"I'm pretty sure I didn't know that," Ryouma pointed out. He pushed himself out of his chair, nearly tripped over the dancing dog, and managed to find the pause button on the T.V. A samurai froze halfway through lopping off someone's head. He'd just hit the climactic scene of the last battle in the third Five Rings film, but silver-screen company didn't hold a candle to the real thing.

"Good to see you." He slid a hand over Kuromaru's ears, lifted a smile to Tsume. "And food. I swear, you're my goddess of good-food-in-hospitals, or somethin'. I didn't even have to be bed-ridden this time! I think we should make this the new tradition. I'm a big fan of not being the one getting hurt."

Unless the one getting hurt was Kakashi.

Ryouma squared his shoulders and reached for Tsume's box. "Seein' as you're the first official visitors, I think we got a celebration on our hands. Kuromaru, there's root beer and chips in the bag over there."

"I'm pretty sure you're the first official visitor," Tsume laughed, handing over the box. "Given healthy people in hospitals don't normally get visitors. Technically, we're visiting him." She glanced at Kakashi again, feeling a twinge of concern. He'd heal. He was the Copy Ninja. She thought about asking what happened, then glanced at Ryouma -- at the strain around his eyes that he was trying not to show -- and decided she could have some discretion. Besides, she'd hear it through rumor soon enough.

"You look like half-eaten rodents, Ryouma." Discretion about Kakashi, anyway, and what distracted someone better than harassing them? Nothing. Ryouma was pale, though nothing that a good night's sleep wouldn't solve. His T-shirt framed his shoulders well, gathering at his lean waist. Baggy jeans only hinted at muscle underneath, and his feet were bare on the linoleum.

He looked great, from the tips of his toes to the sooty lashes framing dark eyes. She smiled. "Been here all night? Or rather, as much as they'd let you?"

Kuromaru sniffed Ryouma's toes. "He smells good!" One golden eye turned guilelessly up at Tsume. "Don't you think?"

She eyed her familiar. "Delightful," she drawled.

Kuromaru looked back at Ryouma. "She thinks you smell good." He wagged.

"Seein' as you think the same, that's not saying much, is it?" Ryouma curled his bare foot, scuffing lightly at Kuromaru's fur. "Besides, smelling good but looking awful doesn't really get me points. What's up with you Inuzuka and your new obsession with rodents of doom, anyway?" He stooped to pick up the bag of chips, considered, and plopped down on the floor with the grease-spotted box of food still balanced precariously on one hand.

He'd grown used to sitting on cold hospital linoleum in the last day and a half. The ancient vinyl recliner grew uncomfortable after only a few hours, and Ryouma was too restless to stay in one spot for long. Perching on the edge of Kakashi's bed hadn't lasted more than five minutes before it was back to recliner, floor, pacing, barging over to check on Ginta, back to pacing again... At least the movies helped him keep still.

Food and friends were good for that, too. "Been here since yesterday afternoon," he informed Tsume as he popped the box lid back. "Still got a crick in my neck from sleeping in that recliner. I think tonight I'm staying on the floor." He peered into the box. "Okonomiyaki! Aww, you remembered." He glanced up sidelong at Tsume, grinning. "Our first date and everything."

Tsume hesitated halfway down to the floor, glancing at him sharply and catching his grin. She relaxed and chuckled back. "How could I forget? It was so very memorable." Especially with the trying not to vomit part.

"I picked the toppings."

"Except these two, which are safe for human consumption," Tsume said dryly. "The rest you eat at your own risk."

"You know," Kuromaru began loudly, looking everywhere but at them, "there's a chair here for people... you could sha--re!" He gave Tsume a withering look, moving away from the foot that had kicked him.

"Would you stop?" Tsume stared at him in exasperation, then glanced at Ryouma. "Normally we're home, and when he gets like this he can go around setting up other canines. Or taking care of puppies."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Kuromaru sniffed disdainfully and looked away. "I'm just going to eat my okonomiyaki."

"Sure," Ryouma said, shovelling two of the odder-looking pancakes onto the box lid. One was topped with dried squid and whole baby octopi; the other, from the smell, was probably kimchi and something else equally rancid. "Eat your heart out. Leave the talking to the big kids."

Kuromaru seemed quite happy to be left out of the big-kid-party, so long as he got okonomiyaki. Ryouma shook his head and investigated the other options. The 'safe' ones involved dried fish flakes, shrimp, shredded pork, scallions, and cheese. He stole a slice of pork-and-cheese and dripped congealed cheese in his lap with the first bite. The taste of something that wasn't field rations or convenience-store snacks was totally worth it. He swallowed with difficulty, licked his fingers, and reached for another.

"I'm guessing asking what 'getting like this' involves is gonna lead off into something bizarrely awesome. Do Inuzuka boy dogs, uh, go into heat, too? Or is there some matchmaking disease going around the vet should know about? Reiko's always trying to set me up with her friends, but I didn't think that was contagious." He'd sparked a grin; he eyed her over his third slice, trying to decide how hard to push. Where her boundaries lay. Hell, where his were, now...

He didn't glance over his shoulder.

"Or's it just 'cause I'm alpha now and so we oughta be making babies for him to bully? Which gets me kind of worried about what's going on when he's alpha, by the way," he added severely. "You said he's got like this before..."

Tsume grinned and shook her head. "He gets like this every spring. Occasionally in the fall, too. And, yeah, it's partly because you're alpha -- but when he was alpha, his mates were all other canines." She leaned in toward Ryouma, her smile still playing around the corners of her mouth, and whispered as if it were a clan secret, "Those things you hear about Inuzuka and our familiars... they really are just rumors."

"Humans smell funny," Kuromaru added solemnly. "But if Reiko's always trying to set you up, then you obviously need a mate! And you're both alpha, and you're both human... and your puppies would be adorable." His ear flopped, and he stared wistfully into the middle distance.

Tsume chuckled, stretching her legs out across the floor. There wasn't much space -- the hospital room was small -- but if she shifted she could angle her legs to one side of Ryouma. "You think Reiko's bad, try living with him."

"Kiba was such a cute puppy..." Kuromaru murmured forlornly to himself.

"And he's still a cute kid," Ryouma pointed out. "You got two kids of Tsume's to chase after, now, and however many of your own. A hell of a lot, I'm betting, if I know you."

Kuromaru's ear twitched; he seemed unsure whether to mourn the transition of adorable puppies to significantly less adorable children, or to swell with pride at this praise of his virility. Ryouma shoved the shrimp pancake in front of the dog and watched him inhale that instead.

"Anyway," he said, picking a sliver of sliced pork off his own fourth slice, "I got a dozen street rats to look after, when I got time. That's enough for me. They won't miss me--much--if I never come back. Not like some cute little black-haired carpet-crawler would." He glanced at Tsume, his mouth twisting up. "I guess if it was yours, I could trust your family to take care of it, the way they've done with Hana and Kiba. But..."

She knew, even if she hadn't really seemed to understand. He pried another slice of pork out of cooling cheese and flipped it to Kuromaru. "S'prolly a good thing you don't want my kids, anyway. They'd be hellions."

She smiled softly, rolling her legs to brush them against his knee, silent acknowledgment of what he hadn't said. "You're probably right. Worse than mine. My family would never forgive me."

"Ohhh, you two," Kuromaru groaned in frustration, and stole another okonomiyaki out of the box before taking it off to a corner.

Tsume laughed at him, then grinned at Ryouma. "And the good news is, you can pass on your jutsu legacy without needing to breed. You get all the benefits with none of the colicky babies or crabby mates or runny noses. Trust me, a few years of that and ANBU starts to look good. One morning you're sitting down to breakfast and you realize something. You could watch your son shove peas up his nose, and contemplate explaining the menstrual cycle to your daughter, or you could risk life and limb. It's really no contest." She stole a slice of pancake, this time taking one of Ryouma's, just to try it out, and munched thoughtfully. "Really, you went the right way with the street kids." He had called them street rats, but it wasn't an informality she'd dare. "What with them being out of diapers, and offering to help with the ninja exams."

That day bloomed in her memory suddenly, her own stress, the filth of the alley, the rotten little kids who'd been ready to take her on, and Ryouma standing among them looking both proud and concerned. As if she might actually tear into a child. And yet -- that fear, she understood, no matter how unfounded it was. She'd had the same worry when she'd seen Ibiki and Kiba together -- though Kiba had nothing but hero worship for the other ANBU.

She rolled her legs again, touching his knee without being too intimate. "You're good with them."

"I'm not teaching 'em my jutsu," Ryouma said. His voice came out a little sharper than he'd meant it; Tsume glanced up at him in surprise. He shook his head, flattening one hand in dismissal. "No, it's not-- I mean, I'm not being all secret about it and everything. Well, I am, but that's not why. They already know nobody's gonna give 'em anything. If they want it, they've gotta work for it. That way--"

That way no one can take it from you.

Which wasn't true, really. Any Sharingan eye could copy the seal-set and chakra pattern of Ryouma's jutsu in a few seconds of swirling crimson. Tsume shared her jutsu with her entire clan, but no one outside her clan could steal it without stealing himself an Inuzuka body, too. Tsume's bloodline shaped her identity as surely as it shaped her body. She'd never had to fight to prove her value to the world, or struggle to carve out her place in it--

She was alpha. Of course she had.

"S'better for 'em to make up their own jutsu," he said. "Builds character." He finished his last slice of okonomiyaki and licked his greasy fingers. "Sticking around to watch your son grow up prolly builds character, too."

She paused, glancing up at him sharply. He didn't look accusing, but there was an edge to his movements, there ever since he'd started talking. She looked back down at her slice, folding it to keep all the toppings in. Her mind tripped over past conversations. He was angry -- but not at her. This seemed more of an excuse than anything.

It wasn't surprising. From what he'd said, his life hadn't ever been the most settled, and his recent weeks were piling up like houses in an earthquake. Frustration took any outlet it could get. "Hmm." The noise was noncommittal, giving him nothing to fight against. "Some of us aren't so good with children."

Then she shifted, pulling the pack of cards out of her pants pocket and giving him a brief smile. "Think fast." She tossed the deck and he snagged it out of the air, quick and graceful. "I didn't really think you'd want to go for a spar, and food only keeps people occupied for so long. It was the best I could do on short notice."

"What, my witty conversation's not good enough for you?" Ryouma tipped the deck out into his palm and fanned the cards. The knot behind his breastbone didn't ease, but at least it stopped tightening. Tsume wouldn't fight--but he hadn't really wanted a fight, anyway. Cards were as good a distraction as any.

"Three-card monte?" he suggested, cutting the deck. "Blackjack? Cut-throat euchre?"

Kuromaru yawned.

Tsume glanced at her familiar, hoping he was about to settle down and nap, but spoke to Ryouma. "Probably something where bluffing isn't involved. I have a bit of an advantage." She gave him a wry smile and tapped the side of her nose, omitting the fact that she was terrible at lying -- most Inuzuka were. It was a skill that went unlearned, when the people around could smell a lie on you. "We could play--"

"Patooey!" Kuromaru suggested, hopping upward. "We should play Patooey! It's the best game ever."

"Or blackjack," Tsume suggested quickly.

"But Patooey has rolling around on the floor." Kuromaru wagged, then slunk over to try and cuddle up against Ryouma's side. Kuromaru towered over the seated man; cuddling didn't work so well. "Don't you want to roll around on the floor, Ryouma?"

"Not if it involves playing a game that sounds like a slimeball," Ryouma said warily. "I'm not that much of a kid at heart." He bridged the deck and tapped the cards back into a tidy stack. "We could play poker and I could light a smoke."

And probably lose, anyway. It wasn't just whatever lying smelled like that gave away his poor attempts at bluffing; he had a bad poker face, despite years of low-stakes games in claustrophobic bunkers, and when he won it was usually through sheer blind luck. But at least he knew the rules. Usually he could handle the unstable ground on which Tsume stood; usually his conversations with her were like assailing a castle on quicksand, a challenge to be gleefully--if carefully--undertaken. When nothing else was certain, though...

He could do with a little poker to calm his nerves.

Tsume failed at not frowning. "Don't we have too few people to play poker?"

"What she really means," Kuromaru said, wandering away from Ryouma to sprawl out on the cool linoleum, "is that she's terrible at bluffing. I have a pretty good poker face, though."

"That's because you're a dog."

"Canine!" Kuromaru yelped, utter betrayal in his tone.

Tsume grinned at Ryouma, winking where Kuromaru couldn't see. "That's what I said. Dog."

Stiffly, Kuromaru stood up. He towered over her. "I do not like you very much, and I hope you never have more puppies. And I'm going to be Ryouma's familiar, now." He shifted over five steps and sat down beside Ryouma, leaning to whisper loudly in his ear, "She's terrible at bluffing. Even for an Inuzuka."

"Hey!"

"And she hasn't played poker since she was eighteen and preggers, and that game ended really badly. She even lost her hitai-ate, but the squad captain made them give it back."

Tsume stretched her arms out along the bed she was leaning against, giving Kuromaru a half-joking glower. "We can stop talking about this any time."

"Oh, please," Ryouma said, wide-eyed, "let's not. Strip poker? Really?"

He tried to imagine it, failed, and spent a few seconds puzzling out whether it was the idea of Tsume cheerfully playing strip poker with a bunch of undoubtedly horny men, or the idea of Tsume pregnant, that was the problem. Tsume stripping came to mind all too easily, but he was having trouble figuring out a way to make her happy about it. And of course she'd been pregnant--and had Hana and Kiba to prove it--but...

Eighteen. Even for a kunoichi in wartime, that was young.

"I wasn't playing strip poker!" Tsume protested, laughing. "We were playing for ninja gear. Besides, who wants to see a naked pregnant woman?"

"There was that--"

"Except for him." She flapped a hand carelessly. "Deal the cards."

"For strip poker?" Kuromaru asked brightly.

"No!"

Kuromaru sighed. "She hasn't played strip poker since she was seventeen. Before she got pregnant." He sounded utterly forlorn. "And I like it so much. People always smell hilarious."

"Next time, I'll invite you," Ryouma promised. He grinned distractedly at Tsume. "You can come too..."

Seventeen, then. Just barely over the legal age of consent--which no one paid attention to, anyway; the general feeling was that if you were old enough to die on an enemy's kunai, you were old enough to have sex. But not to have a baby, surely.

Of course, Shouri had been fourteen. But Shouri's situation wasn't anything like Tsume's. She hadn't been prepared for the horrors of the war into which she'd been thrown, and eventually even Hitomi-sensei couldn't stiffen the spine of a girl who wanted to be anywhere else. Death offered one way out; she'd chosen another.

Tsume wouldn't have taken either. She'd given her children up to return to ANBU, after all; she enjoyed fighting in a way Shouri never had, and she certainly had no problem with killing. Or with risking her life. In fact it was even harder to imagine her willingly tying herself down with a pregnancy than it was to envision that mythical poker game.

And Hana was unhappy that no one would tell her who her dad was...

He shook his head sharply and broke the deck again. He'd put those questions aside, hadn't he? Told Tsume he wouldn't pry. She was living with her past, and he...had enough uncertainties and half-healed wounds of his own. He didn't need to be borrowing anyone else's.

Dammit.

"We'll play blackjack for stories, then," he said, dealing the first two-card hand with a practiced flick of his wrist. "You win a hand, you get to ask anything. I've got an itch to know about Kuromaru's first time with the ladies."

"I was ten months--" Kuromaru began, his eye unfocusing.

Tsume picked up an okonomiyaki box and chucked it at him. "He hasn't asked yet! And I'm not sure I want to know..."

"I think you were there," Kuromaru said thoughtfully.

Tsume gave Ryouma a flat look. "If you traumatize me, I'm going to think of the most mortifying questions I can." She eyed her cards as Ryouma laid them out, reaching down to tap the top card with one hooked nail. "Hit me."

"Me, too," Kuromaru asked cheerfully.

"You have seventeen." Tsume looked at him. He looked back. "You should hold."

"Nah. Hit me!" He wagged.

Tsume grimaced. "If you're busting just so you can talk about your sex life..."

"Would you prefer to hear about my sex life?" Ryouma grinned.

Kuro leered back. "I wouldn't mind!"

Tsume looked utterly exasperated at both of them. Ryouma remembered he was supposed to get her off- guard, and hurriedly tossed two cards over. He took a third for himself. "Fifteen."

"Eleven," Tsume said, setting her card down with the others.

Kuromaru glowed. "Nineteen! Hit me again."

The fourth card took Ryouma to twenty-four. He dropped it with an exaggerated sigh. "I'm out. What've you got?"

It was probably better to loosen up Tsume beforehand with his own truths, anyway--to convince her she could share. Maybe he'd feel a little less guilty about scratching at her wounds, if he had to open up his.ho

"Eighteen," Tsume said, shaking her head in a mockery of despair. "Kuro?"

"Twenty-one!" He dog-grinned delightedly.

Tsume snorted. "All right, Kuro. Out with it." She turned and regarded him expectantly.

Kuromaru wagged so hard she thought she could feel the floor tremble with each thump. "Okay -- okay--" he squirmed up to all four feet, still gleeful. "Ryouma! Did you ever meet a girl you wanted to be mates with?" His single ear flicked and he stilled, with a dubious look toward the bed. "Kakashi isn't a girl."

"I think I'm going to have that image burned into my retinas forever, now," Tsume said plaintively, then glanced over at Ryouma. He looked a little confused. His gaze landed on her, a question unasked, and she grinned reflexively. "Mates -- married. In the Inuzuka, if you're mated then kids are likely."

"I'm not marryin' anybody," Ryouma said automatically. "Casual sex is my middle name."

Tsume snorted her way into a chuckle. Kuromaru's ears flopped sideways, and his wagging tail slowed and drooped. "Kinda a funny middle name," he mumbled.

Ryouma laughed. "Well, yeah, okay." He gathered the cards up and shuffled the deck again, thinking. "First time I fell in love was my jounin sensei. I was fourteen, fifteen, and she was twenty-five. But I never really had a chance, and I sure wasn't thinking of marriage. Got pretty serious with Misao when I was seventeen--she was twenty--but she died a month after we first had sex. Since then..." He tipped one shoulder in a shrug, and dealt the cards again. "I don't do strings."

He managed not to glance at the bed. Kakashi didn't do strings, either--he'd said!--and you didn't pin any sort of future on a man who was just waiting for you to die.

"I don't do strings, either," Kuromaru said loftily. "I just have puppies. But mostly the Pack raises them all up, anyway."

Tsume ignored Kuromaru, watching as Ryouma deftly dealt out more cards. "I had no idea you had such a thing for older women." She paused, then twisted a smile and tipped her head toward Kakashi. "And younger men." Which was oddly reassuring. If he were busy sleeping with Kakashi, he'd be less interested in her.

Or so the theory went.

"Kakashi can't have puppies," Kuromaru muttered.

"That might be his appeal." Tsume picked her cards up and eyed them. Fifteen. To one side, Kuromaru asked for a hit.

Ryouma tossed a card to Kuromaru and took one for himself. "Kakashi doesn't even like me sometimes," he said absently, counting up on his fingers. "But he sticks around anyway. Eighteen."

"Twenty-three," Kuromaru said mournfully.

"Excellent." Ryouma looked up at Tsume, opened his mouth--and found he couldn't ask. Not yet, anyway. Not with her head tipped back, her eyes meeting his, that faint smile still teasing her lips. Her shoulders were loose, relaxed; he couldn't burden them again.

"What's your favorite type of underwear on a guy?"

Her eyebrows shot up before she could stop them, and she released a surprised bark of laughter. She hadn't been expecting anything, exactly, but definitely not that. Ryouma was grinning like a dog with a stolen shoe.

She looked away, still chuckling, trying to think up an answer. There were so many answers. "I'm going to assume you don't mean for practicality's sake, and that there's no mission going on." She glanced at him. He looked amused. At her. Tsume smiled right back at him, all teeth and teasing. "Underwear on men is overrated, at best. If your pants sit too low everyone knows your taste. On the other hand, if there aren't any underwear..." She tipped her head consideringly. "Well. Then that just gives everyone food for thought."

Kuromaru looked at her. "I don't get it."

She didn't bother to look back. "Good."

"S'why I wear a belt," Ryouma said comfortably. "Any given day in civvies, I'm more'n likely to be going commando." His grin widened. "Wanna know what today is?"

Tsume threw her head back and laughed quietly at the ceiling. "Thanks," she said. "I think I'll just imagine."

Ryouma shrugged, unfazed. He hadn't expected any other reaction, but at least she was laughing. "Your loss," he said. "I've received a number of compliments." He winked at her, and then hurried to deal again before Kuromaru could ask any more questions.

The canine won this hand, and inquired what kind of underwear Ryouma liked on men. Tsume nearly fell over with laughter. Ryouma, straight-faced, explained the merits of boxer briefs in relation to support, stability, and aesthetics. Tsume didn't stop laughing until he'd dealt the next hand.

That one went to her.

Tsume stretched her arms out along the edge of Kakashi's bed again, drawing out her win and eyeing Ryouma. She couldn't quite keep the laugh from brushing the corners of her mouth, but other than that she did her best to look like she was pondering horrible, evil questions.

"I've got one! I've got one!" Kuromaru called excitedly.

"You lost. I'll think of one." She didn't look away from Ryouma. She knew enough about him to know where not to poke. She knew enough to know that she didn't want to bring his mood down. She didn't know enough about him to know what wouldn't hurt. It seemed like his whole past was a minefield of bad things.

Then she grinned. "What was your most embarrassing moment on a mission?"

"Oooh," Kuromaru said. "That's a good one."

"You mean the time I swore up and down the mushrooms I'd collected were safe, convinced my whole squad to eat 'em, and spent the rest of the night puking my guts up? Or the time I tried to lead the way through the swamp and fell in over my head on the second step?" Ryouma smirked. "Sorry. I don't embarrass easy. Everyone else on my squad got sick, too--and it was even funnier watching my second-in-command flail around when he fell in after me than it was for the rest of 'em to watch me."

He dealt the cards again. Kuromaru had nine; Ryouma had sixteen. Tsume had thirteen. Another card left them with fourteen, twenty-five, and twenty. Kuromaru demanded a fourth card anyway, and got a five. He shoved it back, grumbling. Ryouma waved a hand at Tsume. "Your turn again. Ask anything. My life is an open book. So's his, I guess, if there's anything you don't know and still want to."

"I'm afraid to ask him anything I don't already know," Tsume said, with a sidelong glance toward Kuromaru. "All right, then. Tell me, why a ninja? You were old by the time you joined the Academy. Would've been easier to do something else, I'd imagine."

"Ooh," Kuromaru said. "That's another good one!" Tsume chuckled, reaching out to ruffle his fur. "I would've asked him what his favorite kind of rodents were."

"I've eaten rats," Ryouma said, wrinkling his nose. "Rat bars are better. They come in peanut butter."

"They don't squeak when you bite them," Kuromaru pointed out.

"Past ten years old, they do," Ryouma said, amused. "Some of the really old ones even try to escape when you tear off the wrapper."

Kuromaru looked dubious. Ryouma scruffed his ears and glanced back up at Tsume.

"I was doing something else, at eleven," he said. "Mostly it involved starving. Digging old blankets out of the trash-heap and sharing 'em with three other kids. Begging or stealing or fighting for every mouthful--and fighting just to fight, too. The shinobi who broke up a gang-fight and broke my arm was the only one who ever thought I could do better."

He dropped his eyes, watching his fingers flex in Kuromaru's fur. "Konoha wanted me," he said simply. "It had a place for me. Told me I could make something of myself, give something of myself. You don't know what it's like to be needed unless you've never been."

"You could have--" She stopped, thinking. Done something else. Apprenticed somewhere, she'd been about to say. "Well. Guess there's not much else that will tell you you can give something of yourself."

She watched Ryouma deal out the cards again, still mulling over the idea of needing to be needed. He was right: she didn't know about that. Inuzuka were needed from the get-go; to be ninja, to create jutsu, to track the bloodlines and find the right pairings, to breed. In her case, to hammer the clan back into working order, after the Fox and her mother's death had ravaged it.

She didn't pay much attention to the cards, and looked at them with vague surprise when she realized she'd won again. Or as good as.

"Hit me," Kuromaru demanded, his cards laid between his paws. "I don't care if I have twenty."

Ryouma hesitated, then finally gave him another card. Three. Kuromaru sighed gustily and laid his head down on his paws. Tsume shook her head in amusement, checked out her own eighteen and Ryouma's seventeen, and leaned back to think up another question. "If you hadn't been a ninja," she asked slowly, "and you'd been a normal brat and in school, what would you have done?"

"No one ever asks me anything," Kuromaru whined.

"That's because you've got an honest, open face," Ryouma assured him. "We know everything we need to know just lookin' at you. I, on the other hand, am a man of mystery. I'm not sure I even know the answer to that question."

He'd fantasized before about life if his mother had survived, if his grandfather had died first and left him in the care of Konoha's war orphanage from the start. He'd never actually thought about being normal.

"I dunno," he said at last, slowly. "I'm not much good at anything that doesn't involve shinobi work. Even sailing and trout-tickling I picked up on missions. I guess I could--No!"

His back stiffened; he sat upright, eyes blazing. "I'd be the bass guitar player for the best band ever. Think Shuriken Force and Atomic Sunrise and Strands of Life all smashed together and headlined by pure sex in shredded jeans. Rockstar. You better believe it."

Tsume had frozen when he'd first said, 'No!' Now she relaxed back against the bed and laughed, shaking her head. "Of course you'd be a rockstar. I don't know why I even asked." She could see it, too, torn denim and stage lights, sweat-slick skin and adoring fans. She'd only ever been to one concert, but she could imagine him there. Imagine him leading the pack.

It really was perfect.

"Deal the cards, man of mystery." What was it about musicians, anyway?

She watched him flick out the cards, movements masculine for all their grace, fingers shifting with smooth little gestures that made even rough calluses and large bones look gentle. It was the hands. It was definitely the hands. She dragged one nail along her lower lip, forcing herself to focus on the game. "Can you actually play guitar?" She bet if he couldn't, he'd learn.

"Just air guitar," Ryouma admitted. "Didn't have the money, at first. Now I don't have the time." He glanced up at the bed, at the still form behind him. "Maybe I should pick one up. No time like the present, eh?"

Although the nurses might have a lot more trouble with him practicing guitar than quietly watching movies. He added up his cards, took another, double-checked the math on his fingers, and set them down again with a proud grin. "OK, two questions. Kuromaru, what'd you do first if you were human for a day? And Tsume..."

This one was harder. He'd mostly formulated the real question he meant to ask, but he wasn't quite ready for it yet. "If you weren't Inuzuka, who would you be?"

"That is a silly question," Kuromaru said, but he puffed up anyway. "I would become Hokage."

Tsume was tempted to claim the same thing, if only because she couldn't imagine not being Inuzuka. But Ryouma had given her questions fair thought, and it seemed a cop-out. She folded her arms over her chest, gaze turned inward.

"I'm really not sure." She spoke hesitantly, feeling out her words as she said them. "I mean, if I weren't Inuzuka, I wouldn't be me..."

"That's why he was asking who you would be," Kuromaru whispered hoarsely.

Tsume whacked at him but missed, flicking the tip of his ear instead. He grinned. "Okay," she said, bending her knees and resting her elbows on them. "Maybe I would... um..." Scraping her hands back through her hair didn't jog her mind like she'd hoped it might.

"Be Asuma!"

She snorted. "Can I trade questions? Ask me something else? Because I really don't think I have an answer."

"Who's Asuma?" Ryouma hastily waved a hand. "No, no, that's not my question. Um--Kuromaru?"

Kuromaru's tail flopped against the floor excitedly. "Asuma lives beside us, now." His voice dropped into a very bad attempt at a stage-whisper. "He's allergic to meat." His wide golden eye invited Ryouma to share his disbelief.

Ryouma took a breath of sheer horror. "How does he live? Are you sure he's actually human? Men aren't meant to live on vegetables alone..." He glanced up at Tsume with a quick, sideways grin. "And does that mean you and Kuro disapprove on principle? I should know if I got a rival for your affections."

Dammit, did that count as his question?

Tsume laughed, shaking her head. "It means Kuromaru's been catching every creature he can think of, and dragging them over to Asuma's apartment to see if he's allergic to them."

"He wasn't home to ask about the giant hamster," Kuromaru said forlornly. "But allergies are a defect I can deal with. I suppose." He looked highly doubtful.

Tsume leaned over to ruffle his ear, then bumped Ryouma's hip with her foot. "Is that your question?" Her grin was slightly wicked. "I mean, if I'm off the hook..."

"Nope!" Ryouma leaned over to gather up his cards and shuffle the deck again. "My questions are much more, uh, life-exploring and deep and stuff." Like what kind of underwear she liked on a man. Right.

Was this the moment? He'd no desire to see her grin drop away, her face close up, her shoulders hunch under the weight of a secret she'd never shared. But it was a question he was going to have to ask someday. And if this was a bad moment, there'd never be a better.

He chose his words carefully. "Why can't Hana know who her father is?"

Tsume's gaze dropped to her discarded cards. She picked them up, shuffling them back and forth, giving them a rueful smile and Ryouma a stiff shrug. "It's... complicated." Then she laughed humorlessly and leaned back against the bed once more. "And really not complicated. I met him on a mission. Knew him for a few days, and never saw him again." She looked up, meeting Ryouma's gaze, steeling herself for a well-practiced lie that was entirely true. "I haven't seen him since, and I don't even know his family name."

At the point of the triangle that the three of them made, Kuromaru laid down and looked toward the door, shifting slightly so his back rolled toward Ryouma. Tsume eyed him, well aware that his way of lying to his alpha was to ignore the whole thing. When she was sure he wasn't going to speak, she looked back at Ryouma.

"I've told Hana I don't know who he is, but she doesn't believe me. And frankly, I don't want her trying to find him. By the end of the mission, I'd realized he was more of a mistake than I'd ever thought. Not someone I want in my life or around my kids."

She shuffled her cards again, flipping them back and forth, back and forth, almost calm in the ability to fall back on a tale she'd rehearsed over and over again.

Almost calm.

Finally, she scooped up Kuromaru's discarded cards and handed the whole bunch to Ryouma. "I was young, and stupid." She grinned at him, a little ruefully, a little laughingly. "I'm sure you can relate to that. You must have done something you regretted at some point."

"Plenty of things," Ryouma said honestly. He slipped the new cards into the center of the deck and shuffled again. "Mostly they ended up with me bleeding. Or someone else dead."

But those were all mistakes he could heal from, grieve over, move on. He didn't have a bright-eyed little girl staring him in the face every day to remind him of what he'd done, or to ask him why he'd done it. No wonder Tsume was still twitchy.

Still... Hana was eleven years old, close to graduation from the Academy. In a few more years she'd be the one heading out to fight, to repeat her mother's mistakes if she didn't learn from them first. And Ryouma knew, better than anyone, what it meant to spend those early years adrift and searching, looking up at every tall man's face in a secret hunt for shared features. Hana had the Inuzuka side of her family to ground her, but it was plain that wasn't always enough.

"So why can't you tell her what you just told me?" He bridged the deck again, watching his hands instead of Tsume's face. "He's probably dead anyway, if you haven't seen him since then--this village isn't so big you can avoid running into someone for twelve years. And she's old enough and smart enough not to go look for him, if you tell her why. Knowing her dad was a class-A jerk will hurt a little, but she'll know you kept her, too, when you could've not. That--that makes up for a lot."

And Hana, at least, would know why.

"Don't let her spend her whole life searching. She'll have it hard enough already."

"Oh, I have told her," Tsume said wryly. "But she wants a father. I think he's become a tragic hero in her mind. Someone who will take her away from all her problems." Her lips thinned, stomach twisting. "She says that me not getting along with someone probably just means I can't boss them around. She wants to know what he looks like and who he is. She wants to find him, if he's still alive, and have a perfect life." Tsume couldn't keep the bitterness out of her tone, or the edge of anger.

Kuromaru scooted forward on his belly, resting his head on her knee. She petted him absently, watching Ryouma's hands. The cards settled with a purr of flashing cardboard before he tapped them even and shuffled them again.

Hana wanted to know what was so bad about her father, and Tsume... couldn't tell her that.

She looked up at Ryouma finally, giving him a weary smile. "Hana and I don't get along very well. Mothers and daughters are supposed to have some mythical bond, but we just end up butting heads. Tori says Hana is more human than I can handle, and I suppose she's right. A lot more pre-teen melodrama and a lot less pack mentality." She laughed dryly. "Deal the cards. I need to think up some deep, soul-probing question to ask you. Something like..." Her imagination failed her. She waved a hand. "I'll think of something."

"Ask him what you should ask him," Kuromaru suggested, tail wagging, his head still on her knee. She could feel the vibration when he spoke all the way up her leg.

Tsume laughed and petted him. "That's not a bad idea..."

"That's a cop-out," Ryouma said firmly. "You come up with your own questions." He laid the cards out with a steady hand, gaze still fixed on their painted backs. The rest of the words kept churning around behind his teeth, mixed into a tangled mass he couldn't talk straight. Something like You're human, too, and You're her mom, you're supposed to handle her, and Maybe she wouldn't want him if you hadn't left her.

Which wasn't fair, and maybe not even true. Ryouma'd only talked with Hana a handful of times; he probably didn't understand her anymore than her mother did. And Tsume had tried, and was still trying.

Sometimes trying just wasn't enough.

"One of these days," he said, turning his cards over delicately, one at a time, "I'd like to take Hana out to lunch. Maybe a movie or something. Whatever kids her age like to do. I got a feeling we could both learn something from talking to each other."

He looked up at last. "Seventeen."

Tsume turned her cards over. Sixteen. Odds said to stay, and maybe Kuromaru would bust. But... well, Wolf's teeth, she never played safe odds in life. "Hit me." While Ryouma handed her -- and then Kuromaru -- each another card, she spoke. "I'm sure she'd love to go out to lunch with you. She's still nursing that crush."

"She is too young for puppies," Kuromaru mumbled, peering at his cards closely with his single eye. "She shouldn't be thinking about mates. I got the highest!"

"You bust, Kuro," Tsume told him. She, on the other hand, had nineteen. Sitting back, she leaned against the cot and regarded Ryouma steadily. "Why do you care so much? Hana's not alone. She has a better relationship both with Yasuo and Tori than she does with me. Why do you care if I'm there or not?" She shouldn't be asking. She knew she shouldn't be asking. But he smelled sour.

"'Cause I've been where she is. Well--sorta." Ryouma stirred his cards with a finger, then pushed them restlessly away. He drew one leg up and wrapped his arm around it, resting his chin on his knee. "You know the story already. If my mom knew who my dad was, she didn't tell me. She went on a mission when I was three and never came back. Left me with my granddad, which was worse'n leaving me alone. Hana's in a better place'n that, but her mom's left her, all the same."

He fixed his gaze on Kuromaru, not on Tsume. It softened the accusation a little, but some still bled into his voice, ragged with memory. "Yasuo and Tori may be good to her, but they're not hers. Not the way you are. Of course she wants her dad--kids always do. An' with the way you keep running off with us hell-raisers, trying to get yourself killed, who's gonna blame her for wanting something else to cling to, when you won't let her cling to you?"

Tsume watched him steadily, keeping her eyes on him while his gaze wandered. "You're right," she said softly. "I can't give her what she needs. But I can't give her her father, either. What I can do is make sure the people who love her, keep her. I do more harm than good, and I could do a lot more harm than that without ever meaning to. Your mother left you with someone who shouldn't have had a kitten, much less a child. I spent five years trying to be a mother, and only made things worse. Maybe your mother was a good mom, but I am not. Giving birth or donating sperm doesn't make a good parent -- and I cause Hana more pain than anything else."

She dropped her gaze, tapping her cards even. "But you're still right. She needs someone to connect to, and she's set her father up in that role. It doesn't change the fact that he was..." She trailed off, unable to think of an insult bad enough. Finally, she shook her head. "I can't help her find him."

Kuromaru growled softly, staring anywhere but at them. "We should stop talking about Hana and her father," he rumbled in a deep, bass voice.

"You're right, too," Tsume told him. "Shuffle the cards."

He turned, slapping a paw over the deck. Then his ear wilted back and he looked at her almost accusingly. "I don't have fingers."

Tsume snickered.

"Don't need fingers, as long as you can toss 'em all over the floor and then collect 'em again." Ryouma scrubbed a hand through the deck to demonstrate, flicking cards across the floor. Kuromaru pounced as they skittered under his paws. For a moment, in the mess of cards, Ryouma didn't have to look up.

He didn't understand. Couldn't understand. Couldn't even meet Tsume's eyes just yet, because if he did he'd have to speak, and anything he said was likely to be wrong. He couldn't laden her with his own burdens; she wasn't his mother. She didn't have to answer to him.

But why did Hana have to suffer for her mother's mistakes?

Because you're expecting the world to make sense. He snorted. It never had; why should it start now?

With the cards in an untidy stack at last, he skimmed three sets of two off the top and tossed them out. He had a two and a six. A third card still gave him only fourteen.

He cleared his throat. "You need a hit?"

Tsume shook her head and laid her cards down carefully, face up. "Blackjack." She pondered her hand, mulling over their conversation and more possible questions.

Ryouma didn't smell happy. Maybe this hadn't been the greatest idea, but she'd had no way of knowing that their conversation would take this turn. Next time, she decided, no truth games as a forfeit. For now... She didn't think she'd be able to make him happy about Hana. Some people, you just couldn't convince. Kuromaru was right; getting off the subject was more important.

She looked up and offered Ryouma a smile. Then she glanced at Kuromaru, who was mumbling about never winning. "Who was your favorite Alpha?"

His eye practically closed, he thought so hard. "Me," he announced finally. "Definitely me." Then his ear folded back, and he stretched toward Ryouma, flicking his tongue out. "And you, too. But also me."

Chuckling, Tsume looked at Ryouma. "What's your happiest memory?" At least that would change the subject, and maybe brighten up his mood.

Ryouma glanced involuntarily toward the bed, then away. Kakashi'd asked for good thoughts, which weren't quite the same. And which were much easier to come up with, anyway. Happiest memory? Who kept those sorts of things labeled in neat rankings?

He couldn't think of much but the bad ones right now, anyway.

But the years on the border had been good, generally. He'd made some of the best friends of his life, and they'd managed to enliven even the long stretches of boredom punctuated with occasional bursts of deadly action. Maybe one of these days he'd take a mission back to Lightning Country, catch up with Arata and Hiroyuki, tour the new base. Remind himself who he'd been, before he hit ANBU and his life turned sideways.

Of course if he was getting nostalgic, there were older memories to return to. One of those rare perfect days with his genin team, when they'd completed a new move to Hitomi-sensei's satisfaction and she took the whole team out to dinner to celebrate. (It was easier to look back on those memories fondly now, when Kenichi wasn't sitting beside him making snide comments and tempting Ryouma to drown him in the miso soup.) Dates where everything went right. The afternoon he'd finally completed the Nikutai Tokasu. The morning he'd walked through Konoha's gates...

"Day I made genin," he said. "I'll never forget tying the hitai'ate that first time. I'd practiced with bandannas before, to get it right, but it wasn't--it's not the same, the way the metal weighs on your forehead, the way you can just catch it out of the corner of your eye if you look up at the right angle." His voice softened. "Like the difference between living some place and belonging."

Tsume smiled, basking in the way his scent mellowed out and his muscles relaxed. She hadn't realized how tense he had been, broad shoulders held stiffly, until he let it ease away. She hadn't missed the glance toward Kakashi, either, and wondered what it meant. Good memories, or just something related? Maybe it was coincidence, but she doubted it. She hoped it was pleasant.

"That is a good memory," she murmured, sweeping the cards into a pile again.

"I remember when we became genin." Kuromaru stretched out, sprawling on the cool tile. "We got rolled right over."

Tsume laughed, taking Ryouma's cards from him and shuffling them back into the deck. "We weren't very good genin. But we got better."

Kuromaru's tail thumped against the floor, and he arched to lick at Ryouma's fingers. Ryouma reached over, sinking his hand into thick fur. For a moment, Tsume just watched. Then she looked back down at what she was doing.

A few more games. She'd make sure they were square, keep things light, and then get on with her day. Surely there had been enough emotional upheaval, here. She glanced at the empty boxes of okonomiyaki, and felt a smile twist her mouth. How far they'd come from those first meetings. Laughing, fighting, hurting, snuggling, strain, and now this odd sort of truce. Missions that went wrong threw people together, made them bond, sometimes before they even knew each other. And then when they learned more... well, sometimes that bond lasted.

The cards feathered into each other with a quiet purring noise.

A few more games. And then she'd go.