ii.
Chapter Ten: I'll Kill You (If That's What You Want)
"We are all searching for someone whose demons play well with ours."
Nanami pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. It had been steadily getting colder in the great stone room. She supposed that meant it was getting colder outside.
She roughly estimated she'd been here for a little under a year. At least three seasons. The first change had brought in the sharp pungent scent of pollen flowers when the Red Clouds would come home, (and Burning Earth's constant sneezing) and then there had been a stint where Loud Blood did nothing but complain of the heat, and after that they had been tracking in colorful leaves for a while.
She shrugged the blanket higher up on her shoulders and laid her head down on the table. Beating Hearts sat next to her, and she was lulled by his scratching pen and her sense of his heavy waterfall and thrumming chakra.
Raven Eyes had been gone for a while. Even False Pieces and Burning Earth had come and gone at least twice in his single absence.
She was… worried.
She kept this to herself. (The hotel confrontation was sometime after the Naruto bridge wasn't it?)
She rolled her head so that her other cheek was pressed into the wood of the table, and she watched Loud Blood say his morning prayers. He kept it muted, she thought it was probably because every time he got noisy about it Beating Hearts would lop his head off and close it in the bathroom.
And then there had been that one time that he'd tried to cajole her into joining him, "I'll teach you how" He'd said, aiming for her enjoyment in learning. She had almost accepted, feeling curious.
She wasn't sure who it had been but she suspected more than one Red Cloud had helped to severe all those pieces.
There was a pause in the pen scratching and she rolled back over to find acid green eyes flicking between her and Loud Blood. She couldn't see his face as it was covered with his mask today, but she got the impression he was frowning.
He made a strange grunting noise as he considered her.
"Would you like to learn?" He gestured at the accounts.
"Hah! Yea fucking right. She doesn't want to learn your stupid fucking numbers Kakuzu." Hidan spat interrupting her response.
They ignored him.
"Nanami likes numbers." She told him. His brow rose.
"You don't know any fucking numbers, cunt." Hidan interrupted again, only to once more be completely ignored.
"Nanami knows her numbers." She told Beating Hearts, secretly (but not really, because she was an open book) looking forward to the opportunity to be involved with something he enjoyed doing.
He slid a blank piece towards her, and wrote a set of simple numbers down the side with quick confident strokes of his pen.
"Show me." He put the pen down, and she picked it up. It was still warm.
"You would like Nanami to add them?" she clarified, already adding the total up in her head. They were very simple numbers, it wasn't even a challenge.
He grunted.
She wrote the total down beneath the last number.
"What the fuck." Loud Blood said suddenly hovering over her shoulder. She looked up at him with a teasing smile.
"Would Loud Blood like to learn his numbers too?"
He twitched.
She made a leaping dodge backwards just as his scythe impaled the cushion she'd been sitting on, coming within milimeters of Kakuzu's arm.
"Hidan." Beating Hearts warned.
"Get back here you little slut i'm going to split you like a little baby fucking cow!"
Nanami cackled and dodged another high sweep of the three pronged blade. She knew if he really meant to kill her she'd be dead, she kind of got the feeling he enjoyed her teasing sometimes.
She didn't blame him, comparatively, everyone else here was a stiff.
"Hidan." Beating Heart's voice was starting to hit that deep, thrumming pitch right before something excessively violent happened.
Nanami clicked her teeth together as his next swipe split the skin of her arm in a long vertical downward stroke. She hissed at him, resisting the impulse to grab the wound with her free hand.
Oh, Okay. He wanted to play like that today then.
She dropped down onto her hands, blood pooling onto the floor, chakra thrumming into her palms and the balls of her feet.
She leapt- the floor cracking beneath the force of her chakra laden limbs, just as Kakuzu pulled the scythe from his hands.
She hit his chest with enough force to send them both crashing into the floor. His head made contact with a sick crunching sound.
The breath left his lungs, his bright violet eyes shone with an eagerness she was accustomed to seeing when she managed to pull one over on him. Her palm met the underside of his chin in a fierce smacking motion, she pressed up, baring his throat to her. Blood poured from her arm in rivulets across his chin and mouth. (But he never tasted her blood. He never went so far as to begin the ritual, that wasn't the point of his fights with her- she assumed.) His hands came up around her, one set of fingers digging into her wound splitting it open further, tearing jagged edges into the muscle, the other squeezing her throat enough to cut off her air.
It didn't slow her down, (she was used to his violence by now, she gave him what he wanted just like she tried to do for all the other Red Clouds.) her teeth were sinking into his jugular, and blood was pouring into her mouth and Loud Blood was laughing madly which quickly turned into a wet hacking joyful cries. (He liked this too much, but she was willing to play.) His grip on her loosened.
She tore in like a beast that hadn't eaten in days, laughing with him around chunks of wet hot flesh.
She was aware that the entrance door had clicked open, just as Beating Hearts was grasping at the back of her clothing.
"Enough." He told her, (and he always sounded slightly pleased when she managed to kill Hidan.)
She unlocked her jaw and let go as he pulled her off of the white haired man and into the air like a petulant puppy. She let a large chunk of neck fall from her mouth, dribbling blood and saliva after it.
Loud Blood wasn't laughing anymore, his eyes were glassy. He'd be fine in another thirty minutes, and then he'd do that weird thing when he would come find her and graze his fingertips over the new injury he'd given her, with that unnerving smile on his face that was oddly soft like he was proud of her.
(She'd been here too long, maybe.)
There was blood everywhere though, she was soaked in it. It was all over the floor and the rug.
It dripped down her chin to pitter patter into the pool beneath her.
Beating Hearts tossed her towards the bathroom door. She landed awkwardly on her shoulder, her injured arm not wanting to hold her weight and she rolled into the wall hard enough to see stars for a moment.
"Clean up." He grunted at her and she shakily stood; ready to follow instructions, when a voice made her hesitate.
"What the fuck have you been teaching her Itachi?" Her eyes widened and she swung around to see Oceans standing at the open door with Raven Eyes. (Where was his chakra? Why couldn't she feel it? How did he do that?)
A grin split his face showing rows of jagged, brutal looking teeth. (she loved it) His silver eyes drifted from Hidan's corpse over to her, and he looked humored, entertained. Was he pleased? A shiver of delight coursed down her spine even as the throbbing in her arm bordered on excruciatingly painful.
There was a resigned sigh from his partner, but he didn't dignify Ocean's accusation with a response.
Beating Hearts stepped between them, breaking her attention away and he pointed at the bathroom door.
"Go." She did. Beating Hearts didn't like repeating himself.