The unhappy ache of the mission had dulled as the month took its course and first Hinata, then Adela lost their bandages and stopped walking around with the slightly cautious movements of people recently injured. Itachi disappearing for another mission had been a jolting reminder that Sasuke was supposed to be making sure that his brother was following the medic's instructions -- not that Sasuke thought Itachi would deliberately ignore them, but shinobi were notoriously bad patients.

There were multiple reasons that Sasuke hadn't wanted to follow the medic-nin's path completely, and at least some of them had cropped up after his first interaction with patients at a ninja hospital.

One of the other reasons was the early hours. In some ways Sasuke was a true teenager, sleeping like a particularly dead log in the comfortable safety of his own room until whenever external factors woke him. In this case, external factors was the very vague awareness that his door was open. Stronger than that was still the sense that he was home and home was perfectly safe, so rather than startling awake, he rolled over with a groan.

"Mom," he mumbled into the pillow without opening his eyes. "I set my alarm, you don't need to wake me."