When the only chance at surviving involved the need for a miracle, it was easier to believe in them. Genma nodded his head a bare fraction, gave Kakashi a steady look, and acquiesced. What else could he do? "There's a trea--ty now. Iwa's better than when I was--" The halting non-rhythm of his speech ceased. He saw something like understanding in Kakashi's eye. Understanding and empathy. Kakashi knew. Genma got that with a finality as firm as the knowledge that Kakashi was right, and he was dying. Going straight into the viper's nest was their only real chance of both walking out alive.

"It's bet-ter than before. But they'll prob--ably recognize me. Someone there will." Terror rose like a tide, pushing bitter memories and waking nightmares ahead of the foamy swell, eroding fragile hope. A treaty was nothing but a piece of paper, weak in the face of Iwa's interrogators' jutsu and steel.

Kakashi understood that, too. His hand curled over Genma's shoulder, a firm grip without malice. "My message is on its way to Arakaki," he repeated, looking Genma steadily in the eye. "The Hokage will send a team for us, and Iwa will have to let them, or face another war. They can't afford a war."

Yes. If logical heads prevailed, if diplomats and village councils got involved before lower-level interrogators had their way with a lost pair of Konoha ANBU... Yes. "They won't want-- war." Genma echoed. And tried to believe it.

Kakashi made some noise in his throat that must have been a command to the dogs, because the movement started again. Genma closed his eyes and tried to let the motion of the mastiff's spine under him, the throbbing at the back of his neck, and the seething, vertiginous nausea that his sense of balance was dissolving into, become a single thing. A sensation to be breathed through. To be prayed through.

Kannon-bosatsu, giver of mercy, protector of the wayward, hear my plea...