"You didn't get any sleep, again, did you?"

Looking up from the batter she was whisking, Kana watched Kotetsu groggily enter the kitchen while rubbing the sleep away from his face with a deep inhale. She frowned and dropped her gaze back down to the task at hand, "I don't really… Sleeping hasn't been easy for me for a long time."

Even when she was curled around the two chunin over the last three nights, Kana's mind wasn't able to calm itself enough to sleep - it seemed that it was more than just Kisame's warmth and weight that helped her relax, after all.

Kotetsu smoothed his hair back into the messy ponytail he usually wore it in when he was home, "Nightmares?" he asked while reaching for the pot of coffee that had been prepared about half an hour earlier. After a beat, he added, "You don't gotta explain if you don't want to."

There were a few moments of silence as she added the vanilla extract to the batter before grabbing a ladle. As much as Kana wanted to do exactly as Inoichi suggested, to let her old friends in and help her move on… It had been so long before she had actually confided in anyone about anything that mattered. There was a difference between talking about her favorite foods with Kisame, and explaining what went through her mind every time her body began to feel the call of sleep.

Pale wisteria eyebrows knitted thoughtfully as she poured carefully-measured medallions onto the skillet. The chopped blueberries almost immediately began to bleed into the surrounding batter like violet blossoms.

"I just…" Kana sighed, "I'm… I'm sorry."

Kotetsu shifted so that he was standing behind her with his chin resting on her shoulder, "We aren't expecting things to go back to normal just like that," he said quietly, "But we're your friends – we're always gonna be." As if to make his point, he placed his hands on her upper arms and rubbed them reassuringly – it seemed that Kotetsu still liked touching things.

Years ago, his display of affection would have warmed Kana's chest and brought a smile to her lips – their weird family that used physical contact as affirmations of their friendship used to bring her so much comfort - but now she just felt a heavy sadness at the reminder of how things were so drastically different.

The kunoichi flipped the pancakes over once they started to bubble, twitching when Kotetsu poked at her ribs.

"I hope you're making a bunch of those. Pretty sure being this skinny isn't healthy. When was the last time you even ate?"

Things were drastically different, but it seemed that the people around her were still going to be getting on her case about her appearance. Sure, the muscle atrophy that came from being in a hospital bed for four weeks, then locked in a prison for about two more, then laying around in her apartment for about four more – all while not bothering to eat and basically getting all of her calories from sake and other boozes – meant that Kana was probably underweight, but she wasn't a shinobi anymore so what did it matter?

"She's been here for three days, and you're already ignoring me for her," a familiar voice whined playfully. Kotetsu backed away just moments before the familiar soft smacking sound of kissing reached her ears.

"Maybe if you made me pancakes then I'd show a little more interest," he teased back.

The couple bickered back and forth while Kana poured the last of the pancake batter into the heated pan, keeping an eye on the large omelet that was cooking in another. When was the last time she actually cooked? Because they were constantly on the move, Akatsuki members got their food from street vendors and small cafes in smaller villages with little to no military strength – cooking was a luxury they didn't have. If she thought really hard, Kana thought she could remember making three bento boxes for Tenten to take with her to the training field the day before she left, though she couldn't recall their contents.

The point was that she really hoped this didn't taste like ass from being out of practice. It was awkward enough that she was still here, after showing up out of the blue and spending the last few days in their apartment, and Kana was only making them breakfast in the first place because she had literally no idea how to break the ice with them. She had half of a mind to just leave in the middle of the first night to avoid all of this, and the only reason she didn't was because it would defeat the entire purpose of coming to them in the first place. Instead, they simply hovered around each other while making awkward small talk while the elephant in the room grew bigger and bigger with each waking moment.

Taking a deep breath, Kana scooped the food onto two plates and turned on her heel to set them on the table, immediately feeling all of her resolve and courage vacate her body when she saw the chunin look up from their coffee with matching smiles; it was quickly replaced by feelings of fear and uncertainty that caused her to almost drop both of the plates.

"I'm… Imma get going," she said shakily, sliding the food in front of them, "Thanks. For, uh –"

"You're not going to eat with us, again?" Izumo's gentle smile faltered as he spoke, "But it looks so good …"

'It's blueberry pancakes and some egg with generic vegetables, Izumo. Pretty basic stuff.'

Kana shifted uncomfortably and lowered her eyes to the floor so she didn't have to see their growing disappointment, "I'm not hungry. And… I have to... Report to Lady Tsunade for…" She trailed off with a sigh, knowing that her lie was as transparent as a window, and wrapped a lock of hair around her finger anxiously.

Their smiles faded in time with one another into expressions of worry; she felt her own feelings of being a piece of shit meld into her anxiety. As much as she wanted to teleport back to her apartment and crawl back into the closet where her makeshift bed was, she knew that she needed to get over this. Kana couldn't spend three years dodging their attempts at rekindling their friendship like she did the last time they struggled to get her out of her shell – back then she didn't want them in her life, so things needed to be different this time around.

She moved faster than necessary, flitting about the kitchen to grab a plate and scoop some food onto it hard enough to almost miss it entirely, and nearly broke the chair when she dropped into it a little too hastily.

Fuck.

"You… Haven't seen anyone else, have you?" Izumo asked softly after a few moments of uncomfortable silence. When Kana shook her head silently, he nodded in understanding and looked back down at his partially-eaten pancakes, "So what're you going to do?"

After three years of not having any coffee – as most places they went to were tea-or-water-only establishments - the woman scrunched her face at how much more bitter it tasted than she remembered, and set the mug back down. The frown she wore deepened as she picked up a fork to poke at the fluffy omelet that made wet squish noises with every prod.

"No idea," she mumbled, "I… I want to see the others…"

"But it's hard, after what's happened," Kotetsu finished.

Kana bit her lip and nodded, finally using the fork to cut at the egg roll to nudge it around the plate, "I just… I feel like… I feel like if I don't explain everything, then we can't move on, but…" her brow furrowed and she stabbed the egg piece a little too hard, causing it to split into uneven halves, "I don't know how… Or when… To talk… I-I don't – I mean, do I wait after a few weeks of pretending to ignore the way people look at me? And pretend like we're all friends again and just drop the bomb? Or…?"

Dropping the fork to the plate with a noisy clatter, she pulled her hair out of its braid to run shaking fingers through it.

Sensing her rising anxiety, Izumo reached out to pull her hand away from the locks it was currently trying to entangle itself in and wrapped it in both of his own, squeezing gently.

"If you want my advice, hon… I think it would be better, for everyone, if you just came clean and put everything on the table up front," he said quietly in a voice that spoke enough understanding that made Kana's chest ache.

Next to him, Kotetsu nodded and took a sip of his coffee before adding, "We get that maybe you can't share everything, but it'll help a lot if we just have an idea of what happened."

"You came home, and that's what matters the most," Izumo explained, "Even so, Kotetsu's right – more than anything else, we just want to understand."

"When you're ready."

Kana released a breath she wasn't aware she had been holding before squeezing the chunin's hand like he did moments earlier. After everything that happened, she would be lying if she said that she was expecting to be met with nothing less than intense hostility – from everyone, not just other shinobi, including the two men sitting to her right. It was part of why she spent three days hiding in her apartment after her talk with Kakashi; she had been mentally preparing herself for the backlash that she knew would inevitably come from approaching one of her old friends.

The lack of anger coming from Izumo and Kotetsu was simultaneously giving her reassurance and making her feel like hell. She deserved to have anger directed towards her – she deserved to be punished by her village for everything she did. In her mind, that was what was supposed to happen. The fact that her village was just treating her like any other shinobi with PTSD, and her friends were saying they just wanted an explanation, was unsettling.

A part of her knew it had to do with what the Anbu Commander said, that she was too full of remorse, and that Kana just wanted to be punished so she could feel even the tiniest bit better about what happened.

It was abhorrently selfish, but it was true.

She sighed heavily, eyes sliding shut, and she pulled off her sunglasses to rub at them with the hand not holding Izumo's. Hiding from her loved ones as a form of punishment wasn't going to make anything better for anyone – the chunin were right in saying that it would be better to get everything out in the open so they could move on. As much as Kana felt like she wasn't ready, that she needed more time to mentally prepare herself, she knew that it was just her way of procrastinating so she didn't have to confront the others.

Because confronting the others meant confronting her own thoughts and experiences from the last three years, and not in the mission report-like way she addressed them with Inoichi.

"I… I think I want to get everyone together to do it, then," Kana nearly whispered, "I just… Don't want to keep…"

Izumo nodded and rubbed the back of her hand, "Of course. We can do it here."

"We'll talk to Gen when we see him in the mission room later, but it might be better if you talked to Raido yourself," Kotetsu frowned at his plate, "After we nuke our pancakes."

Kana hid the worry that flared through her chest by laughing – a weak, hollow sound – at his comment with a nod. Their food had long since turned cold, with Kotetsu's being especially bad since he drowned almost the entire plate in copious amounts of syrup.

"Dammit, Ko! Why do you even bother eating real food if you're only going to ruin it with – ?"

"Ruin it?!" the chunin's mouth dropped open in mock-anger as he stood up from his chair fast enough to knock it backwards, "Ruin it?!"

The two began their routine bickering over Kotetsu's food preferences, which mostly consisted of Izumo being worried for his health and asking why he doesn't even make an attempt to use the sugar-free options that are on the market, to which his lover responded to by claiming he exercised enough for his body to be okay with what he admitted was an unusual intake of processed sugars.

They pretended to not notice Kana slip through the front door as they placed their plates into the microwave in turn, the barest of subtle smiles playing across her lips.

When she was sure that she was out of earshot, she jumped up to a rooftop so that she was face-to-face with the Anbu escort with a mouse-shaped mask with yellow markings. He had less than a beat to even realize what was happening before Kana sucked him and the three others into her Kamui, jumping in with them and then spitting them all out into her apartment. The last time she used the Mangekyo ability to teleport home without them, they raised all sorts of hell and nearly half of the Anbu force had been sent out in search of her, so Kana decided it would just be easier to get home this way.

They clearly didn't share her sentiment, however, and each one of them groaned at the twisting sensation of teleportation as they struggled to maintain their balance. One of them toppled over to fall back onto his butt with a dissatisfied grunt.

"That… Was unnecessary," the one in the bird mask grumbled, pushing his fingers up under his mask to rub at his forehead.

Kana ignored him and picked up one of the two clean t-shirts that hung on a wire hanger in her closet, snatching the only black pants she owned, and wasted no time with flickering over to the tiny three-by-two bathroom that only barely had enough space to fit a shower, a toilet and a single cabinet that a sink was built into. Stripping out of her one piece and jacket, Kana jumped into the cold stream of water that did nothing to ease her jittery nerves.

Confronting Raido was something she hoped she wouldn't have to do until later, but also knew that if she continued to put it off then she would eventually lose her resolve.

So, that's why she was speeding through her shower and trying to not tear her hair out while aggressively shampooing it and scrubbing her skin so vigorously that she was almost surprised her tattoos didn't wash away into the water that swirled around her feet.

All Kana had to do was knock on the door, tell him that she was meeting a few people at the chunins' apartment, then leave. Maybe she would just leave a note, that way they wouldn't have to even talk to each other.

It sounded like a simple plan but, as she toweled herself out and pulled her clothes on, she knew that it was more than just the pants that were making her uncomfortable. It was more than just the thin sheen of leftover dampness that made her shiver when she stepped back out into the normally warm room of her apartment. It was more than just the lack of food that left her feeling nauseous as she jumped into her Kamui dimension with the other Anbu.

Talking to Kakashi would be easy, for the most part, because he already had a general idea that things weren't as they seemed. Kana knew that he most likely told that much to Guy, who had been like a father to her for most of her life. The night she fled Konoha, she told Neji that she was doing what she did for the safety of the village, so he had a similar idea as Kakashi. Even Genma, the man that was completely out of the loop, said that he couldn't believe that she was "One of them."

It seemed that everyone but Raido and the chunin believed that there was more to the story than what met the eye and, for some reason, Kotetsu and Izumo readily accepted her back into their lives after being so eager to kill her in the forest with Asuma and Shikamaru.

A dark voice in the back of Kana's head reminded her that they had at least been open about their intentions, though – that Raido tried to use her feelings against her as a distraction so Yugao could land a killing blow.

The thought made her stop in her tracks, freezing on the spot with one hand half-raised to knock on the door to his apartment. What part of her that insisted he deserved to know why his lover walked out of his life by stabbing him in the flank was quickly being drowned out by the reminder that he made a legitimate effort to end her life just a year later.

"You might as well go through with it," of the guards commented shakily.

Kana looked over at him with narrowed eyes, "You just don't want to be teleported again."

He shrugged with a heavy sigh, "That, too. That fucking sucks. But, really," he keeled over and placed his palms on his knees, "Watching you is fucking depressing. I mean, suicide watch is always depressing - ."

"Wait," she stepped away from the door to help him stand back up, "Put your hands behind your head to breathe. What do you mean 'Suicide watch'?"

"Our primary assignment is to observe you twenty-four-seven to prevent you from taking your own life," the man in the mouse mask explained to her left, "Were you not aware of this?"

Uh, no. Kana thought that they were following her around because Tsunade assumed she was going to snap again and either go rejoin the Akatsuki or go on a killing rampage – that, and there were a lot of shinobi that wouldn't mind having her head served up on a platter for being associated with the same terrorist organization that flattened their home two or three months back.

Were they really under the impression that she was going to kill herself?

Actually… As bizarre as the idea sounded at first… Kana drank all day and refused to eat or leave her apartment. Looking down at her hands, which were admittedly close to being skeletal, she had to ask herself if she was subconsciously starving herself to death, or if she had simply given up on bothering to try anymore.

She took an uncertain step back and leaned against the metal railing that enclosed the apartment building breezeway. Was that why one of the guards from earlier that week went to fetch Kakashi?

"You need to meet people, baby, the way you shut yourself away like this… It isn't healthy."

"That small sliver of light within you began to fade so quickly that I – I was so scared I was going to lose my little girl."

Words that Guy spoke years ago, words that Kana had very nearly forgotten, finally hit home.

"Kana?"

Oh, fuck.

Almost giving herself whiplash, and making her ponytail whip around hard enough to smack her in the cheek, Kana looked up from her hands in horror to see Raido standing maybe ten or twelve feet away with a bag of groceries in one arm, keys dangling from his other hand.

She thought back to what Kotetsu said earlier about Genma working in the mission room, and it suddenly occurred to her that they would be relieving him from his shift – the shift that he almost always shared with Raido, Iruka or Anko.

The fear that Kana thought she felt earlier wasn't even comparable to the cold terror that washed over the second she heard that familiar voice call her name. It didn't come close to the fight-or-flight response that had her pressing back into the cold bar that dug into her hips, refusing to budge. When Raido took a step forward, she grabbed the corner post and hoisted herself up so that she was crouching on the railing and ready to jump, which the Anbu team responded to by spreading out in case they had to follow.

"What are you doing here?"

The sound of his voice, rough and husky from the same fire jutsu that caused the scars that stretched across his cheek, made Kana's stomach twist painfully as she was reminded of the night she left him. Raido was wearing almost the exact same confused, fretful expression he wore when he found her sitting on the edge of their bed in the dark with her few belongings packed into a bag that sat at her feet.

It was too soon. This was too fast. Seeing Izumo and Kotetsu was one thing, but this was Raido. This wasn't the same – this was a whole other ballpark she threw herself into and Kana realized she needed more time to brace herself.

"I think you're afraid of them."

Of course she was afraid. She was fucking terrified. If she reached out, she couldn't go back to keeping herself safe behind the wall that separated her from everyone else. There wasn't any going back after this. Kana could be rejected, or accepted, and either outcome left her feeling like her world was going to fall apart at the seams.

Raido took another step forward. When she tried to make words, to tell him to stay away, the only thing that came out was a strained abortive noise that got caught in her throat. He took another step forward, and Kana gripped the railing harder even as her legs refused to move.

"We'll be on the roof, Captain."

'No, don't go.'

She didn't want to be left alone with him. Being left alone with him meant that she didn't have an excuse to leave.

Kana didn't realize she was crying until Raido's figure was nothing more than a blur of green and blue.

"We… At… We're…" The words seemed to struggle to force their way past her mouth, and struggled even more to string together into a coherent sentence as she tried to explain what had taken place earlier in the magpies' kitchen, "I, uh… Met with… And…"

It was like a fuse had short circuited in Kana's brain that scrambled her thoughts and turned her tongue to lead. There was one question that managed to successfully form, though, and it was one that plagued her for more nights than she could count.

"Did you really volunteer to… To kill me?"

Spiky brown hair quivered when he took a step, vehemently shaking his head with an expression of abject horror, "No! What happened with Yugao –she was angry that you betrayed the Anbu Black Ops, and tried to take matters into her own hands. That wasn't a part of the plan."

"I needed help finding you," Raido explained, "I asked Lady Hokage if I could lead the mission because I thought that if I reminded you of what we had, if I proved that I wanted to spend my life with you, then you'd come home. But… Yugao got angry, and lost it when she saw you had the hilt to Hayate's sword – the plan was only to engage you if you attacked us, first."

She thought back to that day in the forest, trying to bring up the details of the event, while savagely gnawing on the inside of her lip. Kana had noted that the presence of Aoba and the lack of black clothing meant that Raido intended to take her alive, and it had been Yugao that tried sneaking around… She assumed that it was just a ploy to keep her distracted long enough for the Anbu member to get in a sneak attack.

There was something that she knew about Raido, though, and that was he never, ever lied to her. Not once.

Not like she did to him.

Setting the paper bag and his keys on the concrete walkway, he ran a hand through his hair and released a heavy sigh, eyes glued to the ground, "What you said the night you left. Did you mean it?"

"In all honesty I was just playing around with you to pass the time because you're easy to manipulate."

"You're clingy, and annoying, and I'm sick of looking at your disgusting scars."

"I don't want you. I'm sick of you, is that so hard for you to understand?"

Kana's own eyes squeezed shut to blink away burning tears, and shook her head just hard enough for near-white bangs to swish with her movements, "I… No… I didn't."

Having closed most of the distance between them by this point, Raido reached out to tentatively stroke her cheek; her breathing hitched when his callused thumb grazed the soft flesh under her eye to wipe away the stream of warm tears.

She unwittingly leaned into the palm that cupped her face, eyes sliding shut at the warm weight of his callused palm. He was close enough for Kana to smell the agonizingly familiar scent of wood and musk – the same scent she would wrap herself in at night when they cuddled on the couch to read or watch tv together. It was the same scent that filled her senses when they made love, attenuated by the subtle smell of sweat and sex and heightened by the repeated mantras of "I love you."

Raido leaned down to press his lips into the top of her head, nuzzling her hair and taking a deep breath before placing another kiss on her temple. It was the same way he would kiss her after coming back from a particularly stressful mission, as if she were all he needed. It was a gesture Kana had learned to love just as much as she did the man himself.

How many nights did she spend lying awake trying to imagine how this scene would play out? How many hours did she pass by daydreaming about what it would be like to feel his touch, just one more time?

Kana turned her face just enough for her lips to ghost over the pad of his thumb, not unlike she did the day of Pain's attack, and pressed a kiss into the warm palm. In response, Raido used his free hand to hold the other side of her jaw, cradling her head in his hands, and tilted her face up so that their noses brushed together.

His breath was hot against her mouth, and she could feel that his lips were parted just enough to where they would perfectly mold with hers if he just leaned down that extra inch, but Raido kept their faces apart long enough for him to push her tinted sunglasses up into her hair. When she finally opened her eyes, he asked quietly, "The day you saved me. Did you mean what you said then?"

"I never wanted you to get hurt, Raido – please, believe me! I love you – I love you, Raido!"

A strangled sob escaped her lips. Kana shifted enough for their noses to rest against each other, and she could feel the uneven ridges of his scarring when she nuzzled his cheek in a desperate attempt at feeling more of him, even if she was too afraid to indulge in anything more. Her breathing hitched again when she inhaled deeply.

"Yes."

It was only just barely loud enough for it to be audible, but Kana could feel Raido's brow furrow against her own at her answer. She could feel his breathing quicken as much as she could hear it, and the fingers that held her cheeks flexed.

"Say it, Kana," he nearly growled, "I need to hear it."

Raising mismatched eyes to lock with his, she could feel another wave of warm tears fill up before spilling over her cheeks. She knew what he was asking, and what was being offered in return, and Kana felt like she was precariously teetering on the crumbling edge of a cliff with an inky black chasm below, with Raido standing right behind, ready to take hold and pull her to safety if she just trusted him enough.

Being home, having breakfast with the chunin, being this close to Raido, face close enough for her to smell the subtle hint of coffee on his breath… The whole situation just felt too surreal for her to feel as if she could grasp onto it, and Kana struggled to make sense of it all as he silently waited for a response. It was almost everything she wished for so, so long, and the understanding that it was finally being presented outside of her dreams left her feeling almost dizzy.

Tattooed hands, clad in standard black gloves, came up to grip his upper arms for support at the thought, as if he was the only thing keeping her from plummeting down the five stories of the building to the concrete below. Through the fabric of his shinobi jersey she would feel the muscles in his biceps twitch and flex in response.

"I love you, Raido," Kana's voice was small in her ears, too small to possibly ever belong to her, "I love you," another snivel as she used the hold on his arms to pull herself closer, "I love you, Raido."

The tokujo made a noise in the back of his throat that sounded like a cross between a groan and heartbreaking sob just before closing what little distance there was between their faces. She offered herself to him, allowing Raido to set the pace of the chaste kisses he fluttered over her lips like a bee that bounced around a flower before finally touching down on its petals.

His lips were just as soft as she remembered, thin and full and so fucking perfect as they moved with her own. They made the ache behind her eyes she wasn't even aware of fade away, and the sickeningly cold wire of fear wrapped around her heart loosened when he used the hands on her head to hold her in place so he could deepen the kiss. When Kana slid her hands up and around the backs of his shoulders, she realized that she had forgotten how to breathe and it only made her return the kiss that much more fervor.

"Oh god," he ground out between hurried kisses, "Tell me you're not going to leave. Tell me you're gonna stay with me."

Kana mewled when his mouth trailed along her jaw, the hungry sounds dancing over her ear sending her nerve endings into an electrified frenzy. It wasn't until Raido dragged his tongue along the shell of her ear and roughly nipped at the lobe at she even realized he had said anything, too overwhelmed to pay attention to anything other than the fact that he was kissing her and one of his hands was squeezing her waist and she could feel his saliva on her skin from where his mouth had been and he was kissing her.

"Kitten."

The desperation in his voice snapped her out of the haze long enough for her to turn her face enough to press a hard kiss into his cheek, "I – I won't leave you."

Kana whimpered when he slanted his mouth back over hers to greedily bring them together in a bruising kiss with a groan.

"I love you so much," Raido used the hand on her waist to pull her away from the railing, "God, kitten, I missed you," he groaned into her mouth again when she wrapped herself around his torso in response, and his hands smoothed down her body to support her weight, "I missed you so fucking much. I thought was never going to see you again."

Hands molded to his jaw and her legs tightly secured around his waist, Kana couldn't find the presence of mind to respond as she melded their mouths together. There would be plenty of time for apologizing and explaining later – right now she just wanted to feel Raido's body against hers, and breathe in his familiar scent of wood and musk, and relish the way Raido's mouth tasted clean and sweet, like rain. It was like he embodied everything she loved about Konoha and it filled her senses as his tongue danced over the seam of her lips in a silent request that Kana was eager to grant.

The cold wire almost completely unraveled itself from where it squeezed at her chest. Raido's tongue was warm and wet as it swirled around hers, and Kana was absolutely certain that there was no better feeling than their shared breaths puffing against their swollen lips as they struggled to map out each others' mouths. When Raido moaned, a soft, grunting sound, in the back of his throat before flicking the tip of his tongue over the roof of her mouth, she could feel a thin line of drool trickle down her chin and she wasn't sure who it belonged to.

It wasn't long until the way she had been treating her body began to catch up with her, and Kana realized that the lightheadedness from earlier had yet to go away when her eyelids grew heavy and her breathing became too labored for it to be from just making out. She had to make a conscious effort to tear her face away from Raido's, immediately feeling empty and cold, and let her arms drop to circle his shoulders for extra support.

"R-Rai… I'm gonna pass out," she panted into his collar.

The arms around her waist and hips tightened, and he pulled back just enough for his mouth to rest against the side of her head, making her hair flutter in time with his heavy breathing, "What –w what's wrong?"

Had the situation been different, Kana probably would have laughed. What wasn't wrong? She hadn't eaten in nearly two and a half weeks, her only fluid intake was booze, the last time she slept was nearly two weeks ago, and her emotions were in chaos.

Instead, she just screwed her eyes shut against the way the world seemed to spin around them with a weak moan.

"Alright, I've got you," Raido cooed, putting one foot up on the railing to jump off, "Let's get you checked out at the hospital."


"How the hell did you let it get so bad before bringing her in?!"

Raido's eyes didn't leave his lover's face as she struggled to stay conscious, mismatched eyes glazed over but still on him. Lady Fifth's voice had no trouble carrying through the relatively thin walls of the hospital, one of the few buildings that didn't need to be completely rebuilt, though he was pretty sure that Kana was too out of it to even register what was being said.

"There is no excuse for my failure - ."

"It's not just your failure, Captain, there were three other Anbu Black Ops teams assigned to her. I want to know why the hell every one of you failed to mention that she had allowed herself to fall into such a state!"

His calloused fingers stroked the back of her hand, feeling the metacarpals jut out of the pale tattooed flesh that was stretched tight over them.

"She holds valuable intel on the Akatsuki that we may need later – or did no one inform you that we're about to go to war with them?!"

The IV bag was nearly empty, having transferred most of its contents through the butterfly needle that was embedded into Kana's arm. He didn't understand what happened for her to go without food or water for so long, but he felt more than fortunate that she came to him before finally succumbing to her body's weakened state. Had she fainted in whatever apartment she was staying in, Raido wasn't entirely sure if the Anbu goons in charge of watching her would have had the thought to bring her to the hospital; it would have only been a matter of time before cardiac arrest set in.

"I apologize, milady -."

"I don't want your apologies!" she cut him off for the umpteenth time in their talk, "I'm taking you, and the others, off of the assignment – effective immediately. Commander Hiketsu will deal with your punishment, so get out of my sight!"

The door to the sterile room swung open just moments later to reveal a frustrated-looking Tsunade that was flipping through some papers clipped to a chart. She paid no mind to Raido and focused on the woman lying in the hospital bed, poking some buttons with the hand not holding the clipboard before reaching out to start taking Kana's vital's. The way she flinched away from the Hokage's touch, as subtle as it was, didn't go unnoticed, but it seemed to be of very little concern to her.

"You spend too much time with Kakashi," she muttered irritably, "Quit fighting the drugs and let your body heal yourself. You're a doctor, you know how important rest is."

Silvery lashes fluttered in response; it was all Kana could manage in her current state. He didn't understand much about sleeping medicines, but Raido knew that she had been put on some pretty heavy-duty stuff to put her into a sort of medically-induced coma. He was under the impression that those were only supposed to be done in cases where the patient is in extreme pain, and nearly raised hell until it was explained to him that Kana was suffering from a severe case of PTSD that wasn't allowing her to sleep.

Running a hand over her wrist and up to her forearm, the tokujo squeezed gently and tried to not let his somber feelings show through what he hoped as a reassuring smile.

"I'll stay with you," he said softly, "I won't go anywhere."

The hand still holding his twitched in response, and Raido watched her brow furrow as she struggled with her own internal battle. It made his chest clench painfully.

All shinobi lived with psychological damage in one way or another, whether it be through depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and so on; it was why every ninja was required to undergo monthly psych evaluations on top of physical exams. He dealt with his own issues by cleaning his weapons, an ironically cathartic process, or would run laps around the village until his legs couldn't carry him anymore. Genma was constantly chewing on that infernal senbon and burying his own stresses into the rear ends of the chunin, which seemed to be a pretty common way of coping – sex, not sex with the magpies.

As a result… He was watching alien-like eyes struggle to stay open in a display of an ingrained fear of what could happen if Kana let herself fall asleep.

Raido knew that Kana drank and trained enough to give Might Guy a run for his money to cope with her own problems, but he knew that she wasn't good at talking about them; when she left the village he wondered if she only scraped through her psych evals because the Leaf considered her too useful to bench her. It made absolutely no sense how someone could be so visibly happy could simply snap one day and withdraw from everyone she knew and loved, then abandon the village to join a terrorist organization a little less than a year later. Even if the tokujo was aware that one of the members of the Akatsuki was a relic of her past that he knew very, very little about - Kana had really only mentioned him in passing, just fleeting references, and would clam up if anyone asked for more - it still felt inconceivable that she would choose to betray everything she believed in just to be with him. There had to be some sort of sign - something that everyone missed, or simply refused to ignore.

Maybe that was because Raido didn't want to believe that there was a man out there that was more important to her than he was.

The call of the drug-induced sleep proved to be too much, or maybe there was something comforting about Raido's promise to stay by her side, and it was only a few more moments before her eyelids finally slid shut and the tension around her mouth softened.

"I don't want to see you like that again, Namiashi," Tsunade murmured after they were certain that Kana was actually asleep, head tilted down as she scrawled something into a form, "I can't have my best men get shaken up to the point where they forget to come into work." She finished writing and slid the pen under the metal clip before turning on her heel and walking towards the door, "I want you to think about that before jumping into whatever this is."

Tsunade didn't give him time to answer, the door clicking shut behind her just as she finished speaking, but Raido didn't mind because he wasn't entirely sure how he was supposed to respond to something like that.

He lifted his gaze to watch the sleeping figure next to him, idly tracing the mysterious tattoos that circled her arm with the tips of his fingers. Raido never learned what they were for, other than the tattoo on her left hand that was the kanji for "Shield" surrounding by unrecognizable circles and swirls that curled around each of her fingers. During their brief altercation in the forest he was able to see that there was also one on her thigh, and there were probably more that he couldn't see, just like the few scars on her face.

So much had changed over the course of more than three, nearly four, years. They obviously wouldn't be able to just pick up where they left off, but would they ever find themselves sharing something even remotely similar to what they had before?

Raido was thirty-six years old – he was a grown man that experienced enough to not buy into the magical romance that Jiraiya wrote about in his novels, which meant that he knew that things were never going to be exactly as they used to be. What they had before, the perfect scenarios he would dream about, wouldn't become a part of their future. Could he accept that? Would he be okay with struggling to pick up what pieces were left of their relationship?

As if on cue, a soft sigh escaped Kana's chapped lips, and her fingers twitched in his palm, which he brought up to his lips to press a gentle kiss over the scarred knuckles.

"Still here, kitten," he whispered, feeling the tight pang of worry in his chest lessen somewhat by the warmth that came from watching her relax into the hospital sheets at the sound of his voice.

Yeah..

Picking up the remaining pieces would be alright.

They could always make new ones.