***Have a nice long chapter.  There is angst and fluff.***

It was a quiet trip over to the hospital wing.  Jinsu had a lot of information to assimilate, and for some reason, her brain felt more done in outside the general’s rooms that it had done in them.  Amber was clutching the brown files containing information on her brother – she didn’t know if she dared look at them: the idea that he was some kind of historical figure was beyond weird to her – and still getting salutes off a number of people that they passed.

The most worrying thing was whether or not they would be allowed to go home eventually.  Kyujong and Kris had not seemed particularly keen on the idea.  She could see why, because they had no idea how it would change things, not to mention that there was no way of knowing how much of the world would stay the same.  If they returned home, for example, and her brother didn’t develop a time machine but the North Koreans still stole a patent, who knew what would happen?  But then, a successful trip in the Attayear, as it would then be, would mean that there wouldn’t be a backlash of ill public sentiment.  What nagged at her most was that the Attayear had apparently been a military secret.  It made sense now, obviously, that it was being used as a sort of weapon, but before?  Initially?  As far as she knew, her father had intended it for public use of some kind – for research.  If it was intended for the military, it was very unlikely it would have been unveiled to the public without years of it being used first and a good reason to transfer it into the public sphere.

She was still mulling over all of this as Amber signed her in at the front desk and then marched her along one of the corridors, one side of which was glass and let in an incredible amount of light, and proceeded to show her into a private ward.  The woman saluted sharply and informed her that she’d be just outside the door if needed before putting the files down on one of the hospital tables and retreating.

The second she turned to the rest of the room, she got a wolf-whistle off Kyungsoo.

“Get you, y,” he said with a mischievous little grin.  “Someone’s gonna choke.”

Hyunwoo managed to lift his head off the bed.  “Why are you in uniform?”

Jinsu shrugged.  She wasn’t totally sure why she was in it either.

“Baekhyun and Junmyeon are still being put through tests,” Kyungsoo told her before she could even start looking around for them.  “Jisung got the munchies and went to find food.  Kyuhyun’s in intensive care still.  I heard the other three were here somewhere too, but that’s as much as I know.  Have you been out exploring?”

Jinsu sat down heavily in one of the visitors’ chairs.  “No.  I had breakfast with a senior member of the army staff, found out what happened to the world after my dad screwed it up with time machines, and there’s a possibility we won’t be allowed home.”

“I’m sorry I asked.”  Jinsu must have looked pretty shaken up, because Kyungsoo’s tone wasn’t completely blithe.  But it didn’t stop him from going on: “so what exactly has happened?”

He had been happily diverted onto the files about Jinsu’s brother by the time a nurse ushered Junmyeon and Baekhyun into the ward, and both were looking considerably better for wear than they had been on the Attayear.  Baekhyun’s eye was less puffy and his sleeve paws were evenly matched, for once, and the bruises that were visible seemed to have faded.  Junmyeon looked like he could do with an extra couple of hours’ sleep but was otherwise fine.

“Jinsu’s brother was a military spy,” Kyungsoo announced as the nurse bustled over to Jinsu, saying something about needing to take her for check-ups now that she was finished with the others.  “Can’t get much cooler than that for a brother-in-law, can you, Baek?”

Baekhyun’s eyes had been wandering towards Jinsu at the time, so she wasn’t sure if it was Kyungsoo’s preposterous, deadpan-delivered statement (a large part of Jinsu suspected it had been a personal rather than a general comment, and Baekhyun obviously took it that way too) or because Kyungsoo was right that he spluttered, looking like he’d accidentally inhaled a plumstone.  Kyungsoo hid an evil smirk behind the file that he was currently reading through.

To his credit, Baekhyun recovered pretty well.  “Jinsu, do you think Jimin would want Kyungsoo as a brother-in-law?”

“Ooh, burn,” said Kyungsoo with no feeling whatsoever, and everybody except Baekhyun burst out laughing.  Jinsu allowed herself to be ushered away by the nurse with a large grin on her face.

The actual check-up took very little time at all.  Jinsu got sent through two machines, one she had to stand in and the other she had to lie on to go through a tunnel, which did some kind of whole-body scans, and then she had to have various body fluid tests.  While they were waiting for the results of those to come back, a pair of doctors took a closer look at the back of her head and her hand and the nurse showed her the image results of her brain.  Jinsu was fascinated that she could see what concussion actually looked like, although the nurse did inform her that she was lucky and that it had largely gone.

“So can you see things like the extent of brain damage and stuff?” she asked the nurse as the woman switched to another image on the hologram she’d brought over.

“Oh yes,” the nurse said, promptly launching into an explanation about it that Jinsu found absolutely fascinating.  It turned out that the technology had actually been around since Jinsu was only a few years old, but that it had been so expensive and there were worries about health repercussions that it wasn’t often used.  Now, it was commonplace.  Jinsu found herself wondering what else had changed in the field of medicine.  One thing that hadn’t was the body’s ability to recover by itself.

“You might still feel the effects of the concussion for a day or two,” one of the doctors told her as her fingers were splinted up again.  “Dizziness, headaches, the like – if you do, stop what you’re doing and take it easy for a bit.  Don’t overexert yourself.  The bones in your fingers are healing up nicely, but they just need time.  It looks like they were bashed about a bit after the initial break.”

Thanking them for their time, Jinsu followed Amber back to the ward.  Her bodyguard had remained silently beside her at all times during the medical.  Jinsu had tried and failed not to find it disconcerting.

There was a celebratory atmosphere when Jinsu got there.  A cake and balloons had appeared out of nowhere and Kyungsoo was sitting up in bed looking like he’d just been told he had the world’s supply of chocolate at his disposal.

“The doctors say I’ll be able to walk again,” he announced as she walked in.  “They’ve just been figuring out a rehabilitation programme for me.  Apparently there are discs in my spine that are out of kilter and one or two are fractured, but I haven’t actually broken my neck and my spinal cord isn’t severed.”

Jinsu heaved a sigh of relief.  “That’s great news, Soo.”

“Oh my gosh, she’s given me a nickname!”  Kyungsoo let go of the string of the helium balloon he’d been holding.  It only managed to climb half a metre before it hit the ceiling.  “This calls for a celebration – quick, cut the cake!”

The ridiculous dramatics had Jinsu laughing as she sat down beside his bed again.

For the next few hours, they were more or less left to their own devices.  Nurses came in every so often to check the vitals of the boys who were still in bed, and it was hard for Jinsu not to relax with Kyungsoo’s light, familiar banter surrounding her.  Baekhyun had stolen a few of the files on Jinsu’s brother to read through and was sitting on Kyungsoo’s other side, ankle on his knee and elbow balanced on the other knee as he bit lightly on his thumb, absolutely engrossed.  Junmyeon was talking to Jisung and Hyunwoo appeared to have fallen asleep.  Lunch was brought to them, along with a visit from Kris to see how they all were and ask if any of them wanted a guided tour (Jinsu refused on the grounds that she wasn’t quite recovered enough for tourism, but would happily go the next day, and for some bizarre reason the others who were capable of walking took her lead), and then dinner appeared with another visit from Kris, Sunny at his side, to inform Jinsu that a number of very important government officials and international figures wanted to meet her the next day.  It set her stomach buzzing with anxiety and immediately put her off her meal.  She waited until everybody else was digging in before getting Kris over to the corner and quietly asking if she could take somebody with her.

“I wouldn’t,” he advised.  “It’ll make you look weak.”

Jinsu’s nerves exploded.  “I’m sixteen!  How strong am I supposed to look?”

The room went silent as everybody turned to see what the commotion was.

Jinsu felt herself turning red.  “Sorry.  Don’t mind me.”

Once they had reluctantly turned back to