruichi wasn't sure what else to say. It was getting a little harder to string a straight thought together before he voiced it.

Genma refilled Haruichi's glass again. "You might want to go slower with that stuff. If you're thirsty I can get you some water, or maybe you should drink some plain tea?" Because that was potent liquor. Genma was only partway through his first cup, and he could feel the mellow buzz the drink induced.

He was glad it wasn't the curse seal, though. The notion of facing down Haruichi's relatives again, demanding they repair their mutilation, was a little daunting.

Maybe there had been a death in the clan? Someone Haruichi had been close to? Though as far as Genma knew, all the family Haruichi had been close to had long since moved on to their next lives.

He felt a flicker of chakra from his clone. A tiny mental image of Hoshi in a red and green dress over orange pants, holding a paintbrush in one hand and the door open with the other. She had a puzzled smile on her face.

"Hoshi's fine, by the way. And she knows you're with me." He sipped his tea. "So what kind of shock, Haru?""

A hollow sort of sniff for Genma's suggestion about the tea was replaced by a sudden surge of longing for Hoshi the moment she was mentioned. It almost hurt, and Haruichi was glad. He was still allowed to miss Hoshi, allowed to care what happened to her, and to do things for her benefit and happiness and safety. He was still allowed to go back to her, and say he was home.

It just made him feel traitorous for saying what fell out of his mouth next. "I hadn't realized how badly I need to go home."

Genma set his cup down and really looked at Haruichi. Heard something in the way Haruichi said 'home', that held a kind of leaden sadness. "You're not talking about going home to Hoshi, are you?"

He'd never heard Haruichi talk about his original home much. Maybe a few brief words, in passing. Talking about his cousin who had been Genma's sister's classmate. His cousin who had died for him. His room had held photographs of a few Hyuuga whom Genma had always assumed were Haruichi's parents and his deeply-mourned cousin, but he'd never been able to ask. And then Haruichi had disappeared.

The Hyuuga elders had told Genma Haruichi was dead.

"What's going on, Haruichi?"

There was something more than curiosity in the question, and Haruichi wanted to back away. There was a reason he hadn't talked about this with anyone, a reason even Hoshi didn't know, it simply wasn't spoken of. Just like he himself, not a fit subject for anybody's ears.

Haruichi scowled in anger at it all and forced himself to talk. He hadn't been about to let the Branch be martryed over what the family thought was proper all those years ago; it was time he remembered that he didn't have to accept all of it, either.

"You know that common saying, feeling like somebody walked over your grave?" Haruichi's sullen gaze grew heavier, casting down at the corner of the room. "I know exactly what that's like. Every day, it gets a little colder and a little heavier." A sigh, closed eyes.

"They didn't just throw me out. They declared me dead. I've got my own marker in the Hyuuga cemetary, did you know that? A little one, so it can fit between my parents and Hinaji-neesan. Most of the clan think I'm under there." Haruichi was surprised to find a rueful half-smile stretch the corner of his mouth. "No wonder I like the basement."

Genma paused with the teacup halfway to his mouth and set it down again. "That's cold," he said at last. His eyes flicked to the memorial tablets to his own lost family. How much more awful would it be to be orphaned twice over? "Really cold. Bastards." His hands clenched into fists, shoulders squared.

"I wish I'd kicked your cousins' damned asses, back when-- No wonder they fucking told me you were dead. Those utter bastards." Genma gave Haruichi a fierce-eyed stare. "What could you possibly have done to deserve that? Or that damned curse seal? How can they-- How can they justify that?"

Haruichi's eyes flicked open, glimpsing Genma's furious expression before his eyes blurred oddly. He closed them quickly and pinched the bridge of his nose to try and focus, wondering where he'd put his glasses.

He didn't need to wonder at Genma's anger, undeserved though it somehow felt. All Hyuuga learned as children that the ways of the clan made no sense to others, were considered alien and sometimes wrong, and that their duty was to say nothing. After all, outsiders could believe what they liked - all that mattered was the truth that any Hyuuga could clap eyes on.

Years of living in exile had left Haruichi too attached to the others, to the ANBU, to say nothing. All those times he had demanded their trust, and still not trusted them. The hypocracy of it had been a neccessary thing... until now.

"Justification doesn't come into it, Genma. But... for what it's worth, the reason I don't hide my seal is that I earned it." An exhalation, and he tried to open his eyes again. Everything seemed to be smudged with soft light. It took Haruichi a few seconds of staring intrigued at the back of his hand to realize that it was the supplement to the tea doing this.

All the same, Genma looked like Genma even with blurs brightening around his face. Haruichi gestured at him. "Don't get angry, you don't have to care. S'okay."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Genma demanded. "Of course I have to care. I'm your friend, aren't I?" The very idea that Haruichi didn't want him to care set Genma's teeth on edge. "What kind of friend would I be if I didn't care that your stupid family treats you like shit. I mean, I know they're your family, and Hyuuga are special, and you have your clan law and whatever, but fuck, Haruichi."

Fuck indeed. Genma reached for the alcohol and liberally resupplied both their cups, warming the shots with a little more tea. He stared at Haruichi's forehead, at the curling green manji marks of the curse seal, the scars that edged the tattoo. It was almost like a branding scar he'd seen on a slave in Wind Country, raised at the edges in delicate welts.

"You can say you earned it all you want but... But that doesn't make it right. I never really looked at any of the Branch Hyuuga before. I mean, most of them hide their marks, so you can't really tell. I never really thought about it. Probably most people never think about it. But I saw what that curse seal did to you, and... And I saw how they treat you. If you'd killed someone, you'd have been dealt with by the Hokage, not the Hyuuga. I can't think of anything you could have done. Can't really think of anything any of those Branch family people could have done..."

He trailed off, staring at Haruichi and past him. How the fuck was any of it justified? But the Hokage allowed it. Approved it. It had been that way since the founding of the village, Main family and Branch family. It wasn't Genma's place to judge, any more than it was his place to choose his targets as an assassin. Somehow thinking of it like that didn't make it sit any easier.

Listening to Genma, understanding every word he said, and watching the way his eyes changed put a look of curious fascination on Haruichi's own pale face. Genma was right, of course. Haruichi knew that, and had known it since he was a teenager, but there was something about hearing somebody else say it - about hearing the proof that he wasn't the only one - that made it real in a way it hadn't been before.

Haruichi wondered if he'd really ever been that brave and stupid, and then reached up to rub a thumb against the raised weal of his curse seal to remind himself that he had.

"They didn't do anything, Genma. They were just born into it. Like birds. Some are born free, and some are born caged."

He looked down at the opaque shine of the drink in his hand. The blurs of brightness his alcohol-affected eyes were putting on things seemed unable to touch the liquid. Haruichi peered at it, and for the slightest moment he caught a ghost of Hinaji's reflection on the liquor's still surface.

"And some get caught."

Haruichi downed his drink, winced only slightly and shook his head a bit. He glanced back at Genma, and those unfalteringly righteous brown eyes. "And I didn't mean... I mean, you'll feel however you feel. You're like that. But it's... I'm supposed to fix things for you. Not make them worse."

"You're not making them worse," Genma said slowly. "And it's not really your job to fix things for me, is it? I mean, sure, you fix my injuries, but that's because you're a medic. That's not the same as, as I don't know, as fixing me." But that wasn't really what Haruichi had said.

"We are friends, aren't we?" he asked. "I mean, friends carry each other's loads for them sometimes. Or I would. If you'd let me." And that was way too much touchy-feely stuff, even for Genma. He knocked back his drink in a gulp, refilled it, and looked levelly at Haruichi.

"How come you're falling apart? What happened?"

Drunk though he was, Haruichi was perfectly capable of giving Genma quite the incredulous look in response to all of that. He opened his mouth with the intention of saying nothing at all, but his voice stayed still as the rest of him remembered...

...the last person to talk to him like that had been Hinaji. The owner of the heart thudding away quietly under the scars on his chest. The reason he was alive, and the reason he'd fought back against tradition and his clan, and the reason he tried so hard to be brave, and clever, and tenacious, and worth saving.

"I hadn't seen Hiro-kun since he was just a little boy. And there he was, taller and stronger than me, and I realised how much I've missed."

Haruichi's eyes dropped, mostly unseeing, to the tatami floor. "And how nothing changed for him, or any of the Branch. Like I was never there at all." Haruichi's thumbs pressed against each other, hands fidgeting aimlessly where they hung in the air between his knees. "Like she died saving me for no reason at all... if I couldn't even get them to see it was wrong."

He pulled in a breath and glanced sidelong at Genma, not daring to let his whole face show. "I mean, it is wrong, isn't it? That just because I was supposed to be important I had my own human shield and blood bank and donor organs and best friend assigned to me when we were three? That's not right, right?"

Whether his white eyes were unreadable or not, whether his face was in full view or not, it probably couldn't have been more clear how badly Haruchi needed an answer to that.

"That's not right," Genma agreed, low and serious. He met Haruichi's pale eyes, unblinking. "But I'm still glad you had her. And I'm pretty sure if she was here, she'd say she's glad she was there for you. Because she did care for you, didn't she?" It was as much a statement as a question.

"Yumiko talked about her. Hyuuga Hinaji. Your cousin, right? Said it was a waste when she died, but she said Hinaji did it of her own free will. It wasn't like one of the big clan heads activated her seal and killed her so they could save you. She did it herself."

He hoped that was true. Hoped the half-remembered conversations with Yumiko, and what little he'd been able to glean from Haruichi in the past, and from his digging into Haruichi's disappearance more than a year ago, were telling him enough of the story that he at least had that right.

Haruichi was too far gone to wonder how Genma knew any of that, too dizzied by the heaviness of his broken blood-ties and aching heart. A heart that wasn't his, but still felt things for him all the same.

He managed not to voice any of the painful thoughts he'd had on the topic and to not say anything too cruel or cutting about any of them in reply. Just watched Genma's clear brown eyes and the flickers of memory and thought darting in them like little fish. Bright little fish. Everything seemed to be getting bright, even as he felt as though he was sinking.

"I wish she hadn't," he murmured so quietly, and so sadly. It was the most he'd ever sounded like the boy he'd once been for over a decade. "She was a better person than me." Same was true of Yumiko, and of Rin, and of Taisei and the others who'd been lost saving the people who were supposed to save Konoha.

"They were all better people," he said. He finally closed his eyes and dropped his head. "I'll never understand why it's the good ones who die first, no matter how hard I try."

And if that sounded like two things out loud it sounded like many more in Haruichi's head. He tried to save people and he tried to understand, but he failed often enough for it to feel as though anybody else wouldn't be so lost.

Which made him wonder if anybody else could have made a difference to the others like Hiro, could have known what to say or what to do. Could have made being an exile worth it. Could have made feeling like this be an exchange for a benefit to the Clan, instead of the hollow punishment it was.

Haruichi's eyes stayed closed, blocking out the drunken lights blurring his vision and whatever legitimate look Genma might be mustering.

"Not all the good ones," Genma said. "Haruichi." He reached out one hand to touch Haruichi's shoulder. Waited when Haruichi stiffened, half prepared for a blow. Waited while violet-grey chakra flickered under Haruichi's skin, papery and rough, like unfinished pottery. He couldn't see the flow the way Haruichi could, but touch spoke volumes. Haruichi was as tightly strung as any jounin on a mission.

He felt a little lost. How did you save a drowning man? Water walked out to him and pulled him free. Swam if you couldn't water walk. Threw him a life line. He had no idea what kind of life line might reach Haruichi, but he was damned if he was going to watch him go under a third time.

"When Yumiko... When I found out about her, you know what they told me? She screamed at the guy who was ferrying me out of there. Something like, 'That's my little brother, you idiot!' Which is so like her, you know? And after that, when everyone was so... When it was all just horrible, people--medics I didn't know--they'd come up to me and say how awesome Yumi was. And I felt like it was such a waste it was me here and not her. But then her best friend told me..."

He paused. Tried to remember where he was going. His hand was still on Haruichi's shoulder. His eyes still on his friend's heartbroken face.

"Her friend told me Yumi was right, and her little brother was an idiot. And if Hinaji was here, she'd call you an idiot."

Haruichi held still, let things seem to sway in whatever drunk undercurrent they'd been caught in for a moment, and then - abruptly as a cord being cut - the bitter thrum of the chakra Genma could sense racing through him vanished. All the anger and confusion and sense of failure unleashed by the sight of Hiro crept quietly back into the box he'd built inside himself for it, shepherded back by the sense behind Genma's scatter-shot words.

There wasn't a way to capture all the grief and guilt that went with their lot in life, but somehow Genma had just put a light over the most important thing to remember if they were to get clear of it. Even if only for the briefest times.

The women were always right.

Maybe he had failed in doing what he had to for the Hyuuga, but Hinaji hadn't. Maybe Genma hadn't been able to keep his family safe, but Yumiko would be satisfied that her brother was alive. Their situations had been hellish, but both of them had made sure something they loved survived.

Haruichi sighed thickly, glanced sidelong to Genma without turning his head, and managed an incredibly weak quirk of his lips.

"I'm sure my cousin would have something even more choice to call me," he murmured. "She always had the words to cut anyone down to size."

"Someone related to you was sarcastic and biting? I'm shocked," Genma said with a laugh. He wasn't entirely sure what had changed, but evidently it had. Haruichi still seemed a little broken, but not nearly so close to some kind of major fracture as he'd been only moments before.

He also seemed, by the way he was swaying, quite thoroughly drunk.

Genma filled his cup with unadulterated tea.

"No wonder she and Yumi were friends. I bet Yumi would have liked you. What was that thing you called me when you had to dig that cactus spine out of my foot after that mission to Wind? That was a good one. Or that time with the spiders. Um. Spider venom. It was spiders, right?"

Haruichi looked a little better. If it took reminding him what an idiot he thought Genma was, Genma would do it. Whatever it took, Genma would do it. Which was kind of an interesting observation, really. Yumiko and Hinaji's ghosts must have been laughing.

An automatic roll of Haruichi's bloodshot eyes met that, despite the way it made the room swirl in a blur of brightness. "I learned from the best," he replied, taking a sip of his tea. He was far too far gone to notice that it was additive-free, not that it mattered any longer. The sadness stirred up by the day's events, and all those of a life he'd been forced to stop living years ago, was still there; but it wasn't all that there was...

"And yes, it bloody was spiders. Big fuck-off huge things you'd been breeding for the express purpose of buggering yourself up." Haruichi gave Genma a look that might've been more stern if he'd been less drunk... and more able to focus on anything. "I'll give you this, it was one of your more... what's-the-words?... fantabulous? fantastic? Fantabuloustic entrances to the Infirmary."

...even soul-crushing misery had to give way to the space in himself required to keep the agents alive. And lectured. But mostly alive.

He'd never have let himself admit it if he was sober, but sometimes it looked like they paid him back for it.