Genma’d had the presence of mind to warn Rina before they got to Konoha’s gates that they’d probably be separated for debriefing. He’d actually been a little surprised when the jounin manning the watchtower had waved over a white-fatigued medic to escort the pair of them to the hospital, allowing them the luxury of continued companionship at least as far as the emergency department. Of course everything had changed once they were past those guarded doors.

It had been an interesting exercise in reading people, watching the face of the triage nurse when they entered. There was the typical alert concern every medic showed when faced with fresh cases, chased quickly by a different sort of concern when the medic in question registered Genma’s black and white uniform and missing mask. Then the expected separation had come, with Rina herded away to an examination bed and Genma bundled into a completely unnecessary wheelchair for a ride to the fourth floor.

There the look on his greeter’s face was much plainer, and echoed in her words. “Oh, Genma-san, you’re back?” said with such dismay that for a moment Genma’s own heart lurched.

“It’s no big deal,” he’d assured her. “Just a few bruises. I’ll be sleeping in my own bed tonight.”

Her expression hadn’t wavered as she passed him through the doors with a tight nod that said like hell you will.

It really, really galled, thinking about it afterward, that she’d been right.

Three of the nurses on duty were people Genma could almost call friends, after his long confinement in their care last spring. It was strange how much he felt he’d somehow disappointed them by turning up injured again, as if he’d spilled soy sauce over a freshly laundered shirt. He hadn’t had much time to contemplate all that, though, before a pair of debriefers arrived from Intel. They’d kept his mind fully occupied while the medics stripped him, cleaned off the worst of the grime, stitched cuts, smeared salve over burns and bruises, taped his ribs, and finally got to his scar-red hands, with Rina’s delicate script keeping the chakra contained.

The interview with Intel had ended then.

Ito-sensei had been summoned.

Genma had been sedated.

He’d told them everything worth knowing at that point anyway. He’d handed over the jounin’s dog tags, described every detail he could recall of the Kumo ninja they’d fought and the jutsu they’d faced, and told them where the bodies of their comrades and enemies alike could be found, if they were still there.

Ito-sensei had arrived to tut over the damage Genma’d managed to incur, and praise the heavens that it had been Rina Genma’d been with. “She saved you at least a week of in-hospital treatment,” he’d told Genma, peering at the seals she’d painted. “Probably more. I wouldn’t have signed you back to active duty if I’d known how fragile this palmar circuit was. And you’ve got a chakra leak here, too.”

Genma, drowsy with painkillers and the beginnings of a soldier pill crash, hadn’t been able to mount much of a protest when Ito-sensei’d told him he was staying the night.

Later, chakra-healed, stitched, bandaged and scrubbed, settled on soft white sheets in a darkened room, he was past the dreamless stage of drugged sleep and starting to surface when the door to his room creaked open. He blinked awake hard, hissing when stiff muscles protested and aching ribs caught his movement up short. It was probably just a nurse come to check on him, he told his racing heart.

But the woman who slipped past the door was no nurse.

“Rina? What are you doing here? Are you okay?”

“Thank god they finally let me see you,” Rina blurted out as soon as she heard him speak, his solid presence easing some taut place inside her. “I mean, they told me you were okay, I knew you were okay, but...” She spoke too fast, her words tumbling over each other.

Consciously taking a breath, she eased down into the overly-familiar tattered armchair by the bed, continuing more slowly. “I’m glad you’re okay,” she told him in a soft voice, arms resting lightly across skinned and bandaged knees. Tense relief was written all over her face, vulnerability etched into the set of her eyebrows.

With another ragged inhale, she pulled herself away from his wide, exhaustion-ringed eyes, her gaze settling on the unremarkable linoleum beneath her feet. She’d hunched her shoulders and counted its bilious mint green ridges too many times in the past to be comfortable seeing it again.

“It’s strange, isn’t it, being back here,” Rina told the deceptively innocuous pastel flooring. “I mean, maybe not for you, you’re ANBU so you must have been here all the time, but...” She qualified herself quickly. “Not that you get injured all the time or anything, but just, that we’re both here again after you’d been here so long, and...”

She trailed off. “Fuck,” she swore with feeling, looking up at him again. “You know what I meant, right?”

“Are you done?” Genma asked quietly, and watched the guilty flick of Rina’s eyes, before she offered a small, tentative nod. “Okay.” He slid himself stiffly over on the bed, making space for her next to him, and patted the pillow with one bandaged hand. “Stop making that face at me and come here,” he told her. He took a deep, waking up sort of breath, winced as cracked ribs expanded, then winked at Rina. “Come on, they cleaned me up so I know I smell way better now than I did in that safe house, and you snuggled up there just fine.”

After a moment’s embarrassed hesitation, Rina slunk into the bed, carefully tucking her legs next to Genma’s, and even more carefully draping an arm over his waist.

“That’s better,” Genma told her, and shifted just a little, stretching one arm out under her neck and tugging her closer. He kissed her forehead. “Silly. You weren’t really worried, were you? I know I told you they’d debrief us separately. It’s standard ANBU protocol for the Intel guys to ask their hardest questions right as the docs pour alcohol over your worst cut. And they can’t let the standard ranks see that. Spoils our image if you see us cry.”

Rina turned her face down, burrowing against Genma’s neck and the pillow so her voice was muffled as she mumbled, “I wasn’t worried. I knew you were fine. I just... I wasn’t worried.” He felt her head twitch and then a little more clearly heard, “Ito-sensei came, right?”

“Yeah.” Genma took a slow breath. “He came. You were...” He sighed, finding words harder now. “Well, you were the one who told me they’d probably make me stay overnight, right? So we already knew that. He said you did good work and I was lucky you were there.”

He flexed sore fingers on his right hand, patting Rina’s shoulder. His left, behind her, was in a soft splint with fresh seals painted delicately over the back and palm and wrapping each finger in a shell of chakra support.

He took another breath and turned his own face away from her. I wouldn’t have allowed you back to active duty if I’d known you were this fragile, Ito-sensei had told him. Or something like that. He licked dry lips to speak, but closed them again; he couldn’t bring himself to tell Rina that.

Looking at his strained expression in profile, Rina took a guess. “He said you shouldn’t have been out there, didn’t he.” Rina and Ito-sensei had agonized over it it for days when the pressure had started rising to declare Genma fit to return to the field, poring over medical diagrams and chakra-flow charts, attempting to poke holes in their own painstaking work and find any little chink where the tiniest dribble of chakra could leak through. Even just a trickle could eventually grow to a flood that would bring down the entire delicate fortress; but they hadn’t found anything.

They’d been wrong.

“You were lucky I was there,” Rina told him, guilt suffusing her tone, “but I was even more lucky that you were.” He shouldn’t have been there at all. She should have seen the weaknesses in her and Ito-sensei’s construction, the fragility lying in wait, and told the ANBU administrators not to let him off medical leave, however upset they would have been. However upset Genma himself would have been. Ito-sensei had pulled her aside and told her: this is what he wants, this is what he does. But she should have seen it, she should have said no.

At the time, huddled in that cave, she’d just patched what she could and moved on, because she’d had to. But now, his warmth next to her felt almost like a taunt: this is what you nearly lost, because you made a mistake.

One mistake.

She was curled close enough to feel the roughness of his stubble scrape pleasantly across her cheek, the salty tang of clean sweat purging the acrid stench of fear. Pressed full-length against him, she savored the simple physicality of each sensation and hoped, selfishly, that he would still be there even after the next time she made a mistake.

“Rina...” Genma tucked his chin down against her a little more comfortably and used his forearm to rub slow, even strokes along her slender shoulders. She was upset, he could tell, but was it about him? Or about what Ito-sensei had said? Had the hand doctor talked to Rina already?

Or was it just the mission itself? I was even more lucky that you were there.

“It wasn’t your fault, you know,” he said. “I mean, it sounds like either someone tipped off the Kumo guys, or maybe your team just had really shitty luck and there happened to be a Kumo patrol up there. I mean, yeah, it was lucky I was there, but...”

But he wasn’t thinking about that. About the what-ifs. About what would have happened if he hadn’t been there on that path, when her wounded and dying teammate collapsed in front of him and begged for help. He shivered the thought away, concentrating instead on her warm body next to his. On the heat of her skin through the thin cotton of her t-shirt, the weight of her arm draped over his side, and the press of her thighs against his. The curve of her waist and the softness of her breasts. That was the important part: the still here, still alive, still so very much alive part. So very much alive. He made a deep, throaty sound and pressed a long, possessive kiss to her hairline, to her dirty, unwashed hair, still straggly from their mission.

That snapped his attention away from her curves.

“You didn’t get a chance to shower?” he asked in surprise. “Did your debriefing take that long? Or... Or you talked to Ito-sensei, didn’t you? That’s how you know what he said. That’s...” That’s why you were worried.

He felt a chill spiral down his spine. What had Ito-sensei told her that the medic hadn’t had the heart to tell Genma?

Feeling Genma’s shiver, Rina pressed herself up on an elbow, her palm spread wide across his chest in an unconsciously calming gesture. “No, I didn’t see him, I just guessed...” She looked down at her fingers sliding across the crepey hospital fabric, feeling the warmth of his skin underneath. “It was the two of us together who decided when you should be cleared, you know. Not just Ito-sensei. I was... I was supposed to be able to tell, if there was anything that could disrupt your seals. But I couldn’t find anything. Not anything at all.” Her wide, pale eyes met his golden hazel ones, watching her, and she couldn’t decipher the expression she found there. She’d never been good at that.

Biting her lip, she flinched back slightly from his steady gaze, brushing stringy hair back from her face self-consciously. “I can go dunk my head in a sink if it bothers you. I was going to take a shower at home, but... I didn’t want to disturb my family.” Easier to talk about her hair than his hands, although she knew that ‘family’ was also too often a forbidden word.

But he just pulled her down closer again, murmured, “don’t be ridiculous,” against the crimp in the pale strands where her hitai-ate had recently rested. She turned her head so his lips fell against her forehead instead, and felt the gentle curve of his small smile against her skin.

Felt it disappear as he pulled back slightly, eyebrows creasing together. “So... Does he... do you....” He paused. “Do you think I...”

Rina waited, silent, as he took a steadying, preparatory breath.

“Did you think I shouldn’t have been out there, either? And did I wreck them again? Is it over for me, for field work?” The questions came out all in a rush, one after the other, and Rina suddenly remembered that, after all, he wasn’t much older than she was. Just eighteen. Not so very old at all.

His quiet panic made something ache in her chest. “It’s not, we’ll fix it, really,” she answered quickly, emphatically. She tried to catch his gaze to show how much she meant it, but his eyes were darting away, pupils dilated and irises yellower than usual, like a scared animal. “Like I said in the field, it’ll only set you back, not put you out of commission. It would’ve had to be a lot worse to do anything like—”

Genma’s flinch said that her words were not helping, so she bit her tongue and, after a moment’s rapid consideration, changed tactics.

The soft, feather-light kiss she brushed against his cracked lips would, she hoped, do a much better job at conveying her tangled reassurances.

There was something like a promise in Rina’s kiss — a promise Genma desperately wanted to believe. She leaned over him with one hand braced near his face and kissed him again, and this time Genma reached for her, pulling her close with one arm. He kissed her back, full and deep, opening his mouth for her, feeling the delicacy of her lips. Feeling an urgency he didn’t expect.

His other hand, the one with the splint, reached for her hips and stopped short. “Damn. I can’t... My hands...” He frowned in frustration and brushed his wrist along the curve of her waist. “I guess you’ll have to do all the work.”

Her lips curved up in a mischievous smile. "Not like I haven't done that before,” she told him. Her hand skimmed down his chest, tracing out bandages under the loose hospital gown. "Your ribs are sore?" Concern crept back into her voice.

“Yeah, a little. I cracked two on the right. The seventh and eighth. But they gave me some morphine, so it’s not too bad. Guess I rated the good stuff, since I’m a VIP here.” He tried for lighthearted, but the joke fell flat, he could tell by the crease in Rina’s brow.

“Come on, climb on up. My hips are totally fine.” He lifted them in an almost graceful move, pushing towards her. "Or do you want to lock the door first?”

Rina looked between Genma, the door, then back at Genma. He rolled his hips again in a supple, suggestive motion that made her lips part and brought a dusting of light color to her cheekbones. With a sigh, she slid off the stiff, crinkly mattress and turned her back on his cheerful leer.

“You might not care who sees us,” Rina told the solidly shut door, fishing around for something in her pocket, “but there are several nurses out there who I do not need to find me engaging in illicit hospital bed activity.” The ‘again’ went unsaid, but Rina took Genma’s sudden silence to indicate that he took her point, particularly since she knew for a fact that he had similar problems with quite a few of the exact same nurses.

When her fingers closed around a tiny roll of rice paper, her lips curved into a satisfied smirk. “You owe me, though. This time, I came prepared.” With a shake of her wrist, the roll unfurled into a sheaf of miniature seal-tags, each barely larger than the palm of her hand. Tugging out the third from the end, she pressed it above the door-handle with a negligible puff of chakra, then deftly re-rolled the rest and slipped them back in her pocket. “It won’t hold off the combined might of Konoha’s medical establishment,” she told Genma as she made her way back to his bedside, “but it’ll certainly delay a few irate nurses for a while.” Her grin didn’t quite reach her eyes, but it made a valiant effort.

She didn’t stretch out again next to him, though, instead perching awkwardly on the edge of the mattress, one foot slid free of its sandal and tucked up next to her. Her arms wrapped around her bandaged knee, and she watched him silently for a moment, pensive. She didn’t reach out to touch him.

“Look, Genma...” The part of her that was his friend, his sometime lover, didn’t want to say this, but the part of her that had spent hours upon hours studying with Ito-sensei, arguing, agonizing over the smallest parts of his recovery, said that she had to. “I meant what I said, that we’d repair your hands this time,” she began slowly, eyes fixed down on her chipped toenails, still painted a faded lingering pink. “We really will, and I’m close to one hundred percent sure you’ll make a full recovery.”

“But Genma,” she looked up abruptly, her voice pleading, threaded with intensity. “You’ll recover this time, but....” Her words trailed off, returning lower, rougher, more emotional. “You have to be more careful than you were before. You can’t just do... what you did this time, every time...”

Almost a whisper, barely audible. “Because next time... we might not be able to fix it.”

Genma didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t needto hear it. He could feel it in the aching-tingling-misfiring of nerves in his fingers, in the dull heaviness of damped chakra flow where seals — seals Rina had designed — restricted the movement through scar-distorted coils. He could smell it in the antiseptic harshness of the hospital air and the lingering tinge of mission sweat and dirt and blood. He’d seen it in the eyes of the nurses who’d helped him change ANBU armour and underpinnings for a too-thin hospital gown, and on the faces of the debriefers from Intel.

There was Rina, looking strangely tiny, curled over her knees, and Genma knew she didn’t deserve it, but...

“What was I supposed to do? Let you die? What the hell was I supposed to do, Rina? I didn’t take any bigger risks than I had to. I didn’t cast any harder jutsu than I’d already worked out in rehab. I didn’t push it. How the hell am I supposed to be a ninja if I can’t do exactly what I just did, on that mission? How the hell careful am I supposed to be?”

He shoved himself upright, knocking pillows to the floor, curling over his own knees brought up defensively between himself and Rina. His bandaged, useless hands quivered in the air. “You can’t ask that of me. You can’t.”

"I can!” Rina uncurled and looked straight at Genma, facing him with the same courage she’d shown their Kumo enemies barely two days before. Her shoulders trembled, and Genma could see the fear there, but she didn’t even begin to back down. “I can, and I have to, Genma, I'm not asking you not to be a ninja. I'm just asking you to think first. You can't tell me you did that crazy boiling metal jutsu... thing in rehab. You can't tell me you didn't push it."

“She was going to kill you. She was right on top of you.” Genma glared fiercely back.

Rina held her ground, matching Genma’s scowl with an intensity he’d forgotten she was capable of. “You didn’t have to do that.”

It was Genma who broke first, looking down and away. “I had to do something. Maybe not that jutsu, but I just...”

You’ll have to work at your craft, Genma, Fumio, his rehab trainer, had told him. An older woman, she’d reminded Genma a little of Amari-sensei, with that same steely core that said she’d seen a lot of young foolish ninja come and go, and you were lucky she was wasting her time on you. You’ll have to learn some new tricks, and probably retire some old ones. She’d gestured with a cigarette held in a three-fingered hand and appraised Genma with a one-eyed stare. Ito says you’re worth the effort, and Arakaki says you’ve got the chops to do the work. Prove to me they’re right.

“I don’t know how. I don’t know... I...”

He could feel his own heartbeat magnified in the ache in his hands.

“I couldn’t let that Kumo bitch take you down.”

“Hey,” Rina murmured softly, inching closer and daring to reach out and rub Genma’s back in slow, gentle circles. She was comforting herself as much as she was him, but she wouldn’t tell him that. “I know you couldn’t, and I’m not saying you did the wrong thing. But look, you can work on it now, right?” Her lips quirked up. “I can even help you, if you want. If there’s anything I can do to help your supreme ANBU self.”

She felt Genma’s shoulders shake in a half-hearted chuckle at that, and flashed him a full smile, warm and quick, before her expression fell back into more serious lines. Leaning over his bent back, she closed her eyes and took a half breath, breathing in hospital antiseptic sterility layered over his sun-warmed spring green that told her that he was there, that she was there, that they were both there together.

“Okay?” she whispered quietly against the strung bow of his shoulders.

It was a long moment before he answered, the tension finally slumping out and leaving him half resigned, half bewildered as he tilted his head to look up at her. “I guess,” he agreed, as if he had no idea how he would accomplish what he’d agreed to.

He had already moved closer, leaning his weight against her as if he didn’t quite want to support it anymore right now, so she answered by pulling him closer still, until he was curled most of the way across her lap with his head tucked up against her stomach. She ran her slender, unblemished fingers through his hair, soothingly slow, and hoped that he’d forgive her.

It was almost frightening how choked up Genma suddenly found himself, curled against Rina like he’d been the one in danger and she the rescuer. He took a deep breath and swallowed hard, forcing the knot in his chest to loosen. Rina kept combing her fingers through his hair, straightening minor snarls, pushing calm into his scalp in rhythm with her breaths. There was a fragile kind of quiet around them, like the hospital corridor, the village, everything outside had vanished, and there was no one left in the world but the two of them.

“Rina?” he said quietly.

Her hands stilled. “Yes?”

“I don’t know. I...” He pushed himself up a little, and she scooted down and lay back, so that he could rest his head on her chest, so that her arms circled his shoulders. His bandaged hands tucked up between them, but after a moment, he reached out with one and rested it carefully on her belly. “Were you scared? You had to have been scared.”

She laughed a bit hollowly, almost startled sounding. "Hell yeah, I was scared. Gods, I really thought I was going to die in there, smoked out or flooded out or huddled behind my own seals until I ran out of food." Her fingers on his head tightened, curling around his scalp, threading deeper into the hair. "When I saw your ANBU mask there in the shadows..." She broke off with a laugh. "It was like you were a guardian angel or something."

Genma lifted his head then, to look up at her. To catch her pale gaze in the dim light. “That’s why,” he said simply. She looked puzzled. “That’s why I do it. That’s why I have to keep doing it, no matter what.” Genma lifted his hand and set it down again, and lay his head back down as well, listening to Rina’s heart slowly counting out time. “You understand, right?”

Rina paused, feeling his weight heavy against her chest, his warm exhalations against the thin fabric of her t-shirt. His gauze-cocooned fingers curled against her stomach. She thought about her sister, curled up in the dark with her book, and her brother sleeping soundly upstairs, safe at home.

She thought about her hitai-ate, resting in a puddle on her dresser.

“Yeah, I understand. Idiot,” she added fondly, mussing his hair again. The words caught in her throat, and she almost couldn’t say them lightly, but she managed. “Just... find a better way to do it, okay? There are those of us who care that you stay in one piece, too.”

His breath stilled against her chest, and the silence eddied between them. He tilted his head up and just looked at her, searching, but she couldn’t quite tell what he was looking for. She gave him a small smile, uncertain, and finally he nodded slowly. “Okay.” His voice sounded rough, like he’d been quiet for a long time. “Okay, I can do that.”

Her tentative smile widened, and she leaned down to press a light kiss against his forehead, like he had so often done for her. “Thank you,” she murmured, her lips moving soft against his skin.

Genma didn’t say anything else for several long moments. He listened to her heart and her breaths, felt her fingers tracing circles on his shoulder, and relaxed into the syrupy sensation that always came with pain medications and hospital beds. When Rina kissed him again, he lifted one bandaged hand to awkwardly caress the curve of her breast with his wrist.

“When I ran into that chuunin — your mission partner—” Genma reached for the name, but it wouldn’t come. Just the man’s face, grey and beaded with sweat under dark, straight hair. A face etched with the beginnings of lines that would never have time to develop into wrinkles, and corpse-pale lips framing the man’s last words to Genma — You’re so young.

“Shouji,” Rina whispered. “Tanaka Shouji.” Her hand on Genma’s shoulder stilled.

“Shouji,” Genma echoed. Rina’s hand resumed its slow caresses. “When I ran into Shouji, and he told me it was you trapped in that bunker, I told myself it wasn’t any different than any other rescue mission. I told myself that all the way there. But Rina, if it hadn’t been you I was going after...”

He felt her hand still again. Felt her waiting, and found he didn’t want to tell her any more. Didn’t want to tell her how cold he’d felt in the marrow of his bones, knowing there were two Konoha ninja trapped, pinned down by a much larger force. Knowing how impossible the odds were. Remembering his own captivity and rescue barely six months ago.

Didn’t want to tell her how much of a coward he was, that it was only because it hadn’t been just anyone he was trying to save, that he’d been able to go in at all.

His words had choked off, and Rina didn’t understand why. That was okay, though. They had time.

“If not me, then what?” she murmured, sliding her palm down Genma’s back in soothing strokes, like smoothing the fur of a ruffled cat. His eyes were catlike too, that luminous golden color, but he didn’t look up at her.

Filling the empty space he left, she spoke the first thoughts that drifted to her lips. “I wasn’t expecting anyone to be around, of course.” Not in the remote forests of Lightning Country, still hostile territory, far from standard trade routes and any Konoha clients. “I never thought I’d get away, penned in the way I was, with no one to guard my escape route. Not alone.” She’d pretended otherwise, but she’d known Yushiro was dead too, in any one of a hundred terribly vivid ways her imagination had paired with the crackles and explosions she heard outside.

Her unfocused eyes didn’t see the hospital ceiling anymore, instead looking up at the rough stone of a dimly lit cavern, engraved with the faintly glowing curves and windings of a thousand intertwined seals. When they’d left, it had been painted with burnt ash, the charred remains of blood. “I’d wondered what they would do to me, when they caught me,” she continued, her voice almost dreamy, her present awareness spiraled down into that nightmarish vision of memory. “I’d remembered...”

She blinked and pulled back, biting her tongue until she tasted blood. What she’d remembered, had been what had happened to Genma. When he’d been captured like she’d almost been.

Not something she could say.

The bright hospital-white walls were placid and smooth under her gaze, devoid of ink and markings. Feeling chilled, she skimmed her fingers between the ties of Genma’s hospital gown, sliding along the warm skin between the bandages. “But you came,” she told him, with only a hint of the desperate cliff’s-edge relief that she felt.

There was a moment of shining clarity in which Genma knew — knew — he and Rina were sharing a thought neither one of them dared speak. She’d been pinned down in that bunker, listening to her comrades die, waiting to be captured, and she’d remembered Genma. Remembered him the way she’d first met him, just starting to stabilize after his rescue from torture: starved, horribly injured, half-crazy with nightmares and survivor’s guilt.

He’d remembered it, too.

“I didn’t want what happened to me to happen to you,” he said. The words were fragile and raw, and barely audible.

He wanted to be the one holding her, he thought, and pushed himself carefully up, shifting higher on the pillows. Not meeting her eyes. She hesitated, then let him slip an arm around her shoulders, curling against his side the way he’d been curled against hers. Her slender hand settled on his chest, a slight weight over bruised ribs that brought an almost reassuring sort of pain.

“It’s funny, at the time... I kept thinking about it, even though I was trying not to. I mean, I was running straight for you, drilling myself on the trap sequences Shouji had warned me about, and in the back of my mind I kept... I knew what I was doing was insane, but I kept remembering, and.... I don’t want anyone to face that, but... But...”

But the ANBU debriefer had raised one elegant eyebrow and made a flurry of notes, when Genma told her about his decision to stage a immediate one-man rescue attempt against overwhelming forces.

“I don’t know, Rina. If it hadn’t been you... If I hadn’t known it was you I was trying to get out, I... I just don’t know.”

She still didn’t understand what he was getting at, but Rina let him hold her; their positions had switched so many times that she could hardly keep track of who was comforting whom. Maybe it wasn’t so different, either way.

“Thinking about it, coming after me was kind of a hare-brained thing to do,” she murmured, casting a gentle smile up at him to soften her words. She hesitated, thinking of a way to say it. “Maybe, if you were scared... that was because it was the best thing to be.”

Was that what he’d meant? Maybe she was way off base. According to whispered rumor and Konoha legend, ANBU were supposed to be fearless in the face of danger, advancing unhesitatingly towards what anyone in their right mind would be fleeing from.

But she’d seen him scared; terrified, even. She’d held him in the dark of night when he shook with it, overwhelmed by pain and the unvoiced fear that he’d never, ever, be as he had been before. She knew he was human; knew it intimately. Rina couldn’t quite imagine it, hearing what he must’ve heard from Shouji, having been through what he had, and choosing to run towards her rather than away.

Maybe, if it was him, she would’ve done the same thing. Maybe that was what he meant. The thought made her feel unexpectedly warm, and at the same time guilty, and a little frightened. She didn’t want to have that kind of responsibility.

“Scared is fine,” Genma said quietly, almost to himself. “Scared is what you have to be, if you want to live. I just...” He blew a breath out, staring at the shadowed ceiling. It was never truly dark in a hospital room, even with the door to the hallway shut. And fresh injuries were never truly pain-free, no matter how many drugs they gave you.

“Yeah, you know what? Fuck it.” He took a breath and tightened his arm on Rina’s shoulder. “Fuck it. I did what was right. My hands might be a little hurt, but they worked, and the Intel guys might think I was an idiot, and you and Ito-sensei might think I’m an idiot, but I did the right thing, and I’d do it again.”

He wasn’t sure he was convincing her, or himself, but defiance was an easier emotion than regret. And he didn’t have anything to regret, anyway. He’d done what any ANBU faced with a similar situation would have done. He’d done what that tattoo on his left arm said he would do. He’d done what the Hokage had sent him to do: be the sharpest weapon in Konoha’s arsenal, the strongest shield.

And he’d survived. He hadn’t damaged his hands beyond repair.

And Rina was safe.

He couldn’t help thinking of Kobo, his friend, maybe the closest thing he’d had to a mentor in ANBU, who’d died six months ago taking a blow that should have severed Genma’s head.

He couldn’t help thinking of Seijuro taking one last, gasping breath through a broken, bloodied wreck of a face, before the Iwa interrogator ended it.

The ache in his hands flared like a struck match. Tension turned, for a moment, into a tremble, and then he stilled.

“I’d do it again, Rina, and I probably will. But I hope it’s never for you.”

That was a sentiment she could get behind, at least. With a sigh, Rina subsided back against Genma’s shoulder, and stroked her fingers gently down his arm. “Just... be careful,” was all she said finally, a quiet entreaty in her worried expression. He wasn’t like her little brother, young enough for her to take responsibility for. He’d go his own way, do what he wanted.

Trying to lighten the mood a little, Rina smiled up at him, angling to catch his shuttered gaze. “Anyway, maybe next time it’ll be me going after you, instead. You never know, right? I’ve been sent out as support on some pretty heavy missions myself, recently.” She couldn’t help the tinge of pride shining though in her voice, though she was sure what she considered ‘heavy’ was nothing special to him.

“Most of the seal specialists I know tend to use their skill as a bargaining chip to land cushy positions at home, so... that means there are more left over for me.” Her quick grin showed a flash of white teeth, though her cheeks were still drawn and paler than usual. It was hard to think about future dangerous missions when she’d barely survived this one.

“Maybe they’ll send me out to support some ANBU missions sometime, hmm?” Rina pressed on anyway. “I’ve heard from... various sources... that it can happen.” Well, from another special jounin bed partner, actually; the woman had specialized in some pretty incredible ninjutsu traps that Rina had wanted to study, and had indicated with quite a delicious smirk that her own talents had been well-appreciated by ANBU on occasion. If hers had, why not Rina’s?

“If you’re trying to cheer me up, you should know that’s really not working,” Genma said. He met her bright look with a more sober one. “The last thing I want is you taking even riskier field missions, Rina. I mean, I know, we’re ninja, that’s what we do, but...” He shrugged and felt the burning tug of a cracked rib. Lifted his bandaged hand up where Rina could see it, then brushed his immobilized fingers along her hairline.

“Wasn’t the one you were on supposed to be an easy mission? I know about the kinds of ANBU missions seal specialists get sent on...” He looked past her. “Even the easy ones... they aren’t pretty. They aren’t nice.”

Rina raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips, giving Genma a look full of skepticism. "Well, we were supposed to blow up the bunker with people inside,” she said, “so I'm not sure that exactly counts as nice either."

“But you weren’t supposed to be there to watch them die, were you?” Genma didn’t wait for her answer: he knew it already. “You were supposed to trap the hell out of it and be long gone before any of your traps got triggered.” He sighed and let his hand rest on her shoulder for a moment, but it hurt, and he had to move it away again.

“It’s just... I don’t know. I guess, obviously, I’m not taking safe in-village jobs, so why should you, right? But...” He dipped his head down, pressing his lips to her hair. “If you end up getting an assignment with an ANBU team, come find me, okay? I’ll try to arrange it so I get on the squad you go out with. But really, if I were you, I’d try to avoid ANBU jobs.”

He could feel her breath on his shoulder, feel her weight against his hip.

“Besides, don’t you get enough ANBU excitement from me already? Especially now you’ve had a chance to see how sexy I look in my uniform? I know this whole hospital gown thing is kind of a letdown after that, but you can close your eyes and imagine it, right?”

Rina gave an amused laugh in spite of herself.

“You don’t have to prove anything to me about how brave you are,” Genma added quietly. “I already know.”

The Hokage’s very same words to him, just a week ago, when he’d resumed active duty. You don't have to prove anything to me, Genma. You have already more than proved it.

It was strange to realize now just what Sandaime-sama had meant.

Genma’s acknowledgement soothed her ruffled feathers a little, but Rina’s pride still twinged. Less risky missions, indeed... She was too worn out for another argument, though, even if his unnecessary protectiveness did make her uncomfortable and a little bit irked — since when did she need protecting? Well, except for that last time, but... she’d given as good as she got when it came down to it, hadn’t she? Or, well, close enough. Her seals had saved his skin a few times on the way out, no denying that. No one else could have done any better, alone, in that hopeless situation, could they have? Of course not.

You just tell yourself that, Rina, her subconscious shot back, and she stomped it down.

“You’d better know,” was her quick retort to Genma, finally, trying to make light of the issue with only partial success. Quieter, she added, “if I don’t have to prove anything to you, that would be a first. No one ever thinks a scrawny civilian-born girl could even make a decent ninja, much less master fuuinjutsu, the most esoteric branch of the shinobi arts.” She shrugged her shoulders.

“At least you didn’t laugh.”

Her genin team had learned to stop laughing the first time she saved their skins with rice paper and bottled ink. And certainly no one was laughing on the tenth of October while she clung to the wall by the North Gate, frantically patching the titanic array of seals her personal hero had drawn years before, as they crumbled under the onslaught of a monster. But people had had better things to do that day than look at her and laugh.

Hatake Kakashi hadn’t laughed, a week later, but that was because he’d been too busy trying not to kill her.

Certainly, Kakashi would never have agreed to teach her. Really, she was surprised she hadn’t been laughed straight out of the Seal Division on her first day, special invitation or not.

“But here I am,” she told Genma with hard-fought pride in her voice. No one laughed in the Seal Division anymore; she’d catapulted over the heads of anyone who’d looked down on her, though she realized that was enough to generate another kind of resentment entirely. “I’ve got my own lab in the basement of the Seals building, and the Director sometimes comes to me for discussions and advice. I’ve had several apprenticeships in different divisions, and a couple of times I’ve been requested specifically for missions.” She looked down, tracing the coarse material of Genma’s hospital gown with her eyes. “Is it that bad, really, if sometimes I’m a little bit proud?”

“No.” Genma pulled Rina a little closer, using his forearm instead of his hand to snug her shoulder. “You can be proud. I didn’t know it was so hard for you, really. I mean that you felt like you had to prove yourself. Both my parents were ninja, and my grandparents before them, and my older sister. I guess I sort of remember kids from the academy whose parents were civilians, but...” He shrugged. “No one really hassled them about it.”

He thought about Rina’s family. They owned a book store, she’d told him, and she’d brought books from the shop to read to him during his long convalescence. Did it bother them that their daughter was a ninja? But they lived in a hidden village... No civilian in Konoha was truly outside the penumbra of the Hokage’s service.

“I don’t know, maybe it’s different now that the war’s over,” he said quietly. “Or maybe it’s different in ANBU. I mean, if you’re good, you’re good, that’s all anyone cares about. Just, you know, don’t get yourself hurt trying to prove how good you are, is all. I mean, more than you have to. I mean...”

He laughed at himself, forestalling her protest when her head came up, her gaze sharp in the dim light, and her fingers clenched accusingly into the thin fabric covering his bandaged chest. “Yeah, I know, I’m one to talk. But it’s my job to make sure specialists like you don’t end up getting hurt, right? There’s lots of guys like me, but only a few people who can do the kind of seal work you can.”

Rina’s brow furrowed, but Genma didn’t let her protest. “Look, I’m not actively trying to get myself hurt, either. I promise. Do you honestly think I want to be here? I can think of a much better bed I’d like to be sharing with you right now.”

A wry grin quirked fleetingly across Rina’s lips. “That makes two of us. Though right now I think--” A jaw-cracking yawn overtook the rest of her sentence, surprising her. “--I think I’m not up for much other than sleeping,” she finished sheepishly. She’d felt okay up until just now, but suddenly it felt kind of like a brick wall had fallen on her back. Curling up closer to Genma and wondering if her eyelids had always felt so heavy, Rina smiled. “Too much talking and not enough sex,” she murmured, amused. “How unlike either of us.”

It was good to talk, she knew. They’d said it over and over in the later years of the Academy, in psych evaluations, and after debriefings. You were supposed to work through what had happened and understand your reactions to it, to find out what you did wrong and do better the next time.

Personally, she preferred sex.

But beggars can’t be choosers, and she had, after all, been the one to start the discussion. Too bad she was so tired, or she’d be the one to end it, too — much more pleasantly than it began. Instead, hazily recognizing the symptoms of a soldier pill crash, Rina stifled another yawn and racked her brain for the vague thought pricking at her consciousness and urging her to stay awake through the haze of warmth and safety. There was something...

A sudden clatter of the doorframe, coinciding with a sharp tug on her chakra, shook the memory abruptly to the surface. Jolting into brief alertness, she caught Genma’s confused glance and tossed him a conspiratorial smile. Pressing a finger against her lips, she tumbled soundlessly out of the bed and into the worn armchair, hunching down as if she’d been on the verge of falling asleep there.

Her small seal tag, pressed inconspicuously above the doorknob where she’d left it, hummed silently, and strained... and broke.

The thump of an emphatic kick sent the door crashing open, a bewildered nurse stumbling a few steps into the room and nearly dropping her clipboard. Rina started awake in the chair, blinking at her surroundings and frowning at the intruder. She added on a quick reach for a nonexistent kunai, for verisimilitude. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Genma had followed her lead, though not so far as to jostle any of his injuries.

Giving the nurse a moment to recover her undoubtedly formidable composure, Rina shook her head, rubbing imaginary sleep-dust from her eyes. “It was stuck, I guess?” she ventured innocently, unable to hide a small smile. “That’s too bad, you know these hospital doors...”

The nurse cast Rina a sideways look, suspicious under iron-gray eyebrows, but with no proof. If she looked behind the door, the tag would have poofed into a fine dust. “Yes,” she frowned. “I do.”

Rina beamed back, all angelic. There was nothing for her to feel ashamed of, anyway. Just another ordinary aftermath of another ordinary mission.

Heaven help them all — especially Genma — after whatever the next one might be.

“Rina’s my mission partner,” Genma said. “She has a right to be here.” He levered himself up painfully on his elbows and gave the nurse — drat, it was one of the older, take-no-nonsense rule-abiders — a hopeful smile.

“She’s not ANBU, so she’s obviously not your mission partner,” the nurse said, all clipped efficiency. “And she’s not your Intel debriefer, either, so don’t try that lie on me Shiranui-san.”

Rina looked vaguely uncomfortable, shoved back into the chair closer to Genma, but she didn’t get up.

“She was... involved... in my mission. I mean her mission and mine, they—” Genma stopped when the nurse held up a hand.

“I don’t need or want to know about your mission, Shiranui. I’m interested in your recovery.”

“She was just visiting,” Genma protested.

“Is that what you kids are calling it these days?” a cheery voice interrupted, as a second nurse swept into the room. The new arrival stopped, grinned at her patient and his visitor, and strode over to the bedside. “I remember you,” she said to Rina. “Weren’t you Ito-sensei’s assistant last spring?”

Rina nodded, but her return smile was fractured by a sudden yawn.

“Poor kids,” the nurse said, looking from Rina to Genma and back, “you look like you had a rough day.”

Genma remembered the nurse from his extended hospitalization in the spring. Her name was... Something-or-other-moto Miri, she had a ten-year-old daughter, lived with her mother, and worked nights because the pay was better. And she was nice. She’d brought Genma home-made custards when he’d been struggling to regain lost weight, and sat up late just talking when he couldn’t sleep.

Miri turned back to her colleague. “I’ve got this, Tsubara-san. He just needs vitals and his Q4 dose, right?”

“Yes.” The older woman nodded and handed over a clipboard and a syringe, then headed for the door. “Visiting hours are over,” she added, with a lingering scowl for Rina from the doorway.

Rina looked down, seemingly contrite, but Genma could see the tamped-down mischief sparkling behind her tired eyes, and was reminded again of how much had been at stake on that unplanned rescue mission.

“Thanks, Miri,” said Genma, lying back tiredly against the pillows. The nurse reached a fond hand down to push Genma’s hair back.

“Alright young lady,” Miri said, turning to Rina. “I know a soldier-pill-crash when I see one. And his should be about to kick in again any minute. Can you get yourself home, or do you need an escort?”

“I’ll be fine,” Rina said, standing unsteadily with another yawn.

“Kiss goodnight, then,” Miri instructed with a smile. “And off you go.”

Rina hesitated, then leaned over and gave Genma his kiss and a lingering smile.

“I’ll be home tomorrow,” Genma told her. “I’ll come find you.”

“Or if he’s still here, visiting hours start at ten,” Miri added.

When Rina had gone, Miri turned to Genma with an almost sad look on her face. “Don’t go breaking any hearts, Genma. Hear me? You ANBU boys take too many risks.”

“It’s okay,” Genma told her sleepily. “I was the hero this time.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Miri.