ii.
Chapter Twenty: Bodies (Ghosts)
"Silence is not the absence of something, but the presence of everything."
"Stand in the ashes of a trillion dead souls and ask the ghosts if honor matters. Their silence is your answer." –Javik
It was quiet when she crawled out of her cabinet one morning. The air had a stillness to it; and when Nanami breathed it in she knew.
There was no chakra here. Her Red Clouds were all away.
She was alone. (She didn't like being alone.)
The stone beneath her feet was cold, and it made her feel unsettled as she made her way to Loud Blood and Beating Hearts open door.
The room was just as they'd left it. A necklace made of darkwood and red vine hung on the wall above Hidan's bed from a crooked kunai, the bed had covers strewn half on the mattress and half on the floor.
Nanami took a minute to tuck them back into place and smooth her little hands across it's surface. He didn't really like it when she picked up after him- "You're not our mother little bitch."
But she needed something to distract her from the empty feeling of her home. (The empty feeling inside her. Without them, she lacks purpose, she lacks a reason.)
She exhaled as she settled the pillow in its proper place, and the sound of her own breathing was jarring. Nanami placed a knee up onto of the newly made bed, and then the other, and she stretched an arm up to the necklace she'd made for him so long ago. She chewed her bottom lip, fingers hesitating just before its surface. She traced the familiar lines with her eyes.
When she touched it, it was cold. She wasn't sure if she'd been expecting something from the contact. A light maybe, or a feeling.
She just felt… well, nothing really.
Nanami wondered what it might feel like to have a purpose as solid and permanent as a god like Jashin. She thought maybe she might understand Hidan in his fanatical devotion a little better when she thought about how temporary her place was here.
(This couldn't last forever. It wouldn't.)
She retracted her hand, (a little disappointed) bringing it back to her chest and she left Loud Bloods space alone to make her way to Beating Hearts.
It was immaculate as always. She smoothed her hands over his covers too, just for something to take up the time. She straightened the stack of books she knew contained old numbers and new bounties on the table that sat at the foot of his bed.
Nanami collected the pile of papers he left there for her, and made her way back into the great stone room. She paused in the doorway and turned back for a moment, eyes sweeping over the shared bedroom. Trying to memorize it. (Memorize the people who lived here.)
She turned away, suddenly finding it difficult to breath and placed the papers on the low table of the main room. Her barefeet slid across the stone, if it weren't for the sound of her breathing in the quiet she might have confused herself with a ghost.
(She might as well be.)
She left them there, and took a turn in each room to pick things up off the floors, and tuck in sheets. She left False Pieces mess alone, the last time she'd attempted at straightening it she'd earned herself a bloody welt across her shoulder that had stung for days.
She'd remember that for the rest of her life too. (She promised. She would remember when there was no one else to do it. For all of them.)
As she moved she began to hum. First things from this world, but as time wore on she chose songs from her last.
She made breakfast with only her voice as company, she focused on cleaning the rice, and washing the few dishes someone had left in the sink. The sound of water running from the faucet was comforting.
Then she sat at the table to work on the accounts. Her scratching pen and absent humming distracting her from the biting cold. She'd have to get her blanket out from her sleeping cubby, if the chill in the air and the way it seeped into her skin from the stone was anything to go by.
When she finished with her morning task she sat back, leaning on her arms to look up at the ceiling.
She hadn't realized she was crying until the cold of the room brushed against her wet cheeks.
She laughed a little, a sad distorted wet sound- but stopped almost immediately when it startled her too badly.
"Crap." She said to no one instead.
It wasn't often that she was left alone like this, this was only her third time.
She hated it. (Too much time to think, to know.)
On the first night, she crept in the absolute dark and crawled into Beating Hearts bed.
She only got to sleep in their room when they were away, too shy to ask when they were here. Nanami was closest to Beating Hearts and Loud Blood, but they didn't share the softer kind of dynamic that she had with Raven Eyes or Burning Earth.
She thought they probably wouldn't be very receptive to that kind of thing.
But as she lay curled in his blankets, in a dark that was so complete she couldn't see her own movements, encased in the scent of clean water and old paper she thought maybe she might ask someday. (If there was time.)
On the second night she slept in Oceans bed, and shivered despite the warmth of his comforter.
His blankets smelled like brine and sea salt. She loved it- but at the same time it reminded her. It reminded her of the end of things.
On her third day, she sneezed constantly, and she carried around some tissue from the bathroom to wipe at her runny nose while wrapped in her own blanket.
It didn't help. She still felt cold. (empty)
On her fourth day, she made dinner twice because the first time she sneezed on it and it seemed like as good an excuse as any to keep busy.
Her fifth day she ran out of accounts, so instead she organized Raven Eyes book shelf by size and color- because she didn't know enough kanji to alphabetize it like she would have preferred. This led her to pulling out one of the books he had been using to teach her to write with before they'd moved on to other things and she made a token effort at studying.
It didn't last long, it was too difficult to understand without guidance, and her heart wasn't in it.
On her sixth night, she cried again.
She cried because she was cold, and miserable, and empty and she missed them so much.
(And they weren't even really gone yet.)
She cried because her bones ached and her head felt stuffy and she wished they were here to complain about her sneezing. She wished Loud Blood was here to yell at her, or Raven Eyes to give her those sharp looks when she said too much about things she shouldn't know.
She wished Oceans was here to brush his chakra past hers and remind her of the greatest love she had felt in more than one life. (She loved them all so much.)
She wished Beating Hearts and Burning Earth were here to make those small gestures to remind her she belonged somewhere. That she was wanted.
She wished for False Pieces, and his silent acceptance. His allowances that said more than any words he might have chosen.
Nanami cried, because she mourned a future she didn't know how to change. Didn't think she could change.
Nanami cried- wet, hacking, loud sobs that were messy and undignified and she filled the silence with her broken heart, and she allowed something within herself to die a little. Because she wasn't sure if when the time came she could make it through if she had to let this feeling die all at once.
(What would she do without them? What purpose would her existence serve then?)
Nanami cried her shame to no one, except maybe the cold, and the empty- but they would never tell. The silence would always keep her secrets.
On her seventh day she wandered aimlessly from room to room. The quiet pressing down on her, and all the songs she could have offered it she already had. They had been swallowed up and she was left with nothing.
Before she went to bed, she found herself sitting before the main door. Waiting. Straining for chakra signatures that weren't coming. She sat there for a long time before she even realized what she was doing.
She felt like a dog waiting for her master's return. She didn't care, because at least right now- they would return. (Someday, there would be no one to come home. No one for her to wait for.)
She sneezed again.
Nanami crawled into Loud Bloods bed that night, and was surprised to find it smelled mostly of clean linen and the shampoo he favored. She buried her face into his pillow and curled herself tight against the wall, and as she fell asleep, she hoped for herself just this one thing-
That if they had to die, that maybe she could be allowed to as well.
The Zombie Combo descended the stairs, Hidan taking the lead with a loping eagerness. Kakuzu followed behind him at a more sedate pace.
They entered the main door only to have an empty room and silence to greet them, they exchanged a look with furrowed brows.
Nanami always knew when they were coming. This had never happened before.
"Maybe the bitch is still asleep?" Hidan questioned more to himself than his partner. It was odd though… she should have been up for hours by now.
Kakuzu noted the stack of completed ledgers on the low table, and the dark and empty doorway to the bathroom as they entered the kitchen.
"She's not here." Hidan informed him from his crouched position before the open cabinet doors.
"Check the Uchiha's bed." He grunted to the man, and they separated while he went to check Deidara's. They met back in the great stone room moments later, and purple and acid green traveled to their own open bedroom door.
"You don't think…" Hidan trailed off.
"There isn't anywhere else." He told the white haired man gruffly. "Go get her I'm going to make tea." and with that they separated once again.
It was quiet for a moment, and then-
"Kakuzu!" The startled cry had him putting down the tea cup he'd just fetched on the counter with a clack.
He turned, the sound footsteps hitting stone brought Hidan, and held limply across his arms like a virgin sacrifice was the tiny form of Nanami. Hidan held her out to him with eyes that shined with that hint of madness.
Her face was flushed, her hair plastered to her face and neck with sweat, her breathing wet and ragged. Her eyes were closed, her body slumped bonelessly in the man's arms.
Her skin was a little too white, her little fingers and toes a little too blue. Kakuzu absently noted the feather in her hair was ruined.
She looked so small. Like the child she was.
Hidan was practically bouncing from foot to foot with a slightly panicked expression. He always was dramatic.
"She was in my bed." Hidan told him nonsensically.
Kakuzu frowned, and laid a hand on her forehead.
Her skin burning.
"She's ill." He told Hidan.
"Well no fucking shit. What the fuck do we do ass hole!" Kakuzu was not surprised to hear the note of concern in the other man's voice, he too had no idea what to do with illness; being immortal put a damper on that part of his and Hidan's existence.
"Lay her on the couch." Because he wasn't sure what else to do, but he was sure the cold air probably wasn't helping.
The white haired man did as he was bid without complaint, which was surprising in itself. Kakuzu retrieved the girls blankets from underneath the sink and made his way into the living room to curl them around her.
Hidan and Kakuzu shared another look.
"Now what." Hidan asked him with an uncharacteristic nervous twist of his hands into the fabric of his pants.
Kakuzu remained silent. He didn't know.
He had never tended to a sick child before.
It was then that she blinked open bleary eyes that were clouded with fever. A weak smile curled the corners of her mouth when she saw them.
She said a string of words that neither one of them understood, harsh, heavy sounding words in a strange cadence.
Hidan and Kakuzu both frowned. That hadn't sounded anything like japanese...
"Am I dreaming again?" she murmured in real words this time and Kakuzu watched as Hidan knelt on the floor at the side of the couch to pull a wet strand of hair away from her eyes.
"Stupid bitch, going and getting yourself sick what the fuck were you thinking." He huffed in annoyance that thinly veiled the concern.
She blinked slowly, and unraveled a tiny arm from her blankets to reach up and touch the man's cheek.
He let her.
"I would kill all the Nara in the world if it meant I could keep you." She whispered to him brokenly.
Hidan looked up at Kakuzu in confusion, and her hand fell away from him to hang over the side of the cushion. Her eyes slid shut lethargically before she blinked them open again rapidly and looked up at Kakuzu. Her pupils were large, swallowing the majority of her brown iris.
"It's all Zetsu's fault…" She murmured to him.
Silence reigned, and Hidan looked startled and unsure. Kakuzu felt the way his partner looked.
"She has a fever." Kakuzu explained to him and maybe a little bit to himself, and Hidan for all his bluster and idiotic choices, was not completely stupid and he gave his partner a flat, doubtful look. Because yes, she had a fever- and yet...
She had never met the strange plant man- and as far as Kakuzu and Hidan were aware no one had mentioned him in her presence.
Nanami sometimes said odd things.
Things she shouldn't know.
"We should contact someone." Hidan offered, and Kakuzu nodded in agreement. They were not the best option for this situation.
"Do it."