Eight

Flicker

November's Skies Look Like Smoke

:: ::

C didn't know what he was doing, standing in the hall of this floor of the prisoner's block like this.

The thick metal of a door stood between him and the cell he stared at, but the key was in the tips of his fingers and the guards knew better than to stop him if he chose to do something unexpected. He was both a personal support of the Yondaime Raikage and a high-level medic operating at Cirrus Central Hospital—the largest medical center for shinobi and shinobi-related research.

It was a pride of his, being able to offer his services. Not many Kumo-nin became medics and even then, most of those who did gravitated towards the field instead of allowing themselves to be sequestered in their village's high peaks. He understood the feeling. Truly, he did. There was a certain thrill of staying alive to heal in the midst of battle instead of watching comrade after comrade get wheeled into a white room and never knowing if it would be your own fault if they couldn't be saved.

But.

That didn't erase the issue of the slowly declining number of available medics at all their facilities. The civilian doctors did their jobs well, but there would always be cases they could never have a hope of taking on themselves.

Kumo needed medics.

And there was one on the other side of that thick metal door using chakra he wasn't supposed to have access to and wasting it on healing cuts and breaks and strains he inflicted on himself.

Self-education, Mabui described it as.

C tapped a finger against his thigh. Another. Again.

He turned and walked out of the hall.

:: ::

"What do you mean you're putting off the surgery? He doesn't have three more days!"

"There's no one who can take it!"

"What about Q?"

"He hasn't had any doss in five days—"

"—where the hell's Airashi—"

"Kak! We just got a squad in from—"

C's pen almost shattered in his grip as he braced himself on one of the admin counters, six or seven files under his hands. The common behind him wasn't new—far from it. Medics couldn't operate on a 24/7 basis and that was what Cirrus needed, especially with their dwindled numbers and the fact that the entire staff was stretched too thin.

The smaller specialty clinics like Cumulus Memorial or Nimbus Point tried their best to accommodate extra patients when they could and Stratus Medical Center was a civilian-only facility, leaving the medics with no other option but to buck up until they passed out from chakra exhaustion.

He rubbed at his eyes and the bags he was sure were purpling under them.

He thought about the ragged staff, the patients, the sleep he hadn't gotten in almost fifty-two hours.

He thought about a thick metal door.

He gritted his teeth and leaned forward over the files. Two of them needed paperwork done for surgeries and the others needed their daily checks to be cleared and handed off to the nurses.

What he tried not to think about was how much lighter the medic workload would be if there was another trained body in the hospital.

:: ::

The guard who marked his arms told him the ink was made out of a small tree native only to Wind and Lightning Country. Ground and crushed and mixed into a rich brown paste, the brush dipped into it wound around his forearms three times: twice by the wrists and once near the elbow. Each band was broad, maybe three or so centimeters wide, and burned with the chakra that traveled from hand to hilt to bristle to skin.