Raidou made it to the hideout and nearly collapsed. Things had been tense between him and Genma for the entire damn mission. He was pretty sure the man was limping, something pulled or torn, but every time he asked Genma just said he was fine.

Their mark was dead; that was what mattered. A senbon through the back of his neck, hitting a nerve cluster that paralyzed him before Genma cut his throat. They were back on their way to Konoha and home, and maybe some peace.

He closed the door of the tiny hut crouched in the middle of nowhere, glancing around. Genma had sat, pulling up the leg of his pants to examine his knee. It was swollen, red and angry.

"Let me see?" Raidou asked quietly.

Genma shot him a look that might have been dirty, except it was too short. "I'm fine."

"You're fine," Raidou echoed softly. "Fine. You've been fine since you killed your target. You've been fine since we got out of the village walls. You've been fine the whole while we've been on the way home, and you've been fine since we got back to our own territory. You want to pick another word?"

"Diseased," Genma said without looking up. "There's a word."

"Diseased?" Raidou snapped. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Figure it out." Genma started wrapping a long strip of cloth around his knee; above the kneecap, below it, round and round again.

"Are you sick?" Raidou nearly yelled, panic setting in.

This time, the look really was dirty. "Must be, if I sleep around as much as I do, right?" he said plainly.

"Shit," Raidou muttered. "I'm worried about you."

"Stop."

"I can't just stop!"

Genma shrugged.

"Why are you such a fucking asshole?" Raidou kept yelling. "We're friends! Friends worry about each other!"

"Maybe I don't want to be friends," Genma said quietly. He pinned the cloth in place around his knee, then let his pants leg fall back down.

"Why? Because I won't sleep with you?" Raidou said. It hurt more than he'd thought possible.

"Maybe."

Raidou stared at the other man. Then he rubbed his face and came further into the room. "We'll rest for a few hours," he said quietly, trying to pull his mind back to the present. "Then head on."

Genma hummed.

"There should be some dried food in the cupboards," Raidou said, heading toward them.

"Great," Genma murmured.

Raidou opened them, pulling out cured meat and hard biscuits. Not much, but something. They wouldn't be home for another four hours, and they were already taxed; they'd been running straight for eight hours. "There's some blankets in the back, and a well--"

"I've been here before, Raidou," Genma said wearily.

Raidou paused. "Right. I forgot." He sat down on the floor, tearing off jerky with his molars. Genma slid off the table he'd been sitting on, walking stiffly toward the food.

"Will you please let me look at that?" Raidou asked quietly.

"No."

His temper flared. "Why not? Because I was worried about you?"

"Shit," Genma said, bending carefully to pick up a biscuit. "Because you're being a fucking mother hen. If I wanted that, I'd find a mother."

"I'm sorry, then," Raidou said. "I didn't mean to be a mother hen. *Now* will you let me look at your knee?" He was starting to consider *ordering* Genma to let him see the man's knee. He was still the top ranked ninja here.

"No," Genma said firmly. "I've seen to it. Leave me alone."

"Genma--"

The man snapped. Raidou saw it even before he started yelling, saw the way his muscles tensed, the senbon in his mouth grinding against his teeth. "Damn it, Raidou!" he shouted. "Leave me alone! I don't want you to fucking care! I don't want you to worry about me! I want to let people fuck me until I bleed, and I want to have fucking rope burn without you looking at my like I'm something to be pitied, and I want to have sex with everyone and their damn brother if I feel like it, and if I get sick then that's my problem and not yours!"

Raidou looked at Genma in stunned silence.

"Shit," Genma hissed, and threw the biscuit, smashing an unwary fly against the wall. He twisted on his heel and marched toward the door.

"Where are you going?"

"Home," Genma snapped. "Leave me alone. We're in our territory. I don't need an escort."

Raidou stood, watching Genma slam out. He almost went after the man.

Almost.

Then he cursed and flung himself back to the ground, picking up his jerky and ripping into it.

**

He woke to chakra, the flavor just hinting on his tongue. He lay on the nest of old blankets for a moment, trying to identify it.

Unfamiliar.

Someone had tracked them down. No, *him* down. Genma was gone.

Raidou rolled up onto his bare feet in one smooth motion, hand falling on the kunai by his bed.

The hut was empty.

He peered into dark corners and every shadow. Only a raccoon looked back at him, surprised.

Raidou reached out with his chakra, thinking maybe he'd missed something. Sometimes, at night, he thought he felt people when he didn't. Paranoia. Paranoia kept ninja alive.

Then he felt it again; almost masked. Quiet.

He spun, tasted danger, and raced for the door.

He kicked it open, and stopped.

There was a rock wall.

Jutsu, he realized dimly. Some sort of earth jutsu that he didn't know.

A window nearby shattered, the wooden shutters exploding inward in a shower of flame. Raidou yelped and leapt back, throwing an arm over his face. Two other windows exploded inward as well, bringing heat and fire. He staggered back, toward the middle of the room, ducking low under the blasts of smoke.

Breathe. He had to breathe, and stay calm while every instinct in him screamed to get out now.

The door was covered. There had to be at least three ninja out there, one at each window; no one could move to the next window, light a torch, and fire into the hut that fast.

The walls were reinforced to hold off attacks. Genma had the exploding notes. He wasn't getting out that way.

Raidou bent double, trying to get closer to the floor. Something on the torches, something to make them ignite whatever they touched. Gas or oil. He wasn't sure. Couldn't tell. Didn't matter.

Another volley of arrows smashed in, bringing more fire with them. That was his cue. It would take them time to re-light and aim.

Raidou dove for a window, through the flames, hit the sill--

And was blasted back, an arrow smashing into his shoulder. He rolled with it, spine along the floor, flattening himself out to kill the fire. He tried to ignore the burn, didn't think about how his flesh had seared, and how every breath was only getting worse, burning his lungs.

Extra archers. They had extra archers out there.

He needed out.

**

Genma had turned back at some point, still angry and frustrated but not willing to just go on and ignore things. He couldn't decide why he wasn't willing; it would be infinitely easier.

Instead, he started toward the hut.

And smelled smoke.

Genma pulled his body together, forming chakra to strengthen his knee and flying through the thick forest.

He came onto the cabin silently, already seeing the glow from the windows and the smoke rising into the night sky.

He paused, fingers tightening on the wood under him. He waited a heartbeat, eyes scanning the forest.

Movement caught his eye. He looked down, saw a shadow try and fly through the window only to be shot back.

Genma locked down emotions that screamed Raidou was *in* there still, and tracked the path of the arrow.

Two ninja, dressed in clothes as black as sin, almost hidden in the shadows.

One aimed while the other reloaded.

Genma began to make his way toward them, silent, prowling. A senbon fell easily into his fingers, then another, and a third. The fire crackled angrily to his right, tightening his skin with its heat.

He shifted up, climbed through the foliage, then down again, descending behind the two ninja.

They never saw him coming. The cool metal slipped through their skin, slicing through nerve clusters.

Genma grabbed one body, laying it carefully across the branch, his other hand fisted in the second target's vest. He settled that one a bit lower, leaning it back against the trunk of the tree.

Raidou wasn't screaming. That could only be good.

Genma took several weapons off the still-warm corpses and slipped away, looking for the others.

There--another two across from him. And two more off to his right. All watching the fire lick and eat at the building, crisping the man inside. Genma checked the side with the door, but saw no one.

He was halfway to the next two archers when something struck him, hard, sending him smashing back into a branch. He focused chakra and clung, the height suddenly dizzying.

Genma looked up.

A ninja stood in front of him, relaxed but ready. "Guess you weren't both in there," he said in a rolling voice.

Genma smiled and shifted the single senbon he held between ring and pinky finger. "Guess not."

The man closed on him, moving so fast he was barely visible, and Genma realized just as he moved to block that this was no normal shinobi. They'd sent a Jounin.

The blow landed on his crossed wrists, the impact spread and absorbed through his body and chakra. He still skidded back, off the branch he stood on, suddenly falling through the air with his hands numb and the Jounin diving after him--

Genma formed hand seals with fingers that felt nothing, prayed they were right, and a moment later smashed into the branch one of the corpses had been lying on. He tumbled and fell again, grabbing for a handhold, molding chakra to stick so he wouldn't plummet to the ground below.

Genma jumped away, landing solidly this time, focusing his chakra and driving it into his body, pulling it and shaping it--

"Kage no bushin!" he snapped, and felt his energy scatter into four clones.

All of them darted away in a different direction, though he felt the intent from two of them to stall the Jounin. Genma himself dropped down through the trees and sprinted along the forest loam, ignoring the pain shooting up through his knee.

He felt the echo as one of his clones died, but kept going. He dug notes out of a vest pocket, clinging to the shadows, slapping paper on trees as he neared the archers.

Then he ran faster, away from his work, leaping upward, boots sending bark and moss falling through the gloom below.

Trees behind him started to explode. No more subtlety; he needed to get Raidou out of the burning hut, and couldn't do it with so many watchers.

Somewhere, another clone died.

Above, trees older than his village groaned and fell, coming down in a tangle of branches, sap and snapping limbs. The two archers leapt, trying to stay on their feet.

He grabbed three shuriken and flung them as hard as he could, letting them whistle through the air.

Two hit their mark; the last missed. One ninja fell, crippled, under a collapsing tree.

Dead, then.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw flames lick higher into the sky. Wood popped and burst, sap exploding with heat. Raidou was caught in there. He was running out of time.

Genma leapt for a tree, taking to higher ground again, sprinting for the last two archers.

"Son of a bitch!" someone shouted behind him. Not the Jounin; the voice was too high. The second fallen archer, that he'd missed with his shuriken.

Genma whipped around in time to parry a kunai, slashed up with his other hand, grabbed the man's wrist and whipped around, hurling the body into the trunk of a tree.

The Jounin was on him.

Genma jumped back, but not fast enough. Heat slivered through his ribs, there and gone again. He didn't have time to check it. He twisted, back and away, out of range--

The Jounin struck him, sending Genma spinning into wood, face-first. Something crunched in his ribs, blood spattering out of his mouth as his teeth tore open his lips. He grabbed a kunai and turned, trying to keep the Jounin in sight, dredging up every dirty trick he'd ever had to learn, sparring with Raidou.

Genma dropped gracelessly, mimicking a dead faint, crashing through branches and battering his body further. He hit the ground, hard, glad he hadn't gone very far up, and rolled. He dashed for the archer he'd just downed, grabbing torch-arrows and lighter fluid.

The Jounin kicked the weapons out of his hand before he'd even realized the man was there. He fumbled the lighter fluid, managing to arc a stream over the ninja's clothes as it spun away. Genma scrambled backward, whipped his hand up and around, releasing the senbon he still held between ring finger and pinky.

It struck the Jounin in the foot, driving through his boot, into the dirt. The man snarled.

Genma ran.

Out into the open, toward the burning hut, ignoring the flames licking toward the sky. He didn't hear footsteps following, which meant nothing. He doubled his speed, ignoring the way torn muscles and flesh pulled at his side, ignoring the heat of blood running underneath his vest, ignoring the voice in the back of his mind that whispered he'd been cut and was bleeding badly.

He had to get to the hut.

Faintly, he felt energy trickle into him. The third clone was dead.

The Jounin appeared when the cabin was no more than an arms' length away.

"Want in there?" the man snarled, twisting into a spin, cracking Genma in the spine, sending him flying forward. "Then burn with him."

Genma flew into the wall, breath driven out of his lungs, dropping to the ground. He grabbed hot sand and flung it at the Jounin, fingers tingling.

The man began to laugh.

Then the lighter fluid caught on fire.

Genma started to race around the hut, to get inside, and was stopped by the two archers from above.

"Don't think so," one of them hissed, dropping to a knee and knocking an arrow.

Genma didn't move until the last minute, letting the arrow take him in the shoulder as he twisted around, flinging another senbon with the momentum he'd gained.

The archer was coming toward him, certain of his kill. The sliver of metal sunk into his eye, the body continuing to lunge. Genma kept twisting, grabbing the corpse's arm and hauling the ninja around, flinging the deadweight at the final shinobi.

The man ducked and came back up, eyes flickering past Genma.

It was all the warning he got, but all the warning he needed. He dropped and rolled toward the fire, his skin tightening in protest. Blood was dripping down his arm now, smeared across his face, warming the skin on his stomach.

It didn't matter. It couldn't matter. Raidou was in the inferno.

The Jounin stopped short of following Genma into the heat, well aware now of the lighter fluid. He'd managed to put out the fire, but didn't dare try again.

Genma panted harshly, smoke stinging his eyes, clogging his lungs. The archer backed away.

"You want me?" Genma snarled, flashing a wicked grin at the two ninja, knowing the Jounin couldn't come any closer. "Come and get me." He ducked low, under the smoke, took two deep breaths, and leapt through the window. A torch followed him, smashing into wood nearby, feeding the flames.

The heat was more than he'd expected. He slapped an exploding note on the inside of the wall and lunged farther into the inferno, eyes nearly closed, lashes already caked with soot. Heat from the fire burned away every other pain. It superseded itself, screaming, onto his nerves.

"Raidou!" he yelled, face burning. Flame roared around him like something living, breathing, snapping and snarling and whipping around in an ever increasing frenzy. He glanced back, saw the archer at the window, and smiled viciously.

Genma dropped to the ground, covering his head, speaking the word to activate the note. The wall behind him exploded. Fresh air rushed in, only to bake and boil around him as the fire grew, feeding on the oxygen, eating it up and spitting out fumes. Genma hauled himself to his feet, glanced back to see the mutilated body of the ninja, and started forward again.

"Raidou!" he bellowed, suppressing the urge to cough.

Everything was red and yellow, shades of black tickling the corners of his eyes only to vanish when he looked. His skin was burning.

The flames moved, shifting, giving him a teasing glimpse of a body curled on the floor. Genma raced forward, avoiding the worst of the fire, and grabbed his partner.

Heat seared his lungs, burned his flesh. Raidou was cooking, blazes licking up his clothes. Genma yanked, drawing him out toward the opening in the wall, knowing the enemy Jounin was there but he still had a clone alive--

Raidou wasn't responding. He had to get the man out, protect him until he woke, regained consciousness, something.

A beam crashed to the ground, sending bits of flaming wood and snaps of fire after them.

Genma yanked and pulled, dragging the unresponsive body over what was left of the wall, outside, staggering away from the heat before dropping to his hands and knees. He coughed, eyes watering, while Raidou lay still and silent beside him.

"I think you might have been too late," the Jounin purred.

A cool breeze washed away some of the heat, beating the flames back into the hut. Genma grabbed Raidou's sleeve and pulled him farther away, dragging the burned and twisted body along. He still couldn't see. His eyes blurred, watering, his lungs heaving.

He heard the footsteps, though, and a wet gurgle from farther away. A moment later, his clone died.

The footsteps stopped just out of reach.

"That was foolish," the Jounin said. Genma saw a black blur nudge what he knew to be Raidou. "This is your assassin friend? And you're, what? His apprentice?"

Genma's eyes were starting to clear. Tears ran down his face freely, washing soot away.

"Yes," the Jounin sighed. "I think he's dead."

Genma retched. He hadn't expected the fire to be so damn hot. Not like that--worse than an oven, worse than anything he'd felt. It seared his skin and left him a husk, inside and out. His whole body still cooked. Raw meat slowly roasting.

From the recesses of his memory came words, dry and cracking with age. "Burning to death is one of the most painful ways to die. Try not to."

Raidou lay beside him, skin red and angry, blistered. Genma tried to breathe and felt air catch in his throat.

The Jounin hadn't killed him yet, he realized, crouched on all fours, staring at the blackened ground.

Power games. The man was playing power games.

"Now whatever are you going to do, hmm?" the man asked, straightening up from where he crouched next to Raidou. "Your big bad mentor is gone."

Raidou couldn't be dead. He couldn't. Genma let his head hang, shoulders trembling. It wasn't hard.

He was out of kunai. He'd thrown the last of the shuriken at one of the archers. Exploding notes wouldn't do any good if he couldn't put some distance between the explosion and himself.

Even his senbon were almost gone.

He trembled again. Pain was starting to spread, insistent to be heard. Cracked rib, he thought numbly. Twisted knee. Broken fingers, though he wasn't sure when that had happened. Broken nose. Loose teeth. Blood still running freely down his side, where a blade so sharp he'd barely felt it had torn through his vest and into his skin.

He was reasonably sure that, with the exception of a minor burn or two, the Jounin above wasn't injured.

This was bad.

Genma trembled again, forcing a whine through his raw throat. "Don't . . . don't . . ."

He didn't have to complete the thought. The Jounin started to laugh and stepped closer. Almost in reach.

"That's right, little one, beg--" he stepped forward again.

Genma slapped a hand on the man's leg, focusing his chakra, shoving it up his arm like a solid mass. A senbon ripped out of his forearm and he smashed it under the Jounin's kneecap, tearing as violently as he could, hearing the pop and squish of tendons and flesh ripping and snapping. The Jounin dropped, screaming.

"I'm the assassin, fucker," Genma snarled, and jammed the senbon up into the man's jaw, through the tough palate of his mouth, into his brain.

And just to make sure he was dead dead dead, Genma wrenched it around and yanked it back out.

The Jounin fell.

Genma took a deep breath, then another. No time. Raidou still had no time.

He turned to the man, wincing as he put a hand on blistering skin and pressed.

There was a pulse. He was alive.

Genma stood, then dropped to the ground again with a hiss. Carefully, he stood again, dragging the tattered shreds of his chakra to his knee, stabilizing and solidifying it. Then he stooped, grabbed flesh that was raw and oozing in one hand, a leg that hadn't been burned too badly in the other, and slung Raidou over his shoulders.

His shoulder muscle spasmed, fresh blood running out of the arrow wound. Broken fingers screamed, the tear in his side opening back up.

Genma controlled his breathing, keeping it steady, focusing his mind away from the pain.

He focused on getting Raidou to help as quickly as he could.

Genma ran for an hour before he realized it wasn't going to work. He was covering ground slowly, his knee hampering him and the added weight making things worse. His lungs were burned, refusing to effectively process the air he was dragging into them. He stopped in a tree, breathing hard, trying to regulate pain. Blood kept welling in his mouth, and he couldn't seem to spit enough of it out. His breath rattled wetly in his lungs.

Genma laughed. He stopped when he heard the despair.

He wasn't going to die like this. Neither of them were.

He also couldn't make it all the way back to the village carrying Raidou. He needed another option.

It didn't take much thinking, and then he shouldered the man again, racing through the forest as fast as he could, which wasn't fast at all.

He stopped at the first farm he found. Walked up the stone path, knowing he was bloody and frightening looking, and settled Raidou on the porch. Then he started pounding.

"Open up!" he shouted, fist hammering on the wooden door.

No one answered.

He stepped back, looked around. The farm was far enough into Fire country that they shouldn't have been hit by the war. They should still be there.

There was a single cow watching him. Well-fed.

Someone lived here, then.

He hammered on the door once more. "Open the door! I'm a ninja from your hidden village, and I need help!"

There was no answer.

He couldn't carry Raidou the rest of the way. He wouldn't make it, and even if he did it would take so long that he would be signing the other man's death warrant.

Raidou whimpered, mind fighting back to consciousness. Genma prayed he lost; that he stayed oblivious to the pain for a few more hours.

"Open the door!" Genma bellowed. No one answered. "Screw it, I'm coming in!" He stepped back, took a deep breath, and threw his weight against the wood.

It swung open, slamming against the wall inside. He staggered in, looking around.

The place was empty.

There was furniture and food, so people had to live there. But they weren't home.

"Fuck," Genma muttered. Pain swam behind his eyes, and he was breathing heavily. Wet. Every time he inhaled, it was wet. He slid a hand under his vest and felt blood, sticky and warm. It was starting to harden on his shirt, though every time he twisted he felt the wound open back up. Shedding a little more life.

He would carry Raidou back, if he had to.

It would probably kill them both.

He closed his eyes and leaned against the wall, swallowing pain. Trying to remain silent.

"Good gods, what--"

Genma snapped up, stepped around the doorway, saw a woman standing there with a basket full of root vegetables. He breathed.

She took several steps away, seeing him. Her face--lined, older--went white.

"I'm one of your ninja," Genma said calmly, voice bubbling out of his throat. "We're returning from a mission, but we need help." He willed her to trust him. Bloody and burned, limping heavily and unable to breathe, he willed her to trust him.

"Masa!" the woman shouted, taking another step back. She dropped the basket and it fell to one side, potatoes and yams tumbling out. "Masa!"

The world twisted and shuddered around Genma. The yams lay in the sun, casting dark shadows on the stones in front of the house. A bee buzzed them, checking for flowers, then sailed fatly away.

"Masa! Help me get him inside."

Genma blinked and looked up, saw the woman and a man--her husband, he presumed--pulling Raidou past him into the house. Relief made him dizzy.

"Thank you," he murmured. He could taste the metallic tang of blood on his tongue. "I have to go. Get help. We'll be back for him by--" he stopped, unsure what time it was anymore.

When had it become daylight?

"By tonight," Genma said finally. Three and a half hours to the village, from here, at full speed.

He could do it.

"You need--" the woman started to say.

Genma shook his head, ducking out of her reach. "No time."

"Look at you--is all that blood yours?" she asked, horror in her voice.

Genma looked down. His vest was black, shining wetly in the morning sun. He smiled crookedly. "Not all of it." Most of it. "Gotta go." He stepped back, refusing to stagger on his knee even when it threatened to give out.

He had to get back to Konoha. The medical ninja could save Raidou. He had to get back, and he had to get back fast.

Genma took to the trees before the people could say anything more.

**

She packed ice and clothes soaked in water around the fallen shinobi, wincing every time she did, afraid to touch the burns spread over most of his body.

"He's not going to make it," she whispered to her husband, who was bringing in buckets of water from the stream.

The ninja whimpered in his sleep. His skin was sticky with puss, cracking and breaking every time he shifted.

"Which one of them?" Masa asked quietly, setting down the buckets at the edge of the bed.

She just looked at him for a moment, then pursed her lips and shook her head. "Do you think he's any older than Daigo?" she asked. "Does he have a mother in that village?"

"He has lots of people who care for him," Masa answered gruffly, dipping another rag into the cool water and laying it over raw and angry skin. "Like that boy who left. He'll make it. With people willing to go to those lengths for him, he has to."

**

The world was swimming when Genma threw himself over the village walls, hoping they would recognize him and not shoot him down.

He tried to land on his feet. Instead, they fell out from under him and he collapsed, skidding across the wooden ledge with the momentum of his jump. Someone grabbed him before he dropped over the other side.

"Sir?" a ninja--younger than he was--said uncertainly.

"Medic ninja," Genma breathed, the words bubbling in his lungs. "Now."

There was a scuffle, voices shouting, feet stomping. Genma didn't know how long he lay there before the medical ninja arrived; it didn't feel like long, but it had to have taken them time . . .

He pried his eyes open; they were cutting off his vest and shirt, slicing open his pants. "Not me," he bubbled through a blood-filled mouth. "Raidou. At a farm--I'll show you." He started to struggle up.

"Stay down!" someone bellowed. "Idiot!"

Genma glared at the man out of eyes that wouldn't focus. "I have to show you--"

The medical ninja jabbed him in the ribs. Genma cursed and doubled over, pain driving away everything else.

"Describe it," the man said. "You're lucky to be alive. You're not going anywhere, except maybe further into shock."

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