Genma lay still, aware of how grimy he was in his muddy, sooty, blood-spattered uniform, and how clean the bedsheets he rested on were. It was an abstract kind of awareness, compounded with a sensation of aching heaviness in every limb that came from pure exhaustion, and discordant notes of pain flaring through strained and overused chakra channels, stretched tendons, bruised muscles, damaged skin. The only sensations that held his attention were the weight of the woman curled against his chest, the rise and fall of his own breath under her head, and the slowing beat of his heart as adrenaline finally ebbed away.

He lay still even when one leg began to tingle with pins and needles and his injured shoulder started to groan, because Rina had finally relaxed, with her pale eyes shut and her features softened into something altogether vulnerable and delicate. He shifted as gently as he could when cold and discomfort became insistent, but only enough to ease the pressure on his shoulder, enough to draw a rough wool blanket up over the pair of them. When Rina stirred in response, he patted her shoulder, murmuring nonsense sounds at her as if she were a small child. She tightened one hand around the shoulder strap of his vest, holding on like she might fall if she let go — or he might — then relaxed again.

The rain came a little harder now, but it was a natural rain, steady and gentle, plodding against the wooden roof and walls of their safe house with a music that lulled Genma. Gentle wind rocked the branches around them, barely disturbing their perch. Somewhere out there in the rain, under Genma's foil blanket, Shouji was probably dead. In a sacrificial bunker scoured from the inside by Rina's apocalyptic fireball, Yushiro lay dead. More Kumo ninja than Genma had counted lay dead, and others gravely wounded.

At a north-eastern Konoha outpost, or maybe along one of Fire Country's roads, the rat Genma had summoned when he'd left Shouji to his fate was delivering Genma's message: Mission AB-445C3 aborted. Agents down. Agents captured. Attempting extraction. Send backup.

In a little while, when they'd rested, when he'd recovered some natural chakra, he'd summon another rat and send another message: One rescued. One deceased. One unknown. Two with minor injuries. Their coordinates.

In a little while.

He was sorry to Shouji. Sorry he'd had to make the choice he did. He had a shockingly clear memory of the chuunin's pale, sweaty face. Of a rugged jaw with a small, well-healed scar on the chin, and a crooked front tooth. Of Shouji's failing chakra, and the certainty both men had shared about Shouji's chances, even if Genma had had a hospital to take him to.

Looking down at Rina, feeling her warmth against his side, her breath lifting his arm around her shoulder, he had only one thought: It had been the right choice.