It burns.
As soon as he gets into the fire, the shock of the furnace-like heat all around him and the choking smoke have dissipated any traces of genjutsu Tajima had put him under.
He halfway wishes it would have held. He would not have felt the fear creep back in, the smoke racking into his lungs, burning a path of ash into his nose and mouth, irritating his eyes and blinding him, he would not have felt the pain from his broken wrist, already swollen against the bandages, pulling at them. He would not have felt the hairline fracture on his skull from the time Tajima threw him against the Nio. He would not have felt the exhaustion, the desperation.
All around him fire crackles, smoke dims his vision and burns into his lungs as he runs towards the stone Nio, searching for the seal.
He ducks as the Nio snarls and roars a katon somewhere above him, towards the Uchiha. Heat blooms above him and feels his back scorched even from a distance.
He ploughs forward, getting closer and closer to the raging guardian. There! In a crack in his thigh, the hair had wounded itself around the rugous surface. He desperately leaps and stretches his right hand towards the seal just as the Nio sees him and crashes both fists down, intent on crushing him.
His fingers grasp at the hair just as the stone fists hit the spot he had just been a moment prior, shaking the earth. He hears the skin on his hand bubble and boil from the heat, a smell of cooked meat and sizzling fat before he is thrown away, flying with pieces of burning wood and flying rocks, until he crashes against a stone lantern.
He wants to wait, to see what has happened, but he cannot waste any second, for if he does, he will die from the smoke and heat. He crawls around, tries to rip some cloth to put over his nose and mouth ( why hadn't he thought to do this before?) and only then the pain hits. His right palm is a mess of rapidly forming blisters, red and raw. When he tries moving his fingers, pain blooms white hot, going straight to his brain. He cannot muffle his scream.
He coughs, dizzy from all the smoke inhalation, trying to will his watering eyes to see.
The guardian stands still, but the danger has not passed in the slightest. The fire still rages, the smoke still swirls around him. And Tajima is outside the circle, waiting.
He crawls on his knees and arms away from the place he entered, aiming to exit in the opposite direction, trying to protect his hands as much as possible, but every jolt sends a different kind of pain from both.
He hopes Tajima would think him dead and not search for him, for with both hands useless, he has no chance.
Finally he is out, and there he stumbles on his feet and hurries towards the hanging door of the exit, hoping nobody would see him.
A black form coalesces from the shadows, eyes red and burning with wrath. He stumbles back.
The Uchiha advances on him slowly, obviously chakra exhausted. And yet, Tobirama has no chance of escaping him.
"Senju brat," Tajima growls, voice husky from the smoke. "Which death do you prefer? Will you let me watch you burn?" He asks as he steps closer, his naked sword glinting from the reddish glow, "or will you squeal like a pig while I gut you and cut you into pieces?"
Tobirama takes a step to the side just as Tajima starts running full tilt towards him. A falling log making a wave of sparks fly over with a thunderous roar blinds Tajima for a moment, makes him falter, and it is what saves Tobirama's life as he manages to avoid being impaled.
Tajima snarls and whirls to him, raising his sword. Tobirama waits, desperately watching the Uchiha for any sign of faltering, any opening to give him an advantage, a sign he can evade a second time. And then what? His brain says. He cannot evade forever.
Tajima stops and turns to look towards the entrance with a frown. Tobirama looks as well, concentrating. Beyond the noise of the fire there is a clacking noise, a skitter of something hard, metallic, on stone, coming closer and closer to them.
Tajima tenses, watching the door. Tobirama does the same, holding his breath. The clicking noises stop. The fire roars.
Then the hanging door is blown off its hinges as a spider youkai bursts in.
"Jorogumo," Tobirama whispers in shock. Of course, he cannot see the stars now, but the hour of the yokai is not yet finished. Tajima shifts next to him.
"I would love to cut your head and throw your corpse to the jorogumo," he snarls, "so I can have a present for Butsuma, but I think you will suffer more if eaten alive. And your flailing will give me more time to leave," he finishes as he sheaths his sword in one fluid movement then grabs Tobirama by the collar, lifting him up.
Tobirama grabs at his hair his clothes despite the burning pain, as he realises what Tajima intends to do. Tajima slaps him hand away, throws him in the air and Tobirama's breath is punched out of his lungs as Tajima's leg kicks him, sending him flying away into the jorogumo's arms.
He lands in front of the spider. The sharp legs rise and Tobirama cries out, using both hands to make the warding grid, the vertical and horizontal slashes completed by each hand while he screams "die, die, DIE," until his voice fails.
The jorogumo shrieks and writhes in pain and one leg slams down into his right shoulder, making Tobirama howl in agony. It feels as if his throat had been ripped out from his screams, but the jorogumo still comes after him, still is not dead, and he will be eaten alive, he has failed, he will never see his brothers, his father again.
There is a loud furious shout from behind the monster and the jorogumo bursts into blue flames and shrivels to a lifeless husk.
Through his blurry vision, Tobirama sees Ojou, face streaked with red, a red eye tattooed on her forehead.
She rushes to his side. "I told ya, this be no place for snipper-snappers!" She yells.
Tobirama coughs weakly, spent. It hurts, it burns, but now he is too exhausted to do more than lay there in pain.
Suddenly he remembers. "There is…another one," he mouths with difficulty. His voice is gone. "Shi..no…bi," he articulates.
Ojou frowns. Tajima indeed appears again like a dark wraith, a black ghost with red eyes, surrounded by smoke, ready to finish the job. And Tobirama can do nothing but watch as someone who has saved his life will be killed because of him.
Ojou turns to the Uchiha and snarls, teeth bared, looking so much like a wolf, Tobirama almost expects to hear her howl. "Don't you dare," she spits towards the Uchiha as she stands up to him.
In reply, Tajima unsheaths his sword. A wave of malevolent chakra slams into Tobirama, leaving him choked and breathless. Dimly, he sees Tajima take a wary step back.
"Get out," Ojou snarls, advancing a step, and the Uchiha has enough presence of mind to comply. Tobirama feels a pang of regret at that. He is sure that whatever fate Tajima had wished upon Tobirama, he would have fared much worse had he tried to stand up when he was so chakra depleted.
The girl turns back to Tobirama and takes him in her arms. "Never do this again," she scolds him, at odds with the seriousness of the situation. As if he had just scalded his hand with tea. "Yer not gunna be so lucky the second time."
Tobirama nods and closes his eyes. He was probably going to be safe. Ojou…not killing Ojou had been the correct decision. A life had been paid in return for a life, he hears a whisper into his mind as something presses so hard against his tenketsu he thinks he might explode from the inside.
He blacks out as girl and oni take him down the mountain.