| [Oct. 1st, 2015|02:56 am] |
Ryouma dropped his gaze. Easier to stare at Genma's hand than at his face, with encouragement warm in those whiskey-amber eyes and softening his lips into a smile. Genma's mouth always looked a little too naked without a senbon or a grassblade or a mask. Nothing like Raidou, with all his determined lines or wry twists.
Raidou wanted another medic. Well, that was smart. That was what a captain should want, right? That was why Ryouma wanted so badly to do this — so that he wouldn't watch another Kenichi bleed out with no one there to help, so that he wouldn't see Genma staggering up from his sickbed to operate on a civilian because there was no one to spell him off.
They'd all done their best to help in the bunker at Arechi Hill, but the lion's share of the work had fallen to Genma there, too. He had more reason than anyone to want a second medic on the team. And yet he said, when you have the temperament, killing can be hard on you.
"Well," Ryouma said, half at random, "it's always good to be useful. If Kakashi ever steals my jutsu, at least I'll have a fallback career."
"You can still use your jutsu even if someone else is using it too," Genma said, sounding puzzled. "The Sharingan doesn't steal jutsu, it just copies."
"If you were a famous sculptor and I copied your best work and sold it for a hundred million ryo, you'd still have me jailed for stealing," Ryouma said. "Well. If we were civilians. That's not the point, anyway."
Though he needed to talk with Kakashi about that someday. Kakashi'd kept his promise so far, and Ryouma still owed him. Maybe not the Nikutai Hakai, but...something.
"It's all for the good of the village," Genma persisted. He pulled his hand away, cutting a swift arc through the air. "It's not the same thing as copying a sculpture. Like, when I teach you my medical jutsu, that doesn't diminish my value to the village."
"No, but—" He hadn't had any luck explaining this to the Hokage's advisors. How was he going to do any better with Genma?
He grabbed for his glass of barley tea, and drained the rest. Thought about jutsu, the burn of chakra in overworked pathways, the nights sitting up with green twigs and chicken scraps, practicing until he tipped over from exhaustion…
The first time he'd used the Nikutai Tokasu to kill. The way the jutsu seized on that Iwa-nin's chakra and roared like a flame touched to oil. The sick squelch of his fingers through dissolving muscle and bone, the throat-ripping scream that had disintegrated into gurgles even before he managed to stagger back and slit the man's throat. The way even Hitomi-sensei had walked wide around him after that, days after the reek faded and he'd scrubbed his hands raw.
"I don't trust anyone else to use it," he said, and realized, for the first time, that it was true.
Genma's lips formed a question, and then firmed on it. He nodded slowly. "Because it's dangerous. Because it could backlash. Some medical jutsu are like that too." He drummed his fingers on the table. "The combat jutsu I've created, if you did them wrong there could be consequences, but no one would be likely to die. At least not in practicing them."
"Well, I'm a jealous bastard, too." Ryouma studied his own hands. "I don't have much, so I'm not good with sharing what I've got. When I was a kid—"
His tongue fumbled on the words. Words he'd never said to anyone.
Genma waited, listening. |
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