Ryouma could break that grip, if he wanted.

And then what? Fight Kakashi, because Kakashi said he wasn’t expendable, because Kakashi said he deserved to live, because Kakashi said he was worth something more than three deadly jutsu and a debt? Hell, he should be happy to hear that. And he was, he just—

“I don’t know how you believe that,” he said. “I mean, I get how you do. Naruto-kun cares about you, anybody can see that, and everybody knows your sensei does too. So of course they see you as more than Sharingan no Kakashi, because they know you when you’re just Kakashi. But I— I don’t—”

Kakashi said, very quietly, “I think you’re still listening to your grandfather, even now.”

Maybe so. Could he honestly look Kakashi in the eye, and tell him that no one on Team Six knew him as more than the kid who rots faces? Knew him as just Ryouma?

Genma thought he could be a medic. Raidou thought he could be a good person. Katsuko had wanted him to be her wingman. Kakashi’d called him a friend.

And it wasn’t just Team Six. Hakone, Ayane, Norita Takeshi, Sakamoto Ginta: they’d seen him off the battlefield, asked him out for evenings of nothing but his company. Some of them didn’t even want to sleep with him.

The old man would’ve said none of that mattered. That anyone who tried to get close to you was really just looking for what they could get out of you. That anyone who let Ryouma get close to them would see soon enough what he was really made of, that he was rotten deep down—stupid, lazy, lying—

Only the good worry they are bad, Genma had said, at the inn where they’d watched fireflies. The truly bad don’t think about it at all.

If he was going to listen to someone, Genma would be a better choice than his grandfather.

So would Kakashi.

“How d’you balance a right to be alive with being a ninja?” he asked.

“Cognitive dissonance,” Kakashi said, with an dry edge to his voice. “They don’t balance. But that still doesn’t mean you sell your death cheaply.” His grip tightened on Ryouma’s wrist, with a sharp little shake.

“I didn’t think rescuing Genma and saving the rest of you was cheap,” Ryouma said.

Kakashi turned his head to give Ryouma a long, penetrating look. Ryouma set his jaw. Listening didn’t mean buckling.

Then Kakashi said, “Thank you.”

Ryouma blinked, stumbled: “Uh. You’re welcome. I mean, I know it was stupid. You’d have figured something out, I just didn’t think we had time…”

“I would have tried to stab her in the face,” Kakashi said.

Ryouma squinted at him. “Before or after she had Taichou in her jaws?”

“Ideally before. In practice,” Kakashi admitted, “I had a giant paw on my chest, so options were limited.”

“Yeah.” Ryouma looked down, at Kakashi’s hand on his wrist, at the long dark scabs below. “All the choices were bad choices. I thought I was doing the right thing. And I can’t promise I won’t do it again. But— If I’ve got to sell my death, I’ll set the price high.”