Thank you for your reviews, each of them made my day in it's own way!

krn-kimbap: Thanks for reviewing, you are so awesome. -

Gaarasand: You don't even rave to review to get a shout out. All hail Gaarasand.

HinatasBiggestFanboy: The only person that I can find as OOC is Ukon, and wouldn't you be OOC too if your best friend and only relative died suddenly? With Tayuya, I can't find enough ways to integrate cursing into her speech and this is virtually how I perceive Kimimaro.

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Tayuya woke up, to her surprise, with Ukon huddled up beside her. He had his back to her and was sleeping soundly. 'He sure is lonely,' Tayuya thought as she carefully got up and grabbed her clothes to get changed in the bathroom.

When Tayuya got down to the kitchen, she discovered that she was not one of two but one of three people in the house. Kabuto was pouring milk into some Fruit Loops at the table. "Hey bastard, what are YOU doing here?" she asked angrily. Kabuto leaned back in his chair and smiled at her through half closed eyes. "Well, Orochimaru told me to tell you that we're moving Kimimaro in here today and I just decided to have breakfast while you slept." "Gee, thanks, suddenly I wonder who else comes sauntering into my house in the middle of the night," she said sarcastically. "I also came to check out your house for the living conditions -- I suppose we'd have to fix up his bedroom and get rid of that Leaning Tower of Pizza you've got there," he replied as he eyed the stack of take-out boxes in the corner of the kitchen. Tayuya rolled her eyes. "Whatever you do here, be quiet, because this is the first good sleep Ukon's had in a while." "Ah, yes, didn't Sakon have a sleeping problem of some sort? Wasn't Ukon narcoleptic for a bit after the accident, too?" Kabuto questioned rhetorically. "Anyways, we think we'll have Kimimaro in here by 7 PM tonight if things go right. Now, Tayuya, come with me and we will take a look at the state that his room is in," he continued as he placed his bowl in the dishwasher and headed off with Tayuya in tow.

The sixties style wooden door to Kimimaro's room opened with an audible creak and Tayuya and Kabuto walked in. Everything in the room was layered in dust, and Tayuya felt like she was intruding. "When was he last in here again...?" Kabuto pondered aloud to himself while he closed the door behind them. "When he was fourteen," the kunoichi beside him recited. "Three years, then," Kabuto muttered as they surveyed the room. Kimimaro didn't like people getting into his stuff, Tayuya knew, so she hadn't been in here very often. He had painted the walls white and the window was painted a bit too, though he had placed blinds over it and there were scratch marks from human fingernails on the paint. The white dresser did not have much on it, but what it did hold was intriguing, a notebook being one of the things. His bed was made from simple iron with white bedsheets, which were still neatly folded back from the last use. On the metal bedside table, there was nothing but a bottle of shampoo and another of conditioner, plus a white candle. On an iron chair beside the dresser there lay an orderly pile of clothes, arranged with the shirt on top, underwear beneath that, pants soon following, and touching the chair would be a roll of bandages. Under the chair there lay a pair of sandals. None this would fit Kimimaro now, these were the clothes that he would've worn when he was fourteen. "Damn," Tayuya said, breaking the silence. "Let's clean this place up," Kabuto decided.

Kabuto dusted while Tayuya put stuff away, namely the clothes. Beneath her fingers they were coarse. Were they always this way, or had this been an effect of time? Tayuya couldn't tell. The bandages almost fell apart beneath her fingers as she placed them in the dresser with the sandals sitting on the pile when she had finished. For a bit, she helped Kabuto by getting things, but other than that there was nothing, and so, without thinking about it, she sat on the bed and put one hand beside her thigh and with the other leaned on the pillow. Suddenly, from beneath the pillow, she heard a crack. After checking to see that Kabuto was occupied with something else, she stealthily reached under the pillow to feel two hard, cold objects. When she pulled them out, she found that they were photographs in frames. One was of their team when they were younger, maybe eleven or twelve. This was the one that she had cracked. Tayuya studied the picture. Ukon and Sakon were giving each other bunny ears. Kidomaru was giving everyone bunny ears, even himself. Jiroubou was rolling his eyes at the former three's immaturity. Tayuya herself was double-deucing the camera. Kimimaro was standing there, stoically, not smiling and near to the edge of the picture. Tayuya put that picture back and looked at the other one. It was bent, yellowing and looked as though someone had carried it in their pocket for a year or two, but you could still see the scene reasonably well. There were a woman and a man near the top, expressionlessly facing the camera. In the bottom row, beneath the man and woman, were three more people. In the left there was a girl, about twelve, staring down at the camera, almost daring it, without any words. In the right there was a boy, about nine, who looked lifelessly at the picture-taking device. However, the whole picture was not as solemn. In the very middle there was a small boy, about three or four, smiling smally and waving. His eyes were shiny, and even though the photo was black and white, you could almost see the colours that would illuminate his tiny thin body. Maybe Tayuya was just imagining the colours, though, because she already knew them. His hair was white, like his clothes, and he had two red dots on his forehead, just above his green eyes. 'Kimimaro...' she thought sadly as she looked at the picture. 'This is what you were...' "Hey what'cha got there?" Kabuto asked as he approached the girl sitting on a Kaguya's bed. "Nothing," she lied as she shoved the photograph back under the pillow, "But I think Kimimaro may have had lice. That's one heck of a whatever that is." "Tayuya... That's a rock."

"Be careful with him....TAYUYA!!!" Kabuto cautioned, then yelled. Tayuya, who was supporting Kimimaro, had subconsciously run the poor boy right into a wall. "Sorry," she said defensively. Kimimaro didn't even blink, much less rub his wound. He simply let her guide him past the wall and into his room, where Kabuto bade him to lie on the bed. "You stay there for a day, and don't leave unless you have to use the bathroom. Tayuya, you stay with him the whole time, and if he goes to the bathroom, wait outside the door." Tayuya looked at Kabuto appraisingly, wondering how many times she would have to hit him to beat his smirk into a bloody pulp. "Okay," she said instead. Kabuto nodded and continued, "Kimimaro is to have nothing to eat until 8:00 tomorrow morning but a glass of water, and just 1. At 8:00, serve him a Five Alive juice box and a Bean & Spinach smoothie. At 12:30, serve him bread dipped in carrot yogurt, and at 6:00 give him a Raisin & Prune Milkshake. At 9:30, he must eat Onion and Pickle ice cream. I have the food already made in your refrigerator." "You sure you're healing instead of killing him?" Tayuya asked with a look of disgust on her face. Kabuto rolled his eyes. "Be good," he said as he left, but, thinking twice, he turned to her again with a cat-like smile on his face and said, "Oh, and in case you're thinking of it, he hasn't healed well enough for any kinky sex positions." With a yell, Tayuya lunged towards Kabuto with and outstretched fist, but made contacted with the door he had quickly shut instead. She could hear him laughing as he ran down the hall while she slid to the floor.

Standing up, Tayuya turned to look at Kimimaro and realized that he was watching her. "Heh heh... Did you hear what that shithead said?" Tayuya asked nervously. Kimimaro shook his head once to each side. "Good. I'm, uh, going to go get my blankets so I can fuckin' sleep when you go to bed." She quickly exited the room. 'I am so glad that he didn't hear that... Kabuto that bastard I'm going rip his fucking head of and shove it up his ass!' she thought as she retrieved her blankets.

When Tayuya returned to Kimimaro's bedroom, she saw that he had already changed into his pajamas and felt slightly let down for some reason. He had sat himself on his bed and closed his eyes, and if Tayuya hadn't just been in here, then because of his stillness, she would've thought he was dead. In fact, he was so motionless that Tayuya remembered how sick he had recently been (Kabuto had said that the illness was for some reason nearly gone) that she had to go over there and check. "Kimimaro..." she said softly, then, not waiting for a reply, grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him hard, yelling, "DON'T GO AND DIE WHILE I'M BABYSITTING YOU!" Kimimaro didn't even flinch. When Tayuya stopped shaking him, he opened his eyes slowly and looked up at her. "I am not dead..." he murmured. "You will be if I have to shake you again," the kunoichi responded under her breath. Kimimaro looked up at her with his hands folded neatly on his lap and she couldn't help but wonder why he wore such strange pajamas. "Kimimaro, why do you wear a nightgown?" she asked bluntly. "It is a robe," he replied simply, and Tayuya decided not tot make him elaborate. His 'robe' was pure white (like his hair) and was held together with a belt, like a bathrobe. She sighed and sat beside him on his starched white bedsheet bed. "What are you going to do?" she questioned. "Sit," he stated. Tayuya blinked. "Sit? That's all?" she asked. He nodded. "Shit," she breathed, "You live a more boring life than I had originally thought." Kimimaro didn't even seem to notice her comment. He stood up and took her covers from her, then wordlessly made her bed on the floor and turned around so as not to face her. "You may get changed now. I am ready for sleep." 'At eight thirty?' she thought disbelievingly. Once she was done changing she decided to surprise Kimimaro and picked him up bridal style. His feathery hair touched her fingers slightly as she dropped him onto his bed. "Goodnight," she said, smirking. Kimimaro looked up at her without emotion. "Dream well," he replied tonelessly.

It had been ten minutes since they had turned out the lights, but neither had gotten to sleep. Tayuya shifted her eyes over to Kimimaro. He had his eyes half open and the moonlight coming through the window (Tayuya and Kabuto had scraped the paint off) reflected off of his eyes. Somewhere in there there must be some sort of emotion, she mused, but he always hid it. You had to be pretty Kaguwise to penetrate his barrier even slightly, and Tayuya was proud to say that she had mastered it the most. If you horribly surprised him in a way repeatedly you might get to know the miniscule cracks in his mask. Not that it cracked often. In fact, Tayuya hadn't seen him crack in quite a while now. Maybe it was time to re-establish her place as all-annoying....