The cave was dark except for the fire, which Kakuzu had built while Hidan slumped against the rock and stared at him, unblinking, all like a ragdoll. Outside the weather was frightful: a late autumn storm, all bluster and electricity, with the bite of winter in it.

"...You're mine now," Hidan said, over the crackle of the fire and the howl of the wind. It wasn't the way he said it to a sacrifice or an opponent, not a triumphant cry. He sounded... matter-of-fact and maybe a little wondering. It was a novel thing that they both knew and he was just trying it out with his mouth.

Hidan had been loopy when Kakuzu pulled him out of his ditch and he hadn't improved over time. He'd been muttering bullshit - more bullshit, Kakuzu should say, even than usual, since being loud about pure nonsense was basically Hidan's hobby - since mid afternoon. It was nearing midnight now. There had been a lot to filter out.

This was the first time Hidan had actually seemed to be addressing Kakuzu, though.

Kakuzu looked up. There wasn't a good response for that one, except maybe a punch in the teeth. And Kakuzu had spent too much of the day stitching Hidan back together to undo all his hard work for thirty seconds' satisfaction and some bruised knuckles.

So Kakuzu looked. He ran his tongue over his teeth. He blinked and said nothing.

Hidan would be healed by morning. He wouldn't need the stitches then. Which was lucky, because Kakuzu's patience was... not endless.

Even with the firelight warm on his skin, Hidan looked pale and sick. His skin was a map of seams that ran along wounds crusted with dirt and old blood, and that was really only part of why he looked so bad. His pupils were blown wide, massive black holes in his red irises - even though he should have been struggling with this much light after months in the dark. They didn't contract in the light of the fire, or to the lightning. He was sweating enough to leave long streaks on his skin, washing right through the blood and dirt.

Kakuzu was very aware that he hadn't actually found all of the pieces of Hidan, and that could account for... kind of a lot. Human bodies were tough in terms of survival, but absurdly fragile in terms of functionality. Hidan's wasn't that different - just because Hidan could live through anything didn't mean that he would function properly through it.

So Hidan was missing some things. Organs. A couple toes. Not his brain, but probably some of the things he needed to churn out chemicals that affected his brain. Kakuzu had done his best in the rain and the mud and the howling wind. But he'd still just been a wild animal scrambling on his hands and knees, scratching body parts out of the dirt like the world's ugliest harvest.

Hidan was pale as death, with the edges of his wounds all grey and ugly, but his face was flushed across the nose and his glazed eyes were fixed upon Kakuzu.

He hadn't complained about being stitched up. He'd just stared at Kakuzu. As he did now.

"You're mine," he said again, this time with emphasis - and not as though Kakuzu might not have heard him, either. Kakuzu was not entirely sure Hidan was even talking to him.

Nevertheless, it was... mildly unsettling. Kakuzu was willing to admit that much, at least in the privacy of his own head. Hidan had never looked at him as anything but a partner, and perhaps as a recalcitrant heathen who he sort of got on with. The violence with which Kakuzu treated him was a pleasant footnote in Hidan's regard.

Now his attention was fixed on Kakuzu and it wasn't going anywhere, and his teeth flashed in his mouth - blood in the grooves, old and brown, and breath like the mouth of hell - and he said "You're mine," with increasing certainty.

Kakuzu didn't really feel the need to correct him. It was a stupid statement, Hidan was crazier than usual, and if he ever carried on trying to enforce some sense of ownership over Kakuzu... Well, that would be a mistake on Hidan's behalf.

He kept muttering to himself, and sometimes possibly to Kakuzu, slipping in and out of intonations. After a few more minutes his eyes were focused somewhere beyond Kakuzu's left ear.

"You're-"

"Shut up, Hidan." He couldn't help it. Hidan was annoying. That much hadn't changed.

"You're mine," Hidan said, louder, like receiving a response - any response, even that one - was quite enough to encourage him. "...'n god gave you to me," he slurred deliriously.

Kakuzu paused, long enough that Hidan's sudden jerk forward let him catch Kakuzu's wrist in his clumsy fingers.

They were dark as bruises at the tips, from worse things than just dirt. It had taken a long time, clearly, for Hidan's body to begin to decay - but it had begun nonetheless. It seemed not to have impacted his awareness very much.

"Shut up," Kakuzu said again, sharper. He tugged on his wrist, not gently. It came free with the scrape of calluses. Hidan's fingers were weak and uncoordinated.

"Mine," mouthed Hidan, surging forward in response to Kakuzu's withdrawal, until he could lay hands on Kakuzu again. He was too clumsy - and, frankly, too broken - to get very far if Kakuzu dodged out of the way, but then he'd also probably ram his face right into the wall of the cave, which...

Kakuzu let him thump his skull into his shoulder and ground his teeth.

"Mine," said Hidan again, ragged.

Maybe slamming his skull into the wall would be a good thing, Kakuzu contemplated clinically. A concussion might shut him the fuck up.

"Jashin-sama sent..." Hidan was fading, finally, and as he started to drift off he didn't protest - much - when Kakuzu shoved him away. He was too weak for that right now.

But it didn't actually make Kakuzu feel any better, because he... He didn't quite know exactly how he'd come to be here. He had been with Hidan by the time he'd found the cave, of course, but...

He did remember, vaguely.

He remembered a distant and dreamlike concern for his body, remembered his mouth thick with the overwhelming smell of organic decay. Sweet. Sweet and sick and metallic.

He remembered a voice, timeless, genderless, murmuring, "The death god doesn't want you, sinner," in his ear. "There will be no rest for you." A hand on his chest - in his chest. A smile, edged. "Just as well."

He remembered a face in harsh black and white, a painted mouth - or not painted at all, maybe, but still red as rust. The hands, too. Red. So red. And over that, the delicate bones painted on in blinding white.

In his chest, there was a thump. It hurt. It throbbed. It buzzed and sang along his limbs, in his bones, up into his skull, and the ragged threads that made up his innards shifted restlessly in response.

Thump.

The hand moved, and his eyes opened to a flash of lightning and the strange feeling of water striking his skin. Above him thunder growled.

Kakuzu was face down in the mud and his chest ached. He breathed in, hard, and the pain was - flat. Ordinary. He blinked.

"Run, sinner," said the voice, and then - footsteps. Splashing. "Run, and dig, and do not stop until it's done."

Kakuzu remembered - he remembered now, how he stumbled to his feet, how he breathed in and felt his chest expand with it, how his ribs creaked and his limbs tightened.

The words fell upon him like a brand, like a compulsion. He had as much chance of fighting them as he did fighting the reflex to breathe.

So Kakuzu ran.

He couldn't remember much of the run - rain, the thump of his heart beating hard and agonising and steady in his chest, the slap of his feet on the dirt.

When he came to a stop, blind to everything but the words burning in him, he began to dig, bare-handed and wild.

It made sense at the time, although Kakuzu had since been reacquainted with just how annoying Hidan was.

Outside the cave, lightning flashed. A few seconds later, thunder roared, hard on its heels. The storm was close, then.

It occurred to Kakuzu, uncomfortably, especially now that Hidan was slumped over, nearly out and no longer leering at him - well. It occured to Kakuzu that one of the pieces he never found was Hidan's heart.

He'd stitched him up even in its absence, because there was a good chance he'd grow it back, but -

He didn't actually find Hidan's heart.

And he didn't know who had filled his own chest, or with what. He didn't know what the big alien chakra in the organ beating steadily there was. It kept time like a metronome, each slow pump reliable and hard enough to feel in his skin. The blood moved in his veins, ebbed and pulsed among the ragdoll threads of his body.

"Mine," Hidan mumbled, and he'd repeated it so often now that the word was devoid of meaning, stranger and stranger on Kakuzu's ears.

Somewhere out there, carried on the howling wind, an ageless voice laughed. It wasn't quite soft enough to be imaginary - and Kakuzu wasn't prone to anxious daydreaming anyway. For the first time in a great many years, Kakuzu felt a dull, helpless fear twist his insides.

And inside his chest, his new heart beat its steady, invincible rhythm.

I love Kakuzu and Hidan, both of them, and especially when they're suffering. We can add this AU to the list of AUs I have a lot of thoughts and ideas for and which I would like to continue at some point. /deep sigh

If there was something you liked about this, and if you feel inclined towards commenting, please let me know what you enjoyed. Otherwise have a good night. :)