Ficlet; Yugito, Kakuzu, Hidan. The only thing that stays the same, is that things change.
“Sweet dreams!” Hidan is practically beaming, and he drops a kiss on her cheek that ends up on her ear as she twists to avoid him.
For Yugito there will be no sleep tonight. She is unsettled, there is no avoiding it, a restless trapped feeling, much like she had felt before long ago in her own village when she was still coming to terms with her situation. The cat is dancing with excitement though, strangely enough, rolling inside her, making it impossible to pin down. Meditation is out of the question, which bothers her. It seems like being at peace with her death is rapidly slipping out of her grasp, which leaves room for all the doubt and fear and melancholy to boil like acid inside her. All this time spent in preparation for her death should have made it less of a shock, more of a graceful acceptance of defeat. Inside she is clawing at her last shreds of dignity to not make a fruitless attempt at escape.
---
They don’t tell her anything, which frays her already strained nerves. Somehow being kept in the dark is worse than the full knowledge that she will be killed. The trap is set and just waiting to be sprung. All she is aware of is that things aren’t going quite as smoothly as the Akatsuki would like, and it has something to do with her. A desperate part of her wants to believe that her village is sending a party (finally, FINALLY) to rescue her, but the rational part of her acknowledges that they are using her as a test case, what not to do, so that Bee can survive. That thought hurts, in a deeply personal way that she would rather not feel, especially now. Like just another knife twisting into her.
The chanting begins, Yugito feels very tired, and her world narrows to a hazy image and then…nothing.
---
Someone is saying something, no yelling, but she can’t tell from what direction it is coming. Sounds like they are calling from underwater, everything is unintelligible. Arms enfold her, and her body jerks in strange spasms like every part of her has fallen asleep and the pins and needles feeling skitters over her skin. She can hear the yelling, screaming now; someone violently angry, inchoate with rage. The arms are carrying her away, for which she is somewhat grateful, to be away from the screaming. Vertigo grips her harder than the arms, and she spins sideways into unconsciousness again.
She regains consciousness, fully this time, in a dimly lit room. She has been laid upon a futon, her hair loose and cool on the pillow. She never thought she’d feel anything again, and the reality of everything is overwhelming.
“The one-tails was a two-tails once. It fought another one-tail, the cat demon, and lost.” Kakuzu’s voice startles her. He is sitting, legs folded, back utterly strait.
Yugito is very still, inside the cat stretches languidly, utterly pleased.
“The tanuki lost a tail, making it the ichibi, and the cat gained a tail, making it the niibi.”
Yugito must be missing something, a vital and important concept that will make sense from all this confusion, these little tokens of information.
“We put the ichibi where the niibi should have been, rendering the statue unusable. ” His voice is stern, his profile sharp and uncompromising.
This revelation is like a sucker-punch. They can’t use her demon. They can’t use the demon insider her, but they can still use her.
“Will they build another statue?” Her own voice sounds hollow and distant, like her ears are stuffed with cotton.
“No. Housing the demons in the statue has made it their home. Each one has insinuated itself irrevocably within the container. Removing even one of them will cause the entirety to collapse, freeing them all.” Kakuzu stands, with an air of finality; the conversation, if it can be called one, is over.
This disclosure has the air of privilege, they are giving her something in return for… Yugito knows that they intend to keep her, but to accept that position? It would have been unthinkable in the beginning. Now, it doesn’t look like she has much of a choice. Life has plans for her, and the best she can do is follow until the end.
***
A/N Random thoughts that were too good of an idea to let settle. I will most likely revise this at a later date, polish it up some, make it less choppy but I wanted to have the new year start with a new beginning of sorts.