in the distance, across the battlefield, red flames lick the sky.
There is blood in his eye.
Fast enough to keep a kunai from burying itself deep in his skull but not fast enough to escape it entirely-- it had cut a long slice on his forehead just above his eyebrow, sluggishly bleeding even now until red coats the entire right side of his face, tacky and metallic on his lips. Blinking only temporarily clears his vision, and he can’t tell if the haze settling over his mind is a side effect of the haze over his vision or if all of that is just exhaustion.
He’d watched Ebisu take a blade deep into the meat of his arm, earlier. Lost sight of him after that, and the best he can do about that is hope he made it to a medic instead of fighting until there wasn’t any blood left in him. The battle is otherwise extremely confusing, seeming to come in fits and starts and Genma takes advantage of it-- flickering in and out of the shadows, cutting throats and lifting senbon from corpses to reuse, fast and quiet enough to escape most notice. It feels like it tears on forever, an unknowable amount of time, the moon hanging red above them like a malicious eye, unbroken by anything and all he knows is the fighting until.
There’s a flicker of blue-green chakra in the distance, and as he sinks a kunai between the cervical vertebrae of an enemy and flickers away again he spares a thought for his other teammate-- Don’t die, Gai.
It’s the first coherent thought he’s had in who-knows-how long. There’s concern there, real fear that opening the seventh gate will end up shattering his friend’s bones and. And he’s distracted, someone almost got the drop on him. He hits the dirt and buries a foot in their gut, popping back up and slitting their throat with a groan of effort. The blue-green feeling at the edge of his senses is a balm as much as an irritant, fear mixing with relief because as long as he can feel it he knows Gai is alive and.
As soon as he thinks that, it flickers out abruptly.
His breath catches in his throat, but he keeps fighting. Tells himself he doesn’t know what happened, it could mean anything. Raidou lands hard next to him and Genma lets himself lean against his shoulder for a moment, fatigue hitting him all at once as he tries to catch his breath past the tightness in his chest. His eyes are on the horizon, the direction he’d last felt Gai in-- not that he would have missed the wild blaze of red setting the sky on fire if he hadn’t.
And he knows what it means even as something heavy and numb curls in his gut. His breath catches in his throat and for a moment he freezes completely, fingers digging into his teammate’s arm as he tries to find his feet again. Genma lifts a hand to wipe the blood out of his eye, like that might change the color of the explosion of chakra on the horizon, or the heavy, bloody feeling that fills the air even this far away. He’s seen this before and he knows what it means: Gai is dead for sure as soon as the storm falls quiet.
He doesn’t... he doesn’t know what to do. Gai has been a constant in his life for almost thirty years. What is he supposed to do? Running to the source is impossible-- abandoning his comrades and dying on the way isn’t in his cards, and even if Gai wouldn’t haunt his ass forever for doing either, he’d never make it in time. Gai is going to die miles away, and there’s nothing for him to do.
“Oh,” he breathes, inaudible except to Raidou, who gives him a worried look even as the battle around them seems to pause and hold its breath. “Oh, you... big-hearted idiot.” Genma closes his eyes and lets out a breath as sounds like great thunderclaps ring in the distance. The tremor in his voice is almost, almost nonexistent.
Maito Gai has found his opportunity to lay down his life for something, someplace, someone that he loves.
He straightens and tries to silence the shivering scream that wants to tear out of him, bloodied hand pressed to his breastbone. Gai is dying to try and save the world. He doesn’t have the time to be selfish about it-- might not even live long enough to.
Genma uses his pain to still the exhausted shaking in his hands and gives the horizon one last, long look. If Gai is going to die for this, they’re going to win. There’s nothing else to do but fight on, whether he feels like a puppet with its strings cut or now. He grits his teeth, adjusts his grip on his kunai, and steels himself again because Gai would never forgive Genma or himself if he bit it out here because he was too focused on what was going on over there.
@gatesopen /// Wet your finger, place it toward the wind Feel disaster in the air We are far too slow to outrun it now But not too far gone to care
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