The first twitch, the first low groan--the first sign that Raidou was still with him--jarred Genma into heart-pounding alertness. He strained forwards against his bonds despite the futility, panting open-mouthed. It was getting harder to breathe.

"You're one to talk," he rasped. His voice sounded strange and soft to his own ears. As if it were muffled in cotton. As if that unnatural fog was still flowing around them.

"Can you get your weight on your feet?" It was the first thing he thought of. He'd watched with growing despair, as Raidou's hands went bloodless white and nail beds tinged dusky grey; as his lips had followed suit, while he slumped unconscious.

"One of their guys is a medic. He treated your burns. Healed them a little." The bastard they'd called Yuuhito. He'd come in long after the other ninja had left, and done a half-assed job. Genma had winced when he saw him applying the rabbit seal to his jutsu. A seal to halve the strength of the healing. When he'd finished, the burns looked a week old, not fresh and raw. But they looked just as miserably painful.

At least they weren't oozing anymore. The medic had bandaged Raidou with no more care than he would have a wooden effigy. And Genma hadn't dared say a word, because any healing was better than none at all. He'd winced and coughed, and the medic had looked at him once with pure contempt written over his face.

Genma coughed again now, breathing in short gasps because deep breaths were impossible with his arms wrenched up. Raidou's arms were held even higher, but the medic had done something with glowing hands over Raidou's chest, targeting lung meridians. Genma'd seen the same technique used during the war, to keep bound prisoners from drowning in their own body fluids.

It was only a matter of time, now that Raidou was awake, before they came back to start again.

He didn't dare let Raidou think about that.

"We get home--there's a movie I wanna go see--with you. Horror flick. Think it's based on--Orochimaru. Guy resurrects dinosaurs."

Raidou made a noise that might have been laughter, if he'd been able to get the air. It ended on a hitching groan and choked out. "I love--your pri-orities," he managed. "Who--doesn't want--killer lizards?"

Talking about home, that was important. To remember they were going to get out of this. It was rule--something. He couldn't remember. But it was one of the rules you learned during interrogation training. Keep believing. Keep your partner believing. Don't give up.

It'd take a whole lot more than a hot poker and cracked teeth to break a Leaf-nin.

Genma wanted him to stand.

Raidou started to clench his jaw, and stopped with a long shudder that rattled steel. Pins and needles rippled up his arms. Slowly, carefully, thinking about each muscle before he moved it, he straightened his legs and tried to get his heels down. The way he was chained wouldn't allow it, but he managed to brace awkwardly on the balls of his feet and wrench some balance back. Muscles trembled fitfully in his calves and thighs. His ribcage heaved. But some of the weight hanging on his shoulders and wrists eased, letting blood flow return to his hands.

It was not, in any sense of the word, pleasant.

He threw his head up and let it thump back against the wall, panting open-mouthed as fire arched through his limbs. It wasn't pins and needles; it was someone with a damn katana blade stripping the flesh off his bones. Sweat streaked down his face, slick over pale skin. His knees gave, dropping the weight back onto his shoulders, and numbness started to return.

"I can't," he gasped. "It's--"

Too hard. Hurt too much.

Genma wanted him to stand.

Raidou bit down on his tongue and tried again, forcing his weight onto his feet. Made his head stay up. Made himself keep breathing. If he had to do it then he'd damn well do it--

The manacles snapped open.

There wasn't time to catch himself.

Watching Raidou's burned, bandaged face contorting in agony as he tried to stand was nearly as bad as watching him tortured had been. Hearing him say, even for a moment, I can't, was almost enough to rob Genma of his own hope. "Rai, listen to me--" he started.

Then Raidou jerked and fell, and Genma surged against his bonds, instinct to catch his friend before he hit the ground overriding logic and the sure reality that he was still bound. The manacles cut into nerveless wrists, the shackle around his sprained ankle bit painfully into swollen, bruised flesh.

Raidou lay on his side on the cold concrete, drawing deep, rasping breaths, making sounds Genma never wanted to hear again.

Why had they turned Raidou loose? Was it a malfunction in the locks on the restraints? The facility was decommissioned, after all, but it still clearly had electricity, so...

"Hang on, Rai. Give it a minute, it should ease off." As long as there was no nerve damage, as long as Raidou could get enough air and get his hands moving, there was hope at last. "Breathe--"

As abruptly as Raidou's had, Genma's irons sprang open. He staggered and fell, unable to protect his face with outstretched hands, because his arms were completely unresponsive after their long hanging; he twisted to the right, landing on his bandaged shoulder with a harsh grunt.

The door slid open.

Freedom was a shock. Hitting concrete was a bigger one. But years of training were designed for moments like these; even as his arms caught fire from shoulders to fingertip, as half-healed burns stretched and split beneath taped linen, as Genma fell and the door opened with a grate of moving metal, Raidou was trying to get back to his feet.

He made it to his knees, braced on his palms, before Green-eyes grabbed him by the throat and slammed him back down. A knee drove into the small of his back.

"Should've stayed asleep, pretty boy," hissed the voice next to his ear.

Raidou didn't waste breath on a response. He slapped tingling hands together, desperate to form seals while he could. A clone--he needed a clone. His fingers twisted, forced through the right shapes. Genma's yellow-brown eyes fixed on his for a flickering second. Chakra roared under his skin--

Weasel stamped down on one wrist and kicked his other hand away. "None of that."

The half-formed jutsu collapsed in a backwash of chakra, lashing into his coils. Raidou jerked and tried to yank his hands back, bring a knee up. He twisted beneath Green-eye's hold, ripping bandages away as concrete rasped against skin, and never saw the fist aimed at his jaw until it connected.

When the world came back, bringing brand new hurts, Green-eyes was straddling his back, holding his hands in a chakra-laced grip, Weasel had his head yanked hard to one side, facing the room, and Sago's booted foot was pressed down on Genma's throat.

"Stop struggling," said the big man quietly, "or I'll snap his neck."

Raidou froze.

The takedown had taken mere seconds. Booted ninja swarmed in--how could only three men seem like so many?--before Genma could pull himself together. He'd called up chakra, forcing aching, bloodless fingers into seals. He'd seen Raidou doing the same, when the greasy-haired ninja landed on him with a hiss.

For a wild moment Genma's eyes connected with Raidou's, as they both struggled to put chakra into play. Then the weasel-faced ninja knocked Raidou senseless, and the big man in the doorway--Sago--flicked his fingers almost causally. Genma fell convulsing as the jutsu hit him, thrashing limbs against cement, soaking bandages with fresh blood.

When the jutsu-induced seizure passed, he found himself gasping for breath again, at the mercy of Sago's boot, which ground relentlessly against his neck. Unable to move.

Raidou's eyes were wide, his bloodied lips parted as he dragged in air. He'd stopped fighting.

Don't give up! Genma wanted to scream. The pressure on his windpipe kept the words from forming.

"Maybe your handsome friend here will be more cooperative that you were, plum blossom," Weasel said. He and Greasy-hair hauled Raidou up onto his knees and snapped the former ankle restraints around his wrists.

The fourth rogue Mist ninja appeared in the doorway with a collapsing table. He set it up as if preparing for tea.

Sago nodded at him, then stepped behind Genma, wrenching him up and throwing him across the small table. "You can't move, can you? I designed that jutsu. It's a good one."

Genma shivered.

Sago bent over his chest, picking through his tools.

Whatever their captors were, they weren't stupid. They'd hung Genma and Raidou up just long enough to really hurt, to make breathing an issue, then cut them down. Granted a millisecond of hope with false freedom, then ripped it away. Tortured, healed, let them rest without ever getting comfortable. Used them against each other.

And now Sago was turning his attention on Genma.

Raidou didn't dare move. He couldn't take down both Green-eyes and Weasel fast enough to get there before Sago made good on his promise. He couldn't do anything when the leg-irons snapped around his wrists, pinning his arms wide again. Green-eyes sat companionably down by his side, pulling out a packet of cigarettes. Weasel got up and slouched over to the table the fourth ninja--one Raidou didn't recognize, but had to be the medic--had set up.

"So what're we doing?" Weasel asked, flicking a strand of mud-stained hair out of Genma's eyes. Genma didn't move, beyond trembling faintly. Why wasn't he moving? "Fingernails? Bones? Cutting off a few joints? S'gotta be something with these pretty hands."

Fury drowned fear. It spiralled down in Raidou's belly, sick and hot and full of bloodthirst, kicking pain so far down his list of priorities that he didn't even care. He'd known they'd go for Genma's hands--a torturer of Sago's calibre couldn't fail to know what those scars meant--but he'd hoped, damn near prayed, they'd keep their attention on him. Genma was strong, but Raidou was stronger. He could stand up; survive where others couldn't. And Genma's hands--

"No amputation," said Sago, pulling out an instrument that shone in the bright lights, fashioned like a heavy pair of silver pliers. "Whoever buys them will want all ten fingers for their money's worth."

"We knew you'd come, you see," said Green-eyes to Raidou, blowing out a curl of smoke. "When that stupid kunoichi sent off her bird, we knew they'd send ANBU to clean up the mess. So we figured we'd hang around, maybe make a little profit." He grinned, eyes on Genma. "You know how much people are willing to pay for information? Not nearly as much as they'll pay for living, breathing ninja. You boys are going to keep us flush for months."

They were close to Grass and Rain and Rock--three villages who weren't friendly enough to mind paying real coin for Konoha-ninja. Especially ANBU. Raidou didn't think about it--didn't think about anything but the metal gleaming in Sago's hand as he wrapped blunt fingers around Genma's left wrist and lifted it up. Weasel grabbed Genma by the shoulders, pinning him firmly down. Amber-brown eyes flew wide. Genma wasn't moving.

Raidou threw himself against his chains. "Wait!" He coughed, spat, drew a breath. "Sago, wait!"

The big man's hands paused.

Green-eyes lifted his eyebrows. "Something to share?"

"Yeah." Raidou bared his teeth and lashed out, cracking his heel down on Green-eye's right kneecap. Bone gave with a dull crunch. Green-eyes howled and jerked away, cigarette dropping from his lips. "You're not done with me yet."

Sago arched an eyebrow. "Nice try." He leaned down, caught the middle joint of Genma's left pinky between the pliers, and snapped it.

Adrenaline slowed time to a near standstill, so that Genma had time to really think in the space of seconds before Sago applied the pliers. He watched the slow motion of Greasy-hair crumpling over his fractured knee, the medic rushing back in to kick Raidou in the chest, and thought Raidou was a heroic fool. He watched dull silver jaws close over his little finger, and thought Ito-sensei would be seriously pissed if he had to fix his hands again. He thought how strange it felt, how bizarrely calm, to be facing his greatest fear after four years of nightmares. How wrong it was that Raidou was there. That it was pliers this time.

Bone snapped.

It didn't hurt immediately, so much as make him feel faint. Like he might pass out or vomit. Like he couldn't breathe at all. It was like touching white hot metal and feeling the burn as if it were ice cold. He gagged and choked, and felt strong hands on the back of his neck, pushing him down against the table. Panted shallowly through clenched jaws. Couldn't move.

"Damn, that's a good jutsu," Weasel drawled. "He didn't even flinch."

"It isn't permanent," Sago warned. "Be ready for it wearing off." He studied Genma's hand, with its obscenely bent pinky, and opened the pliers again, this time choosing Genma's thumb.

The crack this time was slower coming, as thicker, stronger bone gave way.

It took Genma a moment to realize the screams echoing from the cement walls were his own.

"Son of a bitch," Raidou choked, breath staved out of his chest by the fourth ninja's kick and his own rage. He heard the first bone snap and saw Genma's face drain white. Heard Weasel's comment and Sago's answer and understood, finally, why Genma wasn't moving. Heard the second dull crack, like fragile stone breaking, and then Genma's scream drowned everything out.

Raidou felt something a lot like his heart splitting wide open behind his ribcage. He shouted something--didn't care what--and threw himself against his chains. Sago ignored him.

When the sound finally ebbed into silence, cut through with ragged breathing, Weasel tipped his head on one side. "Damn," he said finally. "The other one was louder."

"Give it time," said Sago, and set the delicate edge of the pliers against Genma's thumbnail, pinching the tip. A spark of chakra flared, Sago's hand twitched, and the nail ripped free. Genma arched and screamed, hand jerking in Sago's firm grip; the other scrabbled weakly against the wooden desk, fingers bridging as every muscle went rigid. Weasel dodged a desperate, clumsy kick and leaned his full weight on Genma's naked shoulders, holding him down.

Raidou almost dislocated his own shoulders, lunging against the ankle restraints, roaring when words failed him completely. He could barely feel his own injuries; his eyes were locked on Genma's, willing his friend to be okay. To not break. To stay with him. Trying to keep him grounded, just as Genma had done for him.

Healing chakra glowed briefly on his left.

"You little bastard," snarled Green-eyes, suddenly an inch from the bandaged side of Raidou's face. The ninja's skin was white, sweat-streaked, his teeth bared. "You broke my knee--"

Raidou slammed his head forward, connecting their two skulls with a crack like stone breaking. A punch like a landslide caught him in the shoulder--the medic--but Green-eyes reeled back again, helped on his way by the awkward, desperate kick Raidou managed to land on his hip.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," the medic muttered, and dodged sideways when Raidou struck at him. "Rikuto, if you'd stop getting close to the sodding ANBU..."

Green-eyes lunged around, staggering on his weak knee, one hand clamped over his forehead. "I'll kill him--"

"Try it," Raidou snarled, trying not to sag in his chains. His head felt like he'd slammed it against a mountain. Over Green-eyes' shoulder, he could see Sago glancing at them briefly before closing his pliers around Genma's index finger. Bone snapped just as Green-eyes' hand clamped around Raidou's throat.

Genma screamed.

The medic lunged and hauled Green-eyes off before Raidou could choke. "You should talk," he said, as he dragged the swearing ninja away. "It'll just get worse."

"Go to hell." Raidou strained against his chains, watched Genma face everything he shouldn't ever have to, and swore he'd kill every single Mist-nin in this room. Whatever it took, he'd get Genma out.

When Genma opened his eyes he expected to see the blank, expressionless masks of Iwa interrogators. Blood pooled from his hand, from the torn thumbnail. Raidou implored him with his eyes, with agony written on his bandaged face...

That wasn't right.

Sago's pliers bit into the meat of his hand, twisting and tearing. Chakra ripped through small bones, shattering the forth metacarpal. Plier teeth tore a tag of skin and flesh away, exposing twitching tendons.

Genma couldn't scream any more. His throat was too raw and swollen, his brain too desperate for air. He wondered where Taisei was. Taisei was supposed to be counting. Voices above his head made no sense. Where was the woman interrogator with her honey-sweet tone and her evil words?

He forced his eyes open again. Raidou was still there, shouting at him.

Up, up, he had to get up. This wasn't right. Maybe it was a nightmare. Maybe it didn't matter. Raidou was there, and hurt. He needed him. Genma threw himself backwards and was instantly pinned again.

"Going somewhere, cupcake?"

He knew that voice. A man's voice, not the woman... A man with a weaselly face.

Sago put down his pliers, and picked up a shapely mallet. "I expect you know how this is used," he said, and for the first time, Genma saw him smile.

Sago. Mist ninja.

He remembered a glowing rake, electric shocks. Raidou was shouting...

Someone was asking a question about Yukaho...

Sago swung the mallet gently, resting it against Genma's wrist as if it were a light caress. Chakra shuddered through it, cracking bones like glass.

He couldn't take it anymore. He couldn't take it. He'd break, or Raidou would break...

"Wait..." His voice was tiny, barely a whisper.

He mouthed words.

Weasel looked up at Sago, who stepped back and let his subordinate in.

"She was..." Genma let his voice trail off. Waited until Weasel's ugly face was inches from his own.

He bit down sharply, surging chakra into his jaw to break the false tooth and aerosolize the poison. Blew it into Weasel's face. The man gasped and fell back, clutching at his throat.

"My friend," Genma finished. She was my friend.

Sago reared backwards, one hand jerking up to cover his mouth and nose. Weasel collapsed on the floor, writhing as his fingernails tore into his throat, black foam glistening on his lips. Green-eyes gaped and swore, still held in the medic's firm grip. The medic himself yanked them both backwards, away from the hovering cloud of fine powder dusting the air above Genma's head.

And Raidou, wrenching against his bonds, pulling hard enough to make the tendons in his shoulders creak, realized something very crucial: leg-irons were wider than wrist-manacles, and his hands were slipping through.

Thought became movement before that powder blew away. He slammed bare feet into the floor, threw himself sideways, and hauled...

Metal grated over the back of his wrist, smearing skin from flesh, slamming up against the base of his palm, stalled only by his thumb joint--which dislocated.

He snatched his hand free before the pain could register, adrenaline thundering in his veins, and clapped his palms together, twisting seals. The remaining cuff tried to tamp his chakra down, but without the other in place to complete the full loop, the chakra-restraining jutsu could only do so much. Raidou threw everything he had against it, beyond grateful the seals didn't need his right thumb to work, and summoned the strongest clone he could.

It burst into existence, fully armoured and carrying every fleck of anger he had to spare, and charged at the Mist-nin, unsheathing a long sword. Raidou didn't stop to watch it; he twisted yet more seals, gasping so hard his head spun, and almost sobbed with relief when the second cuff sprang open.

But there wasn't time for that. Sago was facing off against his clone, chakra sparking through that godawful hammer; the medic was dead on the ground, blood draining from a long slash across his throat; and Green-eyes was coming at Raidou, murder in his eyes.

Raidou staggered halfway to his feet, then dropped back onto his left hand and threw his whole body around in an arc that ended with his heel slamming through Green-eyes' guard, into his right knee. Skin tore across Raidou's chest, burns splitting open once again, but Green-eyes went down with a bellow like a wounded bull. Raidou kicked him hard in the temple and scrambled to his feet--

Chakra lurched. His clone vanished as Sago smashed its head apart.

But Genma was still breathing. Black froth lined his lips, streaked down his chin, smeared over the red-flecked wood; he lay sprawled across that flimsy table, blood splattering the concrete beneath his hanging left hand, skin smeared with sweat and grime, broken bones shining obscenely, but he was still breathing.

Don't let it be a suicide pill.

Raidou grabbed every last bit of chakra he had left, forced it to become strength, and bolted across the room, trying to reach him before Sago did.

In the moments after Genma released the poison, confusion reigned. He knew at least one of his attackers was dying. Knew a battle was raging. But the choking cloud was a last-resort defense, one that left its user vulnerable. Genma'd spent years working up enough immunity to render the toxin a murder-only weapon, not a tool for murder-suicide. He gagged on blackish slime, gasping for air. Struggling to master unresponsive muscles. He was shaking violently, pushing himself up on his good arm only to fall again, retching.

He heard Raidou's voice, screaming a war cry. Or was that a clone? There were two Raidous, one in bone and black, fighting the man with the evil hammer; the other naked but for a few bandages, waging a desperate taijutsu battle against the greasy-haired Mist nin.

Sago's hammer flashed, and Genma struggled up again. ANBU had come to the rescue once before. There had been four of them, taking down the Stone ninja with brutal efficiency. Sago's hammer shattered Raidou's skull, and Genma choked on a cry. The clone vanished.

Genma's left hand glanced against the table, and he blacked out for a second, sprawling face down once more.

Adrenaline and training didn't let him stay down.

There was a sound to his left. Genma's head twitched, he saw Raidou running towards him. He forced himself to roll over onto his back, right hand reaching down to his naked leg for a blade that wasn't there, just in time to see Sago hurtling towards him, his chakra hammer glowing sickly ochre.

He rolled and tried to dodge.

The hammer struck him at the base of his ribs.

There was an instant of searing pain, and then Raidou was over him, shoving Sago away with a whole body tackle.

Genma tucked his mangled hand in close to his chest and threw himself in the opposite direction, skidding on cold, blood-slicked concrete.

He couldn't think. Couldn't breathe. But he was on his knees, then his feet, staggering against the wall. The poisoned ninja was still convulsing, choking on the dreadful slurry of his dissolving airways. Genma grabbed a kunai from the dying man's holster and threw it at Sago. His accuracy was off, his nerves still sluggish from that paralytic jutsu, but even so the blade dug a furrow along Sago's neck.

"Rai!" There was no volume to his shout.

No suicide pill Raidou knew of left its user capable of flinging a kunai half a minute later. But he didn't have time to fall apart with relief. Sago's eyes, dark brown and calculating, pinned him as the big ninja gathered himself and rose to his feet, ignoring the free-running trickles of blood sliding down his neck. Raidou scrambled upright, shaking with pain and adrenaline, back-tracking as fast as he could. Genma was somewhere behind him, close to the door, and Raidou was all that stood between him and Sago's hammer.

He was going to get Genma out of here, whatever the cost.

Sago spun his hammer fluidly around one broad wrist; it was speckled with bright red blood. "How far do you think you'll get?" he asked softly, almost gently. "Really?"

"Far enough," Raidou grunted. He slid back another step and felt his bare hip catch against the table. Warm slickness oozed under his feet. Behind Sago, Green-eyes was staggering upright, catching his balance on his uninjured leg.

Raidou could feel the draft blowing through the door.

"Steel," said Sago softly, "is something you never forget."

He blurred as Raidou flinched, shimmering from there to right here, filling up the whole world with his massive frame. The hammer swung down--

And light lashed out as Raidou squeezed his eyes closed and snapped one final seal, forcing his hands to work despite the angle of his thumb. He threw himself down, knees hitting the floor as Sago yelled, blinded, and metal missed Raidou's head by inches. A kick took its place, but Raidou was already moving, flinging himself towards Genma.

His friend was light-blinded--there'd been no way to warn him--and flinched brutally when Raidou's left hand locked around his biceps. There was no time for gentleness; Raidou hauled him towards the door, taking the wild blow that cracked against his shoulder with a dull grunt. There was a seal on the other side; he hammered it with his right fist, lancing pain everywhere, and tried not to drop to his knees again. Tempered steel slammed into place, trapping the Mist-nin on the other side.

"Don't think--you'll forget me--either," Raidou gasped, and collapsed backwards against the door as something hammered it from the other side. Genma safe in his grip, still breathing.

For one shining moment, nothing else mattered.

The halos were already clearing from Genma's sight. Dark purplish blotches flared in the center of his vision, but at the periphery he could make out details. A curving concrete hall, lit with flourescents. He was still shaking, heart still racing. Raidou was solid at his back, sucking in gasping lungfuls of air.

It was eerily quiet. Genma reached up with his right hand, touching the side of Raidou's neck with gently-questing fingertips. Raidou flinched, shying away from him, then relaxed, allowing the intimacy, and Genma felt for a pulse that hammered as hard as his own. Felt for a chakra as familiar as his own, coursing like a river of light under the skin--warm, rich green, a texture like a bed of woven pine needles.

The door behind them shuddered, bringing reality crashing back. Confused memories of Iwagakure scrabbled at the edges of Genma's thoughts, but the taste of the poison was still on his tongue, the slick choking sensation still in his windpipe. And Raidou was still at his back, breathing hard, groaning every third or fourth breath as if he was in unbearable pain.

The medic in Genma calculated probabilities. A bruised sternum, broken ribs, those burns on Raidou's chest. Maybe something worse. A head injury, a clot in the lungs... Kanon Bosatsu, don't save us from one death only to abandon us to another! Raidou's pulse was still strong. His breaths pained but regular. His chakra diminished, but flowing easily. Genma let himself cling to that hope.

He could feel himself shaking, looked down at the bloody, broken hand he cradled against his chest, and realized it was shock that was making it possible for him to be so detached from his own brutalized body.

The door shuddered again.

"Seals. Burn them--up. Need--seals," he said, voice a breathy, raw rasp. He took a deeper breath, struggled to lean forward. Pain flared from his right side, engulfing him like the exploding tags he wanted to use on the trapped enemy ninja. For a moment, he stopped breathing.

When he came to himself again, he was cradled against Raidou's bandaged chest, looking up into frantic brown eyes.

You couldn't perform CPR on someone with poison coating their lips, no matter how desperately you wanted to. When Genma stopped breathing, eyes wide and blank with shock that was fast becoming something else, Raidou feared the worst. Genma had immunities, but sometimes they only held up so far. Sometimes they weren't enough. And if he'd gotten Genma out only to watch him die now, there would be nothing left to do but slit his own throat...

The lean body in his arms shuddered once, drawing a hacking, rasping breath, and for the hundredth time today, Raidou felt relief crash over his head and swallow him whole. He forbid his knees to buckle.

"Bastard," he rasped, wincing when Genma's weight pressed against raw flesh. "Don't scare me--like that."

Metal crashed behind him, shuddering against his shoulders. War bunkers were sealed against translocation and explosive jutsu, designed to keep captives in and soldiers safe, but those seals would only hold up so long. Eventually, Sago would break out. And Raidou didn't dare attack the room with jutsu for fear of releasing him sooner.

They'd just have to get home first.

He licked dry lips, tasting blood from splits and missing teeth. "C'mon. We need our stuff. Water for you. Bandages. Pants." He shoved away from the door, stumbling, bracing Genma as best he could without making himself scream. "Painkillers."

Raidou's list-making got Genma's brain jump-started again. Find their gear. Find his med kit. Find any med kit. They needed blood pills, soldier pills, painkillers as Raidou had said--strong enough ones that they could run. Maybe with enough chakra Genma could summon a rat for help.

He limped beside Raidou, coughing weakly--a chuffing sound in his throat--and spat more blood-streaked black slime. "Hate that stuff," he said. "Nasty."

Raidou was still making those dreadful, quiet groans. Burns, Genma knew, were the worst injuries. Damaged the most nerves. Caused the most suffering.

He wanted Sago to burn alive.

He wanted to cast a numbing jutsu over Raidou's skin, but with only one hand it was impossible.

He tried very, very hard not to think about his hand. About fractures grating with every step he took. About chakra pathways disrupted, and nerves trapped in the collapsed channels that had once run between crushed bones.

Raidou stopped at a fork in the path. The main tunnel curved up to the right; a branch bore off to the left.

"Up," Genma said. "Down is latrines." So strange to remember the blueprint for these bunkers. But they were all alike. He'd spent months in them, between sorties and messenger missions. He'd seen at least twenty of them, all built to similar, though not identical standards.

Memory served, though. At the top of the upper tunnel, they found a room with cots built into the walls, a rudimentary kitchen. And piles of gear, including two bone and black ANBU uniforms, besmeared with dried, bloody mud.

Raidou pushed Genma towards the cot with their things, forcing him to sit when Genma seemed set to rifle through everything straight away, apparently forgetting he'd stopped breathing back there. Then he staggered towards the basic kitchen and dug through the bare cupboards until he found two dust-streaked glasses, filling them with water from the tap. Getting Genma's hand patched up, his ribcage looked at, were both top priority, but Raidou wanted that poison gone.

He made it back without spilling too much--carrying one glass in his left hand and the other braced between his arm and an uninjured patch of chest--and pushed one of them into Genma's uninjured hand, sinking down onto the cot next to him. Distantly, muffled by concrete, he could hear the crash of metal against metal.

"We should be quick," he muttered, trying not to think about it. He took a sip of his own water--and dropped the glass when cold hit the raw beds of broken teeth and shuddered right through his skull. Genma reached for him, alarm in amber-brown eyes, but Raidou rocked back, unable to bear touch near his face. "I'm okay," he gasped. "I'm fine. Drink your water, we've got to get out of here."

"Liar," Genma said bluntly. That was not okay or fine, that was agony written in bold brushstrokes over Raidou's features. Genma needed his hands. He needed his meds, and he'd almost located them when Raidou'd come back and pushed the glass at him.

He sipped a little to appease Raidou, and choked it back up. Even water felt like a brick trying to get down his swollen throat. Genma set the glass carefully aside, and went back to his search. A few more moments, he thought, a few more, and then the combination of his hand and his side would be too much pain to endure and he'd pass out. He needed drugs now, now, now!

A hard-sided leather kit came to hand. Glass ampules nestled inside, full of morphine meant for injection, but he wasn't sure he could attach the syringe. Always keep one pre-loaded, ready to go, he remembered hearing his sister say, as she checked her kit before a mission. You only desperately need the things you didn't prepare for.

There was one. One pre-loaded.

Raidou needed it. He needed it. He pulled it out, looked up at Raidou, at eyes squinting and lips contorted in pain.

"Sorry, Raidou." Genma injected his own thigh. Always treat the medic first. He was going to pass out and leave Raidou with no support at all if he didn't.

"I'll get you--next." Before the drug even started to take effect, Genma was fumbling one handed to load a fresh syringe.

Moving carefully, Raidou reached out and wrapped his fingers around Genma's uninjured arm, closer to his elbow than his hand. Genma still flinched, pulling away, jerking around to stare wild-eyed as the syringe fell from his fingers.

"Easy, loverboy," Raidou murmured, without releasing his hold. "Take it easy."

For a tense moment, recognition warred with panic on Genma's face, then he took a shallow breath and leaned very slightly forward again. Raidou rubbed his thumb over the sensitive skin just below Genma's elbow, feeling a heartbeat that was far too fast. Chakra stripped past the edge of ragged. There was black still lining Genma's lips.

But he'd taken the morphine first. Whatever Sago had done to him, however newly broken his hand was, Genma was still thinking. More than thinking, he was taking care of both them by looking after himself first.

Though damn if Raidou didn't want some of his own morphine.

"Just breathe a sec," he said instead, and rubbed Genma's arm one more time before he pulled his hand back. "You look half a step from keeling over, and I need you around for the conversation, if nothing else." He needed Genma to stop moving while there was blood still pouring freely from that broken hand; the bedsheets beneath his friend were already splattered and soaked.

Tourniquet. Bandages. Painkillers. Clothes. They had to get out of here.

He needed two working hands for that.

Raidou bit his tongue in favour of clamping his jaw, and snapped his dislocated thumb back into place. He shuddered once, breath hissing through blood-stained teeth, tension crawling over his shoulders, and rode out the wave of pain streaking up his arm.

When it was over, he started to reach for the syringe Genma had dropped.

The shaking had started again. Shudders crawled out from his spine, making Genma's teeth clack together, his breath stutter. The injected drug worked quickly, lending a further edge of surreality to everything. He watched Raidou carefully. Watched the hand on his arm, traced it back to the scarred, battered body of his friend. Let his eyes fall again when Raidou let go, staring at his friend's hands. Big hands. Safe hands.

And then Genma's most hideous nightmare came to life.

Someone was breaking Raidou's hands.

Genma lurched forward with a hoarse shout. He had to stop it. Stop it before they did to Raidou what'd they'd already done to him.

There was a sickening crack from Raidou's thumb.

Genma dove for the interrogator... but he wasn't there. Raidou had leaned over towards the floor, and the hand-breaker was simply vanished. Genma toppled towards him with a confused whimper, hands flung out instinctively to catch himself as the floor rushed up. An arc of blood drops on concrete traced the motion.

Speed was not the touchstone of Raidou's abilities. Strength, determination, the ability to get up after the twelfth hit and lash out with a skull-cracker of his own--but not speed. He had enough flash to keep up with the average jounin, and enough willpower to run long after quicker, brighter kids had fallen, but the lightning-slick reflexes of ninjutsu warriors was generally beyond him.

When Genma fell, broken hand jerking out to catch himself, Raidou could have matched the Yondaime on his very best day. He lunged forwards, one knee smacking down on unforgiving concrete, and twisted to throw his arm across Genma's chest, avoiding both blood-streaked hands. Genma crashed into him, full weight wrenching on Raidou's shoulder, and yanked a scream from both of them.

But Raidou would have rather stepped up and spread his arms for Sago's rake again than see that twisted, mangled wreck of flesh and bone strike the floor. He locked his muscles, threw everything he had into not falling, and yanked Genma against his chest before so much as a fingertip brushed concrete.

"Son of a--"

Genma's left shoulder slammed hard into peeling bandages. The firestorm of pain that scorched through Raidou's burned, blistered skin was almost enough to cure the will to live. Fingers tightened. Eyes squeezed shut. Breath went away.

He didn't let go.

The jarring impact with Raidou's solid bulk was much less disastrous than one with the floor would have been, but even so the pain was exquisite. Genma's focus narrowed to a tiny pinprick of consciousness, engulfed in a roaring inferno. It was several long moments before he was aware of anything but the shuddering agony that had replaced his hand, and when consciousness did resurface, it was to memory: being carried to safety over the shoulder of an ANBU captain he didn't know.

Reality superposed itself over memory. The scent of Raidou's skin, rank with sweat and pain and burnt flesh. The coarse thundering of Raidou's chakra, flaring and stuttering within him as he struggled with his own suffering. The harsh, ragged breaths ghosting past Genma's ear.

Genma tried to ease himself back, and found Raidou's arm clamped so tightly around him that he'd managed to tear the scabs off the shuriken trails over Genma's right shoulder.

"Raidou," Genma's voice was still a rough whisper. "Raidou, hang on."

Genma's eyes darted to the syringe with its precious liquid still undispensed. He stretched out his right hand, reaching for it with desperate fingers.

The sting of a needle slipping gently into a vein barely registered. But Raidou got lucky; if Genma had hit muscle with his injection, it would have been long, agonized minutes before the drugs could kick in enough to even begin to shave the edge off. But delivered right into his bloodstream, swept through his body by a frantic heartbeat, the effect of the morphine was almost instant.

Slowly, achingly, his fingers unclenched. Words began to make sense again, rasped right next to his ear. Hang on, Raidou. Breathe. Pressed tight against his chest, panting in hitching jerks, he could feel the weight of another body. Smell blood and sweat and, underneath that, Genma. It cut through the carnal stench of the battlefield.

Hang on, Rai.

They were on the floor. He could feel one leg twisted awkwardly beneath him, the other flung out and jammed against the metal strut of the cot. Genma was half on his knees, half in Raidou's lap, skin greased with sweat and blood, shaking fitfully. Raidou could feel slickness smearing beneath his fingers. They were both still very naked.

He opened his eyes.

Genma's left hand, the broken one, was hanging loosely to one side, held away from both of them. Carmine strings dripped from the terrible wounds, splattering skin and concrete. There was blood streaked all over Raidou's thigh. Genma's pupils were blown out wide. His uninjured hand was rubbing down Raidou's arm, over and over.

Raidou swallowed hard.

"Sorry," he rasped. "Sorry. I didn't--you've got to sit back. Let me look at your hand."

It took Genma a moment to register that Raidou was talking to him. Responding to him. He'd dropped the syringe after injecting Raidou, and started stroking his arm over and over, as if he could force the drug to work faster by pushing the blood through Raidou's veins. Whispered the meaningless reassurances of all medics everywhere. Hang on. Breathe. Stay with me. Breathe.

"Rai..." Genma said, and suddenly couldn't think. He just repeated the name, rocking back on his knees to try to see more of him, eyes sweeping from bandage to bandage, burn to burn. The gauze on Raidou's face had come loose, exposing yellowish blisters and angry red welts where Sago's rake had lain waste to the already scarred skin.

"Rai." It was a mantra of relief, a prayer. The only thing keeping Genma anchored in the present. There was blood smeared over his friend, a black bruise across his sternum. "They kicked you..." Genma reached a hesitant hand up, not quite touching.

Raidou flinched away, and Genma did too, drawing his hand back as if he'd brushed a live coal.

Raidou's voice sounded a million miles away when he repeated himself, urging Genma to give him his hand. His other hand.

Genma turned numbly to look at it, bloody and grotesque.

"I can't..." He shuddered, felt the ground shifting under him. His bare shoulders met the edge of the cot, and he twitched, started shaking afresh. Pulling it in towards his body, he cradled his left arm at the elbow with his right, and looked up at Raidou.

"It was worse--before."

Before.

Iwagakure. When Genma had come home with two shattered hands, two dead teammates, and four years to face the memories before Raidou had ever met him. He'd heard the stories, the rumours, heard the real tale from Genma's own lips the night of their first mission. Seen the nightmares less than two weeks later. In a weird way, it was part of why they'd ever become friends.

But Raidou had sworn he'd never let it happen again. Had promised he'd keep Genma safe. Take the hits for him, keep him on his feet. Be the man at his back, the shield at his front.

The one who got him home alive.

"Well this time you've got me," he whispered, and reached forward. Genma barely moved when Raidou touched him between the eyebrows, fingertips alight with chakra; he was too far gone into shock. And Raidou was damned if he was going to inflict anymore pain. "Go to sleep, kid. It'll be better when you wake up."

The irony of using Green-eyes' jutsu wasn't lost on Raidou. But he was too damn desperate to care.

Genma's vision was already tunneled down. Grey-brown edges lapped in, obscuring everything but Raidou's face. Raidou's eyes. The right was blackened and swollen partly shut, the left squinted by the swelling from the burn just below it.

Should dress that burn, Genma thought. Should apply a healing jutsu. Numb it up, then heal it. Facial injuries take extra care, and Raidou's already got acid burns there. Should get someone really good to take a look at it.

Raidou's hand came towards his face, and Genma's eyes tracked it.

His hand. They didn't break his hands. They burned him but... The base of Raidou's thumb was swollen and purple. Distorted. Broken.

Genma's eyes flicked wider, searching for Raidou's. He lips shaped half-formed, voiceless words.

Raidou's chakra flooded into him, and Genma's eyes lost focus, slipped closed. His head fell back, exposing crusted wire marks and black contusions on his long neck.

Faced with that, it was hard to see his friend as anything other than dead. But breath still lifted Genma's ribcage, a pulse still threaded beneath the soft damaged skin of his throat, and Raidou didn't have time to panic.

"Okay," he muttered. "Okay."

Hand. Ribcage. Neck. Shoulder and hip. Ankle. Move, Namaishi.

Distantly, metal shuddered under the impact of metal. Raidou shoved the sound out of his mind and gathered his legs under him, staggering to his feet. Genma slipped sideways, crumpling towards the floor. Raidou lunged and grabbed him.

"Pain even when you're unconscious," he hissed through teeth he was fighting not to grit, and hauled the limp weight up onto the cot, laying Genma out on his back. The medi-kit they'd ravaged was still splayed open on blood-soaked sheets; Raidou scrabbled through it and pulled out a length of bandage, knotting it tightly just below Genma's left elbow. The steady pulse of blood slowly drenching flesh and cloth withered to a trickle, giving him time to work. But Genma was already horribly pale.

Blood pills first. Raidou pulled the bottle out, tipped three into the glass of water Genma had discarded, and sent up a silent thank you when they dissolved instantly, turning the water muddy red. He managed to get most of the contents between Genma's lips, lifting his friend up and bracing him as best he could to ease the make-shift remedy down his throat. Blood pills weren't perfect, but they'd keep Genma from blanching dry before Raidou could get him home.

That hand was next. He laid Genma down and steeled himself, locking down eight months worth of well-ingrained instinct as he took Genma's shattered wrist gently and tried to work out how much damage there was; what he could fix. The index, pinky, and thumb were all snapped out of place, bent at violent angles. The thumbnail was missing. The small bones of his actual hand were mangled, but no slivers of white could be seen through tattered flesh. Genma's wrist grated beneath Raidou's touch.

"Goddamn," he whispered, and tried not to think about what Genma's chances of ever regaining full use of his hand were. Whether he'd still be a ninja. They had to get home first.

He swallowed his gag reflex, forced himself to see nothing but flesh that wasn't his friend, and wrenched everything back into place. Then, ignoring the way his own hands trembled, he dug the antiseptic out of their kit--the one every shinobi loved and feared in equal measure--and drenched Genma from fingertips to wrist before binding his whole hand tightly with bandages, swathing bruised flesh up to mid-forearm. There were no splints he could use, but he did his best and stripped the torniquette away. Genma never flinched.

Raidou allowed himself ten seconds to sit and shake, listening to Sago thundering at the door of his prison, before he could focus on the next thing.

Genma's ribcage was bruised, the lower right side shifting in a way that felt completely unnatural when Raidou put his hand on it. There was nothing he could do but wind another length of bandage around Genma's torso and hope broken ribs was the worst of it. Then he stripped the bandages the Mist-nin had applied away from Genma's shoulder and hip, untrusting that they hadn't somehow messed the job up, and rebound the wounds, along with that sprained ankle. There was nothing to do for Genma's badly scabbed throat but paint it with more antiseptic and slap a dressing over blackened flesh.

Then came clothes. Raidou manhandled Genma as gently as he could into the skintight ANBU blacks, pulling them back onto heavy limbs, followed by the lightweight chest armour and sandals. He even strapped Genma's gauntlets back on, hoping the left would act like something like a splint, and the right would do its normal job of protection.

When that was done, he sat again, panting and sick, wishing that burns weren't the one damn injury painkillers couldn't really help. His hands were slick to the wrists with Genma's blood, his head was full of the sound of metal on metal, and he still needed to put his pants on.

"Okay," he whispered, voice like a dull thread. "Okay."

He couldn't bring himself to touch his burns. Where the bandages had sloughed away, he could see red-raw flesh, partly scabbed and mostly oozing, but he couldn't put a hand near it. Instead he got up, got another glass of water, and forced two chakra pills down his throat. Then two of the horse-choking antibiotic tablets from Genma's kit, sequestered after their last mission had gone so wrong. He was almost grateful, now, that Genma had kicked up such a fuss, even when pain of swallowing almost lanced his jaw apart. There was no one awake to hear the groan that was almost a sob, and when false chakra slipped burning fingers through his coils, he felt stronger.

Strong enough to drag his pants on, anyway. And strap sandals to his feet and gauntlets to his arms. But his shirt was impossible, and the weight of chest armour unbearable; he left both where they were and gathered up the med-kit instead. It hung on his hip with the other, still unused, and managed to be almost as comforting as the sword he strapped to his right thigh--Genma's sword--and the kunai pouch he tied to his left.

Sago still had their dogtags. But Raidou found his rings buried beneath his clothes and slipped them on, only now realizing they'd been taken. He clenched his fist, feeling the metal bands against his fingers, and drew a little more strength there.

Then there was nothing left to do but get moving.

He could have summoned a clone, he should have summoned a clone, but chakra was a finite resource and gaining distance fast was more important than how much his shoulders hurt. He slung Genma onto his back, hissing when skin pulled tight, flinching when loose-hanging hands brushed too close to burns and scars, and tried to think about nothing but the eighty miles between them and home. The sixty miles to the closest safe house. The five he could lose with a translocation.

Staggering, wavering, but still on his feet, Raidou carried Genma out of the bunker, and destroyed the entrance with paper-bombs he didn't dare take near Sago's cell for fear of freeing him. Then he gathered all the strength he had left to work a jutsu and blurred them closer to home, skipping as many miles as he could with one burst of chakra, breaking their trail neatly in half.

He landed on his knees, cried out with pain, and got up again. Genma hung on his back, lolling head braced against Raidou's right shoulder, their ANBU masks strung from his belt loops because you had to come home with your mask, even if it was broken.

Okay, Raidou tried to say, and couldn't manage it. Okay.

Then he ran.