Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

Warning: Implied child abuse and rape.

(I'm not going to write anything explicit. Let your mind take you where it wills.)

A/N: Takes place during the last Ninja War, before Raidou receives his scar. This is a backstory for the Genma and Raidou of my story Childhood, but can also be read as a stand-alone one-shot. Enjoy.

Chopsticks

Raidou first met Genma at the Konoha Rehabilitation Center. Sensei had found Raidou caught inside one of his own genjutsu, screaming and unable to break out because he didn't want to anymore, and prescribed a break. Sensei had to take the rest of the team back out, so he sent Raidou to the Center.

It was peaceful there. The steel bracelet around his wrist was inscribed with seals that dampened his chakra, so he couldn't use genjutsu anymore. In the carefully constructed peace of the Center, Raidou was finding stability again. He had been fighting in the war for four years now, and though he knew the quiet chirping of birds and measured steps of the nurses weren't real, he loved the Center.

The courtyard was where Raidou spent most of his time, assimilating experiences other than pain and screams and the scent of death. It was late summer, hot and bright and green. Raidou watched the birds flit among the bushes, mostly ignoring his fellow patients.

The peace split into a hundred jagged shards with the abrupt insertion of a scream. Nurses converged on the edge of the compound, where a struggle was disturbing the silence. Rest now impossible, Raidou stood up, and began to go back inside. Before he reached the door, the bevy of nurses hurried past him, dragging a boy between them.

His pale brown eyes were wide and panicked; he struggled with all the strength in his scrawny body. He was still screaming, swears and threats that made Raidou's cheeks burn.

"Genma-kun, please calm down. Genma-kun, you promised," the nurses tried to reason with the child. He twisted his head and bit a wrist left too close to his face. The hand released with a muffled shriek, and Genma had a hand free. Before he could attack again, the second nurse pinched a nerve bundle at the back of his neck.

Raidou watched silently as they carried the unconscious boy inside. Another nutcase. That was the disadvantage to the Center, most of the residents were truly cracked.

Raidou forgot about the boy for a week or so. Then, he found himself sitting next to the brown-eyed boy at dinner, who kept a careful space between them. He watched his seatmate surreptitiously as he ate, alert for any signs of aggression. The boy was watching him warily as well, not eating, but trying to conceal his chopsticks in the loose sleeves of his white hospital gown. "Hi," Raidou finally tried.

The boy, Genma, he remembered, flinched backwards, an arm coming up in front of his face. Raidou stared. He'd just said 'hi.' The brown eyes showed the same panic that had driven his teeth into the nurse's arm. He was about Raidou's own age, eleven or twelve years old.

Raidou kept the smile on his plastered unthreateningly on his face, and finished eating. The boy watched him intently until a nurse came to take him away.

The next time Raidou saw him, Genma had sought him out. He crept up behind the other boy, and touched his shoulder lightly. Raidou, not having heard him, spun around and nearly took Genma's head off. He pulled away as soon as he recognized the boy, and waited nervously for the crazy boy to attack.

Surprisingly, the aggression didn't bother Genma. He jumped back a pace to avoid Raidou's fist, then stood still. The summer light played across his silky hair and smooth skin, glinting off flecks of gold in his eyes. He looked like an angel. "Did they get you too?" he whispered. One of last night's chopsticks was between his lips, whittled to a sharp point. "We need to escape," he hurried on. "Before they come after us." There were splinters in his lips, but he didn't seem to notice.

Raidou stood up slowly, unnerved. "But no one's coming after us," he said slowly. "We're safe. In Konoha."

"Not safe," the boy whispered fiercely. "They'll come back. Come with me," he pleaded. Raidou shook his head, eyes wide.

The boy looked ready to protest, but then a voice floated across the yard. "Genma-kun, where did you go?" His face turned to a mask of fear, and he sprinted away from Raidou, towards the fence surrounding the compound. This time, Raidou was prepared for the screams as the nurses brought Genma back.

He asked the nurse who always tucked him in at night who Genma was. Her face clouded, and she sat down on the edge of his bed. "Genma...He's a good kid, Raidou-kun. He's a ninja, like you. He took a...bad mission. He hasn't been quite...right since then." Raidou wondered at the many pauses, as the woman searched for the right words. What could have been so bad that she couldn't tell him? He had fought in the war, and he'd seen things. He wasn't a child who needed to be protected.

When Sensei came back, finally, to collect Raidou, he still knew next to nothing about Genma. But he couldn't stop thinking about his face. So beautiful, so broken. He wondered fearfully if he would end up like that. And, drawn by some terrible curiosity, the next time his team was back in Konoha he returned to the Center to visit Genma.

In the room set up for visitors, he waited awkwardly for the boy to arrive. When he did, Genma flung himself towards Raidou. "Get me out," he whispered. "Get me out of here." Raidou tried talking about the weather, about his new genjutsu, about the birds, but Genma just fixed him with pleading eyes, and begged. Raidou left unhappy and disturbed.

He asked his sensei about Genma. The man recoiled like he'd been struck. "Shiranui Genma? I thought he killed himself."

"No," Raidou told him, more distraught than before.

"Well, he's a genin, I think. One of Etsuya's team. What do you want to know? And why?" He was stalling.

"I met him at the Center," Raidou explained. "I'm worried about him."

"You probably should leave him alone," Sensei said, carefully. "He doesn't...react well to people."

There were those same pauses again. Raidou stiffened his spine. "Please, tell me what happened," he pleaded. "He's a friend." Actually, Genma didn't even know his name. But that didn't matter.

"A friend? Well," Sensei sighed heavily. "I guess I should tell you." He sat down on a bench, and gestured for Raidou to sit down. They had been walking through one of Konoha's parks, on the way to meet the rest of the team for training. Sensei stared off into the distance as he spoke, focusing on the waving leaves above them rather than on Raidou's face. "Shiranui Genma was sent on an infiltration mission about a year and a half ago.

"Good luck, Shiranui," the jounin pastes a smile on his face (confident, you will succeed, we believe in you).

He walks into the forest, no weapons, no insignia, ten years old and scared out of his mind. He's done these before.

"They wanted him to retrieve some information from an enemy camp in Earth Country. Troop movements, plans, stuff like that.

He gets in easily (hey kid, want to have some fun?). Part of him is dying (but he's a ninja damn it).

He finds the maps when they're all sleeping and he's sticky with blood and fluids (the maps and papers and charts are worth his soul), ties them up and shoves them in a bag and starts to run.

"The Rock-nin caught him, though. They tortured him, I heard.

They catch him halfway there (but he heard them coming; he might be young but he's a ninja) and he hides the bag in a tree.

They drag him back (but they don't have the papers anymore but neither does he) and it's never been like this.

They want to know who he gave them to, where they are, how much they know. He cries and he screams and he says he's innocent (hasn't been innocent for years).

"He was able to get the documents to his team, and when the lines shifted they rescued him.

His people find the bag, because he tagged it with time-release chakra (and they had confidence in him he had done it before).

They come for him as soon as they can (but it's too late years too late), and they kill them all and carry him home.

"But it drove him over the edge, Raidou-kun. He lost his mind. He even tried to kill himself a few times.

He won't touch anyone. He screams when they get too close.

They almost lose him twice (but after the first time he's found with a knife in his gut they don't leave him alone again).

He puts a senbon in his mouth to keep them away (he's never without a weapon anymore). He doesn't talk. He won't stand next to anyone.

They whisper about him, with sidelong glances and lowered voices (everyone knows, and he hates that the most).

"They must have sent him to the center after that. I haven't heard of him in a while.

They try the white rooms when it gets bad (its always bad but it gets worse). Locked doors and padding and a chakra depressor, quiet voices and soft smiles and he screams and screams and screams (he can't get out and the door won't open pleaseopenpleaseopenpleaseopen).

White rooms and soft walls and light that's not darkness but if they turn out the lights then it is darkness and he's crying and crying and crying.

He tries to run, because that was what he was supposed to do (get the documents then get the hell out) but he can't get out (he can't getouthecan't) and they're going to be back and when they are they'll hurt him again (nonononononono) and he can't take it again (pleaseletemeoutplease).

The nurses make him promise to be good, promise to not run away, and he promises, because he'll promise them anything if it means he can get out (he'd sell them his soul if he had one left).

Raidou went back the next day, and he sprang Genma from the visitor room. He ran with the boy into Konoha, and bought him an ice cream. Because ice cream made everything better. Then the ANBU squad found them and the nurses were close behind. Genma screamed.

They didn't let Raidou in the next time he came, but Raidou wasn't a ninja for nothing. The Center guarded for escape from the inside, not infiltration attempts. He brought Genma ice cream again.

Genma smiled at him. There wasn't any ice cream there, just pain and grunts and painpainpain and a terrible smell of sweat blood decay other things that he couldn't ever forget. No ice cream. No Raidou. Genma knew his name now.

Raidou left before the nurses found him. But he was back again the next day—his team had a break from missions. He brought Genma a book.

Genma had a present for him the next time he came. "For you," he said abruptly, dropping the cloth-wrapped package on the ground, and backing quickly away. He never came closer to Raidou than four feet, well over an arm's grab away.

Raidou bent down and picked the package up carefully. The wrapping was a torn piece of white hospital gown, and Raidou's eyes found the missing piece on the hem of Genma's clothes. The gift was a chopstick, the tip sharp as a kunai. Raidou picked it up, and thanked Genma. He grinned, and sidled a step closer. "For you," he repeated, and there were splinters in his lips. "I made it."

Raidou had to return to the front, but when his team was finally sent back a month later, bloody and beaten but still sane, he tried to find Genma. He stared in shock when the boy turned up at his doorstep, grinning, a senbon between his teeth and an anxious chuunin hovering at his back—but a safe distance away. "Hey, Raidou. Want to get ice cream?"

He still slid unobtrusively away when people got too close (within five feet of him), and he his eyes never quite stopped moving. He flinched when people spoke to him, and his eyes flickered crazy if anyone tried to touch. He still carried too many weapons and whimpered when it got dark. But he was in the present, now. He was healing.

Raidou took his best friend out for ice cream.