Despot [collection]
Title: Despot
Characters: Hidan, Yugito, Kakuzu
Words: 1051
Summary: The trio visits cloud.
Author's Note: Imagine how Kakuzu might react to food coated with leaf gold. I most certainly don't dare to ponder that.
What gripped her first as she reentered Cloud was the feeling of utter wrongness. Wrong to be greeted with pomp and glory, wrong to be at the same time only allowed through one of the back gates. They didn’t know how to handle them, she soon realized, torn between their sense of morale and some grudging acknowledgement of the rising strength that was Akatsuki. So they put her and her partners in a good part of the town, a place from where the mountains were clearly visible and the ever building up clouds that gave the village its name. At the same time the flat was grimy. No actual dirt, but that kind of feeling that indicated that dust settled swiftly and permanently here, got stuck in all the fugues. Something she doubted she would be able to scrub away even if she tried.
She wondered what machinations had put her in this place, had made her return to her old home so Kakuzu as their organization’s negotiator could bargain over some matter.
She knew the people here, or at least she used to for all faces that turned towards her now where hostile. So she slinked through the streets, lurked wherever she had been told to stand guard, making herself as small as she possibly could, not sure if she should be surprised that she was allowed to wander that freely or if she should be glad since eyes followed her restlessly, telling her that it was she who was tainted.
“They want you back.” Hidan slurred in her ear one night. “But not because of the sweet memories, no, because of what you can do.” And the worst, so some part of her comprehended, was that he said those things for the sole reason to make her uncomfortable, not realizing how true they in fact were.
“Nothing has changed.” he told her; nuzzling his face against the side of her neck, so she could feel his hot, hot breath while she made a conscious effort to lie as still as possible. “Nothing. So after all you aren’t really better off with those guys than you are with us.”
Money is capability.
They showed off their wealth he soon realized, served him tea he sniffed at before drinking, sat him on thick cushions and surrounded him by servants dressed in silk. A consideration that appeared to be in combination with the state their accommodation was in purely designed to show them their place.
He had seen it countless times, that archaic and probably most primitive game of power and as the elders entered, settled around him like they were gathered to hold trial instead of to talk, he was vaguely amused by the sight.
Yugito stood behind him, presumably as some caricature of a honor guard, but at the same time aware that this was his way to demonstrate what he was cable of, something that was, she had to admit, way more effective than making the darker man wait for hours or handing him food that was coated with something that looked suspiciously like gold.
Yet it seemed pitiful how she had been reduced to this. To having to wait idly while others decided over something that might as well be her fate.
She looked at Hidan standing at the other end of the room, watched how he shifted, unused to not being allowed to move.
He winked, grinning viciously over the heads of those whose ward she had once been. Shaken she chose to fix her gaze on the counsel instead.
She had talked to one of those men earlier today. “You were loyal to us” he had told her. “Look what has become of you now.”
“I am loyal.” she had answered with her eyes cast down, not arguing. And then, because she was no longer the child that man probably remembered… “The only thing I deplore is that it is not within human nature to remain completely alone.”
Capability is freedom.
Money was something that had no worth whatsoever until people believed that it did. So Kakuzu has payed and sold many things, remembered many currencies. The balance of value and prize that was best un-balanced for only then there was gain.
He was willing to offer certain things. Goods, but more importantly leadership. Things almost like protection and small, greedily measured bits of his freedom. He hoarded this, his inner vaults filled with possibilities, so very real might that was in fact capability.
They let him lead them, nearly willingly. Investment as one might call it. Something in which they gave up something of their own to possibly gain something else.
He stepped back sometimes, knowing that all territory given up could be reclaimed just as easily. The freedom he granted them not a rate of return, but in its nature more like a credit. Hidan was different, the very way he fought with teeth and claws over every inch of land, trying to preserve everything that was given.
But the reason why the younger man - and Yugito in fact, too- always submitted, why Kakuzu could do what he did, was that he was unbound to them, was free, and led for that very reason a completely useless existence.
The truth was that he had been before the villages and their petty business and should he be gone before them, it would be inconsequential. So he sat in some great hall with its painted mirrors and golden ornaments and listened to the village elders wanting money, wanting peace, wanting the girl.
When he was finally expected to issue a statement, he raised, bowed just a notch not deep enough and declined.
Freedom is might.
“So we didn’t achieve anything, right?” Hidan looked his partner in the eyes, his voice dangerously low. “I trailed behind you all week like some cursed lap dog, boring myself like way to death and not a blasted thing came off it?”
His curse reverberated harsh in the night air. “And what now, old man? What now?”
As they left the unlit room, that crumbling shell, she saw the promise of arbitrary cruelty in her leader’s eyes and sensed how something high and cold showered her, bloomed pathetically in the pit of her stomach. A feeling that was half resignation and half dread.
“Please” she thought. “Let us forever be as shackled as we need to be.”
Characters: Hidan, Yugito, Kakuzu
Words: 1051
Summary: The trio visits cloud.
Author's Note: Imagine how Kakuzu might react to food coated with leaf gold. I most certainly don't dare to ponder that.
What gripped her first as she reentered Cloud was the feeling of utter wrongness. Wrong to be greeted with pomp and glory, wrong to be at the same time only allowed through one of the back gates. They didn’t know how to handle them, she soon realized, torn between their sense of morale and some grudging acknowledgement of the rising strength that was Akatsuki. So they put her and her partners in a good part of the town, a place from where the mountains were clearly visible and the ever building up clouds that gave the village its name. At the same time the flat was grimy. No actual dirt, but that kind of feeling that indicated that dust settled swiftly and permanently here, got stuck in all the fugues. Something she doubted she would be able to scrub away even if she tried.
She wondered what machinations had put her in this place, had made her return to her old home so Kakuzu as their organization’s negotiator could bargain over some matter.
She knew the people here, or at least she used to for all faces that turned towards her now where hostile. So she slinked through the streets, lurked wherever she had been told to stand guard, making herself as small as she possibly could, not sure if she should be surprised that she was allowed to wander that freely or if she should be glad since eyes followed her restlessly, telling her that it was she who was tainted.
“They want you back.” Hidan slurred in her ear one night. “But not because of the sweet memories, no, because of what you can do.” And the worst, so some part of her comprehended, was that he said those things for the sole reason to make her uncomfortable, not realizing how true they in fact were.
“Nothing has changed.” he told her; nuzzling his face against the side of her neck, so she could feel his hot, hot breath while she made a conscious effort to lie as still as possible. “Nothing. So after all you aren’t really better off with those guys than you are with us.”
Money is capability.
They showed off their wealth he soon realized, served him tea he sniffed at before drinking, sat him on thick cushions and surrounded him by servants dressed in silk. A consideration that appeared to be in combination with the state their accommodation was in purely designed to show them their place.
He had seen it countless times, that archaic and probably most primitive game of power and as the elders entered, settled around him like they were gathered to hold trial instead of to talk, he was vaguely amused by the sight.
Yugito stood behind him, presumably as some caricature of a honor guard, but at the same time aware that this was his way to demonstrate what he was cable of, something that was, she had to admit, way more effective than making the darker man wait for hours or handing him food that was coated with something that looked suspiciously like gold.
Yet it seemed pitiful how she had been reduced to this. To having to wait idly while others decided over something that might as well be her fate.
She looked at Hidan standing at the other end of the room, watched how he shifted, unused to not being allowed to move.
He winked, grinning viciously over the heads of those whose ward she had once been. Shaken she chose to fix her gaze on the counsel instead.
She had talked to one of those men earlier today. “You were loyal to us” he had told her. “Look what has become of you now.”
“I am loyal.” she had answered with her eyes cast down, not arguing. And then, because she was no longer the child that man probably remembered… “The only thing I deplore is that it is not within human nature to remain completely alone.”
Capability is freedom.
Money was something that had no worth whatsoever until people believed that it did. So Kakuzu has payed and sold many things, remembered many currencies. The balance of value and prize that was best un-balanced for only then there was gain.
He was willing to offer certain things. Goods, but more importantly leadership. Things almost like protection and small, greedily measured bits of his freedom. He hoarded this, his inner vaults filled with possibilities, so very real might that was in fact capability.
They let him lead them, nearly willingly. Investment as one might call it. Something in which they gave up something of their own to possibly gain something else.
He stepped back sometimes, knowing that all territory given up could be reclaimed just as easily. The freedom he granted them not a rate of return, but in its nature more like a credit. Hidan was different, the very way he fought with teeth and claws over every inch of land, trying to preserve everything that was given.
But the reason why the younger man - and Yugito in fact, too- always submitted, why Kakuzu could do what he did, was that he was unbound to them, was free, and led for that very reason a completely useless existence.
The truth was that he had been before the villages and their petty business and should he be gone before them, it would be inconsequential. So he sat in some great hall with its painted mirrors and golden ornaments and listened to the village elders wanting money, wanting peace, wanting the girl.
When he was finally expected to issue a statement, he raised, bowed just a notch not deep enough and declined.
Freedom is might.
“So we didn’t achieve anything, right?” Hidan looked his partner in the eyes, his voice dangerously low. “I trailed behind you all week like some cursed lap dog, boring myself like way to death and not a blasted thing came off it?”
His curse reverberated harsh in the night air. “And what now, old man? What now?”
As they left the unlit room, that crumbling shell, she saw the promise of arbitrary cruelty in her leader’s eyes and sensed how something high and cold showered her, bloomed pathetically in the pit of her stomach. A feeling that was half resignation and half dread.
“Please” she thought. “Let us forever be as shackled as we need to be.”