[THREAD] Sound and Fury
Who: Hatake Kakashi, Hoshigaki Kisame
Where: Fight Club/The Arena, Abyss
When: Night
Summary: Kakashi and Kisame spectate fights!
Rating: R
Other: Lots of prose in this!
( The way to dusty death... )
Where: Fight Club/The Arena, Abyss
When: Night
Summary: Kakashi and Kisame spectate fights!
Rating: R
Other: Lots of prose in this!
( The way to dusty death... )
"Then put it out there and fill the niche." Kisame shrugged, though his tone was encouraging; it wasn't an issue he was especially passionate about, but he was willing to be supportive for his captain, especially if it made him happy. And more social, that was always a plus. Besides, why not do it, if nobody else was? Kakashi was certainly qualified for the job.
His attention was torn away from Kakashi soon enough, the smaller fighter's swift movement catching his eye. His voice melded into the cheer of the crowd easily enough, an inarticulate, bestial roar of approval that no words could do justice to. His hand wrapped around the arm of the chair, grasping it as tightly as though it were the hilt of a sword, ready to be drawn and sent swinging into the crowd; the wood creaked ominously under the pressure. He breathed deep, pulling in air spiked with alcohol and smoke, testosterone and sweat, pain and aggression, fresh blood and death that lingered coppery-sweet on his tongue and clung in his nostrils, begging to be drank in. He obliged, eyes flashing sharp and hot and deliriously fever-bright.
They gleamed even brighter than the rows of viciously sharp teeth lining his mouth, teeth--fangs?--that blurred the line between a grin and a snarl. They were a flash of the monster he had become, the inhumanity that lay buried deep within him now, the man-made freak that people now saw whenever they looked at him. The too-familiar thirst for blood thrummed through him, making his heart thunder and his vision burn red, muscles tense in anticipation of the killing he was suddenly craving. It was intoxicating, far better than anything drugs or alcohol could offer, a lust that ran deeper and more primal than even sex. The instincts had terrified him at first, before he'd gradually grown used to and even accepted them. Perhaps more terrifying though, was that he was more and more coming to not only understand, but actually embrace them.....
Nothing could compare with the thrill of the hunt, the fight, the kill. Nothing. Sex and porn be damned, he wouldn't miss them if he could have lives instead of love. Kakashi couldn't hope to hold his attention when brains were being spilled across the floor, when he wanted nothing more than to be in the ring down there and rain hell down on the fighters. Or maybe the audience, too, but at least the fighters might be a challenge..... A tough kill was much more satisfying than a victim that just rolled over and died. Maybe they could stop in a bar before they flew back into the clouds, so he could pick a fight or three on their way home.....
They said that angels lived in the sky. God's creatures of divine design, made not only to praise Him and manage the aspects of His Creation, but also to be His celestial army--they would fly to battle on His command, one wing dipped in blood and a flaming sword in hand. Was that what he had become? If a demon was an angel that had fallen into Hell, what happened when a demon was lifted into Heaven?
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But Kakashi knew there was nothing left in the world that was still sacred or holy; that salvation was only just the breath of dreams. He knew better; knew that boys were forced to take up weapons at too young an age, forced to kill grown men before they could even read. Knew too that angels had wings clipped in flight, that freedom was little more than the cage they lived within, dreaming of angels, of Heaven, of a paradise lost before it was ever found, because it never existed in the first place.
Kakashi didn't dream of things he knew didn't exist. He kept his eye on the earth below him, instead of the skies above him.
Blood streaked along the floor of the cage the fighters fought within, as one body was dragged out for the next round, bone and gristle gleaming in the bright lights of the stage. The remaining fighter paced the length of the ring. He seemed oblivious to the cheers that deigned him a crowd favorite. He seemed to know life was as fleeting as the fame accorded. That it was pointless to relish in triumph and glory when life still bled from his hands.
Kakashi hummed in a way that seemed to imply he approved. Perhaps they found another potential recruit.
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After all, you didn't have to leave the ground behind when you reached for the sky.
But regardless of Heaven and earth, regardless of how their own lives or souls were faring right now.... regardless of all that, there was still the blood. He reveled in it where the victor would not, thrummed with pleasure and instinct and anticipation all at once. He wanted that beauty for his own, to tear into it and expose it to the world and take from it what he could. It was so easy to hold life in his hands, he only had to shave the people a little, cut them open and rip them apart and make the blood go flying.... That didn't care whether it went to Heaven or earth, and it shone in the sun regardless, making beautiful scarlet patterns wherever it went, shining with what was and what could have been, marvelous raw potential and life in its purest state. The taste, the smell, the sight, the feeling....
Spilling it, your own or another's, was life and soul made manifest, the within brought without. The old superstitions of oracles were right--you could read truth in a creature's bloody entrails. Perhaps not the truth you asked about, but a truth of some sort, nonetheless.
The spike of bloodlust was not to last long, though; Kisame almost gagged at the strong, acrid scent of industrial-strength cleaners poured liberally into the arena, as the cleaning crew began mopping up the mess that had been made so the next match could proceed. Like a camera lens going out of focus--or into focus, he really wasn't sure anymore--, the world subtly shifted around him, ebbing back into normalcy once more. People were just people, not prey, and Samehada's siren song receded. He let go of the arm of his chair, giving his hand an absent shake to relieve the sting of such a tight grip; he hardly even noticed the way the wood had cracked.
He took a slow, shallow breath to ease himself back into the way things should be, then shifted a little to grin at Kakashi, though perhaps without the conviction that was normally present in the expression; he always felt a little subdued after coming out of moods like that, though he was never quite sure why. "That guy's the best I've seen here in a while; I like the looks of him." The implications lingered, unspoken. Guys like this one didn't come around so often. He was the best here, perhaps..... but he could be better. They could always be better. Maybe he only needed a helping hand to convince him to reach for the sky.
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Something to give him hope and faith in the possibility of what lay in clouds, ephemeral and amorphous with all of their intangibility. The kind of stuff dreams were made of, a sort of formless presence. But as long as the presence of hope was there, however shapeless, it was enough to give even a dead man conviction, to put self-worth into throwaway lives that had no other place in the world.
Even if that hope meant giving up your face and your name, pinning your identity down behind a mask of numbers, hope was hope was hope. And that alone was enough, for some.
Kakashi didn't run so much on hope as he did conviction. Even if he didn't always understand his place in the world or how it turned, he believed he had a role to fulfill. There was some kind of meaning to everything in the world; meaning that sometimes wasn't constant and other times unreadable, but present nonetheless in between the lines and all the spaces between them. He'd lived, survived, when so many others had died, and sometimes (always) he believed he lived for the boy who lived on in his left eye. Showing him the world, both light and dark, because as long as he lived, that boy could too, experiencing the world vicariously through him.
Everyone needed a reason to live.
He snapped his book shut with a press of his fingers, tucking it out of sight as the bell rang once more. "We'll see if he makes it to the end." And if he did, they would descend from their cloud to give him a little hope, a little something more than what he had here in the shit and the muck of life that people lived in Abyss, where everything smelled like dust and ash, and the air was filled with all the lack of faith and belief that there was more to life than this.
Whatever this was.
The fight would start all over again, the war drum would go on beating its timeless rhythm. Someone else would die (they always did) before the end of the night, and the winner would go on, fight after fight, until his time has come and the drums recede in the distance. The trophy, only a moment of fame -- a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more -- before the curtain falls with the final act, the script ripped up, the seats emptied.
It is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
[credit | William Shakespeare, Macbeth]
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