White.
Bright. Too many lights. Hard matress...and that smell. The clean smell, but overly much - so familiar...too familiar...
Hospital.
Konoha.
We made it.
-----
"Gaisensei?"
Lee swung the crutches forward as he shouldered open the door, the movement easy from practice of countless times spent in the hospital. The room was empty apart from them; there were few enough other patients in the hospital to merit each their own room. Gai's arms were wrapped tight in bandages, tubes entering his wrist. What could be seen of his torso was also swathed in bandages. There were tubes going into his nose, but the sight that made Lee's breath hitch were the wraps over Gai's eyes. Lee ignored the pain in his casted legs as he moved to the side of his sensei's bed to sit in the chair waiting for him.
Gai shifted, tilting his head so that he faced Lee. "Leekun."
Silence, apart from the birds chirping on the wire outside the room and the laughing of children down the street. Light filtered into the room through the thin, half-closed curtains. Lee's hand slipped into Gai's. He gripped it gently, Gai returning the motion. I'm here.
Minutes passed in semi-comfortable silence. Lee was carefully not looking at the bandages over Gai's eyes, and instead focused on his jaw and the all-but-faded bruise there. Suddenly, Lee shifted forward, reaching forward to brush a few strands of hair away from Gai's face. Gai flinched slightly at the sound of movement and the touch, then relaxed into Lee's hand. Lee blushed slightly, not having intended any sort of personal contact, but didn't remove his hand. His thumb ran over the bandages lighty as he finally forced himself to look at them. Woven bands of cotton, wrapped around enough times to block any view of the skin beneath. He traced it back to the knots holding them in place.
"Leekun, no - " it was a weak protestation, Gai's hand coming up to take hold of Lee's forearm.
Lee didn't stop, undoing the first of the knots holding the bandages around Gai's head. "I...I want to see," Lee whispered, as if he were afraid to say it. Gai's face tensed, then relaxed, and his grip gentled to a simple touch with it. Lee unwound the bandages silently, and as more unwound spatters of blood appeared on them. When his face was finally revealed, Lee bit his lip. Both eyes were heavily bruised and lids tightly closed, though not by the swelling. His right eye was heavily burned by chakra, and a spidery web of scars stretched across his nose and partially over his left. "...Gaisensei?"
Slowly, Gai opened his eyes. The whites of his eyes were nearly completely red from broken blood vessels. Lee's eyes welled up with tears as he saw the blankness in them, the slight unfocusing and darting as they searched for something solid to rest on.
"...Oh, Sensei..." The tears started to fall Lee stared at his teacher's eyes, knowing they couldn't see him. Lee's fist clenched in anguish on the pillow next to Gai's head, and Gai brought his hand up to grasp Lee's. It seemed a motion to comfort Lee, but Gai's hand shook as it took hold of Lee's and he held slightly harder than he meant to. "This is all my fault, if I hadn't run off I wouldn't have run into that nin, and he wouldn't have taken me by surprise," tears streamed over his cheeks to patter onto the sterile hospital sheets and unraveled bandages. "Then you wouldn't have had to come save me, and wouldn't have gotten hurt--"
"But we're alive."
"But your eyes!" Lee cried, his free hand coming up. He brushed his thumb across the scarring to the side of his sensei's eye. Lee's body shook with sobs, "If it weren't for me--"
"But we're alive." Gai brought his other hand up to clench both around Lee's. "We're alive. Don't worry so much." He released Lee's hands and traced one of his own up Lee's arm to find his face and wipe away the tears. "We'll heal. So no more tears, all right?"
His tears slowed but didn't quite stop as he squeezed his eyes shut. Lee's hand moved to clasp Gai's against his cheek and he nodded, a choked noise escaping him.
-----
Lee's eyes were still red and his face blotchy when Kakashi walked in. The leader of team seven nodded to Lee and looked Gai over quickly, stopped on his eyes, then pulled a bowl of curry from behind his back and set it on the slide-table by Gai's bed. He glanced at Gai's face again from the corner of his eye.
"Copycat."
-----
Bright green blurs dart over the grass behind the hospital where a sign proclaiming 'Physical Therapy' hangs, and nurses scurry after the bursts of green. Lee and Gai are careful to keep moving away from them, so as not to accidentally hit one of them.
"Medics always get in the way of training, don't they, Lee?" Gai says through gritted teeth as he and Lee lock arms, block-to-block. His face is spread wide in a smile.
Lee glances over his shouler at the medics, then grins back at him. "Always." The scars that remain on Gai's face still make him cry inside whenever he sees them, and the blankness in Gai's eyes holds his movements in check. Then they explode into motion again, and Lee yells over the rushing wind, "They can't understand how good training is for those of us in the springtime of youth!" and then Gai is flying toward him, Lee starts to dodge but then Gai is behind him, flipping him head-over-heels and sending him into the dust.
Gai steps over him so that his shadow is cast over Lee's face, blocking the bright sunlight. "Lee, don't go easy on me. I might take it the wrong way."
Then he smiles and offers his hand down to his student. Lee blushes at being caught - how could he have thought he needed to go easy on the man who taught him? - then grins and takes Gai's hand. "Okay, now I'll go all-out!"
-----
more art from VC!
vampireking deviantart com/art/Recovery-58265898
put periods instead of spaces between vampireking/deviantart and deviantart/com