Title: The crystalline tenderness of downfall
Characters: Hidan, Yugito, Kakuzu
Words: 422
Summary: Yugito gets injured during battle.
One
It was in some brief moment when the battle halted that she realized she was bleeding. Suddenly shoved out of the crowd, not entirely centre of it anymore.
She remembered having fought beside Hidan, having listened to his hooting, ears ringing from his laughter. Memories blurred, she feeling dizzy herself.
He turned around, eyes wide upon seeing her, cursing; strangely out of breath, horrified.
She began to feel it now, too. A long gash, right across her leg, quadriceps slashed open, smeared with red. Dark und painful. The world turned at the sight, everything placed in weird angles before it got back in place.
Then something shifted in the mass of fighting men, turned towards her, intent, reminding her that there was work to be done, jobs of steel and pungency.
Then, enveloped again, ever-moving.
Two
When Kakuzu arrived the hearts were at his side, following like faithful dogs.
She halted. The end of something that had not entirely been hunting down and not fully backing away.
Going hellwards, or at least it had seemed that way.
He ordered her to sit and as she didn't, he laid his hands on her shoulders, reducing her to submission, his weight tremendous.
Thread sneaked out from the spot where skin connected to skin, the seams thick. Something alien she tried not to recoil from, unable to hide a shiver as it grazed her skin. All of it real in ways her eyes would never get used to. Still strange, still abominable.
The pang of being pierced was sharp, then ebbing away, displaced by her soreness.
She watched him as he closed her wound, the stitches tight, her muscles tense, untrusting. Yet she didn't fight back, the sensation of something tearing at her too manifest, a promise that could be made reality all too easily.
She tumbled - later when he was done and she forced herself to stand. Her legs finally giving out, too much strain put on raw, tender flesh.
As he carried her on his back, she slung her arms around his shoulders, firmly keeping herself in place.
It was warm like that; the rising and falling that came with his pace soft. Her ruin sharp-edged, bizarrely bright.
Burying her face against him, she attempted to forget.
Three
Hidan waited for them, his scythe by his side, ready to reach for it.
His face lightened up as he spotted them, boyish, just for a moment.
Silently she thought that this was all she could ask for.