| Speak My Language [Ginta & Hiro] |
[Aug. 15th, 2010|04:31 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | ginta, hiro | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  discontent | ] |
Takes place April 12, one week following Hiro and Ginta's last meeting in The Little Things Give You Away, six days following Ginta's confrontation with his grandmother and Never What I Expected, and three days following his intervention with Ryouma in This Time Is Different
It had taken a few days following that last surgery, but Ginta had finally been allowed home, with crutches and a heavy cast, and an arsenal of pill bottles that came with detailed instructions about what and how much he should eat (and not eat) with them, which pills could or couldn't be taken within three hours of which other pills, and as complicated a schedule for meals, medications, exercise, and rest as any mission plan.
At a quarter to eleven in the morning, after a few rounds of pushups and some experimental chakra-mediated handstands, he was busy resting.
( In theory. ) |
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| The Little Things Give You Away [Ginta, Hiro] |
[Oct. 20th, 2009|10:05 am] |
[Takes place the evening of April 5, the same day as Welcome to My Morning, three days after Just Enough Rope]
By sundown Ginta was awake and really wished he wasn't. He'd woken in his own bed shortly after noon, gotten an update from the nurses -- Kakashi was fine, sleeping, but no longer in a coma -- and crashed back out again. Ryouma was still in there with Kakashi. Keeping an eye on him. Keeping the door closed. And as much as Ginta'd told himself a hundred times in the last few days alone, that he was letting it go...
He couldn't let it go.
Couldn't let go of the way Kakashi had clung to him that morning. Or the way he'd been caught painfully in the middle when Ryouma had returned to the room. Kakashi had wanted proof Ginta was alive--he'd gotten that. And then Kakashi'd wanted proof he himself was alive, and the only one he wanted that proof from was Ryouma.
Grandmother hadn't been by and wasn't expected until tomorrow. Ginta's mother was absent as well, busy with her own life. Now that Ginta was out of danger there was no further need to sit by his bedside. And he was, he told himself, just as glad she was staying away. It was harder to endure an hour of his mother's sighs and glances at her watch and weak attempts at conversation, than it was to sit in silence, reading the film magazine she'd left behind, and try not to notice the closed door across the hall.
( That's what he told himself. ) |
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| Just Enough Rope [Hiro] |
[Sep. 2nd, 2009|12:04 am] |
[Takes place in the early morning of April 2nd, several hours following After the Rain, three days after All We Know is Distance, four days after Meet You on the Other Side, and eight days after Dude, that was YOU?.]
Hiro slipped through the hospital like a wraith, trying not to observe his surroundings or have any impact upon them. He was a container tipped to the brim with precious information, and he couldn't be a person again until he had poured it all out in pages of notes spilling over Kotoe-san's desk.
Raidou had slept through the rest of the debriefing. Hiro wasn't sure Genma would be able to sleep for days.
It was still in the small hours of the morning -- it had only taken that long? -- and the usual ICU hush had escalated into a deathly absence of sound. At this hour the electrical chirping of monitors was muffled behind closed doors; the visitors were mostly slumped, asleep, over uncomfortable hospital armchairs; and the patients seemed to be taking a brief respite between emergencies.
Experimentally, Hiro scuffed a foot on his next step. It echoed.
The sound reverberated in the ache behind his eyes, creating ripples in his carefully-constructed equilibrium -- Genma's experience, painstakingly recreated image by image, moment by moment, carried whole and entire within the confines of his skull -- and he quickly withdrew back into himself.
( An image caught the corner of his eye and held it, jostling his mental load until he had to scramble for security. ) |
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| After the Rain [Hiro, Genma, and Raidou] |
[Jun. 13th, 2009|03:47 pm] |
[Takes place in the early morning of April 2nd, four days after Meet You on the Other Side and eight days after Dude, that was YOU?.]
It was two weeks later, on a different floor, but to Hiro the deja-vu felt palpable. Shiranui Genma, back in the hospital... And yet again, Hiro was walking down the white-walled hallways with a sheaf of papers--considerably thicker, this time--and a mission scroll.
This was actually his second attempt. The first time, he'd been intercepted by a hawk-faced woman who'd flashed her ANBU tattoo and credentials and told him in no uncertain terms to go home. Sato Kotoe, apparently, matching the face to the name heading his handful of reports--she was his superior both in general and on this case, and it had only taken a moment of meeting her eyes to read her clearly-projected implacability.
( Hiro had nodded sharply, and left. ) |
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| Dude, That Was YOU? [Hiro and Ginta] |
[May. 14th, 2009|09:09 pm] |
[Takes place Monday, March 24, approximately five and a half years after Rescue Me, five days after Ask Me Another, and Don't Want to Fight This War]
The cryptography lecture was, it turned out, reasonably useful. Although the speaker--some woman from Intel who wore no makeup, little wire-rimmed glasses, and her hair in a tidy bun that just screamed nerd--wasn't really that great at fielding questions. As long as she stayed on topic and on her slides she was fine, but as soon as someone interrupted her she got flustered, lost her place, and then her temper.
( After the first two times, Ginta asked questions just to see it happen. ) |
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| Ask Me Another [Closed to Hiro and Genma] |
[Apr. 21st, 2009|10:02 pm] |
[Takes place on March 18th, about an hour after The Color of Incense]
It was his first time in the ANBU wing of the hospital. Hiro looked around curiously, but the sparse hallways didn't appear any different from the regular shinobi wing--well, except for the watchful guards posted at the entranceway. The disapproving look the desk-ninja had given him when he presented his dogtags and mission assignment was different, too; of course, on the lower floors they didn't clear patients for debriefing immediately after they had regained consciousness.
But his contact had been cleared just ten minutes ago, so the tired-eyed woman had to wave him through. Not until he had wasted another ten minutes filling out a clipboard laden with paperwork, though. In triplicate. Almost like some kind of delay-tactic, he thought, annoyed.
This information was important, though. Intel was always important. And who did they think he was, T&I? He wasn't planning to hurt anyone. Hiro had filled out the forms and handed them across the desk politely--because irritability never got you anywhere--but he hurried on his way down the corridor, eager to get the interview done so he could leave for Juunan before it got too late.
The room he was looking for was about halfway down--number 418, the scarred desk-ninja had provided reluctantly. He paused for a minute before knocking, sending a thread of chakra to his eyes so he could survey the situation before he engaged.
The patient was resting quietly, eyes closed. His skin would have blended near-invisibly into the crisp white of the hospital sheets, if not for the flowering brown-purple bruises that spread luridly across his face, tense with pain even while sleeping. He twitched every so often, his shoulders hunched and haunted.
Hiro knocked loudly, releasing his Byakugan as he saw Shiranui Genma startle awake. |
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| Can't Stay Lost Forever [Closed to Hiro & Haruichi] |
[Mar. 15th, 2009|01:37 pm] |
[Takes place March 14th, two days after Connect the Dots]
Hiro pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead as he pushed through the hospital front door, trying to assuage the pounding headache formed sometime between the third and fifth time he had been sent trekking across the hospital to talk to a different receptionist. Three hours ago, he had wondered how hard could it possibly be to get a copy of his medical records.
Apparently the answer was: very hard. General pediatrics; clan opthamology, off in its own wing; regular opthamology (and why would they have any of his records there?); gastroenterology for that mysterious stomach bug when he was a baby; the ENT for the pneumonia he'd caught that one time... For every department he visited, he became increasingly glad that he'd decided to facilitate the document transfer himself. Otherwise he was certain that something would have gotten lost, or confused, or worse, switched. They could have labeled him as an Inuzuka or something!
The thick manila folder in his hand didn't help at all with his headache, but it did make him feel immensely satisfied all the same. Hiro: 1, Bureaucracy: 0.
Now, to return to ANBU headquarters and give the documentation to the on-site medics. In an arrangement of suspicious convenience, that only meant heading next door. Hiro smiled politely at the front-desk chuunin as he passed, then, remembering the location from the discreet Byakugan-scan of the premises he had performed yesterday, he continued down the stairs to the infirmary. |
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| Rescue Me [closed to Ginta & Hiro] |
[Jan. 23rd, 2009|01:12 am] |
[ Takes place five years previously, the night the Kyuubi attacked Konoha. ]
The world was painted in shades of flame-blue and blood-blue and desperation-blue. (His eyes couldn't see that third but he knew it was there; he breathed it with every breath, thick and cloying.) Hiro's Byakugan took in the destruction around him, displaying a scene of monochrome catastrophe.
He was too tired for it to even affect him any more. Twenty-six hours since the first alarms had sounded--they still blared in the background unattended, repetitive klaxxons echoing through the fog and smoke--and Hiro had settled into a rhythm now.
First find the Kyuubi; he didn't need the Byakugan for that, following the screams would do. ( Screams were good, it meant someone was still alive. ) |
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