Tsume waited a moment after the clone had set her down and steadied her, catching the scroll Kakashi threw. She waited until she was sure Ryouma was in good hands.

She couldn't smell anything over the scent of burned flesh, but he seemed all right. It seemed he and Kakashi knew each other well. Her shoulders released a fraction in relief and she took a breath before remembering they still had a run home to manage.

No time to fall apart. Not yet. She straightened, stole another look at Ryouma and Kakashi--Ryouma's dark eyes were darting between her and the silver haired jounin, filled with pain and so much emotion it couldn't possibly all remain contained. She gave him a quick nod and walked carefully, shoulders back and chin up, mimicking strength and awareness she didn't really feel. Sometimes getting people home was as simple as faking.

Kuromaru was still, thankfully, unconscious when they ducked into the hollow. She tried not to look at her male face, destroyed by rot and fire. Focused instead on what needed to be done as the clone blew painkiller dust into his eye and across the ruin of his head. White bandages came next, covering the blistered skin and empty socket. She didn't have to look at it anymore, but she still knew it was there. Knew it was numb, but couldn't bring herself to touch his skull anyway.

There was nothing to be done about the hip he'd injured during the fight with the bandits, but the clone smeared salve over the gash across his belly--no longer hidden by fur--and covered it with clean medical pads.

The world spun slowly, rotating around the single point of growing light on the horizon. She thumbed the pack of pills on her thigh, and finally pulled another soldier pill out. There she paused, spinning it between her fingers. She was perilously close to burn out. After a moment, she tucked it under the strap of her forearm guard.

Together, she and the clone moved Kuromaru carefully out into the dawn, where Ryouma leaned against the tree and Kakashi finished tending to his wounds. Tsume crouched next to them, offering a smile behind her mask. "I dunno about you two," she said, her voice rough, "but I think I'll be glad to get home."

At least she wasn't hurting anymore--and from the softening around Ryouma's mouth and eyes, she thought his physical pain was gone as well. Her fingers reached out, claws brushing gently over Kuromaru's bare shoulder. She wasn't close enough to touch Ryouma, and he couldn't see a smile behind her mask. Kakashi seemed to be doing all right with him, though. She leaned her head against the bark and watched the world spin.

Kakashi glanced over his shoulder, tilting Tsume an eye-curving smile he didn't particularly feel. "A few more minutes and we'll be about ready to move," he murmured, turning his attention back to Ryouma. Scattered around them, the detritus off a plundered medi-kit littered the winter grass. Blood slicked Kakashi's bare hands, drying dirt-brown in creases and scars. It'd be under his fingernails for days.

At least he still had fingernails.

Torn into Ryouma's weary body were enough injuries to keep an entire hospital team busy for a full working day. Kakashi wasn't a medic, but you couldn't spend a lifetime learning how to break people apart without picking up a few lessons on how to put them back together. He did his best and tried to tell himself it was enough.

Pain first.

He'd stripped the black bandages away as carefully as he could, expression neutral as fragile scabs broke and bright blood oozed. The delicate tracery of inked lines that had once formed Ryouma's namesake were gone, flayed away with three broad strips of skin. A twisted pit marked where his left nipple had been; acid streaks ran everywhere. The wounds were angry; bright and irritated by something. Kakashi would've guessed salt; non-lethal, but agonizing all the same.

But the jounin had been lying about one thing--there was no blood painted across the crotch of shredded pants. No crippled limp to Ryouma's walk, just the awkward step of a man with a leg injury. That wasn't enough--not nearly enough--to save the jounin, but it might buy him a quicker death.

Kakashi looked at the blood shining red up to his wrists, and felt the line of his mouth break. Nothing was going to save the jounin. He was going to drag him home, and Intel would make sure he died screaming.

Focus on pain. He blew the blue dust everywhere, covering every wound he could see. It glittered over the raw flesh that twisted down Ryouma's side and over his stomach; blood leaked down his calf. His fingertips were a ruin. And beneath everything, bruises stained him black.

Ryouma shook under his touch. Kakashi couldn't blame him.

But the painkiller worked. Some of the screaming tension in his shoulders eased away, just a little. Kakashi drew a tiny relieved breath and drenched every wound with antiseptic, thankful nerves could no longer carry the sting. He slapped steri-strips over weapon cuts, closing them until the real medics could look at them, and trusted that was enough.

There was nothing he could do for the wreck of Ryouma's chest but wind clean bandages around it, and hope infection wouldn't set in before they got home. He swathed more strips of cotton down the older man's left arm, hiding the burns that striped across his ANBU brand.

That just left his fingertips, and whatever they'd done that made his voice slur sideways.

Kakashi sat back on his heels. "You need blood pills," he said, studying shock-dizzy black eyes. "And I need to bandage your hands. Can you swallow?"

"Think--dunno." Ryouma stared down at his hands, at the red wreck he could no longer feel. He was trembling, he realized vaguely, and wondered how long it had been going on. He tried flattening his right hand on his knee, and pressed down to stop his fingers from shaking. He couldn't feel it even when a few drops of new blood oozed out.

Whatever that blue stuff was, it deserved the name painkiller. The multitude of pains he'd built his focus around for the past day dropped out one by one, like puppets with cut strings. He couldn't feel most of his skin now, either. Only his raw throat, the stabbing ache in his broken teeth and the acid-eaten agony in his tongue, reminded him that his body was still there. Bereft of competition, they leapt out in a jubilant cacophony now. His tongue felt swollen to twice its size; his eyes watered when it moved against his teeth.

"Got--acid on my tongue," he said finally. "Haven't drunk since. Didn't want to risk." He hadn't been always been able to spit out the blood that pooled in his mouth, and a few times he'd felt an angry burn slide down his throat along with salt and copper. It could be thirst or screaming or acid that had shredded his throat, or all three. In the past few hours, it hadn't really seemed worth worrying about.

"Acid on your tongue," Kakashi echoed distantly. The sharingan spun a furious crimson twist, weaving the image in front of him into a red-thread memory. Ryouma's scent wreathed around them, burned with the dry toast catch of a full adrenaline crash. Rust and rotten fruit underlined it--a mess of stress and pain Kakashi couldn't begin to untangle. They'd put acid on his tongue.

Kakashi's chakra flared. Behind them the clone reached down and turned the unconscious enemy jounin over; gloved hands blurred, a sharp snap echoed out. The clone stood up again. Kakashi didn't bother to see what he'd broken.

"I'm going to fix this," he muttered, and pulled the medi-kit around again. "Just hang on." He didn't know if the blue dust would work on an--acid--scorched throat but there had to be something.

While he searched with one hand, the other reached down to his belt and snapped off another scroll, fingers already channelling chakra to release the seal. Three heavy canteens of treated water thumped down next to his heels. An absent thought brought the clone around to take two. It handed one to Tsume, and stood with the other by Kuromaru, mask tilted in a question at the only conscious Inuzuka. "Both of you should drink," it said.

Kakashi glanced at the remaining canteen. If he put the dust in the water...? It was worth a shot. It wouldn't do anything worse to Ryouma if it didn't work. It'd be hard to find anything that could, he thought bitterly.

The clone was too busy to break another bone.

Kakashi splashed glittering crystals into the canteen, watching as they dissolved, and then looked at Ryouma. "This should work." He offered it, then hesitated. The container was heavy. Ryouma's hands were a wreck. There was no time to cater to pride. "Can you hold this?"

He could try. If it would help, he could damn well tear his hands open trying.

Ryouma nodded and reached for the canteen. His fingers slipped along the smooth curves; he watched closely, bent them at the right moment, guessed at the right amount of pressure. His muscles obeyed him, but he couldn't feel them. He fumbled the canteen when he tried to steady it with his other hand. Water splashed over his wrist, and skin went numb there, too. When he tried to lift it, his right hand gave way. "Son of a bitch!"

Kakashi caught the canteen before it fell, other hand wrapping quick, careful fingers around Ryouma's wrist. "Easy," he said, as desperate anger weaved through the pain-scent souring the morning air. "Just--hang on."

This was Ryouma, and they'd ripped him open where it hurt the most. Dragon, hands, acid on his tongue--

Kakashi took a hard breath through his teeth and tasted bile. He twisted his chakra hard enough to sting, and used that to focus.

Help now. Think later.

"Nice guy like you can't be expected to do everything," he said, lifting a smile, catching Ryouma's eyes. He shifted the canteen slightly and flicked three quick seals, shielding them with metal. The sharingan spun and locked the other man in a genjutsu--one where nothing hurt. Black eyes went blank. Kakashi lifted the canteen, cradled the back of Ryouma's head gently, and tipped as much water as he could down his throat without choking him.

He'd need a soldier pill himself soon, but the trade-off was worth it.

She'd taken a sip of the water--smelling it automatically first, though anything in it was buried under the scent of her own burned flesh--before setting it aside to lever Kuromaru up.

She was surprised when the clone did it instead, and relieved at the extra hands when he held the small man steady so she could pour liquid down his throat. He swallowed convulsively, giving several weak coughs before sliding back into unconsciousness.

She tipped more into him, trying to dribble it into him while, from the corner of her eye, she saw Ryouma fumble the canteen and Kakashi catch it expertly, murmuring smiling reassurances. Water slid down Kuromaru's face as she stopped, watching the two men closely for a moment.

When the life left Ryouma's face she looked away. Genjutsu. She knew that, but...

"Come on, pup," she murmured to the fine-boned man cradled in the clone's arms. "Drink a little more for me, all right?"

He whimpered, struggling through murky unconsciousness. She hushed and petted him, sliding her finger along the edge of a sharply angular jaw until he calmed again. When she'd gotten a quarter of the canteen into him she stopped to drink her own, ignoring the way it made her stomach twist.

How long had it been since she'd eaten? It didn't bear thinking about. They'd be home soon.

She gave Kakashi and Ryouma another look, gaze lingering over her dark-haired partner. He was lost in his own mind for the moment, away from pain or torture or the ruin of his body.

"He'll be okay," Tsume murmured, more to herself than anyone else. "He's strong. He'll be fine." He had to be fine. He'd survived this long.

She turned back to the clone and Kuromaru, trying not see long, slim limbs resting lax against the jounin.

It was harder, somehow, when he looked like her. Like her and not, similar and different. She held the canteen up and poured a little more between chapped lips.

He would be fine, too. They'd all be all right. They'd survived so far. They just had to hang on a little bit longer.

Kakashi pulled the canteen back when he'd managed to get at least half the contents between Ryouma's blistered lips. Water ran from the corners of his mouth and splashed down his chin, smearing red-pink over older blood stains. Where it hit Kakashi, his skin went numb.

So at least it was working. He hoped it would last until they got home.

Might as well hope the sky was orange.

He focused with a jerk and capped the canteen, holding the genjutsu as long as he could--too long would be just as bad as not long enough. If the world had changed too much, Ryouma might not cope. Kakashi battered that away, too. Ryouma was strong. He wasn't dead. He would cope.

Then the jounin woke up and screamed.

Kakashi's head snapped around, one hand darting to a kunai. The jounin writhed, shattered arm and useless feet twisting unnaturally as the scream crested and broke, hitting a raw-throated sob. Bones crunched against dirt. Kakashi reached for the clone--but the clone was holding Kuromaru.

He grimaced and released the genjutsu. Ryouma's expression flickered, head jerking back. Kakashi caught him, hand careful against the base of his skull. "Don't move."

The jounin was twelve feet away. It took the copy-nin less than a heartbeat to reach him and smash him back into unconsciousness. One cheekbone cracked against a fist full of metal, the man's head fell limp against the grass, and Kakashi turned like a snake strike and headed back for Ryouma.

It wasn't fast enough.

The world flickered between one moment and the next. His mouth was numb; he couldn't even taste blood anymore. Kakashi's hand cupped the back of his head. His voice murmured, low in Ryouma's ear.

Ryouma couldn't hear him.

The man Kakashi had dropped on the grass when he first came--the one-armed corpse Ryouma had glanced once at, and forgotten--had screamed, and moved, and shattered Ryouma's fragile peace as he'd shattered his teeth. Dark skin, blood-spattered, writhed against the dirt. White hair, sprayed with pink, caught at the early morning light.

Ryouma's breath caught and plunged like a wild thing. His pulse hammered in his ears; he heard a sound like a strangled cry as Kakashi smashed Shiki down, and knew it came from the vocal chords he'd screamed ragged under Shiki's tender touch. He wrenched himself away, and fell into strong hands and a voice he knew.

Not nearly fast enough. Panic hammered Kakashi's nose as he caught Ryouma, struggling to find anywhere to grab him that wouldn't hurt him. There was no clean break of skin, nowhere left untouched by already staining bandages.

But his skin was numb.

Kakashi swept instinct aside in the face of that raw terror and wrapped both hands around Ryouma's upper arms, catching him with an iron grip and careful fingers. He shoved his chakra out, enveloping everything--especially Ryouma.

"It's okay--he's down. He's broken. He's not getting near you." Panic, fear, pain--they'd forced acid down his throat. "Ryouma--" Kakashi let go with one hand and wrapped fingers under the taller man's chin, pulling his head down, locking eyes, "--look at me and stop being scared right now. Or I'll... drown you in coffee when we get home. You got me?"

Tsume scrambled up to her feet when the jounin screamed, gone through two seals and pulling at chakra coils as Kakashi knocked him back out.

Chakra coils. Her heart stuttered for a moment, but--no. No. She still had enough power from the pill she'd taken earlier. It had mixed between her and Kuromaru, but there was enough of it that when she pulled, the rotten chakra only lurched slightly. Nothing entered her system.

Ryouma was screaming.

She slid toward him with a final glance at Kuromaru--still unconscious--and shifted right into Kakashi's chakra. It choked her, dragged up a growl for an instant--her Pack--before she shoved it down.

Every pack had male and female alphas; Kuromaru was out. That left Kakashi.

Her energy, bolstered by pills, expanded even as she tried to keep it low, pushing against and then blending with the other man's. Twisting inside Kakashi's, counterpart in something instinctive and primal. Pack in hers, turning it all more feral than it had been a moment before.

She crouched behind Ryouma, between him and the space he'd left when he'd flinched forward, and pressed shaking hands against the trembling muscles of his back.

They'd had him tied to a chair.

They hadn't beaten his spine.

More alpha crept into her, protective and commanding at once. "We're fine," she growled, the words curling low under Kakashi's reassurances. "And we're going home." It was more demand than soothing. Alphas protected what was theirs; nothing was going to keep them from going home.

Not the white-haired jounin.

Not flashbacks.

Not anything. They'd gotten this far, and they'd get the rest of the way.

Chakra enveloped Ryouma like crackling fog, sizzling through the skin he couldn't feel, weaving around him like a snarling wolf. It was killing intent, broadcast everywhere but at him; it was be safe and I'll protect and watch my back. It blazed in one dark grey eye and one spinning crimson-and-black one; it burned in the small hands flattened against his bare back. It crept under his skin, and it flattened Shiki into the dirt.

Shiki, with one arm ripped away and his remaining arm lying uselessly askew, with his legs bloody and limp and one cheekbone smashed to splinters.

It wasn't enough.

It was a start.

Ryouma's tongue didn't feel swollen, or burned, or lacerated as it brushed his broken teeth; it didn't feel at all. He formed words by force and memory. They came out clumsy and slurred, like a drunken man's parody of a speech impediment, but they made sense. He could think. He could speak. He was shinobi, Leaf, ANBU--Tsume's teammate, Kakashi's friend. He wasn't scared. He wasn't.

"'e wan'ed--ju'su. F'r new village. I killed 'is team. In t'war." His eyes sought Kakashi's again, pleading for understanding. "I coul'n't. S'all I got t'give."

For a moment, Tsume slid close, chakra curling up with a threat and a challenge, and Kakashi tensed, ready to force her away--

But she changed, threading strands of chemical energy through his own, winding pack and protection around the man held between them. Support, without a fight. An alpha in her own right, but with her steel on his side.

It was almost enough.

He focused on Ryouma's eyes, watching understanding break through panic. The ragged strength they still hadn't taken from him, no matter how much acid they'd used, rising up and beating terror back. They'd ripped the dragon away, but the man beneath it was still standing.

And telling him lies.

Kakashi's chakra shivered with anger, desperate with the sudden urge to kneel by the jounin behind them and tear him into bleeding fragments. But Intel would do that, and Ryouma was more important.

Focus on pain.

The fingers tilting Ryouma's chin down released him, slipping around the back of his head to hold him carefully in place. "If your jutsu was all you had," Kakashi said softly, "I wouldn't care enough to be here." His gaze slid for a heartbeat, looking for Tsume. She was hidden behind a blood-wracked chest, but her chakra was still there. Her words underlining everything. "And she wouldn't care enough to make you one of hers."

Pack. He wasn't thinking about what it meant anymore, as long as it worked.

"We're going home. You can show me--" chakra flickered, "--us the rest of your worth there."

His jutsu. They'd wanted his jutsu. It hadn't mattered, still didn't matter, wouldn't until they got home, but...

She'd heard him scream as she'd gone through the door, skidding on the floor and feeling the burn of enough chemical chakra to stop her heart. To summon a demon. "I'll show you," he'd begged. "Don't hurt her."

His jutsu. Something uncoiled in her chest, something she hadn't been aware of. The knowledge that he'd given in. The uncertainty of what they'd wanted. Not knowing if he'd just turned traitor.

She didn't have to take him home and turn him in.

She released a shaky breath across the nape of his neck, over Kakashi's fingers, and smoothed her hands down his spine. "You did good, Coyot. You did just fine." Hearing Kakashi's words, she smiled behind her mask, unable to stop from tasting the edge of bitterness as she murmured, "Though it's a bloodworm of a jutsu."

She knew firsthand, though she couldn't feel it anymore. Kakashi had burned it out. She could only hope it would stay that way. She petted again, feeling Ryouma's muscles ease slightly. Kuromaru was still in the arms of the clone, starting to twitch into awareness. "You did good," she said once more, and pushed away, checking on her familiar. She couldn't sit. She'd never rise again. She didn't know where to stand; beside her canine or her friend. In the end she stood between them, close enough to touch either within a step. To brush their chakra with hers, false and harsh as it was.

Ryouma's eyes shuddered closed. Kakashi's fingers wound into his lengthening hair, warmed chilled skin with an involuntary memory. A sunny day on the riverbank, his own hand cupping the back of Kakashi's skull, trading kisses and honesty. I wouldn't care, Kakashi said. You did good, Tsume said, while her breath ghosted across the nape of his neck and her hands smoothed tension out of his spine.

He couldn't smell the truth in their words, but he could hear it.

They knew what he'd done, why Kuromaru whimpered and twitched with his head wrapped in bandages and his eyesocket packed with antibiotic and gauze, and they touched him anyway. Cared anyway. Cared back, with no real reason to.

"H'me," he said at last, squeezing his eyes tight against the hot itch that threatened to spill through his lashes. Home meant medics, rest, locked doors and gentle nurses. Time to recover. Time to think. Time to find himself again, or at least figure out who he'd become.

"Thanks," he whispered. His voice was as unsteady as the rest of him, but he hoped they could hear how much he meant it.

Kakashi let his hand rest for a moment, laid over too-cold skin and the sharp knife-line of vertebrae cutting up to press against his fingertips. Ryouma was crashing--burned out on his feet, with a scent run through by salt and aching sadness. But there was the barest ripple of something else now, something that might touch peace, if given enough time.

Time they didn't have.

Kakashi pulled away, hands slipping down, and tugged on his chakra. Another clone popped into being, already reaching forward to take his place, keeping Ryouma on his feet. He snapped another scroll open, breaking the seal to drop a loose-leaf fall of clothes onto the ground. The clone leaned down carefully, pulling through them it found a shirt loose enough to be something less than screaming agony--even with numb skin--and pulled it over Ryouma. Kakashi blinked once, feeling an ache prickle behind his temples, and palmed a soldier pill out of his belt. He slipped it under his mask as he turned back to Tsume, eyes flicking to look at the wounded human replacement of her familiar.

At the chakra bonds stretched between them.

He paused, eyes narrowing, and focused sharply on the flow of energy moving between both Inuzuka, coloured raw yellow in the spin of Obito's sharingan. Slipping gently through the streams--more visible the closer they stood to each other--ran thin strings of rot. Putrid chakra the sickly green-brown of grave dirt. It shimmered around Kuromaru like a corrupt halo, and bled through his link to Tsume, poisoning her in turn.

That was why Ryouma didn't know. He'd touched Kuromaru, and the Inuzuka bond was killing Tsume along with him.

Kakashi's teeth clenched. Tsume was right. Ryouma couldn't know, not after everything he'd already suffered, but she couldn't give her life for his peace of mind, either. The copy-nin broke a scroll away from his belt and snapped it out, slicing his thumb on a kunai edge at the same time. Blood streaked over fine parchment as blue-white chakra crackled. Written seals flared, smoke turned the air grey.

A dog bark echoed up the ravine walls.

Kakashi grinned, unable to help it, and greeted his pack. Two mastiffs stood above everyone, bigger even than Kuromaru had been. Shouma and Hoshika, German Shepherd siblings, flicked their ears back, lips curling as scents told them nothing good. Four pairs of bright eyes focused on Kakashi.

"Baiji," he pointed to one of the mastiffs, "Ryouma's yours." The clone bracing Ryouma was already moving him. "Kaori--" the other mastiff, "--Kuromaru's yours. Tsume with him." The clone holding Kuromaru stood, gathering the slight man easily in his arms. Kakashi stepped close to Tsume, one hand drifting to her wrist. Fingers tapped out a code hidden from Ryouma. Can you break the bond?

Ryouma was going to be all right. Not today, or tomorrow, but soon they'd be home... She let that settle into her chest, her lungs, while Kakashi watched her too closely and summoned dogs the size of small horses.

She stiffened when he kept looking at her and her familiar, black on red eye whirling softly in his pale face. When he stepped close she remained perfectly still, waiting for what, she didn't know.

Then he tapped the code into her wrist.

Her head dropped, then lifted again. She didn't bother tapping a code back, simply gave one tiny twitch. No. She'd muffled the link as much as she could. Spent hours riding the edge of chakra pill overdose to try and not pull on the rot. She'd hoped it was gone, known it wasn't.

Surely when they got back there'd be something they could do. She remained very still and waited, heart thumping painfully. He wouldn't do something stupid. Nothing that told Ryouma what was going on. There seemed to be true friendship between them; surely he wouldn't hurt the other man.

Her fingertips fluttered, beating out a staccato rhythm into the back of Kakashi's hand. He can't pull it out. Please don't ask, went unsaid. No one ever thought clearly about their own injuries; as much as possible, she'd do as he suggested.

The clones lifted both injured men onto their chosen mastiffs, carefully settling behind them to hold both Ryouma and Kuromaru in place. Kakashi watched, eyes flickering between the whole pack as his mind raced, focus turned almost entirely on the barest brush of skin against his hand.

Doesn't matter, he responded finally, as despair ripped through her scent. The rot's bleeding through. I can see it.

He had a little of that bond himself, with his own dogs, but it wasn't the same. It was a contract, not a life-long connection with a familiar--it wasn't a dog by his side, day and night. Kakashi had a pack, Tsume had something far closer than that. And he was asking her to tear it away.

Kuromaru was dying. He refused to let Tsume follow.

Fingers caught and twisted, stamping a message against the hollow beat of her pulse. Break the bond.

She didn't laugh, though she wanted to. Her jaw tightened, fingers striking Kakashi's knuckles with whipsharp snaps. I can't. It wasn't possible. Inuzuka bonds didn't work like that. She couldn't just drop it.

Most people didn't know the bonds even existed. She took a breath through her nose, smelling only burned flesh, and let gently curved nails dance out a new pattern on Kakashi's hand. It's a single chakra system. I could close my left arm easier. She tipped her head, glancing at him through the slits of her mask. We should just get home. Maybe once there, no longer trying to beat time and infection, maybe someone would have an idea. They had a whole team of doctors for ninja. Someone had to come up with something.

She was dead.

Kakashi's fingers froze on her wrist for a moment, feeling the wingbeat of her pulse flutter against his skin. She felt warm, angry, on her feet because she had to be. Because once she fell, she wouldn't get back up.

He pulled away, insides turning cold. His other hand lifted, slipping ANBU's hound mask over his face. There was no time left--he could at least get her home. She should see the trees first. The monument.

Her children.

Obito's sharingan stung, and washed tears down the left side of his face. Kakashi's own eye remained dry. There was still Ryouma to save. Maybe even a chance Haruichi could do something. Pull up another miracle, if they reached him soon enough. "Don't touch your chakra," he murmured, "no matter what happens."

His voice lifted, snapping up in a growling sort of bark. Kaori padded over, bearing Kuromaru and a clone on her broad back. Kakashi jerked his head at her. "And stay with your familiar."

Shouma and Hoshika spread out, fanning away to flank either side of the small pack. Ryouma was barely hanging on. Kuromaru was mostly gone. He couldn't think about Tsume. Kakashi dragged in a breath, and braced himself for the long run home.