Ryouma woke to screaming.

Not himself, he realized, as he choked on his first rushing breath and pitched out of the chair to bang his knee against the side of the hospital bed. Not Kakashi, either, who wasn't in his bed. That high-pitched shrill was a hospital jutsu alarm; that insistent beep was a heart-rate monitor, as someone's pulse skidded out of control. Ozone (Summoning jutsu?) bit at the back of his throat.

On the other side of the bed, a dog barked.

Ryouma thrashed his way out of a tangle of his own sleep-leadened limbs and onto his feet. Plastic lines tugged at him, suction-cups cold on his throat and just below his collarbones. He ripped them off, and the alarms shrieked into full-fledged panic. He lost a dazed moment wondering if he could smash the blinking monitors, before he realized who was supposed to have been wearing those.

"You idiot," he snarled, and lurched around the bed.

Kakashi lay sprawled on the floor, masked cheek cuddled up against the black and tan haunch of a leggy dog. Hoshika, Ryouma remembered--the one who didn't much like him. She didn't look particularly happy to see him now. Black lips peeled back to bare an inch of long yellow fang, and a low growl rumbled deep in her chest.

"Ryouma-kun!" That was one of the nurses, skidding through the door on crepe-soled shoes. She took in the room in one swift glance, pressed a hand to her heaving bosom, and marched across the room to shut off the shrieking alarms. "So this is what you call 'looking after him'?"

"I was asleep!" Ryouma protested. He creaked his way into a stiff crouch and held out a hand to Hoshika. "Hey, look, you know me, just lemme check on him--"

Gleaming teeth snapped together so fast that they grazed Ryouma's skin as he jerked his hand away. He swore. The nurse, Kaori, glanced back in concern. Her eyes narrowed at the oozing scratches on Ryouma's thumb. He stuck his hand hastily in his mouth, but the damage was done. Kaori flicked the switch on the last alarm, planted her hands on her hips, and stared the dog down.

"I know you, young lady," she said, very precisely. "You were here the last time your master got himself hospitalized--snarling every time any of us had to so much as change his IVs. Now, I know you're worried, and the Lord Buddha knows you've got reason to be tetchy with a reckless boy like him to look after, but you can't take care of him and we can. So if you'd let us help him without losing any of our fingers, we'd be much obliged."

Hoshika's low, constant snarl ebbed halfway into a whine. The flattened ears didn't lift, but she extricated herself carefully from Kakashi's grip and limped very slowly clear. Her dark brown eyes flicked from Kaori to Ryouma and back to Kakashi, and she whined again.

Kaori heaved a sigh. "All right, Ryouma-kun," she said. "Help me get him back in bed. What was he doing on the floor, anyway?"

"Summoning her," Ryouma said, jerking his head towards Hoshika as he slipped a hand under Kakashi's shoulders. The dog's whine edged back into a snarl. Kaori made an absent-minded little hushing sound, and Hoshika slowly relaxed again. "Guess he needed something to hug," Ryouma said, lifting Kakashi's limp body with one eye on the dog. "Or maybe he just wanted to knock himself flat on his back again--"

"Ryouma-kun!" Kaori said, so sharply that Ryouma froze with Kakashi still in his arms. "Don't--you can't put him down there. Give me just a moment--" She ripped the sheets off the bed and bundled them up so quickly that Ryouma caught only a glimpse of wet-scribbled seals staining the threadbare cloth. He blinked. Blood?

"I was right," he told the still, masked face tipped against his shoulder. "You are an idiot."

Kakashi woke up with a hand pressed flat against the base of his throat, work-roughened skin rasping the strip of flesh left bare between mask and shirt. Bright new chakra singing through his coils.

He stifled a gasping breath and snapped his hand up, catching a wrist. Gripped it tight, nails searching for a place to dig in between ropey tendons, where crucial pressure points lay. A second surge of chakra made his head spin; someone peeled his fingers away.

There were words. Sieved through the jangling white noise in his skull, they sounded like: --el-ome --ack--.

He grabbed with his other hand, and someone caught that, too. There was movement, noise, overwhelming pressure in the back of his skull, (pain), then everything reshaped itself around the heavy, wild-musk smell of fur and threat and dog-stress, and the needlepoint scratch of sharp teeth grazing his forearm.

He stilled. In the time it took to wrench unwilling eyes open (someone had thoughtfully wrapped a bandage around Obito's), the hand left his throat and a heavy weight landed against his side, pressed up tight against his ribs. He couldn't touch it, not with people holding his hands captive, but he didn't need to.

"Hey, beautiful." It was a croak, broken halfway through into real words. He tipped his head down to look at her, whole and breathing and healed-looking, and relaxed like a dam breaking. To his right, the white-hatted medic made a quiet noise, like a grudging sigh. To his left, there was silence. The thundery kind, filled with the promise of coming words. Kakashi hitched half a smile behind his mask, looking down at living brown eyes. "How much trouble are we in?"

"A lot," Ryouma said, and barely resisted the temptation to squeeze Kakashi's hand hard enough to show he meant it. Thin skin and slender bones felt all too breakable, right now--even though Kakashi had just done a pretty good job of attempting to paralyze Daichi-sensei's hand. That was probably a good sign.

Daichi-sensei wasn't terribly pleased about it. His voice was a graveled whisper: damaged by poison gas in the war, Ryouma had heard, and softened even more by exhaustion and annoyance. "Hatake-san, I've just spent ten medical units of my own chakra pulling you back from a relapse. I would be personally grateful if you'd forgo the theatrics until my shift's over. Can you manage another seventy minutes without a minor emergency?"

Hoshika twisted her head around to bare her teeth at him. The medic stared coldly back. Ryouma promised, "Next time he tries pulling stunts, I'll sit on him."

The dog switched her glare to him.

"Promise?" Kakashi rasped, tugging his hand free from the medic's cool-skinned grip to wrap his fingers around Hoshika's muzzle. He pressed her upper lip against her teeth in a warning that required no strength, and held on until she looked grudgingly away. A thread of a growl rumbled in her lungs, trembling against his side, but noise was just noise.

The medic's eyebrows arched sardonically. Kakashi looked at him, trying to place his face. It seemed familiar. "If you check her over," he said, "I'll be so good you'll think I'm nonexistent."

Mostly because he didn't intend to stay long. The medic snorted once, disbelieving. Hoshika's head jerked beneath Kakashi's hand; he tightened his grip slightly.

"She took a knife-hit between her middle ribs on the left side, punctured a lung--"

"When?" the medic interrupted.

Time was a shaky concept. "A week ago," Kakashi hazarded. "I broke the summoning link..."

There was a pointed cough from the doorway. Kakashi jerked a startled look over--he hadn't sensed anyone (his chakra was all over the place)--and saw a lean, pale-skinned man and a compactly muscled woman standing just outside, both wearing Intel colours. "No mission details," said the woman, eyeing them all levelly. "Not until you've been debriefed, Hatake-san."

Kakashi paused, reset the world around mission-standard orders he'd been following for a lifetime, and lowered his chin. Not quite a nod. He tugged at the hand still held firmly by Ryouma, who released it only after an annoyed jaw flex, and levered himself upright. Mostly upright. Beneath his skin, chakra buzzed and swirled, like a hornets' dance. Hoshika's quick breaths warmed his palm.

"Middle ribs," he said again, looking at the medic. "Left side. She won't bite you."

"Hmph," Daichi-sensei said, but he lifted his hands anyway, lit with a haze of pale green chakra. Hoshika whined when he curved both hands over her rib-cage, palms just barely brushing the long fur, but Kakashi was right; she didn't even try to snap. Daichi's eyes narrowed, and the green flared brighter for a moment. Then, abruptly, it died. The medic straightened and thrust his hands into his lab-coat pockets.

"She's healing well," he said brusquely. "Better than if she'd stayed in our world. If you send her back soon, and don't summon her for another week, she should be fit for missions before you are." He glanced over his shoulder at the two Intel agents in the doorway. "Don't upset him."

"We know, sensei," the man said, in a voice nearly as quiet as Daichi's. The curiously light timbre lacked Daichi's injury-strained roughness, though; it was as soft and fluid as oil on water. Ryouma's spine creeped. He resettled his shoulders with an angry shake and reminded himself not to visit the Intel basements, not even if all the girls were pretty.

"I guess I'm not stayin' for this," he said. After all the hoarse half-whispers, his voice sounded too loud in his own ears. "I'll go grab a coffee. Give me a holler when you're done." He hesitated, tugged the blanket a little further up Kakashi's shoulder, and headed for the door.

The soft-voiced Intel agent didn't step aside to let him pass. The woman did, but only to come further into the room. Ryouma scraped up a smile for her, but she didn't return it.

"Screw you anyway," he muttered under his breath, and set off for some coffee to make waking up worth it.

In the glacial pool of silence that followed, Kakashi very carefully didn't touch the handprint of fading warmth on his shoulder. Three pairs of eyes watched him; four, if he counted Hoshika's sidelong gaze. Then Daichi nodded abruptly and strode towards the door, labcoat flaring as if it knew how to behave for a good dramatic exit. The soft-voiced Intel agent stepped aside, and shut the door behind him.

"Hatake Kakashi-san," said the woman, dropping into Ryouma's abandoned chair. "Reg 009720. Correct?"

"Unless someone changed it while I was asleep," Kakashi drawled. He released Hoshika's muzzle and rubbed his fingertips between her ears, where her fur lay short and soft. "Pertinent details first, or do you want the full story?"

"Both," said the man by the door, languid-cool. He sounded like he breathed ice cubes.

Kakashi allowed himself a scatter of seconds to think, tugging on threads of memories until they knotted into a coherent whole. Then sliced them into a rough order of importance. Ginta knew more about the factory he'd been tortured in, knew the politics behind it, but Kakashi knew the number dead and the level of destruction. The avenues of escape they'd used. The description of the family whose house he'd borrowed. And-- everything that had come after.

The muscled woman watched him steadily, waiting. The man at the door pulled a fountain pen from his pocket and began to scrape the inkless nib beneath his fingernails, cleaning them. Hoshika breathed against his ribcage.

"In your own time," said the woman quietly.

Kakashi sat up straight, looked at the middle-distance of nothing, and began to talk. Calm and steady. Beginning, middle, end. Important bits first. He kept talking until he ran out of words, then met the male agent's eyes squarely when the man stepped forward and laid something down on Kakashi's blanketed lap. It was a scroll inside a plastic bag, sealed and neatly tagged. He could just about see the dark brown smudges of dried fingerprints made in old blood.

A keen observer still would have missed the way his mouth flattened into a thin white slash behind his mask.

"Can you confirm this is the scroll you brought home with Kinjo Tsuyako's fingerprints on?" asked the woman.

"Yes."

"Whom you killed?"

"Yes."

The woman nodded once, then pulled a tray-table over the bed, across his lap, and stacked a neat pile of paperwork on it. "Write it down, the whole report. Don't forget to sign."

He wrote quickly, messily, in an academy brat's scrawl that had gotten worse since. Trapped the words in letters, pinned to thick paper, and added the code that meant mission: partial success. Finished with the scribble that was his name. He pushed the pile back towards the woman, who sealed the papers in a thick brown folder. "Are we done?"

"Yes. Thank you, Hatake-san."

The man picked up the plastic-wrapped scroll and tucked it away. He regarded Kakashi for a moment, sloe eyes dark and thoughtful, then turned towards the door. "This mission is still classified. You may discuss the non-political details with other ANBU agents, if you choose, but we suggest you employ discretion."

One of Kakashi's eyebrows twitched. That was an interesting concession for Intel to make, especially on an open-foldered case.

The woman rose from her chair. "We appreciate your time. Have a speedy recovery, Hatake-san."

Kakashi's right hand touched his left shoulder, fingers brushing old crimson ink in a seldom-used salute as he watched them leave. The man glanced back just before he shut the door.

"Tell Ryouma you're done," Kakashi told him, abruptly reminded, and waited for the latch clicking into place before he dropped his head back against the pillow and let out a long breath. Hoshika licked the inside of his wrist. Kakashi's fingers dug into the short, thick fur on the back of her neck.

"Well," he said quietly. "That sucked."

Ryouma had chafed at long debriefings before, but at least then he was usually in them. Waiting for this one to be finished and for Kakashi to be free was even worse. He could go back and lurk outside the door, of course--but quite aside from the serious trouble he'd get into for eavesdropping, how lame could you get? Kakashi was awake, sane, safe; he didn't need Ryouma to look out for him anymore. He especially didn't need some scowling, lovesick puppy drooping outside his door.

So Ryouma got one coffee, and then another. He flirted briefly with a girl in the coffee-shop, just to keep his hand in, and left with her number and a promise to call. He stopped by HQ to see if the Intel agents had checked back in at the front desk yet--they hadn't--and wandered out again into the golden light of an warm spring evening.

The ramen shop on the corner by the old bathhouse had a 2-for-1 sign tacked to the outside wall. Ryouma ordered two to go, and picked up a couple bottles of soda and a pack of jerky at the convenience store down the street from the hospital. Halfway up the stairs to the fourth floor, he realized he didn't even know if Kakashi liked ramen.

"This is pathetic," he announced to the bare, white-washed walls.

Kakashi's door was closed. Fortunately they hadn't pulled the blinds over the half-glass walls, and Ryouma had a clear view of Kakashi cuddled up against Hoshika on his bed. The grey-uniformed Intel agents were gone. Across the hall, Ginta was napping again. Ryouma waved two fingers at the sleeping man and turned to jimmy open Kakashi's door.

Hoshika's lips curled back from her teeth.

"Glad to see you missed me," Ryouma said, sliding the door shut behind him. He set the food-laden bags on the table with the coffee-cup castle and slouched into his chair again. "Hope I'm better company than your last."

"If you've come without paperwork, I'll marry you," Kakashi assured him dryly, clamping his fingers back around Hoshika's muzzle. She made a stifled, disgruntled noise and jerked her head away; he held on. "You'd look great in a dress. Hoshika, quit it. He's--"

There was a second's pause.

"Pack," Kakashi finished, tightening his grip for emphasis. "And he's brought food, so hush."

In his chair, Ryouma smirked and started unloading the white-paper bags. Two styrofoam containers that smelled of salt-savoury meat and noodles made a swift appearance, followed by soda bottles dripping condensation, and a pack of jerky that caught Hoshika's riveted attention. Kakashi's stomach growled sharply, reminding him that he hadn't eaten since...

Sometime too long ago to remember.

"I take it back," he said, releasing Hoshika and leaning intently forwards. "You're a giant amongst men and I'll wear the dress. Gimme."

"Hey," Ryouma said mildly. "Who says I'm marryin' you, anyway? You spend way too much time flat on your back in bed, and it's not the interesting kind." He pried the plastic lid off one of the ramen containers and set the cup on Kakashi's tray-table, along with a pair of chopsticks. "Besides, I got plenty more offers to pick from. There was this girl at the coffee-shop--"

Hoshika, still staring intently at the jerky, made a sudden movement that nearly upset Kakashi's ramen. Kakashi grabbed her collar, growling something in an angry voice that didn't quite form words. The dog's ears flattened, and she dropped her head with a low whine. Kakashi growled again.

"Oookay." Ryouma pulled his burned fingers out of his mouth--at least he hadn't spilled much of the hot broth when he lunged for the tipping cup--and reached for the jerky. "This was going to be a peace-offering. Guess it works just as well now to persuade her not to eat me."

Keeping his eye on the cowed shepherd, Kakashi raked a bandaged hand through his hair and tried to decide how to explain pack dynamics to someone with zero dog experience. He'd spoken Japanese for Ryouma's benefit earlier, but canine was a much easier language to drill the point into Hoshika's misbehaving head with--even if it left Ryouma in the cold.

"She's not trying to eat you," he began, as Ryouma ripped the jerky packet open with his teeth. "Well, mostly. She's just trying to steal your food and prove who's boss."

And possibly, maybe reacting to Kakashi's unsubtle scent changes when Ryouma brought coffee shop girls into the conversation.

Ryouma raised one dark eyebrow. Kakashi simplified.

"Pack," he said, waving a hand that encompassed all three of them. He pointed to himself. "Alpha." Then he pointed at Ryouma and Hoshika in turn. "Beta and beta." Ryouma's other eyebrow lifted. Kakashi smiled crookedly behind his mask. "You know it's true, shut up. She wants to prove she's top beta because she doesn't like you much--"

"I'm Kuromaru's alpha," Ryouma interrupted, just a shade smugly.

"Which is going well for you, I'm sure," Kakashi said, desert dry, as Hoshika made a startled noise. "Okay, fine, if you want to bring another pack in, that makes it a little more complicated." He hooked over his noodles and chopsticks, and tugged his mask down to his chin to eat while he talked. "Your average pack has two alphas--male and female, usually a partnership but not always. Mine just has me, because summoning another alpha is more trouble than it's worth. And I have no idea what Tsume's doing with you and Kuromaru, but that's her business. I'd assume she's got a plan to get Kuromaru back on top."

There was a flicker of expression over Ryouma's face that Kakashi couldn't read. He inhaled, but the ramen-smell overpowered everything else.

"In this pack," he went on, feeling just a little warm at the thought, "you have to prove you're respect-worthy before Hoshika will take to you." Unless you were Ginta, apparently. "You could start by getting her to accept that jerky nicely."

Hoshika flipped an ear at his pointed look, but lowered her head when he jostled her (carefully) with a knee.

"Where 'nicely' means I get to keep my fingers, I'm guessin'." Ryouma fished a strip of dried meat out of the package and dangled it over the elegant head. Hoshika hesitated, looking to Kakashi, then tipped her head back and nipped the jerky neatly from Ryouma's fingers. Not so much respect for him, he figured, as for her own alpha.

Who evidently thought he was Ryouma's, too.

These dog-people were so weird.

He shoved away thoughts of Tsume and Kuromaru and their own messed-up ideas about pack hierarchy. Whatever else was at issue there, at least he got to be in charge. Sort of.

"I really need to start hangin' out with normal people again," he muttered, tugging out another handful of jerky. Hoshika was still working her way through the first one, gnawing sideways on the tough meat. Ryouma dropped the rest on the sheet beside her and retreated to his chair again. "You lot are so screwed up I'm startin' to feel like the boring one. Is Hoshika's respect that much harder to earn than yours?"

Screwed up, Kakashi reflected, was probably a nicer way of saying freak, but not by much. He wiped his mouth on the back of his wrist, pulled his mask up, and flicked his chopsticks between his fingers. They spun awkwardly, but picked up a smoother rhythm when he frowned and repeated the movement.

"Who says you've earned my respect?" he said, mimicking Ryouma's mild, see-how-I'm-not-reacting voice. "You've still got at least two more months of rookie drudgery before we get that far."

Noodle-laden chopsticks halfway to his mouth, Ryouma paused. "You said I could fight beside you," he said, in a voice that was equal parts teasing and obstinate.

"I'm often delirious when I'm recovering from a coma," Kakashi agreed. "It's upsetting."

Eyes narrowing, Ryouma lowered his noodles, accidentally dotting his lap with broth. "Well, I wasn't delirious, this time," he said, fierce and firm. "And I'm takin' you up on it."

Kakashi hesitated, one chopstick stalled against his thumb, then felt his shoulders settle down and relax. A smile quirked behind his mask, fast and gone like summer lightning; he pulled the black cloth down and reached for his half-eaten ramen again. "See, that's how you earn respect."

Hoshika made a low huffing noise that might have been amusement. When she looked at Ryouma, her brown eyes were a little warmer.

"By bullyin' you around?" Ryouma slurped up his noodles at last, flecking his tee-shirt with more wet spots. "I'll remember that." He balanced his chopsticks over the container and snagged the nearest bottle of soda. "D'you want me to open yours?"

Kakashi shook his head and swallowed another bite. "Too sweet."

"Like I said," Ryouma said. "Weird." He unscrewed the cap and took a long drink of carbonated and caffeinated paradise. Really, he realized dimly, he should be hoisting himself out of the chair again to trek down the hall and fetch Kakashi a cup of water or whatever. Except that was a little too perfect boyfriend, and he wasn't either of those. He ate a slice of roast pork instead.

Kakashi finished first, while Hoshika was still only halfway through her pile of jerky and Ryouma was contemplating why bubbles always went up your nose instead of down your throat. A medic poked her head in, scanned the scene of quiet gastronomic bliss, shook her head, and retreated again. She was halfway down the hall before Ryouma realized the only other thing Kakashi had asked for.

"Half a sec," he said, and bolted out of his chair. He caught up with her just short of the nursing station. "Hey, Kakashi's up and awake and lively--he's been talking for a good hour, just finished eating. He wants to go to the Stone."

"Hatake-san just woke up," the medic said severely.

"One of his teammates died," Ryouma said.

She hesitated. "It's getting late."

"We'll be quick," Ryouma promised. "I'll even take him in a wheelchair, bundled up all nice 'n warm, see? Just--" He paused in turn. Kakashi hadn't said anything since waking up, this time, but that didn't mean he'd forgotten. Ryouma'd been trying not to bring it up, after all. And Intel had come and mucked around in his head; who knew what that debriefing had brought back, what ramen had briefly staved off? Ryouma'd only had a few times in his life where he'd had to visit the Heroes' Stone, but even with a belly-wound, he hadn't wanted to wait. "You know how it is."

The woman's lips firmed. She'd lived in a ninja village all her life, worked in a shinobi hospital for years; she knew what he meant. "It's 1900 hours now," she said. "Bring him back before 2100. There are wheelchairs in the hall closet. Be sure you check in and out at the front desk. And I'll have the skin off your back if he catches cold."

"Yes'm," Ryouma said, and headed for the closet.

He tried three wheelchairs before he found one he liked, and then snagged an armful of thick blue blankets off the top shelf to go along with it. When he got back to the room, he found Kakashi spinning his chopsticks again and thoughtfully eyeing the IV lines. The rain-grey gaze flicked to the wheelchair before Ryouma had even manhandled it through the door. For a moment, there was only bone-melting gratitude. Then his eye narrowed, and his mouth hardened beneath the mask. "I can walk," he said.

"Or I could carry you," Ryouma pointed out. "Pick your poison."

"How about walking," Kakashi said stubbornly. "On my own feet, which have a few million years of evolutionary practice at the concept?"

"If you think you can walk to the Stone and back, you're welcome to try," Ryouma said, in a good imitation of Kakashi's usual drawl. He leaned on the wheelchair's handles. "But when you fall over, I'm hauling you back here over my shoulder. Through the middle of the city. Maybe with a detour by the Hokage's Palace. Or we could just take the wheelchair and be quick and quiet."

There was a beat of silence.

"I appreciate that you're a fast learner," said Kakashi eventually, "but it's possible to take a lesson too far."

Ryouma smirked, sharp as a blade, and watched him with steady dark eyes. Kakashi scowled back, then flicked another glance over the wheelchair. It was just a standard issue hospital model, stacked with blankets and boasting a ready set of foot supports. Or, to put it another way, embarrassment on four wheels.

"I hate you," Kakashi muttered, and reached across to shut down the monitors--something he'd learned during one of his very first hospital stays. If Ryouma had cleared a trip outside with the medics, they'd be expecting it. He tugged the re-attached suction cups off his chest, unthreading them from his shirt, and slid the IV needles free from his hands. Then he looked at Hoshika, who was watching them both, and ruffled her ears.

"Time to go, beautiful."

Brown eyes flicked quickly between Kakashi and Ryouma, then narrowed at Ryouma in clear warning. Kakashi stifled something like a snort. Hoshika snapped up the last scraps of jerky from the bed, licked his fingers, and slid stiffly down to the floor.

A whip-crack of chakra was all it took to banish her.

Kakashi vision greyed for a moment as the back-lash caught him with a nasty sting; he breathed out slow. Then he swung his legs off the bed (didn't wince), and set his bare feet on the floor. Muscles that had been overworked, left to stiffen for a week, and then recently slammed into hard tiles woke up and yelled at him. He hissed a breath between his teeth, getting used to it, then shoved himself upright.

For a brief moment of triumph, his legs held and he grinned tightly, then they collapsed like a headshot puppet.

Ryouma caught him just before the floor did, hard-muscled arms tightening around his chest and shoulders. Kakashi grabbed him back, fingers digging hard into cloth and skin, and made a noise of short, defeated frustration.

"Okay," he said, disgusted to find himself panting. "You win. Can we go now?"

Gloating would probably get him punched in the gut, but at least Kakashi couldn't see him grin. Ryouma murmured something vague, conciliatory, and entirely unfelt as he hefted Kakashi to his feet. Sure, anxious concern was probably the appropriate response in this sort of situation--but since when had either of them ever been appropriate?

And Kakashi falling on his face was pretty damn funny--as long as he didn't hit the floor.

They achieved the wheelchair at last, and hit the next stumbling block when Kakashi flatly refused to be bundled up in blankets with "Property of Konoha Hospital" embroidered on the corners. Ryouma, who had secretly been cherishing mental images of Kakashi swaddled like a baby, pointed out that it was only the first week of April and in Snow Country they were still expecting another three months of blizzards.

Kakashi pointed out that anyone who tried to cocoon him in blankets would very quickly learn what the chidori did to the human spine.

"You'd flatline yourself tryin' to get a spark," Ryouma scoffed. "All right, what about a sweater? Seriously, dude, if I bring you back with pneumonia they're going to have my head. And right now, Daichi-sensei and his team scare me more than you do."

"My heart bleeds for you," Kakashi snorted, trying to get his feet braced comfortably on the icy foot-rests. In spite of himself, his eye slid towards the red hoodie now tossed casually over the back of the vinyl chair, Atomic Sunrise lettering crumpled in a way that now read mic unri.

Knowing Ryouma, he would probably still listen to a band called mic unri.

"S'long as you don't bleed on my clothes," Ryouma said cheerfully, reaching across Kakashi to snag the hoodie. He dropped it in Kakashi's lap and waited, infuriatingly patient, until Kakashi yanked it on and got himself settled again. The hoodie was still too big, just like the last time he'd woken up wearing it, and enveloped his hands in soft, slightly static material until he gave up and pushed the sleeves back to his elbows.

"Cute," said Ryouma, from somewhere behind his head. Kakashi could hear his smirk.

He tipped his head back and gave the man a narrow-eyed look. "Don't make me hurt you."

"You'd miss my scintillating wit," Ryouma returned easily.

Kakashi arched his eyebrows. "Scintillating?"

"'To scintillate'," Ryouma said, as he pulled the wheelchair around, "'is to be animated and brilliant'. Brilliant. Or to be a movie-watcher, which is the difference between thinking smart and not hard. Did I mention brilliant?"

"Three times."

"Awesome."

Kakashi braced his chin on his hand, elbow propped against an arm-rest, and wondered how much of this babble was Ryouma's attempt to keep either one of them from thinking too hard about anything, and how much was just Ryouma being Ryouma. The nurse at the ICU's main desk gave them both a warning look as they rolled past; Kakashi glanced back over his shoulder and caught sight of Ginta's door, slightly ajar. The chakra pattern inside wasn't quite wound down enough for sleep, but it was close.

Behind Kakashi's shoulder, Ryouma was a banked sun of energy, just rested enough to be jittery. Kakashi remembered the coffee-cup castle, the litter of junk food wrappers, Ryouma's voice--You wouldn't believe how boring it gets just watching you sleep--and couldn't remember if he'd said thank you.

I've been here all week.

He leaned his head back, until he could feel Ryouma's knuckles brushing the back of his skull, and looked up at shadow-bruised, exhausted eyes. "Can you push this thing any faster, or has all that sitting down atrophied your legs?"

Ryouma snorted. "You're one to talk about atrophy. I've been watching the Five Rings cycle and doing one-handed push-ups." He punched the elevator button and leaned against the wall while machinery creaked. "We spent a day an' a half touring the classic shinobi rock scene, too. You shoulda absorbed some good music." Hopefully, he hummed the first bars from Shutdown Assassin's 'Nemesis.' "Sound familiar?"

A grey eyebrow lifted under the lank fall of hair. Kakashi's lips pinched together beneath the mask; he hummed back a pitch-perfect version of the opening riff. "No. But I appreciate your attempt to give me musical Stockholm in my sleep."

"You probably don't even listen to music," Ryouma accused. "Have to do somethin' about that." The elevator door pinged open, and he backed in, dragging Kakashi's wheelchair after him. "Shuriken Force's playing in Tanzaku City in June..."

"I've got a mission then," Kakashi said. He hit the button for the ground floor. "So do you, I imagine."

"Yeah," Ryouma said quietly. "Probably."

The conversation didn't improve much on the long trek across the village to the Heroes' Stone. Kakashi snarked back when Ryouma gibed him, but his replies grew quieter, less cutting, until he seemed lost in his own thoughts. By the time they hit the bridge leading over the river to the training grounds encircling the Stone, even Ryouma had run out of things to say. The light was fading fast; the Hokage Monument loomed dark against the distant sunset, and the Stone cast a long shadow across the thin spring grass. Ryouma halted the wheelchair just short of the memorial and set the brake.

"I'll, uh...leave you to it, I guess." He stepped back, shoving his hands in his pockets; it was beginning to grow cold. "Gimme a holler when you want me again?"

Another moment to say thank you, if Kakashi had been anything like a normal human being. He glanced at Ryouma and jerked his head in acknowledgment, lips flattening behind his mask. Clouds blanketed most of the sky, but there was still enough fading sunlight--gathering moonlight--to silver the two-day's growth of stubble on Ryouma's jawline and lay pale fingers across the hollows at the base of his throat. Ryouma hesitated a moment, then nodded abruptly and stepped off, drawing back.

There was an art form to giving an injured ninja privacy at the Stone. Kakashi watched as Ryouma walked far enough away to be within sight, but out of hearing range, and knew that was all he was going to get.

It was good enough.

As soon as Ryouma looked away, Kakashi slipped out of the overlarge hoodie, tossing it across one of the wheelchair's arms, and straightened up in his shinobi blacks. Covered from the bridge of his nose to the bones of his ankles, tattoo left bare. Uniformed, respectful. He clenched his hands around the arm rests, caught his breath, and shoved himself to his feet. The scabbed slice along his hip woke up and flared.

Obito didn't mind if Kakashi had to brace himself against the Stone; he'd done it often enough before.

Cut down near the bottom, where there was still space, recent names were new and fresh, scored deep. Tsuyako's wasn't among them. Kakashi dragged his fingers across the stretch of empty stone, then lifted his hand to Obito's name. It was nearer the middle, surrounded by others, weathered by the elements. Two years above Rin's and Minato's.

He inhaled, slow, and let forced non-thought give way to actual memory. It didn't take much effort to remember the snap of breaking vertebrae, twisting beneath his own hands. Or the older crack-crunch of falling rock stealing a different life.

Exhale.

"Hey, Obito."

Distantly, he could feel the controlled flow of chakra being taken through a basic set of katas; Ryouma's version of quiet time-killing. Any minute now, Kakashi expected to hear the dull grunt of a man dropping into the latest set of one-handed press ups--probably. Or a breakdance set to hummed rock music.

His breath streamed in the cooling air. At his back, Ryouma felt like a chakra furnace. His throat worked as he tried to find the words, any words, to tell Obito why this latest teammate hadn't made it home.

For once, they didn't come.

Ryouma finished one kata and began another, and Kakashi didn't move. The sinking sun caught the red sweat-shirt draped over the wheelchair and the scarlet tattoo on Kakashi's arm and turned both to blood, and then to ashes. In the twilight Ryouma straightened, panting and damp with sweat, and watched Kakashi standing there. Bent head, blade-straight shoulders, one arm thrust out to brace against the weather-beaten Stone. His black shirt and trousers were already beginning to fade into the long dusk-darkened shadow of the Stone. When the rising moon slipped behind a cloud, even his hair lost its light.

Shouri, one of Ryouma's genin teammates, had liked ghost-stories. He'd always found something else to do while she was telling them, and now he remembered why.

Ninja lived too close to the dead already, and Kakashi lived closer than any of them. Even when he wasn't fresh off a mission from which he'd failed to bring someone home, he seemed to spend half his time with the ghosts of memories, waiting to add one more name to the tally. Waiting to join them himself.

Ryouma took two steps closer, caught himself, and watched.

At last Kakashi seemed to waver; he took a very careful step back, reached for the wheelchair, and lowered himself slowly down. Did that mean he was done? Holler, Ryouma'd said, but he wasn't sure he could imagine Kakashi hollering anything. Even in the heat of battle or emotion his voice went hard instead of loud. And he didn't yell now, either--but he did slouch back in the chair and tip his head back, glaring up at the sky. Ryouma couldn't hear the sharp, frustrated breath, but it wasn't hard to imagine.

That was probably good enough. Ryouma wandered back, stopping once to retrieve a half-buried kunai some genin had left behind. When he reached the Stone, he crouched down and sank the kunai to the hilt in the thick grass springing up at the memorial's base. His fingers found one name, at shoulder-height; another, eleven years later; a few more further down. Misao's name wasn't here, of course. She'd died on a mission, but not honorably, not in combat. He was still sometimes surprised that his mother's was.

"You said what you need to?" he asked. He glanced over his shoulder to find Kakashi's face. For a moment, between black mask and shrouding hair, he almost couldn't.

Ryouma really had been out of hearing range.

"No," said Kakashi. He dropped his chin, almost biting his tongue at the flash of sudden honesty. Sudden words. But Ryouma always did have a way of getting answers out of a person. Kakashi leaned forward, movements cut sharp with cold. "No. I couldn't tell him--"

He stopped. Ryouma's expression didn't flicker; he turned a little more, angling to look over his own shoulder in a way that should have seemed painful, but fell somewhere more natural. Listening, steady, willing to hear whatever Kakashi had to say. There was even an edge of invitation in the uncurving line of his mouth, in the patient, storm-dark eyes.

Living, breathing person. Nothing you found in a stone.

Kakashi swallowed hard, and felt his dry throat click. He couldn't tell Obito. Obito was the reason teammates mattered, the reason Kakashi wrenched himself to pieces trying to get every last one home. The exact, precise, goddamned reason he didn't have more blood on his hands.

Ryouma wasn't any of that. Ryouma was just--someone worth waking up to. Someone who'd listened before, called Kakashi seven kinds of idiot, and still kissed him hard when he'd come back from blackness that'd begun with one dying teammate and one already locked in the ground.

Someone who'd hung around the hospital for a week, wrangled nurses, faced down Intel, dragged Kakashi's ass clear across town in an uncooperative wheelchair, and danced kata in twilight while Kakashi had tried to find words that meant murderer and said I'm sorry.

Ryouma was crouching; Kakashi didn't need to stand again.

"I talk to Obito," he said finally, quietly. "Whenever I can. It helps me--keep things straight. And I owe him that. But he--he shouldn't--"

He hesitated, jerked his chin up and then forced it down. Spoke short and blunt, in front of the marker that wasn't just Obito's, to a man who'd probably already heard too much.

"I killed Tsuyako. Ginta's teammate. She broke under torture and I couldn't carry them both home."

The words hit Ryouma somewhere just below the ribcage, but they took a moment to sink in. He stared blankly up at Kakashi. The name was familiar, from the little he'd heard Ginta say; the words were all ones he knew, too, but they weren't supposed to fit together that way. Kakashi didn't kill teammates. He brought them home, risking his own life to do it, lashing broken bodies to giant dogs' backs and carrying them in solid clones' arms. He brought them home when there was no one else do to it, no one else who could do it, when no one even believed it could be done. Ryouma and Tsume and Kuromaru would probably be rotting up in Lightning Country right now if Kakashi hadn't brought them all home.

But Tsuyako was rotting somewhere out in Waterfall Country now, instead. Too late for her, Ginta had said. Broke under torture, Kakashi had said.

Too late, or too worthless?

He couldn't identify her name on the Stone, if it was there. But of course it wouldn't be. Dying in the field wasn't enough; you had to die with honor, with courage, saving your teammates or completing the mission. If he'd died under torture in Lightning Country, no one would have remembered him here.

"I broke." His voice didn't quite sound like his own; it didn't feel like it, either. He swallowed convulsively, remembering the fiery taste of acid on his tongue, the raw agony of vocal chords shredded with screams. "Not--not quite under torture. But Tsume came, and I thought she was another genjutsu. I knew it was a genjutsu. She was dead. But I couldn't watch them do to her what they did to me. I begged 'em not to hurt her, to let me give them what they wanted. They didn't listen--she was real, and she was killing 'em. But it's the same in the end, isn't it? I broke. Only difference is no one else knew it."

He tipped his head, meeting Kakashi's gaze. "Would you have brought me back, if you did?"

Next time, Kakashi thought, dull and distant, he'd just get Ryouma to punch him. It'd save time and effort and hurting hearts all 'round. And he wouldn't have to think of words afterwards.

Or he'd just keep his mouth shut in the first place, like a decent ninja.

But that wasn't the real issue -- the real issue was Ryouma wanting to know if he was due a snapped spine. Ryouma breaking, which Kakashi would never had expected from him, ever. Even with the gut-knowledge that everyone broke eventually, if you found the right trigger.

Ryouma had broken.

Ryouma who was kneeling in front of him right now, head lifted and jaw set, looking up at him with sharp, hard eyes and a mouth twisted flat. Braced for a fight, or an argument, or a blow. But for a minute, just before, he'd looked like Kakashi had yanked the ground out from under his feet and offered it back in a different shape.

Which made two of them.

And Kakashi really needed to stand again. He pushed himself up, caught his balance on the stone with a silent apology, felt the night-frosted grass curl around his bare ankles, and met Ryouma's defiant eyes. Looked down at him.

"Yes," he said, and if the words sounded flat than at least he had reason. "I would've brought Tsuyako back, too, if I could've managed it without killing all three of us. But she was an inch away from gone--she would've gone, if I hadn't shocked her heart back to beating--and I had to make a choice. What would you have done?" He was starting to snap now, lip curling up. Angry because he was hurt; because he'd wanted Ryouma to say it's okay, not would you have killed me, too?, and furious at himself for needing that.

Furious at Ryouma for falling down in a way he'd never expected. For being human, and imperfect, and fallible. (Traitor)

He jerked away from the stone, caught Ryouma by the shoulder, and yanked him up. Felt muscles stiffen like iron beneath his grip, the defensive swirl of chakra under skin.

"What would you do now?" he demanded. "If you were me. What will you do, Ryouma? Because if you're thinking of seppuku--" and now he was snarling, "--I can think of a dozen different deaths that'll serve the village better. But don't you dare ask me to put you in the ground."

"The hell you say," Ryouma said, and wrenched away. His chilled, weakened knee wavered on the edge of giving out. He staggered, scraped his hip against the Stone, and came up short. Dead men at his back, a living, snarling man in front, fear and fury twisting like a knife in his gut.

Seppuku. He'd never even thought of it. What the hell kind of ideas were running through Kakashi's head, to imagine that he would?

"I would've killed her," he ground out. "But I would've done it honestly, given her mercy. Not excused it away like I didn't have a choice. Not said she broke under torture like that made it okay. I held out for five hours and slipped for one minute, and that's enough to put a death sentence on my head? Sure, you'd have brought me back anyway, but what would you've brought me back to?"

Court-martial, instead of catheters.

And Kakashi would never have come when Ryouma screamed, would never have pulled him back from the blackness of the edge and slept with him to keep the nightmares at bay. One idiotic law Ryouma'd never paid the slightest attention to--a law he'd broken to far less effect than half a dozen others--and Kakashi would've handed him over to the village Military Police with those same flat words. He broke under torture.

Court-martial. Execution. And for what? Maybe the law made sense to the Hokage in his palace, to the village council with their politics and their prejudices. What was one ninja's life worth anyway, after he'd already broken?

But Ryouma had been there, jutsu-bound in that chair with half his chest flayed away and most of his fingernails ripped out and only a ragged defiance holding him back from insanity. He'd sworn he'd die before he gave in, and he'd meant it. But that oath was for the village that'd given him a place and a purpose, a home to love and a reason to fight. He hadn't held out because they'd kill him if he didn't. He hadn't broken, at the end, because Shiki's knives scared him more than Konoha's law. He hadn't even thought of the law--until now, with his back to a stone full of dead heroes' names, staring down a man he'd thought he knew.

"I said I'd show them my jutsu." He threw his head up, fierce as a cornered tiger. "Shiki wanted it to build a village, and he was willing to cut me apart to get it. I wouldn't have given it to save myself--only Tsume. And I didn't show 'em, anyway, and they're dead, and I will kill myself before it happens again. If you think that's not good enough--if you think I'm as broken and useless as Tsuyako was--then you'd better call the MPs yourself. Turn me in. Keep your hands clean, this time, and let them do it instead."

His lips curled back from his teeth. "Tell 'em to be ready for a fight."

Kakashi had been throwing punches ever since his fourth birthday, when his father had shown him the perfect way to curl his fingers into a fist; knuckles braced, thumb tucked down, chakra protecting breakable bones. Force drawn from the hip and wrist, never the shoulder.

Even now, muscles aching, heart flayed open, body temperature coiling in on itself in the chilly breeze, he hadn't forgotten. And he didn't hesitate.

He did pull the blow, just a little, so that when his fist slammed into the flat blade of Ryouma's jaw, it didn't shatter bone. Ryouma's eyes widened fractionally just before impact--either he hadn't been expecting it, or he didn't believe it--then he was thrown back against the Stone. He recovered fast, spinning off and away, falling into a fighting stance. If there was a word for his scent, it fell somewhere between raw and betrayed.

Kakashi ducked his head and snarled like a wolf.

"How are you this stupid?" he demanded. "They don't care if you have fight in you, they'll kill you. And they won't think about it afterwards. And that's not even the point!" He grappled for words, trying to find the right way to show Ryouma how wrong he was, in every single way. How to make flesh-and-bone rules make sense. "Tsuyako wasn't useless, and I didn't kill her because I wanted to, you bastard. And I'm damn sure not making excuses--I'm telling you the reason."

For all the good that had done.

He ground his teeth together, forcing shaken, aching hands still. Exhaled and glared at Ryouma. "What did you think they'd do with your jutsu after you'd given it to them? They'd have wiped out our village. Every minute matters. My father--" He hesitated, then decided he didn't care. Ryouma knew everything else about him anyway. "My father made a decision like that; sacrificed a mission to save his teammates. D'you think they hailed him for a hero? Not even close. He was ostracised, shamed until he killed himself to wipe the debt clean. He saved half a dozen ninja and got a hundred more killed, and he wasn't even tortured. He just made a choice, made his own choice because he thought he knew better." Kakashi blew a short breath out between his teeth. "And he was a lot smarter than you."

He crossed his arms, holding heat in, and crushed the urge to shiver.

"We follow the rules, Ryouma. No exceptions, no excuses. And if we fall short then we make up the debt." He tilted his head up, meeting Ryouma's eyes squarely. "You're not the only one to have been tortured, you know."

"And turning myself in so my own village can do it again before they execute me will make up the debt, right?" Ryouma straightened, shoving clenched fists into his jeans pockets, and kept his distance. "Sorry, but I'm no samurai. I'm a gutter-rat--a bastard, thanks for the reminder--and we don't do honorable. We survive. I thought ninja were supposed to do that, too."

Kakashi made an abrupt, jerky movement, like a strangled urge to pace. "Survive for what, Ryouma?"

"For everything!" Ryouma half-yelled. "The next mission! The next team! Doing it right the next time! I saved your ass on my first mission after I got back, and I didn't even get scratched on the A-rank I took after that. I'm not gonna fall apart just 'cause I messed up once. I'm a hell of a good ninja and I can go on being a hell of a good ninja--or you can pretend that minute mattered, even when it didn't, and see me dead 'cause your rules say so, screw the waste."

How many more teammates could Hatake Sakumo have saved, if the village's censure and his own shame hadn't combined to sink that knife into his belly? What sort of difference could Konoha's White Fang have made in the war, in Kakashi's life, in Konoha's future? The sheer sickening waste of it caught in Ryouma's throat.

He'd never planned for a future, but he didn't want to lose it like this.

He shoved his cold hands deeper into his pockets, crumpling a ramen receipt around a handful of change. "Either way, I'll pay my debt. It's your choice whether I do it alive and fighting or not. I can't see how my death'll serve Konoha more'n my hands and muscles and jutsu will, but you're the genius." His aching jaw set. "Call it."

Ice set solid in Kakashi's lungs. Slowly, he fell back on his heels and stared at the man in front of him. At the darkening red bruise on the corner of Ryouma's jaw, and the glint of angry steel in his eyes. At the way Ryouma had tilted his head back just the slightest inch, as if he wanted Kakashi to grab it and snap his neck.

Your rules. And Kakashi wanted to say: No, not my rules. My life. Because he didn't just obey them. He breathed them, wore them, carried them around like a second skin (third mask). Did his best to work within their strict borders and still bring every life dependent on him back home -- like Obito had wanted.

And he was getting the nauseating feeling that he'd gotten it wrong again, even before Ryouma had drowned him in words and offered Kakashi his life.

Breaking was treason -- but everyone broke, eventually.

Traitors were executed -- but not in every case.

Those who abandon their comrades and friends are worse than trash.

He'd broken Tsuyako's neck.

For a very real moment, Kakashi thought he was going to be sick. He swallowed hard, put out a hand to brace himself on the Stone (chidori-burned hand; the same one he'd used to punch Ryouma with, and why was he only just noticing that had hurt?), and drew a slow breath. Steadied himself.

"I told you already," he said, "that if I'd known, I still would have brought you back. I would have stayed with you in the hospital, and defended you in front of the council, and probably would have joined you on every stupid B-rank mission they'd have assigned you for the next three months--" Probably. Maybe. Because despite everything Kakashi feared, the council wouldn't execute a brand new agent who'd only slipped enough to scare the only other person who knew about it. The Hokage wouldn't let them.

At least, Kakashi hoped so.

"--Because you do really dumb things when you're left to run around on your own." Like every moment they'd shared company in the last three months, which just proved Kakashi was equally untrustworthy. Across his left hip, the half-healed sword wound ached; he shifted his weight, re-balancing on legs that had long crossed the line between aching and burning. "And you're right, if they'd wanted your life in balance for screwing up your seventh mission, rookie, I would have held the sword. I owe you that much. But it's not my choice to make."

Not even for the man who'd spent a week waiting for him to wake up, and greeted him with a kiss. No exceptions, no excuses.

Except when there were.

Kakashi dragged his free hand across his forehead and pinched the bridge of his nose. It must be nice, he thought bitterly, to be Ryouma and know exactly how the world should work.

"I'm not going to kill you," he said finally, flatly. "Or tell anyone. Pay your debt in your own way and get your ass into some anti-interrogation classes."

"You--" Ryouma cut himself off, licked cracking dry lips, and stared. Kakashi didn't look back. His single eye squeezed into a silver-lashed line as he pinched his nose tightly. He looked like his head hurt, which made two of them. But at least Ryouma's heart had stopped its sick hammering against his ribcage, and his breath had begun to come a little easier.

He won't tell.

Ryouma wet his lips again. "Sounds to me like you just made your choice."

Kakashi's eye snapped open, narrowing into a glare. Ryouma tugged his hands hastily out of his pockets and held them up empty. A small coin had stuck between his fingers; it fell into the dark grass with a tiny sound that made both of them flinch. Like a severed head falling, Ryouma thought. He wondered if Kakashi was thinking the same.

"I won't screw up again," he said, and amended it, "Not that way." Anti-interrogation classes sounded like less fun than anything he'd ever heard of, but he could do them. He could get a false tooth implanted in place of one of his missing molars, like that Iwa kunoichi from their first mission together. He could fight hard and smart, and never get captured again in the first place. He paid his debts; he'd pay this one, too.

And he'd never, ever call in that favor Kakashi had offered, because whatever screwed-up samurai notions of honor and loyalty the Copy Ninja still carried, Ryouma was never going to let Kakashi see him fall again.

"C'mon," he said at last, taking a hesitant step forward. "It's getting late. We'd better get you back, before that medic kills me after all."

Hospital. Kakashi pushed himself off the Stone, glanced back at the wheelchair, and couldn't think of anything he'd ever wanted to do less. Glass walls for every room, nurses keeping an eagle eye on unwilling patients, no space to think. Nothing that smelled like his. Ginta across the hallway, probably wanting to have another talk very like this one.

Kakashi pressed his lips together, feeling queasy again.

Ryouma had paused where he was, fractionally closer, waiting for a reply. The wind dragged feather-light fingers through his hair, ruffling it into short dark waves, and carrying his scent directly to Kakashi. Calmer, a touch sweeter, black around the edges with the lingering vestiges of fear.

Ryouma had been afraid. Kakashi hadn't even realized.

Fear was a good way to make a lesson stick, he'd heard squad leaders say. Heard Jiraiya say. But damn if Kakashi even knew what the lesson was. He reached out for Ryouma's wrist, hesitated, realized he didn't have anything close to the right, and yanked his hand back. Dragged it through his hair instead, to cover.

Ryouma's mouth flattened.

Kakashi shook his head. "I think I'm ready to be done with doctors. How about we go back to HQ, instead?"

Ryouma thought briefly of all the gear he'd left behind in the hospital room--TV, stereo, CDs, video-cassettes, clothes and snacks and his coffee cup castle. The nurses would undoubtedly confiscate it all if he and Kakashi absconded, and he'd have a hell of a time getting any of it back.

Was that part of the debt, too?

But if Kakashi wasn't wavering on his feet, it was only because he'd locked his knees and grounded himself into preternatural stillness. His chakra was a bare flicker in the dusk. He'd woken up from a coma this morning, dammit, and he looked the part.

Besides, if Ryouma took him home, Kakashi would probably just summon another dog and flatline himself again.

"Sorry," he said. "Medic said she'd have my hide if I didn't bring you back in time, and I don't have much of it left. Besides, I gotta return the wheelchair." He took another step, skirting the Stone. Kakashi's skin was goose-pimpled in the cold, but he wasn't shivering. Ryouma was. At least the evening chill was a good excuse.

The round, leather-wrapped handles of the wheelchair were reassuringly solid beneath his grip, the chair heavy enough that he could lean on it a little without unbalancing it. He thought about trying some flippant comment--Your palanquin awaits, m'lady--but all that came out in the end was, "I'm sorry."

And, a moment later, "Thanks."

Thoroughly disquieted, Kakashi settled for jerking his head in an awkward nod, and let his gaze slide back to the wheelchair. He didn't have the energy left to start another fight; he could go back to the hospital tonight and check out in the morning. It didn't seem likely that Ryouma would stay the night again, anyway.

His red sweatshirt was still folded limply over one wheelchair arm; Ryouma himself was wearing only jeans and a t-shirt, something that showed in his pale face and white knuckles. Though, if Kakashi thought about it too hard, he doubted that was really cold.

Ryouma had apologized. Thanked him.

Behind his black mask, sharp canine teeth sank uncomfortably into a chilled lower lip. The whole thing was wrong, and Kakashi couldn't work out why. Ryouma had been wrong, but seeing him this close to admitting it was too much like seeing him broken. All the fight kicked out of him.

How big a sin, really, was faltering for one minute?

How could it be worse than a shattered woman left to rot, unmarked by a name on the Stone or a headstone of her own, hundreds of miles from home?

A frustrated sigh spilled from his lips, gone before Kakashi could catch it; he pulled the sweatshirt free from the chair and yanked it over his head, rolling the overlong sleeves halfway up his forearms. Then he ignored the wheelchair, stepping past it until he could stand next to Ryouma and look up at his weary face. At cracked lips, shadowed eyes, strung-out tension that hadn't been there two months ago.

The bite mark at his throat was fading from livid pink, slowly turning white. Kakashi's mark.

And for god's sake, Ryouma was still new. Young. Pushed too hard and too fast when they weren't even at war anymore--and despite that, in almost every way, he'd excelled. Done better than most without any kind of background for it. Kakashi seriously doubted Ryouma had had someone to teach him how to punch right when he'd been four years old.

He lifted his hand and splayed it over the livid mark blooming on Ryouma's jaw; thumb across his cheek, fingers curving around beneath the jawbone. Ryouma stopped breathing.

"It's not just you," Kakashi told him, quiet, deadtone serious. "Okay? It's not just you. I'm up here for the same reason." His eye flicked briefly to the Stone and back. "Trying to make things--not right, but less wrong. We all have debts."

One cold, callused hand curled against the side of Ryouma's face shouldn't matter nearly so much as it did. Or at least, it should matter in ways that made sense--not with a stomach-churning concoction of relief and fear and a pinch of tired-out fury, the electric impulse to wrench away warring with the traitorous need to lean in closer. This wasn't a break-up fight; hell, they didn't even have anything to break up. The gentle hand cupping his aching jaw was probably supposed to be reassuring, like the way Kakashi had wiped away the blood from his bite. They'd yelled at each other then, too, and it had been all right afterwards. Better than all right.

It was better now, but Kakashi'd told the truth: it still wasn't right.

He stepped back. Kakashi's hand dropped away, and his shoulders curled in. In the deepening twilight his face was almost lost, but Ryouma still caught the brief flicker as his eye squeezed shut and then opened again. Ryouma bit the inside of his cheek.

"You're paying it," he said, a shade too urgently; he leaned forward again, but Kakashi didn't reach out. "That, just now--that's making it right. Bring flowers for Tsuyako, next time you come; she did her best. An' I'll head down to the basements soon as I get back to HQ, roust up one of the creepers and sign up for the next set of anti-interrogation courses. That's a start, isn't it?"

It still wouldn't make things right between them, but Ryouma wasn't really sure what could.

"Yeah," said Kakashi, watching his breath stream on the wind. "It's a start."

It felt like an end. He'd been through anti-interrogation training himself, years ago, when he'd first joined ANBU. And he'd put it to good use since. Ryouma was learning the lesson backwards, but Kakashi didn't doubt it would change something fundamental at his core; sharpen his edges, blunt that dagger-blade, daredevil grin. Creep inside already scarred skin and build another layer of hard, soul-saving armour.

Eight more months and Ryouma would be an ANBU veteran. And suddenly, all Kakashi wanted to do was tell him to get out now. Find a pretty girl with a sweet smile, buy a house, and raise a pack of tanned, black-haired children with no idea how to drive a knife through flesh.

But Konoha needed its soldiers, and Kakashi knew where his duty lay.

In the blue moonlight, the curving scar over Ryouma's throat gleamed silver-pink. It was barely two weeks old, a promise Kakashi had made with every intention of keeping, bitten right into vulnerable skin. I'll leave you when that fades. Six days before he'd run out into a different night to bring Ginta's fevered body and Tsuyako's bloody fingerprints home.

He'd been a fool, but he wasn't ready to be a liar. Not yet.

"C'mon, then," he muttered, and walked past the Stone on legs shaking with fatigue, pausing only long enough to drag his fingers one last time over Obito's name. The space where Tsuyako's should have been, if she'd held out for one more day. He collapsed back into the wheelchair and closed his eye. "Let's go back."

This time they made the trip in total silence, without even the awkward, dying banter from before. The streets were beginning to empty, as people headed home or settled into bars and restaurants; the last shopkeepers had already locked their doors. At the hospital, visiting hours were almost over. Kakashi's head lolled sideways in the elevator; he jerked himself sharply awake, and managed to stave off the nods long enough for Ryouma to sign them both back in. A passing nurse smiled down at him and then lifted the smile to Ryouma, as if they shared a secret. He barely managed to muster one back.

Ginta was reading a glossy magazine in his room across the hall. He didn't look up as Ryouma slid Kakashi's door open and shoved the wheelchair inside. The light from the hall shafted through the half-glass wall, bright enough that Ryouma didn't need to flick a switch. Kakashi was almost asleep again, anyway.

He roused a little when Ryouma parked the chair next to the bed, and made a stiff attempt at levering himself out. One of his elbows buckled. Ryouma took three long steps back to close the blinds, and then caught Kakashi under the arms as he made a second unsuccessful attempt at pushing himself up. The wheelchair rolled away, but between the two of them they managed to get Kakashi into bed. He lay back with an exhausted sigh.

Ryouma folded up the wheelchair and braced it against the wall. When he looked back, Kakashi was curled half on his side, watching him. "Planning to stay?" The words were a low murmur, almost lost in the pillow. His gaze already knew what was coming.

"Better not," Ryouma said quietly. He shoved his hands in his pockets. "I got those classes to sign up for."

Kakashi's eye closed. "Don't forget your stuff."

"I'll get it later." Ryouma backed toward the door. "You can watch the Five Rings trilogy, if you get bored. Try re-enacting the siege scene on the castle." He hesitated. "Get some rest."

Kakashi nodded.

Ryouma's throat hurt. He turned blindly, scrabbled the door open again, and shut it behind him. Across the hall Ginta was eating dinner with a visitor, a slim dark-haired boy in a black civilian turtleneck. Neither of them looked up as Ryouma scuffed down the hall to the nursing station.

"Heading out for the night," he told the woman behind the desk. "Kakashi's asleep. Look after him, will you?"

"Of course," the nurse said, with an insulted sniff. She paused, looking at him more closely. "Are you all right, Ryouma-kun?"

"I'm fine." He waved her off and started for the stairs. "Just a little stir-crazy. Think maybe I'll take a mission and get out of everyone's hair. Let him know, will you?"

"Of course," the nurse said more quietly, but Ryouma was already gone.