"Okay, but go easy on him." Genma locked eyes with Haruichi, not evading this time. Not flinching from invisible pupils that could see far too deeply inside a man. "He saved my life." For a moment the haunted, terrified 'what if' sensation that Genma had been evading ever since he'd woken in a Konoha hospital bed came back. It took a will that was wearing thin to banish the thought; Genma's treacherous mind replaced the fear with shame. "If there's anyone to yell at, its me. I was the one who didn't recognize the ambush in time."

He held still, watching Haruichi's equally still face for some kind of reaction. What he saw, though, was hardly what he expected. A slackening of tension around Haruichi's chapped lips, a wince that creased bruised and unbruised eyes. Sympathy, maybe, or understanding. A few months of field experience in ANBU had, it seemed, given Haruichi a subtler conception of the choices an agent had to make, the risks he took, the myriad ways a mission could go suddenly, catastrophically wrong.

Genma blinked first, turning his face away before Haruichi understood more than Genma wanted him to.

Sanji returned with Ito-sensei in tow. The older man smiled and bowed to Haruichi, and laid a hand on Genma's shoulder. "It's looking much better, Genma-kun. Really, much better. That junction between the seventh ulnar deviate and the medial plexus has completely restored flow, and the chakra graft is taking. Would you like to take a look, Haruichi-sensei?"

Genma let his gaze drift to the wall while the doctor worked. He pulled his awareness as far from his left hand as it was possible to do, but Ito-sensei called it back with another touch on the shoulder. "I'm afraid we wore you out pretty well today."