My first full-Akatsuki fic in a long while, unexpectedly finished and posted late on a Thursday night. Enjoy.

Disclaimer: We've all been over this, but I don't own Naruto.

Night Music

by LutraShinobi

Night had fallen - well, not so much fallen as gradually but steadily faded in. The last glimmers of the day's brilliance had been extinguished as a black veil dropped over them. Good and evil alike lay in wait inside one of the many folds of the darkness, ready to emerge in the morning to tempt souls and influence decisions. For now, however, the world rested.

He couldn't, though. His back was ramrod-straight, not allowing the comfort of the mattress underneath him to penetrate his body. The window was shut but the air in the room was cool, making him stiffer than he already was. His covers were pushed to the side of the bed, unused, and he was sprawled next to them, equally lifeless. His eyes were open, and their mesmerizing, multicoloured pools were fixed on an invisible flaw in the ceiling.

He asked himself a million questions and mentally crossed off every answer that was wrong. It was an endless task. He could be certain of nothing as long as this lock had no key, and this door no lock.

Finally the lack of headway became unbearable, as the elimination process repeated itself over and over in his mind. He no longer understood the questions he'd created earlier, but he badly needed a solution. Once he'd resisted the indecision and the sudden indolence that overtook him, he was at the door in less than a second. It was firmly closed, but he'd mastered the art of quiet openings a long time ago.

In a moment he was gone, and the only evidence that he'd ever been there was the crease in his sheets.

He leaned against the wall, his auburn hair rubbing against the hard, bumpy surface and creating the sound of sandpaper being scratched. It was warmer in the hallway, easier to breathe. He inhaled, and as his lungs filled, so did his ears. He stepped up to the door across from his own and stood outside it, listening for a follow-up to the irritated groan he'd heard a moment ago.

Deidara moaned loudly. He sat up, cursing his stupid bladder. Why did it have to act up just when he'd settled himself in bed? Of course it couldn't alert him to its necessities before he was snuggled under the covers. No, it had to send its warning signs now.

He flopped lethargically onto the floor, then sped up when he realized he probably wouldn't be able to hold it much longer. Stumbling into the bathroom, he flicked on the light.

Outside, their unnoticed listener drew back slightly when he heard someone give a half-grunt, half-scream of horror, followed by an enraged shout of, "TOBI! What did you do to the toilet, yeah?"

The only answering response was a snore. This was not received well, judging by the muffled thumping that sounded suspiciously like someone being heavily beaten with a pillow. "You moron, Tobi! WAKE UP and tell me where the plunger is, yeah!"

Pein shook his head. He'd had some initial doubts about the effectiveness of Tobi and Deidara's partnership, but things were turning out fine. He took a few steps to the right, pausing in front of the next door down.

Itachi was not asleep. He wasn't tired, but he would have gone to sleep anyway if not for Kisame. His shark-like partner, although doing his best to remain silent and stationary in his bed, twitched continually. Something was on his mind, and Itachi calculated that his chances of achieving undisturbed slumber with his restless companion anywhere in the vicinity were low. So he waited.

As expected, Kisame spilled his thoughts. "Itachi-san..."

Itachi said nothing. Kisame knew he was listening; he always did.

"...how long will it be until you're completely blind?"

Of all the questions Kisame might have asked, Itachi would never have predicted this one. It was much more personal than was characteristic for the aquatic shinobi, to start with. Normally, when Kisame made things "personal", he was threatening someone. His voice was odd too - it was not amused, not menacing, not snarky or full of anticipation for the chase. It held trepidation and solemn wonder.

This was something he should clarify, for the sake of their teamwork. But Itachi felt strangely reluctant as he dutifully spoke up. "If I continue to use my Mangekyou Sharingan regularly, perhaps less than a few months. If I entirely banish the technique from my repertoire, then my eyesight may not diminish further, though the damage that has been done already will never be repaired."

There was an audible silence as Kisame digested this. It was quite a long recital for Itachi, but every word was important in order to have a full comprehension of the matter, and he wasn't going to let anything slip through the cracks. Finally Kisame inquired, his tone still unusually subdued, "Will you? Stop using the technique, I mean?"

"When it is needed, I will call on my strongest abilities," Itachi replied simply. Meaning no. Meaning that he could, and possibly would, lose his vision.

Kisame propped himself up on his elbows, turning his head in Itachi's direction. He wondered how clearly the Uchiha could see him, even now. After a while, he ventured to say, "My eyesight is pretty good, you know."

"Good enough for two?" Itachi said, mildly quizzical.

Kisame nodded, then found his voice, wanting to make sure that his partner understood. "Yeah, I think it would be."

Pein slid noiselessly away from the door, surprisingly touched. Of all the matches he'd made for his Akatsuki members, he thought Itachi and Kisame were the most complementary to each other. They reinforced one another's strengths, while at the same time balancing out their individual extremes. And judging from their results, they collaborated well on missions.

Unlike a certain profane monk and his money-hungry counterpart, who were supposedly sleeping behind the next door.

Kakuzu was in the middle of a strange dream, in which he was lying in the dark, flat on his back on a hard bed, a warm wetness underneath him. It was damp and uncomfortable, and he wondered what it was, but mostly he wished he'd wake up soon.

Then it hit him. This wasn't a dream, and he knew what the wetness was.

"You freak!" he spat, shooting upwards and leaping off the soggy covers. "I thought I told you to take your stupid rituals somewhere else!" Kakuzu frantically felt his pyjamas over, searching for blood stains in the dark. His fingers touched an alarmingly large wet spot on the back of his shirt, and he ripped it off in disgust, lobbing it into the garbage can, whose location he knew by heart.

He heard movement as his partner shifted and sat up, sending up a cloud of very fine silvery dust particles. "Chill out, Mr. Spastic," Hidan said, sounding bored. "Like Jashin-sama cares about your convenience."

Kakuzu saw the glint of metal as Hidan raised his knife above the covers. He wanted to go wrench it out of his hands, but he didn't want to run the risk of treading in a pool of bacteria-infested blood. "There's blood all over my freaking bed, Hidan!" he hissed.

"How do you know you didn't just wet your pants?" Hidan asked, sniggering. Kakuzu resolved, at that moment, that he would definitely find a means of killing his partner someday.

Right now, though, he just wanted to go back to sleep. "I'm sleeping in the bathroom," he snapped. "And by the time I come out in the morning, you'd better have cleaned all this up." He tiptoed gingerly to the bathroom and slammed the door behind him.

Hidan didn't bother to wait to hear the click in the lock before he reached over, grasped Kakuzu's bedcovers, and proceeded to use them to stem the flow of blood from his multiple self-inflicted wounds. Then he leaned back into his pillow, grinning.

"Hell, whatever."

Pein wondered briefly how Hidan and Kakuzu managed to function at all; they seemed to spend most of the night and day bickering, (in Hidan's case) shamelessly annoying one another, and (in Kakuzu's case) trying to figure out how to assassinate each other. In spite of this, neither of them ever seemed to lack any of their cynical energy, and their mission success rate was very high. He had no illusions that "deep down" they cared about each other, because they obviously didn't, and he doubted that anything short of major divine intervention could force them to get along, but things worked out somehow.

The reassuring, almost affectionate rush that had entered him earlier intensified, and his step was light as he moved in front of the next door.

Zetsu understood plants better than anyone else, being a half-member of their species, and he was always very sensitive of their sentience. He found it much easier to relate to them than to humans, and whereas he would murder and plunder at one word from Leader-sama, he wouldn't step on a single withering flower.

This night was humid and unfriendly to slumber, so he was keeping his precious plants company for longer than usual. He stood in front of the wooden shelves that lined the walls of his room, watching the various potted growths that made their resting place there. There were far more than you could expect to see in any household, and they were only a fraction of the amount that flourished in his personal outdoor greenhouse.

Almost involuntarily, he began to hum quietly, a tuneless rumbling that seemed to come from the depths of the soil under the floor. The lulling non-melody rose pleasantly in pitch as his blank gaze hovered over a lovely white specimen with folding petals, and rolled downwards into a caressing growl when he moved towards the large potted man-eating plant in the corner. Its wicked jaws were bathed in moonlight and shadows, but it remained peaceful and still under the soothing influence of the song.

The plants rustled in tranquil, dreamless silence.

Humming uninterruptedly, Zetsu laid his supple body on top of the bed, fully dressed and over the covers. He was careful to face his treasured collection of vegetation, and his eyes closed of their own accord as his immobile, stagnant companions accompanied him into sleep.

The unmelodic notes of Zetsu's personalized lullaby echoed in Pein's head, strangely soothing. Try as he might, he couldn't identify any kind of tune in the song, but he could easily hear the music in it, a sound that tugged at him intellectually and physically, and perhaps above all emotionally.

He turned and paced, very softly and quietly, back down the hallway, and he reopened his own door a crack, enough to slip his thin, wiry body through. His eyes needed no light to make out the figure on the bed next to his empty one - she lay there, the slight movement of her breathing easily detected by his sharp vision. Almost automatically, his lungs contracted and lengthened, the rhythm of his inhalations slowing to match hers exactly, ensuring that there would be no slight noise out of place to disrupt her in her slumber.

Her hair was black in the darkness, a smooth inky mass pooling wildly on her pillow, her features shrouded in shadow. His gaze traced the outline of her lips, protruding outwards from her chin, down to the patch of light at the base of her neck, illuminating the faint, papery lines on her skin. Her covers were rumpled under the weight of her hand, dark fingernails resting on top of the white sheet.

Pein knew that if anyone but him had entered this room, she would have been up in a heartbeat, a kunai at the intruder's neck. But it was him, and she didn't stir. He was no intruder - not to her. Not here.

In perfect silence, he paced over to his bed and folded himself onto it. But instead of staring up at the ceiling once again, he looked to the door. It was shut, but he knew what was behind it, and if he tried he could still hear soft mumbling and the reverberating strains of a lullaby.

He closed his eyes and opened his ears to the small but perceptible noises of these wee hours, more familiar sensations to him than these scratchy blankets, than the cold air in this bedroom, than his own fatigue. He listened and drifted off into a sleep filled with dreamless music, his body still and unrestless. He would not disturb anything or anyone. This night was sacred.

fin

A/N: So it begins with Pein, so it ends with Pein. How fitting.

I haven't actually read the manga in, like, months, so I have no idea how many Akatsuki members are still alive, but they're all immortal in my mind. :)