Eventually, time makes a routine out of the days. The dust continues to settle, and sees Shiro splitting of his time between his claimed office in the Garrison and the wing of the hospital he’s very nearly memorized by now. Healing is as slow and steady a process as the reconstruction in the cities beyond the compound’s borders; he finds himself living on the edges of hospital beds, the lobby just beyond them, still unable to shake the need that has grown deep roots into aching soil to see the team -- alive, whole. ( it is, perhaps, a selfish thing, to find so much relief in them as to distract himself from what other shadowed, clawed things might otherwise seek his attention. )
More than the offices or the apartment suite he’s trying in fits and starts to learn how to live in again, the hospital has become the epicenter of his life. So it shouldn’t be any surprise to find his reunions there.
Something instinctual living within him must meet recognition before his mind is able to consciously catch up -- Shiro stills halfway across the hallway, lips parted and gaze openly confused as he takes a moment, then another, to assess why he’s allowed himself to be held up by the sight of someone he doesn’t --- -- oh. Oh ? Oh -- ! His pulse is thready in his throat, stirred by a deep current of feeling that comes too tangled and sudden to make sense of, and he doesn’t manage much eloquence when he finds his voice.
