He pressed his thumb against a slightly smudged swirl in one corner of the drawing, feeding in a pulse of chakra and activating the ink, which came to life on the paper, reversing time. Healthy chakra-channels collapsed, intact nerves frayed and split, whole bones fragmented, until the hands on the page looked like they’d never function again.

Katsuko let out a soft breath, and her hand touched down on Genma’s shoulder, warm and steady. "This was the same year I was captured," she said quietly, staring at the date.

Genma pushed chakra into the ink again, animating healing this time, instead of destruction. He looked at Katsuko, trying to make sense of what she’d just said. “I don’t know whether that’s sad or ironic or funny.” A push of chakra and the hands deteriorated, another and they knit together again. There was something almost hypnotic about the way the broken parts came together, as seals flared in the diagram. “I’m gonna go with sad that they made you wait this long to get help.”

Katsuko shrugged, her lips turning up in a bitter smile. "There's not much they could have done, anyways. They were pretty clear from the start that my coils were fucked up beyond repair."

“They just didn’t get the right person,” Genma said, wanting to make it true by saying it. “When Rina did this, she was just starting out, I mean, Ito-sensei did most of the work, she just diagrammed it and worked out some of the seals. But she’s a lot more skilled now, and she learned a lot doing the work on me. When I was hurt this last time, in March, when Rai and I got ambushed by Sago—” He cut himself off, catching her eye. “I’m assuming you already got the rumor-mill’s version of that, right?”

"Sago?" Katsuko asked. "That's the man who did this?" She looked pissed, staring down at the diagram, and her chakra flared, hot and bright with killing intent before she clamped it down.

“No. The ones who did this, they’re dead. This was four years ago,” Genma said, gesturing at the papers. “Last March Raidou and I got ambushed on a mission by Sago the Butcher, a missing nin from Mist. He burned Rai’s face and chest, and he went after my hands. Just the left, and he didn’t do nearly as much damage as the Iwa bastards did the first time around, but it was still pretty bad.” He held out his left arm, showing her the newly healed scars that laced over old ones.

Katsuko rubbed her own forearm, where a network of old torture scars lurked under bandages.

“Look, the thing is,” Genma said quickly, “it looked hopeless, but it wasn’t.” He flipped to a page showing the back of his hands and keyed the chakra-ink, so that the bloody wreckage Iwa had left was clear. He pointed to one particularly bad section, where the green tracery of his chakra coils was a broken jumble. “You wouldn’t think there would be any way you’d ever get chakra flowing through there again, but they fixed it. They always warned me it was fragile, though, so when I came in with my hand messed up again in March, I was pretty sure it was over for me. But Rina developed new seals and stuff, and it’s actually better now than it was before.”

He held out his hands again, flexing the joints. “I mean, you saw me work jutsu. I’m fine now.” He met her eyes, wanting her to believe him. “So maybe she can help you. Or if not Rina, someone else. She learned seals from someone. Maybe the Hokage. You can’t just give up.”