Title: The anticyclic dynamics of clockworks
Characters: Kakuzu, Yugito, Hidan
Words: 1129
Summary: The trio is out to collect a bounty. Mainly focuses on how they interact.
One
The Ilias ends with the subsiding of rage.
She could feel it, the way the life around her trickled, seeped and then ebbed away completely, the leaden weight of the sky heavy, smothering all that is beneath its round.
The beast before her opened its maw, grinded its sharp, stark white beak. A cynical almost-sneer, faintly resembling the one of his master, familiar and strange, the thing itself caught between autonomy and dependence.
Then the creature disappeared, scrambling and swift, a vivid, furiously alive mass of black thread.
As it turned around, she followed the shadow of its form through the soft hills.
It was a curious place. The plains rolling, the mountains covered in dark red soil that nourished harsh, yellowed grass sprinkled with small blue flowers, merely flickers of beauty, fading in all that ochre eternity. She had failed to notice them as she had been separated form her partners during the skirmish.
She found them both at the side of one of those low mounds. Some gore plastered the earth here, sticky, cooling red. Not much though, not as much as it could have been.
Hidan was grinning widely, his coal black skin already beginning to bleach to its normal alabaster state while he watched the other man idly as Kakuzu let the heart monster back inside, undoing the seams, stretching himself, opening the deep caverns of his innermost being.
She could see it shift beneath his skin, clawing at him from the inside, apparently working to fit itself in the limited space between its brothers.
When he was done Kakuzu stood tall once more. He reached far down, bent towards the ground where the fallen lay and picked up his prey.
They left upon his silent command, spending their waking hours for the first time in days not rushing, not striving.
Two
It had been early, the day young, still fresh, ready to be corrupted.
They had waited, but it had been an elapsing image of peace. False. Something that could not truly be. She knew that now, but then again she knew a lot - in retrospect.
Hidan had been still, almost docile, gulping down whatever he had been drinking.
Kakuzu, equally taciturn, yet more focused, planning. He had sat over some papers, reading, sometimes moving his lips, voicelessly as if chanting under his breath. Muttering strange spells full of malediction.
Three
His movements were secure, filling yellowed paper with life, the sun burning down on them. Midday.
Everything seemed dry now, the last water long since evaporated.
The pencil drew harsh lines, blackening, all delicate detail and deep shading. The portrait of the man almost real enough to touch.
She watched him, somewhere from behind, unobtrusive, saw how somber he was surrounded by all that light, fating the man he drew oh so skilfully to death.
Four
The world blurred together. She moved fast, her sword drawn, feeling the might in her arm, some of it her own, some the nekomata's. A rush of white-hot, blue energy, filling her being, making it glow with adrenaline.
Then, behind her, diffuse against the sound of battle, some kind of impact. She stopped, looked around.
The dead seemed to have frozen, their last movements ossified, some charging, most of them fleeing, desperation in glassy eyes.
Kakuzu stood behind her. She could tell that the man at his feet might have been able to pierce her with that long, vicious-looking pike of his, not killing, but ripping at tender flesh.
Now both, man and weapon, lay unmoving, rendered useless by one mighty punch. She knew that he could do that, could destroy life swiftly and uncaring like breaking a twig.
The moment unfolded between them, understanding, feeling humiliated, scolding herself and vague, somewhere, gratefulness. Some shameful, half-admitted second before new troops arrived, before Hidan spotted their target and stormed forward, swinging his scythe, howling.
Then, suddenly, she was carried away, out of sight, forced to fight at other places. A sharp rhythm of attack and counterattack. Dull with time, unstopping and tiring.
Five
Sometimes she felt strong hands on her shoulders. Dry, warm and dark. Humming with power. She tried to memorize them, longed to burn the patterns of their calluses into her mind.
When she woke up, resurfaced, she realized whose touch she had savoured.
He was lying somewhere in the dark, not far, never far, as ravaged and tremendous as he was.
Close enough to touch, but –of course- she didn't.
Six
They were camping in the evening after everything was done.
Hidan had long since flopped down near the fire, had simply let himself drop to the floor and fell asleep almost immediately.
Kakuzu was reading, seeming calm now with the bounty collected, steady in both anger and tranquillity, nearly solemn.
She sat cross-legged, kind of sunken down, sunken into herself and pawed at the ground with her naked toes, watched how the dry ground came loose, listened to the cracking of the burning wood.
It was lulling – in a way- and silent. The sounds of nature, soft breathing and sometimes rustling paper.
She looked up to find his gaze on her, even, apparently contemplating. It made her uneasy to be scrutinised in such a way, too personal, something dangerous far too close.
"Don't you think it is strange, that Achilles was killed by a single arrow." he said and his words were deep and rumbling, stressed syllables harsh in night air, his tongue seeming to wrap around the words, giving them strange new meanings, tainting them.
"He knew it though, knew he was fated to die. Isn't that ironic? His anger was unleashed" his eyes were trained on her, sparkling as if amused "and all his ardour reflected on him. That appears to be the price of a life controlled by Gods."
"What" she snapped startled by his words, unsure what to make of them.
"He dragged Hector's body around Troy for days and yet it would show no mark for the protection of Apollo. And then"he laughed, sinister and reverberating, the sound making the air itself hum"he gave Hector back to his father." His gaze was no longer fixed on her, but on the man lying a few meters from them, sleeping.
"In the end it was all doomed to fail", he closed, reopening the book, returning to his former concentrated state.
She stared at the letters half hidden by his hands, the writing bold and penetratingly black. "Homer "she read and didn't know how to feel, sensed the cold creeping into some unknown part of her mind.
Looking in his direction once more she saw a bit of that bad-tempered cruelty in him, a spark of the same self-righteousness. She looked and looked away, ashamed, almost.