I woke up to the most excruciating pain in my muscles. I opened my eyes, yet could see nothing. Come on, Tobirama, focus! See! See!

I couldn't, and started to panic.

"Tobes?"

"Izuna!! Are you all right? Where are you?"

I started crawling blindly, noticing I was on a cold concrete floor. I realised it was bad; had we been in a good situation, they would've put us on something soft.

"Calm down, love", he said. He sounded weak, as if he was crying. Shit, this IS bad. "I couldn't see at first either. It wears off. Give it five."

He was right. Whatever it was they had injected us with must've rendered us temporarily blind because soon( my vision came crawling back. But when I could see, I wished I couldn't.

Izuna was bound hands and feet to the floor with loose chains, but enough so so that he couldn't move around freely. I was free. Izuna looked fine, thank God, other than he'd been crying.

The person who did not look fine, however, was the one in the chair in front of us. He was also bound hands and feet, much more harshly than Izuna. He had scars from deep cuts and burns all over, and his brown hair was incredibly tousled and dirty. He looked like he hadn't eaten for days, and his lips were dry and cracked, his eyes sunken in. He didn't even have the energy to look up.

"Henry..."

"Oh, God!" Izuna wailed and started crying. "Henry, I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry we got you into this."

"Hehh..." Henry's laugh was all but a breath. "Don't be selfish, Izuna. I won't feel sorry for you", he mocked softly, but it was friendly. "You couldn't have known. I'm sorry I ignored you. I knew I was being followed by government men. I knew they were onto me after what I'd done. That they knew. I couldn't risk it. I was trying to protect you." With great effort, he lifted his head up and made eye contact with me. "Both of you."

I looked back from one to the other, my mind spinning in circles.

"I wish I could hold you", Izuna whispered. "Tobirama, please! Go to him!"

Izuna's plea woke me up, and I went to Henry, put my fingers underneath his chin and tilted it up.

"Hey, you", he said, and I felt a pang of longing for him.

"Hi", I breathed. Tears started dripping from my face to his.

"It's raining from your face."

I hugged him close. So close. He dug his nose into the space between my shoulder and my neck and breathed me in. "I'm sorry", I said. "I'm sorry they tortured you. Are you in pain?"

"I wish I could die", Henry said, and suddenly, just like that, the joking jargon was gone, and I started to realise the magnitude of what he'd been through. "I think I have at least two broken ribs. My ankles are broken, too. I don't think I'll ever run again."

"Oh, don't say that!" Izuna wailed.

Suddenly, a bright light lit up the room. That's when I noticed the mirror at the end of the room, that obviously wasn't a mirror at all, but a window where sick men could watch us. There was a voice in the speakers.

"Tobirama Senju." The voice was metallic, robotic, almost, and it was impossible to discern whether it was a man or a woman who spoke. But it had enough range that I suspected the voice wasn't computerised but an actual person who spoke, whose voice got distorted.

"What the fuck do you want?!" I asked angrily.

"Come to the small door in the wall."

"You can go fuck yourself",  I said.

Suddenly, through a wall came a machine gun held by a robotic arm. It was pointed with a laser beam directly at Henry's forehead.

"We're not playing games. You just do as we say. And we said, come to the small door."

I went immediately. It was tiny, barely the size of my hand, and I opened it. Theree was the sharpest knife I had ever seen.

"Take it."

I did.

"Now, back off, whore."

I did.

"Now. Tell us. What exactly does the beta camp know?"

" The hell with you", I said. The gun pointed at Henry again.

"Oh, let them", Henry said tiredly. "I'm done. Please. It's not worth it. Not for the rebellion.

"Henry, no!!" Izuna screamed.

Another gun came out then, this time pointing at Izuna. Izuna wailed. Oh, shit. I knew that Izuna, from the bottom of his heart, did not want to die. And he was needed for the rebellion. If he was killed here, and Henry was killed here, all of the real-life  evidence that people were different before the alphas, betas and omegas would disappear.

I took a deep breath.

"We know everything."

"Tobirama, no!" Izuna said. "They're gonna kill us anyway!"

"They're gonna find out how much we know anyway", I said.

"Smart man", the voice said.

"Now. Izuna is both an alpha, a beta and an omega. But you're just an alpha. How come you've bonded?"

I explained my mothers research to them.

"Thank you. Now. Kill Henry using that knife. Or we will kill Izuna."

Wait, what?

No.

No no no no no no no.

"Tobirama, that's easy", Henry said. "It's not even a choice."

Of course it wasn't. I loved Izuna. I loved Henry, too, but not in the same way as the man I'd bonded with. I loved Izuna lightyears more.

But there was the difference of actually killing someone, having someones blood on my hands, and having someone killed. Damn it. They knew. They knew exactly what situation they put me in. If it had been "kill Izuna or we'll kill Henry", they knew I would've let them take Henry. But now...

I looked longingly at the blade.

"If you kill yourself, we will kill both of them. All three of you will die. If you kill Henry or refuse to so we kill Izuna, two of you get your lives spared to go to your pathetic beta rebellion."

"Why?!" Izuna screamed. "Why are you asking him this?!"

"Shut your mouth, filthy whore", the voice said calmly.

"How dare you-" I screamed, but didn't get further until the machine gun went off.

I hid my face behind my arms, it became so bright. When it was done, the machine gun had done a perfect circle around Izuna. Izuna was a trembling mess, and then, he broke down crying.

"Izuna..." I made to go to him, but the vice interrupted me.

"Back off! Make your choice, now!" I backed off so I stood closer to Henry. I was trembling. I felt myself close to a panic attack. Not now not now not now! Think, Goddamn it! THINK!"

Suddenly, the mirror became a display, and it started counting down from one minute.

"We haven't got all day."

The seconds ticked away endlessly slowly, yet so fast it was as if they were gone in a heartbeat. I heard Henry trying to talk sense into me. I heard Izuna wail a response. But I couldn't make out the words.

"Tobirama..."

"Henry, no!"

"Tobirama."

My head was throbbing.

Why are they doing this?

The answer was crystal clear. It's homophobia. This is what homophobia does.

I held the knife facing front, facing Henry, holding it tight.

I can't do this. I can't do this.

There was a scream. A heaviness over my hands. Suddenly, a body slumped over me.

I did not understand.

In front of me was Henry. But his ankles are broken... He can't stand...

He'd thrown himself off the chair and run into the knife. The entire blade penetrated his abdomen and came out on the other side.

Straight through his abdominal aorta.

He leaned his forehead on my shoulder. He was heavy. So. Heavy.

"Tobirama..." he whispered. "I love you. I love you and Izuna, both. I wish I got more time..."

He backed away, and the knife, that had been plugging the holes it created in his aorta, no longer prevented the blood from pouring out into his insides, filling his abdomen where it did no use.

It didn't even take five seconds before he slumped down. He started cramping, his face distorted, before finally, he was released from life and died.

I dropped the knife.

I landed on all four.

Izuna screamed his name.

His scream created a hole in my aorta, just like the knife I'd held had done for Henry.

Izuna ran against the chains, trying to get to Henry, sputtering nonsense.

The machine gun pointed at Izuna.

"You didn't kill Henry. He killed himself", the voice said.

I threw myself in front of the machine gun.

And it went off.

I had expected pain, but there was none. Izuna... Izuna, please live. Please survive this.

"Tobirama... Tobirama, snap out of it!

A woman's voice.

I looked up.

A soldier, her face covered in a helmet, put a hand on my shoulder.

Izuna stood behind me, clinging to my back.

"You're alive. You're alive. You're alive." He murmured the same words, over and over.

I took a look around the room, taking the situation in. Only seconds had passed, and there was a huge hole on one wall. All around us were bullet holes from machine guns; the machine gun going off hadn't been the one on the robotic arm directed at Izuna and, thereby, me as I put myself in front of him, but had belonged to betas who now raided the place.

The mirrored window was shattered, and inside, I saw dead bodies. A beta-soldier pulled out a person, a man, who was the one with headphones and a mic. You...

I went to him, started beating him up, screaming and sputtering in gibberish.

I hated this man.

I hated him infinitely more than I'd ever hated my father.

"Tobirama, stop! Stop! He's already dead!" The female soldier was trying to pull me off, but I was too strong. I kept killing him, over and over.

It wasn't until I felt Izuna's small arms around me that I came back to my senses.

"Tobirama... Please... I can't see you like this." I slumped down and was close to a breakdown when the female soldier bent down to me.

"No! No, you will do no such thing!" she screamed, noticing I was giving up. "Get your ass up! We need to move! Now!!"

"His body..." My voice was trembling. "His body." I ran to it and picked it up, shutting my brain off, not sensing anything, refusing the feeling of his dead body against my alive one.

"Chief! They're coming!"

With eight perfect shots from her gun, the woman freed both Izuna and Henry from their chains. She lifted Izuna, who was exhausted, and I carried Henry, and together, we ran to the hole, out to the grounds. I don't know how, but my feet carried me to a waiting helicopter.

"I hate helicopters..."

The sensation of his body came to me.

So limp.

Still warm.

"Oh, and Tobirama..."

Don't cry, don't cry, don't cry. Run NOW. Break down LATER.

"What's a helicopter?"

The woman in the helmet put Izuna down, and I put Henry next to him, letting them rest together.

Izuna only temporarily.

And Henry forever.