Chapter 4:

Regret

The first thing that Raidou became aware of as he returned to consciousness was the dull throbbing in his head. The second was the ache of the scars that covered the left side of his body, but at the moment that seemed rather minor.

He wasn't entirely certain where he was for a moment; he kept his eyes closed and his body still, and he waited to see if anything around him would tell him where the hell he was.

The air smelled clean, though not the clean that one would smell somewhere out in the forest after it had rained. It smelled...well, it smelled rather clean, but the cleanness had a sort of...medical smell--

Aaaah. Hospital. Got it.

He decided that he would blame whatever had happened to his head for his slow thought process.

He cracked his eyelids a sliver, just enough to let a little light in. Thankfully, the room was dimly lit, and so opening his eyes didn't cause his head to want to split in two. No, it already felt like that, so the light didn't really do anything. Nope. Nothing.

Breath in, breath out. Inhale, exhale. Ouch, ribs.

He obviously wasn't in the best shape. They must've been beat pretty badly.

He opened his eyes a little wider as they adjusted to the light. The sound of two people speaking drifted toward him, and he turned his head a little, trying to find the source of the sound.

Well, isn't that a familiar sight.

What he saw did remind him of other hospital visits from years ago, of the days when stupidity and bad luck tended to land one in the white beds more than anything else. Of days when Shizune would sit with one of them or the other, healing them and calling them idiots for whatever it was that they had done.

It didn't look like she was doing any healing now, just...sitting. Sitting and talking. With Genma, and Raidou's next thought was that he was glad that Genma was still alive. Not that he was particularly surprised—he wasn't even all that surprised that he was still alive. After all the other crap that he'd gone through—such as nearly having half his face torn off, among other things—he'd stopped being surprised when he woke up in a hospital bed. Not surprised, just...grateful. Thankful. Yes.

He wasn't entirely sure what the two of them were talking about. They were speaking to softly for him to hear anything much, just snippets of a couple of words. He thought that he could see Genma smiling—that was good. Shizune's back was to him, so he couldn't tell anything about her expression, but he figured that she was probably smiling, to. Although, if he remembered correctly, she smiled a lot. Too much, actually. But that was just how she was. She'd either be smiling, or making that worried expression that used to annoy him a lot.

He decided that he'd just lay there for a bit, collect his thoughts. Figure out exactly what had happened and what had gone wrong.

There had a been a barrier of sorts that had hurt a hell of a lot—unless his mind was making things up.

Raidou was fairly lost in thought when the doors to the room were thrown open, but the sound of them clattering against the wall was enough to make him jump a little. It was also enough to make his head begin to hurt a bit worse, but he tried to ignore that part.

Someone was entering the room, their gait a little fast, a little hurried. Raidou turned his head, tried to see who it was, but the thick white divider curtain beside his bed blocked his view.

"Raidou! Genma! I heard that--"

Oh, just Aoba, he thought, prepared to close his eyes and pretend to sleep. Then--

"Shizune."

Oh. Oh, shit.

He opened up his eyes in time to catch the startled, almost shocked look on Aoba's face, to see Shizune turn and look up at him, a very weak, nervous smile on her lips.

"Hello, Aoba," she said, and her voice was pleasant enough, though there was a tremor of uncertainty in it that Raidou could clearly hear.

Aoba had never been part of Anbu, and so he hadn't known, at all, what had happened to Shizune. Raidou had known, as had Genma, that she had been sent on an extended mission—at least, that's what they had been able to figure it out from what they knew about Anbu, and from the fact that her name never came up on the missing-nin list. They'd at least been able to understand why she had left.

Of course, finding her apartment completely cleaned out, with all of the remaining belongings packed away into boxes...that hadn't helped anything whatsoever. Especially with Aoba, who had always taken things harder and reacted far more strongly to change than any of the rest of them.

"We got back last night." Genma's voice cut through his thoughts, and Raidou figured he knew why he was speaking a little too loudly and a little too quickly. "Ran into some trouble on our way back in."

Of course, it obviously wasn't working, because Aoba's attention was still all on Shizune. His eyes were trained on her, and his entire posture was stiff, rigid.

"I only just got back, Aoba," he heard Shizune say, her voice very soft, and he half expected to see her avoiding Aoba's eyes with her own. "I meant to--"

"Where? Where were you?" Aoba's hands clenched slightly at his sides, and he sounded both angry and confused. There was a long moment of silence, as Shizune seemed to try to find something to say, her mouth opening and closing, as though a thousand sentences were trying to come out, but not a single one was the correct one.

"I was...with Tsunade-sama," she finally said.

"For eight years?"

He saw Shizune's shoulder seize up, saw her swallow hard. "I'm sorry. I had to leave and I--"

"Why didn't you tell me?"

Raidou winced at the volume of Aoba's words. He was definitely not taking this well. Not well at all. Although, part of him could understand exactly why Aoba was so...so not understanding. He knew that he had felt like grabbing Shizune by her shoulders and shaking her and just yelling at her. He almost had, when he saw her last night—or had it been the night before that? Probably the latter, judging by the light filtering through the drawn curtains in the room.

Of course, he hadn't yelled at her. He'd been surprised—shocked, confused, angry, relieved—when he saw her. He could understand that it was a mission; hell, he'd been on plenty of missions that lasted for a long period of time. It was just that no one had expected hers to last eight years. So it was understandable that Aoba was upset—after all, as far as Raidou knew, Aoba never was told that Shizune was part of Anbu. Probably never guessed that she was. If Raidou hadn't been working with her back then, he wouldn't have known, either. She had never seemed the sort of person to get mixed up with all the shit that was Anbu. So he understood Aoba.

Though, the yelling was making his head throb, and Raidou didn't like that so much.

"I--" Shizune took a breath, a deep breath, looking quite—well, almost lost. Shaken, certainly. "I wish that—I would have, Aoba. But the circumstances were not those that would permit that. Understand that, Aoba. Please."

"I'm trying. I've been trying. For eight years, dammit!"

Shizune winced slightly, her eyes shutting for only a moment, before looking back up. There was—well, determination, sympathy, hurt, a million little things dancing across her face, Raidou thought. "Can you understand that, were I able to, I would have told you? As a ninja, I have a duty, and you should be able to understand that. I had to leave with Tsunade--"

"Because that was what was important, right? Because in your list of priorities, she came before the rest of us? Is that it? Did you leave because she is more important that our team--"

"Stop it." Her voice wasn't quite calm anymore, wasn't quite as controlled. "Stop that right now. Do not say that. You do not have the right to question my priorities, or to say that I don't care about our team. You don't know--" Her words broke off momentarily, and Raidou wondered for only a moment if it was because she had lost her train of thought, or if there was something she didn't want to say. "Please, just stop. This isn't the place to discuss this. This is a hospital, and these two men are recovering. Now, either lower your voice, or lease leave."

There was silence in the room, and then someone spoke from near the door. "She makes an excellent point. It would be best for you to leave." Tsunade stepped forward, to Shizune's side, dropping a hand on her shoulder. "Shizune, I also want you to go. I want you to go and retrieve some files from my office—they're sitting on the top of that damn pile--then look in on that boy—Rock Lee. All right?"

Shizune nodded curtly. "Of course, Tsunade-sama. I'll get right on it." She rose from the bed, only casting one glance over her should to look back at them before leaving the room, the door closing quietly behind her.

Tsunade turned to Aoba then, arms crossed before her. "And you. Out. I need to speak with these two, and I don't need any disruptions. Oh, and I could hear you all the way down the hall, and I'm sure that many of the other patients could as well. So keep your voice down, and I suggest you get out of this hospital quickly."

As the door closed once more, Raidou saw Genma lean back against the headboard of his bed, sighing. All things considered, Raidou was rather relieved that the commotion was gone.

"All right." Tsunade stood before them, looking at each in turn. "I know you're awake, Raidou. Now, I want you both to tell me what happened out there on your mission."

That hadn't gone well. That hadn't gone well. That...really hadn't gone well, at all. She wasn't sure what she had expected, how she had expected that meeting to play out, but certainly not--

She wasn't upset, she kept telling herself, she kept telling herself, as though simply thinking that would keep her from walking just a little faster than normal, from having her hands clench at her sides, from having to blink her eyes every couple moments to keep tears from falling.

She passed several medics as she made her way through the halls, and she nodded in greeting to them, trying to make herself smile, as though there weren't anything bothering her.

There wasn't anything bothering her. There wasn't.

And she wasn't lying to herself. She wasn't.

She just knew that she wanted to be as far away from that room right now as she could.

Shizune paused at the entrance of the hospital, blinking in the sunlight that seemed overly bright. It was quiet as well, and the only people she saw anywhere were civilians. Not a ninja in sight.

What had she expected? She knew Aoba. She had been on a team with him for years, had worked with him from the time she was eight. She knew he was impulsive, loud, rash, showed his emotions all too clearly. She knew, and yet part of her had been hoping that he would be able to take her return much more calmly.

But, he was Aoba. And she was Shizune, and while she would act one way, it wasn't a given that he would act the same.

And what made everything so much worse was that she knew he had a right to be angry. She had left without a single word to him, without so much as a good bye. There had been guilt about that for several years, it had seemed. Whenever she thought about home, there had been a pang of guilt that had run through her, and it had been hard to justify it in her mind, the leaving without telling him.

It wasn't as though she hadn't wanted to. She had. She just...it just...

Shizune found herself nearly running up the steps to Tsunade's office, trying to work off some of the frustration. Today was not the day she had wanted to deal with this. Not today, not right after getting back from the damned mission. Not while she still had blood under her fingernails.

It had...it had also been a long time since she'd killed someone.

There were stacks and stacks of files and papers on Tsunade's desk, along with several bottles of sake, one still full. The room smelled, and Shizune wrinkled her nose, deciding that sometime in the near future she'd clean the room, organize the papers, and make sure that all the alcohol in Konoha was hidden from Tsunade.

Brushing a hand over the top most files, Shizune saw that most of them were medical files—though, she also noticed that the first had a rather large sake stain on it. Irritated, she wiped at the still damp spot with her sleeve.

Scratch that, she'd not only hide all the alcohol, she pour it into the river.

Flipping through the files, Shizune glanced over the names. Most were genin, and Naruto's file was contained within them, along with one of the Hyuuga's, an Akimichi, a Nara--

There were other papers and scrolls, several of which she thought were Anbu reports—she carefully swept some other papers over them, hiding them from view. Honestly! Tsunade should know better than to leave them out in the open.

She grabbed the files that she figured were the ones Tsunade wanted—the medical files and the ones just below them—and made sure that she was holding them securely enough before heading out the door and back to the hospital. The last thing she wanted was for her to trip and end up dropping them. Doing so would just make her day so perfect.

At least she didn't quite feel like crying anymore.

When she arrived back at the hospital, it was to find Tsunade talking very rapidly to several of the medics, an air of urgency running heavily around them.

"Get a recovery team together—no, I don't care who's on it, just get them out there! We've got six shinobi out there—yes, yes, now go! I want them found as quickly as possible. Now—ah, Shizune. Let me see those files."

They were fairly torn out of Shizune's arms, and then the medic found herself running to catch up with the Godaime. "Tsunade-sama, Tsunade-sama! What is happening?"

Tsunade turned to glance at her, before looking back down at the files. "Did Genma tell you anything of what happened?"

"A little. What--"

"We've got at least five—probably six, give that Lee's disappeared from his bed--"

"What?"

"--ninja, all genin except for on, out there to retrieve that Uchiha idiot, who is most likely in the company of the five sound-nins who took down Genma and Raidou, so now I'm trying to get these sorry excuses for medical ninja out there to track down those kids because damned if I'm going to just let them die out there!"

"Tsunade-sama, please calm down." Shizune deftly caught a piece of paper that slipped out of Tsunade's grasp. "We'll get it all figured out, just—is that why you had me get these files?"

Tsunade nodded, passing one of the files over for her to hold. "When they brought all of you in earlier, I felt as though something wasn't right—and you were found near where Shikamaru's team headed. I pulled out the files last night, after I tended to those two—I figured that I might be needing the information soon."

Shizune understood, very well. She hadn't known about any of it—Uchiha Sasuke's flight, the genin cell being sent—due to being on that mission, but Tsunade would have known. Still...

"I found several sake bottles in your office, Tsunade-sama."

The older woman shrugged. "Alcohol helps me think."

She frowned. "Alcohol is a depressant. It slows--"

Tsunade snapped one of the files shut. "I know what alcohol is, Shizune. And don't sound like a textbook. It's boring. Here, take these," she said, dumping the rest of the files in Shizune's arms to cut off any more of her words. "And get ready. I'm going to need you when they bring those boys in."

"Right." She straightened the files in her arms, trying not to drop any of them. "But please, no more drinking today, especially not if--"

"I won't, I won't." Tsunade threw her hands up in front of her. "Honestly, assistants!"

"Tsunade-sama, you just said that we would be healing soon! It wouldn't do any good for you to--"

"Shizune, I got it. I know. Just--" She sighed heavily. "Keep an eye out for them, all right? And make sure I'm notified once they get in."

"Understood."

Shizune was in the bathroom, scrubbing at her hands to try to clean the blood completely off, when the first of the boys were brought in.

She heard the commotion in the halls and quickly shut off the tap, drying her hands on her clothing before darting out to find two medics rushing in with one of the boys on a stretcher. Tsunade was hurrying down the hall towards them.

"--stabilized?--"

"--no, he--"

"--that room, now--"

"Shizune! There's a report from the main gate, they got another one!"

"Understood!"

When she saw the injuries that Hyuuga Neji had obtained, however, Shizune realized that this would not be easy.

She left two medics to keep him stabilized while she prepared the area they would use to heal him. They would not be able to heal him using simpler methods, or by simply channeling medical chakra into him. The two holes in his body were too large and he had bled too much already. The one through his shoulder had missed any vital organs and any arteries, but the bone and muscle had taken damage. She would need to reconstruct that part of his body.

The minor injuries—even the hole in his shoulder—those were not her primary concerns. Those that were considered more minor at this point—shallower gashes, bruising, broken ribs—were being attended to, and were not, at this moment, life threatening.

It was the hole in his stomach that worried her most. No, it didn't just worry her. It was...it was the most critical part of him at the moment, and would require immediate attention.

Whatever had created the wounds had sliced a portion of his intestines when passing through his body. If they didn't act quickly, infection would set in, and if they didn't fix the intestines before closing the wound, he would most likely die. No, he wouldn't just most likely die...

Shizune had chosen her course of action; to use his hair as a medium and reconstruct the sections of his body. Chikatsu Saisei no Jutsu. However, to use this, she needed to draw the seals across the floor, and the technique would also require multiple medical ninjas. Ideally, nine would be used, two for each of the four supporting positions, so that they would be able to switch out whenever one would tire, and the medic-nin preforming the actual healing.

Which would be her.

There were ink stains on her hands by the time she hand finished the seal. It encompassed almost the entire room, black ink still drying on the floor.

They laid Neji in the center of the seal, careful not to disturb any of the ink. Then, each person taking their place around the edges of the seal, they began.

The process was a hard one. The outermost portion of the seal was meant to distribute the chakra from each medic; it had to be balanced and converted carefully, eventually being channeled to Shizune, who would use it to slowly heal the boy. Each of the other medical ninjas had other tasks to complete at the same time; stabilizing the boy, holding back the blood that would otherwise flow from the open wounds, making sure that no infection was spreading.

"Each person works for no more than three hours, no less than two at a time. We want to minimize the disruption of the chakra. There is no room for error here," she had said before they began, and each of the medics had nodded before taking their places.

It was slow, methodical work. They began on the hole in is lower abdomen, healing from the inside out. The cleansing of the wound came first, followed by the careful reconstruction of his intestines. Each piece of hair used in the reconstruction had to be saturated with chakra, and each one had to fuse entirely with his body before they could move on. The nerves had to be repaired, the veins, the muscle, and finally the skin. Every part had to be taken care of, not a single thing could be left undone, and as they moved from the wound on his stomach to the one on his shoulder, they had to leave time for the chakra to absorb and dissipate before saying that the first hole had been closed completely.

The first hour was fairly easy for her. The second became hard, the third harder still. As the first set of medics exchanged places, one at a time, making sure the chakra flow remained constant, Shizune willed herself to continue to breath evenly, to keep herself from breaking the chakra flow, to keep herself from losing focus.

Three hours. Then four.

Her teeth ground together as the chakra running from her began to cause small, sharp bolts of pain in her arms and legs.

Four and a half.

At the fifth hour, her hands began shaking. Sweat had been running down her face for a long time already, down her neck, her chest. Her hands were warm and sweaty. Her breath came harsher.

And then the final hair was laid in place, forming into skin, smoothing over.

"Hold," she said, her voice as strong as she could make it. "Hold..."

She tied off the flow of chakra, made sure that nothing would come undone. Then she withdrew her chakra entirely.

She let her head hang for a moment, breathing hard. Then she flexed her hands, moving them for the first time in hours.

"We're...done?" one of the medics asked, and there was a collective sigh of relief as she nodded.

"Someone...get him to a room. He still needs to be monitored. There's the possibility that...something could go amiss from here. Keep someone with him at all times."

"Understood, Shizune-san!"

She breathed in deeply, exhaled, then stood. Her legs were shaking a bit, and she made sure that she wouldn't fall as she rose.

It was unfortunate that she hadn't been fully recovered from the day before. If she had...if she had, things would have gone smoother, and she wouldn't be feeling quite as drained at the moment. Still drained, yet not quite as much so.

She made her way from the room, as fast as she could. A medic stopped her on her way down the halls, and she smiled at the information they imparted.

"Thank you," she said, before continuing on.

She heard Tsunade before she saw her, and when she saw her, she called out.

"Tsunade-sama!"

The woman gave a start, looking up. Shizune was still breathing hard, still sweating, but she was smiling broadly.

"Hyuuga Neji," she began, raising an arm and wiping sweat from her eyes. "His condition has stabilized." There was silence in the hall, and Shizune continued. "Also, I have some information. Just now, Hatake Kakashi and Uzumaki Naruto have returned...and although he was injured, his life is in no danger."

The silence continued, and Shizune looked down, knowing why. The mission...

"Just the two, huh?" She saw Tsunade sigh heavily, then look up, at the boy who wore the chuunin vest. "Shikamaru...it seems your mission was a failure."

He was shaking, and Shizune could see his face. She'd seen that expression before, on so many peoples faces. On Aoba's, on Genma's...she was sure it had been on her own. Relief, anger, self loathing as one fell apart.

"But everyone's alive," Tsunade said, and Shizune glanced over at her, at the very small, sad smile on her lips. "That's more important than anything."

Yes, yes, that's true. They're all still alive. Everyone of them.

She saw the tears start on the boy's face, saw him bow his head, saw his hands clench.

"Next time," he started, stopping only for a moment as his voice jumped. "Next time, I'll show that I can do it flawlessly!"

"Next time. You'll get another chance. I suppose...we've all had them. A thousand chances, if we're lucky."

"But I don't want to take the exam a thousand times!" She looked down at her bandaged arms, at the splints that held the healing bone in place. "And I messed up! I messed up so badly, sensei."

"Better to mess up now and get two broken arms than to mess up later and lose your life." He smiled at her then, ruffling her hair. "Besides, you're eleven. You're bound to make some mistakes. Just heal up, girl. Get better, and get another chance."

It was a day later when she visited her two teammates—could she really just call them teammates after all this time? Surely former teammates fit a bit better—a day since she'd stumbled back from healing Hyuuga Neji and collapsed on the bed in her hotel room, Tonton whining and nudging at her feet. She'd slept for a long time, recovering. Of course, she wouldn't have dared be away from the hospital for so long, save that Tsunade had told her quite forcefully that she looked like shit and if she didn't go get some rest she'd tie her up and let Tonton sit on her.

So Shizune had gone back to the hotel room—she really needed to get an apartment—thrown her shoes by the door, and fell onto the bed without removing a bit of her clothing. She'd slept the rest of the afternoon and all through the night, waking only when Tonton decided to topple the lamp off the nightstand. She'd woken then, growled a few angry words at the pig for smashing the lamp, and stumbled off to the bathroom, glad to finally get a shower.

Then there'd been the matter of food, and so she left the hotel, Tonton trotting at her heels, and went down onto the somewhat crowded streets. She found food, and she also found something else; a flower shop—Yamanaka's, which made her smile—and bought two small bouquets of flowers from the smiling girl who worked there.

Just two small bunches of flowers, bought on a whim.

She knocked gently on the door to their room before entering. There was no answer, so she knocked again, a little louder. A groaning sound that seemed to contain the words 'come in' came from within the closed room.

She had to smile a little when she walked in. Raidou was sprawled on his stomach on his bed, looking half asleep. At least he didn't look half dead, she thought.

"Hey," she said softly. A glance to the side told her that Genma wasn't there, but the bed was unmade, so obviously he had been there...still, her stomach flipped a little when she looked over. "How are you?"

"Bored. Very bored," came the answer, and Raidou rolled over, one arm pushing him up. "And my head still hurts."

"Ah." She sat down on the side of the bed, setting the flowers on the little table that was set to the side. "Here, let me see."

He leaned forward a little as she placed her hand against his brow. A little chakra caught in the palm of her hand, then moved, running through him for a moment before withdrawing. "Well?"

"Nothing in particular is wrong." She smiled at him. "Though...it seems as though you ran into a wall at some point."

"Not a wall," he mumbled, sitting back. "Well..."

"A wall?"

"Of sorts."

"How can it be a wall of sorts?" she asked, and his silence made her laugh. "Was it a fence?"

His eyes flickered to hers. "A fence? How is a fence like a wall?"

"It's similar. But really, was it a fence?"

"No! Let's just stick with it being a wall, all right?" He was smiling, though, one half of his mouth quirking oddly from the scars on his face. "A fence...gah."

Shizune laughed, then reached over and picked up one of the bouquets of flowers. "I got you this. I didn't know the Yamanaka's had a flower shop."

Raidou took the flowers from her hand, looking at them for a moment before dropping them on the bed beside him. "Thanks. And they didn't have a flower shop for awhile. I think...I'm pretty sure Inoichi's wife took over when her mother died. They changed the name, though."

"Hm." Shizune glanced over at the empty bed. "Where's Genma?"

Raidou shrugged. "He took off awhile ago."

She frowned, biting on her bottom lip. "Did he say where he was going?"

Raidou shook his head. "No. Well, to be honest, I was asleep when he left, so I don't have any idea. I'm guessing he didn't go far."

Shizune sighed, then stood, picking up the other flowers. "I'll have to go find him, then. If—ah, if he comes back, tell him I was looking for him."

"Got it. Thanks for the flower, Shizune."

She smiled at him again. "You're welcome. It was good talking to you. I'll...see you later."

She found him down on the bridge, the one built over the small river that ran through Konoha. He looked...well, he looked much better than before. Not pale, not bloody, not dying. His flak jacket was absent, but otherwise he was wearing all his normal ninja garb.

"Hello," she said, stepping next to him and leaning on the rail like he was. "You look better."

"Hm."

"Of course," she continued, holding the flowers out before her, over the swiftly running water, twisting them around in her hands, "I wasn't aware that you'd been discharged from the hospital."

"The Godaime is a very accomplished medic."

"Of course." She smiled to herself, then flipped her hand to the side, bringing the flowers up before him. "Here. These are for you. Since you're supposedly recovering."

He gave a sheepish sort of laugh, then took the flowers from her. "Well, yeah. They did discharge me--"

"After two days?"

"--and told me to take it easy for a bit," he said, talking over her. "I'm supposed to go back in three days or so, and then they'll let me know when I'll be back on active duty."

"Ah, active duty. Just what everyone wants."

He rolled his eyes. "Says the person who was off running around for eight years--"

"Technically," and this time it was her who spoke loudly, effectively cutting off his words, "I was on a mission for those eight years. So in the logs--"

"Yeah, yeah. Fine. You win. But what," he pointed down between then, towards her feet, "is with that pig?"

She glanced at him, her mouth twitching in its smile, as she tried to keep from laughing. It just felt so nice to talk to him—to talk to both of them, really. She reached down, scooped up the pig in question. "This," she said, cuddling the pig in her arms, "is Tonton."

"Tonton," Genma repeated, looking down at the pig. "Funny name."

If she'd had time, Shizune would have warned him that Tonton was quite smart enough to understand when someone was talking about her, and that she was also smart enough to know when the person talking about her was not saying the most polite things. As it was, Tonton made an attempt to leap at Genma, snapping her jaw shut quite as viciously as a pig could as she did so.

"Tonton!" Shizune clamped her arms around the pig. Wonderful. Tonton subsided back down, but Shizune noticed how the pig continued to glare at Genma. Simply wonderful. She wasn't sure if she dared to set Tonton down now; she did have a history of going after the ankles of the people she didn't like. "Really, Genma. Tonton, calm down."

Genma was now looking at the pig with the expression of one who isn't quite sure what they're seeing. "She's not a summons, is she?"

"No. She's a normal pig. And I don't think she likes you."

"Eh. No. I don't think so." He glanced at her. "What now?"

Shizune shrugged. "Apologize."

"To a pig?"

"Yes," Shizune said, her arms tightening around Tonton again as the pig decided to nip at Genma's arm. "Unless you want her to keep acting like this. Tonton, stop."

Genma looked down at the pig. "Eh...sorry? You're name's not really funny at all."

Shizune closed her eyes, then shook her head. "Genma, she can tell you're not serious."

"I am serious! I don't want a pig with a personal vendetta against me!"

"Fine. Tonton," she said down to the pig who was still squirming in her arms. "Listen. Genma here is my friend, so don't go biting him. All right?"

The noise Tonton made was good enough for Shizune, and she set her down. Tonton glared up at Genma a moment longer, then headed to the other side of Shizune's feet, settling down and staring at the river.

Genma was quiet for a moment, warily watching the pig. "You're odd, you know that."

"I've known that for quite awhile. Although, you, with that needle of yours, aren't much better." She leaned back against the rail, glancing down at their reflections in the rushing current below. "We're all a bit odd, and there's always someone who's stranger. Besides, what's so horrible about talking to a pig?"

"It's like talking to a cat."

"And what's so bad about talking to cats?" she challenged. "If I recall correctly, you had a stuffed cat that you talked to."

"That was yours!"

"But you talked to it." And then she laughed as he shook his head. Then he laughed, and she smiled, and Tonton decided to take that moment to push her snout up against Genma's leg, making him jump back very quickly.

"I really hope your pig's not trying to kill me," he said, and Shizune reached down, running a hand over Tonton's back.

"Really, she's very sweet. And she didn't try to bite you, did she?"

"No, but--"

"Stop while you're ahead, Genma."

He returned to her side after a moment, and when he turned to her next, she felt the mood change entirely. "Shizune...I need to talk to you about something."

She wasn't sure why, but the tone of his voice, the way his eyes looked, it made her feel...well, rather like something bad was about to happen, and she didn't want to know.

"What is it?" she said instead, carefully meeting his eyes. It was him who looked away first, down to the flowers in his hand, down at the river. "Genma, what do you want to tell me?"

"I--" He stopped, started over, brushed a hand through his hair, knocking his bandanna loose. "Shizune, please understand that I wanted to tell you this earlier, but there just wasn't...there wasn't a moment when it was...appropriate."

"What?" she said again, softly, knowing, somehow, that she didn't want to know. That whatever it was he wanted to say wasn't worth it. That she should tell him she didn't want to know, to walk away now.

She saw him shut his eyes, saw him swallow, saw his hand clench around the stems of the flowers. "He's...dead. Hayate. He..."

And just like that, Shizune felt herself crumble. There was a moment where she couldn't quite breath, where she felt herself almost shudder. She gripped the rail until her knuckles turned white.

"We...they...around three months ago, now," Genma continued, still not looking at her. "During the Chuunin exam. Three or four months ago...Shizune..."

She took in a shallow, shaking breath. Her heat was...jumping, she thought. And she felt cold. Really cold. She rubbed her hands together, ran her fingers over the palms of her hands. She was cold. "How?" was all she could manage, because she didn't think she could say anything more without crying, without her voice breaking to pieces.

"They..." and she knew it was hard for him to tell her all of this, because his words were short, his sentences broken apart, his eye still not meeting hers. "They found him on top of one of the buildings. He...I shouldn't tell you, I..."

"Tell me," she said, her voice too harsh to her own ears. "Please, Genma."

He looked away from her, at the water again. "He was...nearly...Shizune, I don't think I should--"

"Tell me."

"Torn in half," he finally said, and Shizune's breath caught in her throat and she shut her eyes as tightly as she could, because she wasn't going to cry. "We think that...he ran into someone...from Suna, most likely. When...the attack on Konoha was being plotted and...I think he found out something, or overheard something, and..." He brought his free hand to his face, resting it against his head, then dropping his arm and looking over at her. "He became a special jounin, did you know? He made it, even with everything that he had to go through."

She felt too cold. She was nearly shivering, and then a tear collected on her lower lashes, traced its way down her cheek, fell.

Tonton was stirring next to her, agitated, but Shizune didn't—couldn't—spare her any though.

Hayate...no...

Shizune turned, took one step forward, and found herself caught, Genma's arms wrapped tightly around her. She tucked her head against his chest and just...just let herself cry, her breath coming in irregular gasping sobs, her shoulders shaking, her hands clutching at the fabric of his shirt.

Why? Why Hayate? Why him? He was the only family she had left. And the last time she had seen him, he'd been fourteen, looking too small under his new chuunin jacket...

She felt Tonton butt her head up against her ankle, half heard the whine of concern. But she just...the tears wouldn't...why...

They walked down to the gave together, Shizune with still red eyes and Genma with tear stains drying on his shirt.

They stood in front of the grave, and Shizune took the flowers that Genma handed her, and she knelt, placing them before the stone, then running her fingers gently over the engraved characters that spelled out his name.

Gekkou Hayate.

"A special jounin, huh," she said, her voice still broken. "He...always wanted to be a full jounin..."

"He would have." Genma knelt beside her, setting a hand on her shoulder, lightly at first, then her wrapped the arm around her, pulling her to him again. "He would have, Shizune."

She pulled back a little, so that she could see his face. "What...in those eight years, what happened to him? Tell me, please."

Genma gave a sad smile. "He got engaged, you know. To a nice girl, a good ninja. I think you'd like her. She's...like us. Anbu. He almost got into Anbu, too. Tried, when he was nineteen.

"Raidou taught him a bit. Sword stuff, not like I know it. And he got damn good with it, too. That...it should've helped him. When..."

Shizune swallowed, then looked over at the grave again. "I-I missed so much. How could I miss so much? I should have been here. I shouldn't have—I'm just like Aoba says. How could I put a mission before—before--"

"We all have to do it." He looked at her, and she looked up, and his eyes looked so tired and old and so different from when he was twenty-two, so different from before. "And you understand that. I understand that. He understood that. It's just...Aoba's an idiot who doesn't think before talking. So don't...don't worry about it. No one knew it was going to happen, but we all knew it could, and you know that we all take that risk, every single day."

"I know, but it just...I wish..."

"Yeah, I know."

A/N: Thank you all for the kind reviews (and the oh-so-gentle poking for me to get out the next chapter coughNimblnymphcough). What I'm glad about having this chapter done is that I've more or less covered all canon appearances of Shizune until after the timeskip, so now I get to have fun without being so confined to canon.

And I love writing banter and dialogue. It's fun. Especially with Tonton involved...I've decided that pig is going to be very useful...yes...

So, I hope you all enjoyed this, and I apologize (again...I keep apologizing in each chapter, don't I?) for the long wait. I do hope it was worth it...

Raven