A/N: Yeah…I started off with trying something new…and then somewhere into the third paragraph my motivation just evaporated and left this dry, disjointed sawdust that I'm still trying to pass off as something since I really cannot be bothered to look at it again, and I want it off my hands.
Enjoy, if you will.
Touching His Silence
The lights are low at the Akatsuki base, as they lounge in the main room: not of the best repair, perhaps, but top-secret hideouts of criminal associations and civilian refurbishers just didn't quite mix. Deidara had moaned and complained that someone really, really needed to clear the place up, it was giving him artist's block, not to mention a serious migraine, that's how depressing and drab it was. Until, that is, Kisame turned and snapped that cut it out, Deidara, he was giving them all a migraine with his incessant nattering. And wonder of wonders, Deidara had actually shut up pretty quickly. Maybe it was something to do with the aura exuded by a snappy (literally. With all those teeth. Sharp, sharp teeth.), pissed-off Kisame.
It's one of the rare times all the Akatsuki are together between miscellaneous missions: killing this and that figure, reaping the reward, stashing away the cash, the usual. Itachi's sat stiffly in the corner, head bowed slightly and staring intently at the floor, hands clasped, unnaturally still and rigid, ink-strands falling to curtain his shadowed face, already half-obscured by the high curving collar of his cloak, which for some reason as unfathomable as the rest of him he hasn't taken off. By him, on the same two-person couch, is Kisame, tending to that strange sword of his. A pointed gap between them, but still, he's closer to Itachi than anyone else could ever be without finding a kunai ever-so-amiably placed through their neck the next moment. Interesting.
Deidara's having some petty argument or other with Sasori, Deidara's voice passionate and loud, excited, until someone turned and snarled at him to shut the heck up, and then the pitch would drop and abruptly rise again even before they'd turned back round, the latter's hissing with barely-concealed annoyance. Typical. Zetsu was being, well, Zetsu, sharing a book with himself, and the occasional spat could be heard over who was reading too fast and turn back the page, they weren't finished. Konan was talking to Kakuzu, the only non-volatile conversation, it seemed, Kakuzu leant forwards with a slight air of amusement, turning over a thin rectangle of origami paper around hands that are inadequately large and rough.
All in all, mundane. Pein leans back, mouth curling downwards slightly in distaste. A waste of time, in his opinion, and though it might seem that he was doing the same, well, he did, in fact, have better things to do than loll around, waiting for the next dispute between themselves – one-to-one taijutsu with Kisame was always an entertaining watch, for example, and with Deidara nearby it was always a safe bet.
As the Akatsuki leader, a role he by no means took lightly, he considered it part of his duty to understand the works of his subordinates, at least, if only to better strategize how to get them to work most efficiently, and try to avoid situations that would blow up half the base while he was at it. And no, 'understand' did not mean being understanding, he had no patience for that sappy mulch. If one of them came up to him in tears over a hole in a much-beloved old teddy or something like that, he would kick their ass all the same. Fortunately, they had the good sense not to. (Actually, that was insinuating that they did have treasured and love-lathered teddies tucked away somewhere. Which would be very worrying indeed.)
But on to less fantastical matters….his poise shifts, and he becomes serious, alert, the lines of his form joining and merging to form something a little more flowing, a little more sinuous, an alley cat on the prowl, eyes neither widened nor narrowed but locked firmly onto its prey.
And something stirs within him, something in keeping with the cat allegory – oh, yes, there's a wiry sort of hyper-awareness, a kind of twinge in his blood that wants the hunt as much as the product of it, the chasing down of his fated prey, one he never gets whilst on a mission, as well as the strangest feeling of claws down his back…but that's just pussyfooting around the edges. No, the demon that awoke inside him – and just when he'd thought that he'd done with all of them, too – was something much more raw, primal…much more…feral.
Oh, but he pitied Hidan.
He does not grin as he rises, like the clichéd panto villain, walking with his usual assuredness, and nothing seems out of the ordinary. True, if one looked closely into the lines that marked rims of the rinnegan, they might just discern something odd, something they couldn't place, but something off, and perhaps it would be to do with the way they were fixed unwaveringly in one place and that one place only. As it is, no-one so much as bothers to look up, not when there was nothing to see and engrossed as they were in their idling.
Hidan is fidgeting alone in the corner, now that all the others were otherwise occupied and hadn't any attention to spare for him, his triple-bladed scythe propped up at the corner of the back of the couch, easily within hand's reach. He probably wouldn't care, normally, and pester and lever himself in with all the spirit of Deidara, but then again that was only with Kakuzu, and perhaps seeing him with Konan, who has a certain degree of respect tagged to her, puts him off. Womanizer as he is – among plenty of other things: women were not the only sex so favoured with his approval, so it seems, with all that he pulls on an all-too-frequently growling, irate Kakuzu who found it very obvious that Hidan's sole aim was to yank at his chain just for the sheer heck of it – he's not so stupid to make a move on Konan with Pein anywhere in the same continent, though it's not that she can't look after herself, not at all. But for once he's actually quiet, and Pein, leaning back and surveying him critically from behind the couch, finds that he likes it.
It's a strange sentiment: Pein scours himself briefly for an explanation, but it sidesteps him and anyway he's not interested right now. He tips his head aside as he takes a moment to note – appreciate, maybe – how Hidan carries the shadows about his shoulders like black, silken cobwebs that serve to make his own paleness all the starker – no, not starker, that was the wrong word, but more luminescent, perhaps, and indeed it did seem as if he glowed, fine and silvery-white there in the dark. The effect is striking, but striking is also unsuitable – too harsh and too hard, and it makes him think of a heavy black bolt dashing downwards, and the rank blood that sputters afterwards. Though he has to admit, to a more admiring eye than his Hidan in blood would be exquisite: at times it is hot and savage and brutal, and they throw a light of danger into red eyes and lips smirking or drawn back, at others, it is cool and somehow refined, a wineglass of claret blood set beside a sword with a slightly curved, narrow blade gleaming in moonlight, and a chessboard with only the white squares visible for all the shadows.
Pein wonders whether Hidan knows of the effect he creates, whether he knows how the two, black and red, suit him so, a white ivory queen dipped in deep crimson, set alone against a dark window, illuminated only by a sliver of the full moon. Most probably not; Hidan gives little thought to beauty (seeing him here, temporarily still and quiet, Pein could almost be convinced otherwise), and as for attractiveness, he seems to be quite content playing the angler and baiting in the promiscuous with a flashy display, then sending them out again in body bags. It's ironical, really, that for all his preening and Kakuzu-flicking and far-from-virtuous-modesty, he actually manages to woefully under-price himself.
With a half-grim amusement that Hidan still hadn't noticed his standing in such close proximity to him, less than a foot away (and only half amused, because if he couldn't even sense that he would be nothing short of screwed if he ever happened to be tailed by enemy-nin), he reaches out and grips the scythe by his fingertips, taking pains to remain as silent as possible. He curls his fingers when he realizes how heavy the weapon really is, so that it rolls towards his palm, evening out the pressure onto somewhere that could take it. Then, deciding that further pause was of no use, he manoeuvres it as deftly as he can – sure Hidan wouldn't die if he accidently left half his head hanging off, but that would ruin it all – until it is horizontal, parallel to the floor, and the junction of the L of the lowermost blade and the handle is fitted snugly around Hidan's neck. All in less than a second and a half.
Hidan freezes, and Pein takes advantage of that split-second wild freewheeling of the mind to draw a hand over the mouth that was no doubt geared to spill a string of curses and demands – and hm, could 'what the fuck' possibly be in the running?, lean down and hiss something into his ear, mouth between the pale, pale skin and even paler tips of hair – he doesn't really know what he says, but it doesn't matter, it's inconsequential – and pull the blade tighter against the neck. Which was more difficult than formerly precedented: he had to move it at a forty-five degree angle away from himself – meaning that at some point he was going to run out of leeway – and that thing was quite hefty. He wasn't lacking in physical strength, but the idea of keeping hold on it wasn't quite that attractive a prospect, either.
He contemplates just letting it drop and slide along the floor until it came to a stop, hooked round Hidan's neck. Much more likely in it, though, the cutting razor of its blade would meet resisting skin, and there would be the fraction of a moment where the water's surface would give just a little under six insect-legs, and only then would it slice in, steadily sinking to bring forth the endless flow of rich crimson, and eight litres or no eight litres, immortality would keep replenishing it for him all the while.
The thought would be a lot more alluring if he hadn't seen just that oh so many times before, though admittedly it had been Jashin bringing the blade to and through his follower all those other times, and really that was an injustice…after all, why one god over another? Especially since apparently, Jashin's appreciation only went so far as to grant Hidan with the means to impale himself into the ground again and again with no foreseeable end. How very stupid, actually, once one stopped to look at it. Forget the excitement of being alive and knowing of his own invincibility for a while. That fact did nothing for him. But even so the idea was becoming lacklustre, and Pein so wanted to stay entertained. He lowered it to the floor, and pushed it away with his foot.
It's surprising, no, beyond surprising that he hasn't moved, but then he realises that sometime between his approach and now, chakra threads have slunk over the back of the sofa like creepers, and wrapped themselves nice and comfy round Hidan, and looking at the effect they produce, why, you'd think they were snakes, asps with a mouthful of teeth that bled venom, and to move would be to aggravate them, and then where would that lovely pale skin be, if not covered in a multitude of angry bites in an instant?
Upon closer inspection, it was a bit too late to desire unpunctured skin. The threads are not so much coiled around him as inside him, and every few inches apart they can be seen glowing, sharp and electrical, just under the surface, a convalescence of energy that forcibly separated skin from the muscle underneath, and in some places there were raised lines, like raised veins struggling for blood. As if there really were snakes there, depositing their poison here and there. Pein, cocking his head and tightening his hand against the mouth that was throwing all its effort into, as it felt, biting his palm, noted that stretched out, Hidan's skin actually looked transparent. What was happening in those mysteriously dark patches further in, though, he could only speculate. Did the intruding chakra stitch his insides together, loop in and out of thrashing organs? Or did they run along with the bloodstream, and sear every artery, every vein and every capillary?
A particularly loud shout from somewhere towards the centre of the room jerks him from the contemplation he's created for himself, and loses his concentration – even though he hadn't realised he'd been keeping it up in the first place. In the next instant, he feels a jagged flare of pain against his palm, and at first he thinks that Hidan had taken advantage of the lapse and sank his teeth into it at last, but no: when he wrenches his hand towards himself, the last tell-tale glimmers of chakra are only just fading into a circle of burnt flesh.
He barely has time to register this, however, as Hidan is up as soon as he's realised he can move again, twisting round to face him with all the fury of the very Hell he'd never know imprinted onto his features.
Fuck you. Fuck you. FUCK YOU.
Predictably enough. And he's shaking as he says it, of course he is, immortality doesn't mean immunity and especially not against pain. That would be laughable.
FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU–
– But there's no sound, not as pale lips move and pale fingers grip the back of the couch he can't see and he's hunched over and shaking and even then he's glaring and screaming
FUCK YOU.
How irritating, Pein muses, turning on his heel, cloak whirling behind him, to seek out the silence of his own office, a silence that no-one without a death sentence would dare to break with their careless, mood-ruining shouting. He'd quite lost the feeling for it, so much the worse, but then again, the Akatsuki leader could only act so much out of sorts.
And anyway, he had to note down this very interesting new form of torture. Quick, clean, bloodless, efficient. The only problem was that generally speaking, torture tended to lean towards forcing someone to talk, and not really the opposite, but…
…he'd shut Hidan up with a single touch.
That, he thought, with a glance round the still squabbling Deidara and Sasori, the still reading Zetsu, Kisame poking aimlessly at Itachi, Konan and Kakuzu still with their heads together, was some understanding.