"You want a sword that's drunk your blood?" Natsumi gathered up the tangle of rust-spotted bandages and tried not to watch the curved needle piercing flesh. "Don't they also say a weapon like that will turn on its master again? I don't think you need to collect any more scars."

He had an impressive collection already, ranging from a cross-shaped set of cuts fading away on the right side of his chest to three livid pink brands slashing down from his left shoulder, so new that a few stubborn scabs still lingered. Only one was longer than the new slice in his side, and it looked like it might have gutted him.

"You were lucky," she said quietly, folding the used bandages and setting them aside. "We both were. I'm not sure I've ever come quite so close..."

He wasn't listening. He was sweating, fingers trembling as he held the lips of the wound closed and stabbed the needle into the beginning of his fifth stitch. Natsumi dropped the spool of catgut in his blanketed lap and knocked his hands aside. "You don't need to make up for vulnerability with idiocy," she hissed, seizing the needle. "Hold still."

Thumb and little finger were enough to pinch the wound shut and straight. It was blessedly shallow; she wiped the oozing blood away with the side of her hand and set into a series of quick, tight running stitches, perfectly straight and perfectly spaced. If she tried not to listen to his ragged breath and half-strangled swearing, she could almost pretend she was working on one of the rubber dolls in field-aid training. The wound narrowed: ten centimeters, then six. Order out of chaos....

The needle slipped in welling blood. Asuma grunted. Natsumi bit through her lip.

"I would like to point out," managed Asuma, staring fixedly at the low ceiling, "that when you had a low moment, I didn't stab you." He took a careful breath, ribcage expanding against Natsumi's hands, and felt a line of blood trickle down to his hipbone. The needle scratched but didn't pierce; he glanced down.

And stared.

"How did--" The words snapped in half. That wasn't his blood, it was hers, flowering like a violent little kanji down her chin. She'd bitten through her damn lip. And that wasn't easy to do, unless you sharpened your teeth. Natsumi didn't; hers were white and blunt and still pressed deep into the welling cut staining her skin red-black in the green light.

He reached out without thinking much about it and flicked her incisors. Natsumi jerked back, eyes snapping wide, jaw dropping open--hands tightening automatically on needle and thread and flesh.

Asuma had an interesting little moment of agony, bracketed mostly by swearing. When he refocused, Natsumi looked about ready to suture his head off, though her eyes were still too wide. He lifted his hands. "I take it back," he rasped, air burning in his throat. "Give me a second and I could probably cry. Maybe two. Gods, woman..."

"You brought it on yourself," Natsumi snapped. "Who flicks someone in the teeth?" She wiped at her chin with the back of her hand, and mostly succeeded in smearing it. They were both going to end up painted in red before dawn. Maybe the next time they fell in something it could be a hot spring.

"I'm sorry I jumped," she said, more quietly. "I should have controlled myself better." Should at least have sensed his movement, even if she couldn't do anything about it. Concentration was no excuse; a ninja who couldn't watch his back got stabbed in it.

And Asuma'd been shouting a warning to Natsumi when the sword had sliced into his side...

She pushed the thought away. "I'll be gentler. Please let me finish, Asuma-senpai."

Sweat-streaked brows arched. "Darlin', I've been in ANBU a week. And looking past that, naked and bleeding isn't exactly the moment I'd chose to start finding someone respect-worthy." Not that this really had anything to do with respect. Boundaries, maybe. Or Natsumi trying to recover her mental footing in a moment of uncertainty.

And, okay, flicking her in the teeth hadn't been his best idea ever, but at least it had gotten her to stop biting her damn lip bloody.

Asuma drew a shallow breath between his teeth. In the steady pale light of the glo-stick, Natsumi's face could have been carved from white marble. He couldn't see a trace of expression lurking behind that perfectly unnatural stillness. Slowly, a thin droplet of blood trickled down the red smear splashed over her chin; he reached out and wiped it carefully away with his thumb.

"Any more control and something's going to snap," he said quietly. Two fingers left crimson prints between slender brows, like a blurry religious mark. "Right here. I've seen it happen."

Three weeks ago. And wasn't it a kicker to see it again?

"I know what I'm doing," Natsumi said coldly. She tipped her head back to meet his eyes, dark and shadowed in the chakra-brightened green light. Pain still lined his blood-streaked face and knotted his brows, but his eyes were steady. Certain. As if he knew exactly what she was doing, and why, and where to push to break her. Hadn't he done it once already?

No--he'd only given her the chance to be weak. She'd done the rest herself.

And she couldn't repeat it.

"I cried once already tonight, for no good reason at all. That should be enough for the next few years." She licked coppery warmth away from her lips. "You declined your moment of vulnerability. I don't think you get to advise me on mine."

The curved needle was slippery with blood; she wiped it away, dried her fingers on the folded bandages, and adjusted her grip. "If you're ready?"

Suddenly, being naked lost its appeal. Asuma glanced down at the gleaming sliver of metal, tied to his side by an ugly row of blood-crusted sutures, and wasn't sure he liked the idea of sitting quiet and still for Madam Moodswings. Crying was one thing. He could deal with crying. But frozen and unreadable and armed was something else entirely, and he really didn't know Natsumi that well.

He'd just leapt off a bridge for her, right after she'd fallen trying to save his neck.

"Not sure ready is the wor--ow." Steel dragged catgut through sliced flesh; Natsumi's eyes fixed firmly on his ribcage, reddened lips still pressed into that stern line. Asuma tightened his jaw, clenched his hands in rumpled blanket, and went back to swearing roughly while sweat ran down his back. At least he felt warm.

Ten stitches finished the job. Natsumi tied the knot in complete silence, slapped his hand away when he reached for the medkit, and covered the wound with fresh new gauze and old bandages, saving their meagre supplies. It was frighteningly neat for a woman who couldn't move half a hand. Asuma didn't pay much attention in favour of leaning his head back against gnarled bark, finally daring to draw a decent breath. Pain licked across strained nerves, but it wasn't world-breaking.

"Thanks, gorgeous," he mumbled. "Owe you one."

"I think fixing my hand counts." Natsumi slipped the needle back into her med-kit and tried to scrub her hands clean in pine needles. The needles stuck, instead. She picked crunchy prickles out of the congealing mess caking her taped fingers and reminded herself that she'd been in worse situations before.

Probably.

They had shelter, at least, even if it was growing steadily colder. If the red-haired woman had survived to track them, she hadn't found them yet. Asuma was no longer bleeding; Natsumi's painkillers had reluctantly begun to kick in. She had dry clothes. He had... She hoped he had the possibility of clothing in his immediate future.

"You sealed your clothes in scrolls, didn't you? I thought they'd be keyed to your chakra; I didn't check." She finished reassembling her med-kit and checked the little plastic vial of soldier pills. One left. But if she couldn't even form seals... She set the vial aside, and pulled her steel canteen out instead. It was still half-full, and she hadn't lost the little foil packet of tea. Maybe they were starting to catch a break after all.

She tidied again, straightening the corners of her folded kit and adjusting the angles of the stack, and then settled down cross-legged in the narrow space not taken up by Asuma's legs. Her sliced thigh burned; she shifted as discreetly as she could manage. "If you can work on getting yourself dressed, I might be able to manage tea."

Maybe that soldier pill would be a good idea after all. But Asuma seemed to be missing his med-kit, and he was the only one with hands functional enough to actually use chakra. Natsumi cradled her canteen between her gory palms, cut the thread of chakra to her eyes and fed it instead into steel and water, and hoped she could manage at least luke-warm before she ran out.

Asuma tipped his chin down. "Yes, ma'am," he muttered, sketching an ironic salute. Natsumi ignored him, entirely focused on the faint glow whispering from her palms into metal. Sparks of chakra trying to be heat. "Just don't go killing yourself over a hot drink. People would laugh at your headstone for years."

But she did have a point about the clothes. False warmth from too much needle-play wasn't going to hang around long, and Natsumi didn't look nearly appreciative enough to merit staying naked. (Though he couldn't really blame her, what with all the falling and almost dying... well, mostly couldn't blame her.) He pulled himself up with a faint grunt, found his head meeting the ceiling long before his spine straightened out, and decided a horizontal stretch was the better way to go. It didn't take much reaching to scoop up the sorry-looking remains of his kit. He gathered them into his lap, sorting scrap from junk.

The chestplate was a dead loss, shattered by metal and rock. He put it aside. Gauntlets and shin-guards were salvageable, but his mask was long gone, lost in the river; the black skintight under-gear was a wreck, shredded and bloodstained; the turtleneck had a great freakin' slice down the front, presumably where Natsumi had cut it off. His boots looked as indestructible as they always did. No sign of socks.

The jockstrap didn't have a mark on it.

Asuma snorted to himself, then louder when Natsumi's gaze took a decidedly skyward slant as he wrestled around in blankets and yanked his underwear back on. Achingly cold fingers fumbled more than he liked, but at least he could feel them.

There was still no sign of his medkit, or canteen and ration bars. He struck them off as lost and armed himself with his (much more ragged-looking) Guardian Twelve headband and the two old, familiar bracelets instead. Blue metal settled back at his wrists like a lover's kiss; he ran his thumb along the band of cloth dripping water down his forehead, and felt something lighten in his chest. Just a little.

Which still didn't make him dressed, but it was a good start.

Half of the surviving scrolls were in bad shape, crushed and splintered by his underwater tumble, the fine-grade paper torn. They'd be fixable if he could get them home, but they were useless right now. Asuma chewed on his lip as he sorted through them, trying to find anything that might contain wearable pants. His spare ANBU uniform was still crumpled on the floor on Konoha, covered in dirt in from his last mission. But maybe some older gear...

"Ha! Hey, you think blue'll look too conspicuous in a forest?" A touch of chakra was all it took to release the scroll's seal, dropping battered jeans and a well-worn blue tee-shirt into his lap, followed by socks and yet more underwear; an emergency change of clothes he'd been carrying around since who knew when. Asuma held up the shirt, trying to read the faded writing scrawled over the chest. "I don't think I've worn this since Wave Country." He inhaled, amused. "It still smells like salt."

"Have you washed it since Wave Country?" Natsumi firmly squelched the temptation to look around as cloth rustled behind her. She wouldn't see much of anything anyway, until her eyes adjusted from their chakra-lit clarity to the dim green light of a single glow-stick. "I'm told soap works wonders."

He snorted in amusement. She reminded herself that she didn't really need to see that warm grin again, and certainly not when he was still mostly naked. He'd seen her half-dressed; she'd undressed him. And if that had been a moment of desperation rather than appreciation, it still counted; they were even now, and she didn't need to unbalance the score. She bent her head and thought firmly of chakra and heat and--

All right, maybe heat wasn't the best keyword. She tried tea instead.

"All right," she gasped at last, as the metal canteen grew uncomfortably hot, leaching the warmth from her hands. She ripped the little foil packet of tea open on the second try and poked the sachet into the canteen. "Are you decent? And are you going to need that last soldier pill?"

"I'm always decent," Asuma quipped, having achieved pants and socks and not much else. The shirt hung limp from his hand; he waited until Natsumi glanced at him, startled at the still-exposed skin, and gave him a dirty look, before he pulled it over his head. Brand new stitches strained as he lifted his left arm. He caught his breath. Well-worn cloth slipped down his torso, snagged at bandages, and settled at his waist before he managed to relax again.

Any other day, he might have struck a pose and asked for an opinion. Today...

"Pretty dashing, right? I think the blue brings out my eyes." Today wasn't that different. Natsumi made the graceful female version of a disbelieving snort, though her eyes flickered for a moment, and bent back over her canteen. Asuma leaned in to peer at the thin wisp of steam rising between her hands; there was a definite tea scent just beneath the blood-soup they'd been inhaling. He whistled softly. "Nice job." Fingers flexed thoughtfully, calling threadbare energy through exhausted pathways. "I could definitely use a chakra boost. What about you? You just spent half of yours on a hot beverage."

And his pills--which he'd never even gotten the chance to crack open, dammit--had been in his medkit. Which put them down to one little energy-shot split between two.

Not good odds, whichever way you sliced it.

"I'll be fine," Natsumi said, with more confidence than truth. She gulped a mouthful of scalding tea; it still tasted more like hot water than anything else, with only a hint of bitter grass. But she could feel the warmth spreading, tentative as new buds unfurling. She shook the canteen and took another drink. "Just need to warm up and rest a little. A month, maybe."

Food would be good, too; it was the fastest natural way to replenish chakra. She'd wait just a minute, until the tea settled her stomach and she stopped feeling quite so queasy, before she moved. Fainting from blood- or chakra-loss was perfectly acceptable; Asuma had done it already. She was pretty sure, though, that throwing up didn't fit the Grand ANBU Tradition quite so well.

On the other hand, given her experiences so far, the Grand ANBU Tradition involved a lot of being cold and wet and scared. Maybe chakra-exhaustion nausea wasn't quite so far off the mark after all.

"I've got ration bars in my kit," she said, holding the canteen out to Asuma. "They're probably oatmeal by now, but you're welcome to them. And the chakra pill. I'm not very good at jutsu even when my hands are whole." She grimaced down at her bandaged fingers. "I guess I can do taijutsu back-up, if we need. At least I still have kunai."

"Food, tea, my very own energy boost. You sure know how to spoil your teammates," Asuma said, taking the canteen with a quirked smile. Against chilled hands the metal felt hot enough to burn; he curled his fingers around it with a low hiss, relishing the feeling of actual heat.

The chakra pill did a whole lot more.

Eyes bright, Asuma grinned around the feeling of blazing wires dragging through his veins, and blew out a breath. It hurt, but in the dark red way that would have dropped a hundred masochists to their knees and had them weeping for more. He shivered once.

Natsumi arched an elegant eyebrow at him.

"I'm not sure I want to think about you doing taijutsu with that hand," he said, sipping weak tea and ignoring her look. His free hand fumbled with her pack, digging out the promised lumpy ration bars. "Giving up your last chakra pill already gets you serious good karma. How do they feel?" His nod tilted towards the white shadow of her bandaged fingers, but a dull, distant snap answered before Natsumi could even open her mouth.

Asuma froze. This time it had nothing to do with cold.

Squirrels, Natsumi thought. Prayed. But even a squirrel foolhardy enough to leave its nest after dark wouldn't be so stupid--or so heavy--as to run around snapping twigs. And while hope might be what kept ninja going, paranoia was what kept them alive.

She swept the dim green glow-stick out of the branches where Asuma had tucked it and muffled it in the tumble of discarded blankets. No time to fold those, now, or to try to struggle into her ruined armor. But her kunai and shuriken and her few, precious scrolls were still neatly in their pouches, and she could catch her belt up and buckle it in the pressing dark.

Asuma's hand bumped against her wrist. She caught her breath as her bandaged fingers jarred against her side; he shifted his grip, fingertips clumsily tapping a warm pattern against her skin. You move.

Was that a question, or an order? Natsumi reached out blindly with her free hand and found his forearm, fuzzed with coarse hair and heavy with muscle. I can move, she tapped. Can you fight?

A pause. He was even slower this time, as if fumbling through old memories for codes he hadn't used in years. Save you. Dinner later.

"You--" Natsumi hissed, before she cut herself off. She dropped her hand from his arm instead, fingertips skimming a sharp line down pectorals sheathed in cotton and sea-salt. She'd hit the edge of the bandages before he caught her wrist again. This time, his grip was iron.

"Don't trust your work?" he whispered, very low.

"If she's out there," Natsumi whispered back, "she's in better shape than either of us. You can't--"

His hand clenched, laying new bruises over the old ones. Natsumi sucked at the blood crusting on her lip and heard the sharp crack of another twig, nearer. That one was deliberate. The redhead was out there. And she knew they knew she was coming for them.

There was nothing like someone trying to kill you to make you feel really alive--and determined to stay that way. Soaked in adrenaline and fire-bright chemical chakra, Asuma felt his brain light up like a powder keg, knotting together the threads of a plan that had two things in common with all his other plans: It was entirely stupid, and it was definitely going to work.

Sheathed, tightly coiled chakra whispered through the outside air, roiling like a flag. The redhead wasn't subtle.

By his side, Natsumi tensed like a hunting horse feeling the first touch of spur.

Asuma's lips skinned back from his teeth. The red-headed bitch had dropped his partner off a cliff, stabbed him in the side, insulted his village, forced them to run like beaten dogs, and now she wanted to scare them?

Hell no.

Chakra glowed deep blue as it shimmered to life between his hands. He felt the redhead's focus snap around; saw Natsumi's eyes widen. But his fingers were already flying through seals, twisting patterns a whole lot smoother than awkward, half-remembered code taps. The air shivered, whipping around them, turning solid. Natsumi's uninjured hand clenched around his knee.

Asuma grinned at her, darkly savage, and saw chakra leap like blue flame in sharp brown eyes. The redhead's voice sang out, splitting the air like a bell.

"Come out, leaf-nin. You have something of mine."

"Right! Don't forget the sword," Asuma cried to Natsumi, and formed the last seal.

Wind became a cyclone, tearing around inside the hollow tree-cave. It pressed against the bark, leaving the two crouching ninja untouched at its centre, and expanded like a ribcage. Like a fist. Asuma threw his chakra behind it, and the creation roared, spiralling up and tearing down, punching into the earth at their feet and the tangle of long-dead pines above their heads.

The whole thing exploded, scything straight through every trap Asuma had set.

Natsumi grabbed the sword out of the wreckage of Asuma's armor just before the rising wind ripped it away. Chakra and fury roared like dragons. Her own chakra flared weakly in instinctive response; she crushed it ruthlessly down, afraid to lose any more. Whatever Asuma's jutsu did, as soon as it ended, she'd have to be ready to run...

The world erupted in shattered branches and blue knives of solid wind. Natsumi shut her eyes tightly against the sight-splintering light and moved, following the arrow-cloud that had once been a tangle of fallen trees. She landed, gasping for breath, between the gnarled roots of a tree fifteen meters away. Even that tiny chakra use left her light-headed and weak-kneed, but she couldn't let herself rest. She struggled upright, leaning against the tree, and clutched the ancient sword to her breast.

What was the point of a weapon too long to hold one-handed?

She should have given it to Asuma. He didn't even have a kunai pouch, just bare hands and a soldier-pill's worth of chakra. Less than that, now. And he was--

There, in the center of a newborn clearing, lit orange by the flickering flames of branches set alight by friction and chakra. Deadly debris sharded the trees for ten meters around him; one ancient pine was skewered with a sharp bough as thick as a man's thigh. Natsumi couldn't see the redhead. But she couldn't see a body, either.

Slowly, carefully, she shifted the naked sword from her left hand to her bandaged right, and dipped down into her belt-pouch for a handful of kunai. She was in no shape for close combat; if she tried to parry a blow, she'd probably cut her own throat. Running was out of the question. Her shoulders still ached from battling the river; any kunai she threw probably wouldn't penetrate more than an inch deep. But even a weak distraction, thrown at the critical moment, could make a difference.

She still couldn't see the redhead. If she was lucky, that meant the woman couldn't see her.

If she was lucky... Natsumi grinned faintly. Against all odds, she and Asuma were still alive. Luck was already on their side.

Asuma wasn't completely stupid; a ninja always kept an eye on his weapons, especially when his weapons were as important to him as life-blood. His trench-knives had been resting on top of his pack; he grabbed them in the split-second of silence between releasing the jutsu and the world shattering apart.

Then it was just movement, flame, tearing winds, and the relief-worthy knowledge that Natsumi had listened and run.

So had the redhead.

Suddenly alone, Asuma spun on one heel, chakra sliding through his hands to coat the special alloy of his blades, and scythed a glance over the broken, blazing clearing. He couldn't see a single flicker of human movement, not his partner, not the enemy.

And he was standing pretty damn exposed.

Softly, he swore in the first language he could think of, then lifted his voice.

"Oi, bitch! We've got some unfinished business, you and I. What say you get your shapely ass out here where I can kick i--ngh!"

Shuriken sliced over his head, forcing him to drop. Then there was motion, a ripple of black and pure crimson as the woman shimmered into place behind him--

Genjutsu, Asuma remembered. She liked genjutsu.

--and a kunai swung down with intent to pierce his spine. He wrenched around, met it with a glowing, chakra-infused blade, and sheered straight through the weapon.

Straight into her hand.

That scream was the prettiest thing he'd heard all day.

"Sucks to be you, darlin'," Asuma gritted out, and lunged off his knees to follow up the blow.

The woman dodged--but this time, there was no genjutsu to hide her. Asuma lunged forward, and blue-hazed steel sliced through the air. For a moment, Natsumi thought he'd missed. He wasn't even close enough to engage, let alone inflict a wound deep enough to be lethal. Then she saw the blood darkening the kunoichi's side, angling down from a long slice along her ribcage.

Left side. Right hand. This was personal.

She lashed out with a kick that connected solidly with his ribs; a left-handed shower of shuriken drove him back again. The woman's face was bloodless; she'd tucked the dripping wreck of half her right hand against her side, but she didn't have much time left. Asuma was already recovering, straightening with his own hand pressed to his injured side.

If Natsumi could get a clear shot now...

She slipped through the trees, hunting for the best angle. Any kunai she threw from there would be deflected by low-hanging branches; from here it would glance off the bony point of the shoulder instead of lodging in the throat. Even a flesh wound would work, as long as it gave Asuma the opening he'd need to finish the job.

And she had better do it now, because the redhaired woman was lifting her uninjured hand, forming a distorted half-seal while her chakra crackled like lightning across Natsumi's dulled senses. Natsumi braced herself against a tree, gathered everything she had, and threw.

On the bridge, the redhead had merely turned, graceful and contemptuous, as Natsumi's arrow flashed by. Now she was clumsy, almost desperate; she stumbled over a branch and nearly fell as she leapt backward. The kunai stuck, quivering, in a tree beyond her. But Natsumi had planned for that, too. The second kunai, fanning out in a split-second trajectory, missed. The third lodged in the soft skin between shoulder and collarbone and sank deep.

Asuma hadn't moved. His hands hung limp at his sides; his face, lit by the dying fires with a bloody glow, was tight with strain. The redhead wrenched the kunai out of her shoulder and lifted it to throw--

Natsumi's last kunai bit into Asuma's thigh, first.

It was a subtle genjutsu; the clearing remained unchanged, the redhead stood within reach of one single, chakra-drenched blade. He moved and struck and felt the crunch of energized metal carving through bone--

And then he stared at Natsumi's quivering body, impaled on the end of his knife.

Illusion. Not real. Genjutsu.

But a kai did nothing. And a mind trapped in a body that was exhausted, chakra-high, recently drowned, and suffering from a definite lack of plasma, didn't process things like dead teammates without a certain amount of screaming.

He snapped out another kai, wrenching on his chakra, but the landscape didn't change. Natsumi's eyes rolled up in her head, showing whites threaded with crimson. Asuma felt his hands shake. He couldn't focus--the redhead was too good--

Sanity returned when pain like a mule kick slammed into his thigh.

He blinked, gasped, stagger-stepped sideways, and jerked up both hands before the glint of moving metal finished registering. A kunai clashed with one trench-knife and rang away into the darkness. He lunged forwards, following the trajectory without anything like conscious thought, and struck blind.

The world narrowed down to one fine crystalline point, sheered thin by adrenaline. Metal met meat, a throttled scream lifted on the air--and metal won.

Asuma watched the redhead's pupils contract to dying pinpoints.

"Natsumi says hi," he whispered, and landed on his knees, arms full of falling kunoichi. The world spun sideways; enemy blood washed across his hands, soaked into his blue t-shirt. Belatedly, he realized he wasn't wearing boots. "Not bad," he managed thickly, "for a probationary jounin."

Natsumi fell out of the woods at something close to a staggering run. A stray branch snagged her tangled hair; she ripped free and stumbled to a stop just short of Asuma and his armful of corpse.

He'd practically eviscerated her.

"Gods have mercy." Natsumi swallowed hard. A cold clean shot from a distance never mangled its target like this; unless you wanted your arrow back, you never had to look at the results. The way rows of bone gleamed white-edged where a knife sharper than steel had sliced open ribs; the way loops of bowel shone darkly in the cavity of a ruined stomach. Natsumi clutched the naked sword to her chest and fought to breathe.

"The mission assignment," she said distantly after a very long moment, "called for the thieves' heads along with the sword. But...I don't--"

She cut herself off. Somehow her good hand found Asuma's shoulder, and squeezed. "I don't want her following us anymore," she whispered. "Please. Let's just go."

Everything steadied a little, the moment ice-cold fingers settled over shivery muscles and aching bones, and tightened. Asuma squeezed his eyes closed, breathing slowly through his teeth, and kicked his brain into gear.

One pretty teammate, still breathing.

One dead thief, with the sword's scabbard strapped across her shoulderblades.

Revenge delivered, and drenching the ground in clotting crimson around his knees. Asuma lifted his chin, relief strengthening. Warm intestines tangled across his thighs, darkening the cloth of ripped jeans; still-quivering flesh had half-swallowed his hands. He pulled them free, wincing when wet suction grasped at his skin, and withdrew his chakra from the twin blades still held tight in clenched fists.

Mission completed, technically. Barring that one minor hitch Natsumi's voice refused to tremble around.

"I'm sorry, darlin', I am," he rasped quietly. "But now ain't the time to remember you're squeamish. You don't get to pick and choose which bits you like, especially when we lost two bodies in the river."

It didn't feel like much when his hand flicked out, the remaining threads of raw chakra arced like a glittering blue scythe, and the readhead's neck parted company with her shoulders. Crashing adrenaline just left him tired. He thought Natsumi looked away; he would've done, five years ago.

Hell, he probably would've lost a week's worth of meals, five years ago.

A throttled benediction eased between his lips when he shoved the corpse off his lap; a half-measure prayer for the dead. He turned his attention to the kunai jutting out of his thigh.

"Sit down, love," he gritted, as his fingers wrapped around the hilt. "I'd hate to see you fall over when you should be celebrating a heroic rescue. That's the second time you've saved my life today."

"Third," Natsumi said. "I think. I'm ahead now." She swallowed down rising bile again and thought about adding that this was the perfect time to be squeamish; the hunt was over, the adrenaline fading, and if she wanted to sit down and cry, there was nothing to stop her.

Except that she'd wept once already tonight, for the first time in years, and her thin store of self-respect couldn't permit her to do it again.

It was harder to find the cold, now, to empty herself of fear and sheathe herself in ice. Slick warmth coated her fingers when she knelt painfully beside the corpse to retrieve her kunai and free the elaborately decorated scabbard from its straps. She didn't let herself think about what that meant. The sword snicked heavily home, and she struggled to her feet again and backed out of the blood-soaked grass. Her bare feet were wet, now, too. She shivered.

The bits of gear they'd salvaged from the river were gone now, shredded away in the whirlwind. The dying orange glow of branch-embers and the pale cold moonlight revealed nothing more than a scattering of dark lumps through the new clearing. She could go hunting for blankets and armor and damp-drying clothes, but it wasn't likely that anything she found would still be salvageable. She could follow Asuma's orders and sit down, but she wasn't sure she'd be able to get up again.

And the ground beside him was wet, too.

"I really didn't think we'd make it." Her voice sounded faint and low even in her own ears, a bare thread over the soughing of the wind in the trees. "My father told me his bloodiest stories, so I'd know what I was getting into, but... I didn't know. I thought I could strike from sixty meters the way I've always done. Ninja are supposed to lurk in the shadows, aren't they? But they're not supposed to be scared."

She stared down at the empty husk of what had once been a woman. The ice sheath let her look, but only just. At least darkness was closing in again, as the fires died; the terrible wound was only a shadowed fissure now. "If she haunts us," she said tiredly, "you get to deal with her." Her good hand dropped to fish in her jumbled hip-pouch for the thin remnants of the bandage roll. "Tie the score."

"Deal," said Asuma, catching the bandage Natsumi dropped and yanking the kunai out of his leg in the same movement. He grunted softly, too tired to yell louder, and wound a swift strip of linen around the gash in his jeans. Blood welled up, dark and warm; he couldn't tell what was his and what was the redhead's.

In the grand scheme of things, it didn't really matter.

He yanked his crimson-drenched shirt off, wiped his chest down with the cleanest part he could find (moving carefully over bandaged, recently kicked stitches), and then bundled the redhead's head into the cloth, tying it as securely as he could manage. The shirt was a loss anyway; if he was lucky, he might be able to dig his shredded ANBU turtleneck out of his jutsu's wreckage.

If not, he'd bare some skin on the way home.

Standing behind him, Natsumi sounded ghostly. Asuma felt entirely real when he staggered painfully to his socked feet, hooked both bloody trench-knives into his back pockets, shivered once as the night air whispered over naked shoulders, and turned to drag her into a fierce hug.

Muscles laid over bones and curves tightened with shock; breath seared against his collarbone. He flattened his hand down the length of her spine--noting the total absence of a bra strap with something that felt like reflex lechery, mostly crushed--and tipped his head down, pressing a firm kiss to her pale forehead.

"Supposed to's are bullshit. Every ninja gets scared." If he closed his eyes, he could still see her chest caving in around the glittering edges of chakra-soaked metal. He tightened his hold, gripping her hard enough to flare white heat along his ribcage, and then stepped back. "You did fantastic, O partner of mine. And your dad's gonna be proud of you."

He crouched to grab the bundled head, and riffled quickly through the redhead's clothes, extracting anything that looked remotely useful or interesting. Unreadable scrolls, creepy looking jewellery--

Scratched dogtags: her name was Nagano Sachiko. Lips thinning briefly, he wrapped the chain around his wrist and let it stay there, tags clacking against his bracelet.

"Now, what say we see if there's anything of ours left? I'm feeling a desperate need for boots."

"I think you've mostly scattered everything halfway to Konoha," Natsumi said wryly. "Although your boots looked heavy. They might have landed nearby..."

Finding them, in the chilly dark, would be the problem. Natsumi hadn't much hope for her own sandals, or her smaller pieces of armor; they were light enough to have been caught in the explosion of wind and flung further than she could search to find them. Perhaps the blanket had survived, though. Asuma was already shivering, and they had a long, cold night still before them.

But they'd survived to see it. The warmth of Asuma's words--and of his body--still lingered in her tired muscles. She caught herself in a traitorous longing for more of either, bloody and bedraggled as he was, and squelched it as firmly as she could. If now wasn't the time to be squeamish, it certainly wasn't the time to be weak in any other way.

Useful, though, she could do, until her body betrayed her even further. Cradling the old sword in the crook of her right arm, she padded carefully through the fallen pine needles and scrubby grass, kicking gently at any dark hummock that looked promising. Mostly, she found splinters.

Asuma circled to the other side of the brand new clearing, stepping around gently smouldering branches and shattered spurs of wood. Once, he whistled softly. Even in the nothing light, the aftermath of his jutsu still looked pretty damn impressive.

Sachiko's head bumped against his thigh with every step, a reminder not to get cocky. He tossed the makeshift bundle over his shoulder, feeling the hard curve of deadweight skull whack against his bare shoulderblade, putting it out of sight. Something sticky oozed down his spine; he pulled a face.

"One day," he murmured softly, overturning a smoking tuft of dead leaves and tangled vegetation, "there are going to be statues in my honour. Restaurants will be named after me. Pretty, scantily dressed women will flock for my attention. You know why?"

Scratched dogtags clinked around his wrist; he wiped a rolling bead of sweat away from his temple, and pressed his hand to his recently kicked side.

"Because I got you first, bitch. Now give me back my boots."

Long minutes of searching yielded one of the blankets. After eyeing the half a dozen long splints of wood spearing it to a tall tree, Asuma decided it wasn't worth it.

Then he tripped over one of his boots.

When he'd righted himself, his loud 'ha!' of victory startled a settling wood-pigeon from a nearby tree. Grinning, he yanked his scorched, battered, but still entirely functional piece of ass-kicking footgear back on, and renewed the search for its sole-mate with considerably more cheer. Across the clearing, Natsumi's shadow was a bare flicker in the gloom.

When he found his second boot, it was stuck halfway up a tree, more than a little embedded into the bark, and he could barely feel Natsumi's chakra presence--which wasn't saying much, really, given that she was down to a candle's worth. He managed to retrieve it with a shred of chakra and a fistful of luck, scraping new holes in the knees of his blood-stained jeans when he tumbled painfully off a branch that wasn't quite up to holding his weight.

The forest floor was briefly welcoming. He sprawled in the leaves and yanked his boot on, before staggering back to his feet. Pine needles clung to sweaty, blood-streaked skin.

"Damn straight," he panted to the weight still slung across his back, and headed for Natsumi's distant chakra signature, raising his voice when he got close. "Any luck?"

"I haven't fallen over yet," Natsumi said wryly. "That's not good enough for you? You're a harsh master."

She left the smashed bits of half a ceramic arm-guard where she'd found them and straightened gingerly, careful not to upset her jumbled armful of salvage. Asuma was a bass-note rumble through the trees, coming closer. Without chakra to light her eyes, her vision was scarcely better than normal. It was probably good to remember once in a while what most people saw in a dark night, but she'd stubbed her toes too many times to be grateful for the learning experience. He was barely using any chakra, either; she heard his heavy footsteps cracking twigs before she felt the warm brush of his chakra against hers. He loomed out of the darkness like a bloody-faced oni from her childhood nightmares, bare-chested, black-booted, with the bundled head bouncing over his shoulder.

The oni had never been the hero, before.

"I found your pants," she said, plucking at the damp fabric folded and draped over her arm. "And my vest. And one of my arm-guards, and half of yours." She sighed. "Of course, none of them are helpful at the moment. The vest would have been a hassle to replace, but I'll need to repair it anyway. I'd far rather have my sandals. And my canteen." Or her chest-bindings.

As long as she was wishing...

"Half a dozen soldier pills would be nice, too. And a cushioned palanquin in which to lie in luxury all the way to Hejio province. Any chance of you working more miracles?"