[log] Hanabi & Pein
WHO: Pein & his new Akatsuki Member Target, Hyuuga Hanabi
WHAT: Pein finds her practicing in the Kendo club's area and recruits her to the Akatsuki. Only with less words and more confusion.
WHEN: December the 29th.
WHERE: ... Stated above
WARNINGS: FUCKIN LINE BREAKS. References to torture. Piercings. Confusion. Anger. 12 year old girls with swords.
(The clock strikes-)
Is a slave.
(Is a master.)
Is a child amidst a field of growing adults. (Hanabi is a lot of things.) Was a lot of things. (But she isn't-) Violent will never be the word. (Her cousin always has it coming. Neji Hyuuga is spoiled in all of the ways she is spoiled, in all of the ways they have always unconditionally hated one another.) Like fire. (Purple flame. One can't spell the word Violent without Violet. And Slaughter does not exist without Laughter. Not now and not ever.) Words are just words, really. (Is a dancer.)
Never a dancer.
Never pretty.
(Because she is only twelve. Will be thirteen soon. And what then? Will her punches become less delicate and more intensive? Will the-) She swings her sword, and the air is cut. (She is not cut.) The air is broken, penetrated with it's sharpness, and you can hear such a noise with all too much clarity. (Because it is her. She is.) And she rips the blade out of the wooden practice pole that the kendo club usually use to whack around after school with no grace. (Hanabi is not a part of such things. She considered joining, so after school, adorned in a too-thick-for-August dress and looking all too much like an Victorian aristocrat, she watched. It was comprised of mostly boys, and with no aim, no style did they wave the wooden swords in each other's directions like children. Hanabi left within five minutes.)
And so she comes now, at the same time every day, with a real sword, and leaves marks into their beaten wood, deep cuts, and soon enough she will cut it clean through in its entirety, and the mark will have been made in its most permanent of ways. Hanabi likes to finalize things.
(Strikes ten.)
In the morning.
(It's cold.
Her dress hangs to her knees.)
And Pein hangs, hovers, listless, motionless, in the blade's reflection. He is bathed in shadow, in solemnity, and it is evident he has been watching her with his onion-layer eyes for quite some time - it is evident by the way he is so fully absorbed by the movement of her body, by the graceful arcs of her. He studies her appreciatively, plainly, without hiding himself and without seeming to mind if she notices. (The first test is that of-) Perception as perception will be. Pein's own body is silhouetted by the light of the dojo, which is faulty. It is evident that his eyes have been on her for quite some time.
Which is strange since
he was not standing there a moment ago.
(She had not sensed his presence at all. Which was
exceedingly strange.)
In a way, presumably, that Neji is not.
He stands and there is a soft language to it, an ancient one that neither of them can entirely understand but only one of them appreciates for being something other than simple tongues. He stands and there is a soft and steady flow to his lack of casualty. (Lack of-) His piercings catch the light but subtly. It's easy to wonder if the people that know him best either forget or make a point of consciously remembering that they are there in an organized, aristic pattern that dapples his nose and lips like sunlight. (Sunspots. Blackened love, blackened God. And so it is that Pein lives without ever really understanding or appreciating human emotion. And by the same attribute is he drawn.) But Neji was not the first.
Neji
is never
the first.
(Not once.)
Gently spoken words.
"It's as I thought."
And he says
nothing more.
She stares into her sword.
Into him.
(Do unto others
as you would have them
do unto
yourself.
Hanabi is an odd person, has studied multiple languages in great detail and curiosity, and after mastering the concepts of the four most dominant world religions she found she has no faith. She has no faith, no particular morals, and not much of anything, upon realization and concentration in the subject, and she is perfectly content with such a development. Hanabi is the kind of person that is wide open for manipulation, if such a thing were to cross her by, because of her complete and utter faithlessness. She has no life to leave behind because in her own eyes, Hanabi has no life.
It's a strangely comfortable existence.)
And slowly turns around.
(To look at him.
He is nothing like her at the level of sight. He is much taller and she is short and undeveloped, the body of a child and the mind of a blank journal. Everything is potential, but there are no words. No thoughts. Hanabi is a slate, blank in all of her glory, blank like her eyes and the fact that she's a cruel little girl who has a particularly good hand for fighting. Hiashi has taught her well. Because instead of teaching her not to talk to strangers, he taught her where to punch and kick and cut so she can defend herself. So she can win the fights that Hiashi bets on her to win, so that she can provide a little entertainment at the Hyuuga dinner parties. Her childhood was boring.
Nothing more.)
And now she is alone.
(With him.)
Staring.
(Blankly.)
"Unlikely."
But Hanabi has only always been alone.
(Neji by choice.
Hiashi by sad fate.
Hinata by her own fool shyness.)
As Hyuuga are destined to be.
As Pein was until-
(My liege.)
To assess what others will think, to assess what they have never thought before and what it means, what it says about them and about what they are. (Never who. It is a rare individual Pein associates with the word "who".) Because it is Pein who understands the true severity of what it is to be a deity, what it is to be the pinnacle of humanity without meaning to be. It is not something one becomes. Rather, it is the entirety of one's own countenance. It is Pein's-
(blood.
Face.
Cold.
Slick.)
Everywhere.
It is only unlikely because it is impossible that Hanabi recognizes him for anything that he might be. He was wearing
a mask on Halloween
after all
and only Tayuya and those who might recognize his voice understood what lay underneath. Konan (Kasumi, but he has not called her that for a long time, inside his head, and he has been calling her for near a week - at the speed Pein thinks, with the amount of thought that passes through his head and mouth and eyes so suddenly, so easily, so constantly, it is inevitable that the nickname itself has become her identity, to him. As her blue hair is her identity, to her. Blue. A magnificent color. But T. S. Eliot wrote of a violet hour, not a blue one. Just as Pein writes of Red. Eternal red. The new moon. The new dawn. Akatsuki. Revolution.) It is is impossible for him to think that she has truly understood him. That she ever will.
(But it is Pein's goal
that she understand him.
To some extent,
at least.)
He does not step forward or backward.
The unspoken question.
(Dead
birds-)
Do you know who I am? Why I have come for you?
But she does not. And so it is
not
truly worth
asking. (Such a question.) There are broken pinwheels, splinters of wood in the light. Broken bones in the light. (Did Pein break them? Does he remember?) And there is a soft, uplifted moment where he feels his lungs inhale, inflate with breath and watches her do the same. Breath that is inevitable as the end. Likeness that is inevitable as the truth of dissimilarity.
You are nothing (like me).
And yet she is exactly
what he needs.
Pein knows this.
(Pein knows-)
My liege.
Hanabi stares. (Doesn't know what to say. Doesn't feel like saying anything at all, and that is the very, very least of it. Doesn't know this person for the life of her, and so she doesn't care. Doesn't need to care. Hanabi eats, sleeps, and breathes a lackthereof. And Pein is-) Not a name she knows. (Just an English word that means-) Not a name she should ever know if she had any kind of morality, but lucky for Pein (Neither of them believe in luck.) that the absence of those things is evident. (Absence of-)
Her stare is monotonous.
And abruptly-
"Go away."
-does she speak.
(She wants to be alone.)
And she turns back to the wooden pole, raising the sword in her hands, and bringing it down with a hard and loud connection of force and accuracy behind regularly sharpened metal. (The wood isn't broken.) - And she rips the sword out of its wake with her underdeveloped muscles, twirling it around her wrist to bring back into her grasp with a heavy and intensive blow. (It says nothing. It is neither a threat nor an invitation of any kind. Hanabi is practicing. Pein is-)
Someone she doesn't know.
(If she were lucky-)
But she's not
(-believes in nothing.)
And Pein does not believe in fate.
In the same way Hanabi does not believe in fate.
To every actions, there is always, will always be
an equal and opposite reaction.
(Perfect. Whole.)
Neji believes in fate, because Neji is constantly fighting against it.
Hanabi is simply fighting.
(Cold blood.
"BROTHER. BROTHER STOP.")
Pein's diet is not the same as Zetsu's.
But he likes blood more than he should.
(Likes violence as if it were a woman. As if it were a body to-)
Tayuya's vulgarity is one of the many things he adores about her.
But there is no way for Pein to really understand the meaning of the words.
As he understands all words in a linear,
mathematical sense. (Poetry as arithmetic.
The Prophet as the Saint.)
"Do you know where 'away' is?"
The first of many trick questions.
(It begins.)
Hanabi raises her sword.
(But does not turn around.
Will not turn around.
Not for Pein and not for Neji and most certainly not for-) But Hinata didn't show up, and it angered Hanabi in so many ways it was rediculous. (Because she hates Hinata. Because she hates a lot of people for a lot of reasons that make so little sense to her that it drives her insane. Hanabi's life revolves around the simple gift of just making sense. And so when things go astray, Hanabi becomes angry. And when that happens, it is mostly people like Neji that recieve the brunt of it.)
She is quiet for a moment.
Before she speaks.
"When it is said to Go Away, there is always a destination in mind."
Clearly.
(But her voice is young.)
"But the point of the statement is for the other person to not know. And even if they do, no one is at a loss."
"Is that the point?"
And the way he says it is so aloof, so scholarly. As if he is a teacher, as if he is something ascended. Ascention. (There is more than one thing that Pein is obsessed with but it would never seem that way if you studied him the way most people do. It is evident that he is obsessed with her but never has it been quite so evident as to-
"Why the hell are you following me?"
Blank stare. Long piercings that extend to the very bridge of his nose. He almost expected her to punch him in the face. And she almost did. To this day, there are still times when he wonders why she refrained. There are still times when he wonders if she wonders why she refrained. There are so many things - so many songs - to sing in the dark, and how many has Pein truly heard? If he really recounts and regails himself he could probably name around twenty of the thousands upon thousands of ballads that have been strung through his pierced ears, have been slipped carefully like letters through a slot into his pierced head.) Pein has no comprehension or understanding of the word
LOVE
and so it is that he relies on obsession instead. Relies on Tayuya. (Instead. Lover, sinner, revolution, death. Death as rebirth. Pein knows what the Phoenix would say to this. Knows what the Pharaoh said before him. So it goes.) There are too many goddesses of destruction for women, as they are, to go unheeded - for the same reason Tayuya hates all women, Pein has an almost doggedly loyal respect for them simply for being and behaving as they do. He is no real fan of human beings, this fact in itself is indisputable, but he understands that God has taken the form of a human woman in this realm, and beneath her is his place.
Her voice had been cutting, like a knife into his skin.
He'd lavished in it.
"What do you want you little fag?")
He watches the shadows and how they move with an
antique
mystery to him. (A Detective's real-)
Watson.
(El-e-men-tary!)
"You've forgotten my presence."
And that is a grave mistake.
(Hyuuga-san.)
Hanabi turns around completely at his statement.
(Out of confusion, perhaps?
Out of irritation.)
Blade in her hand, her right hand, held in such a way that if she ran towards him at the speed of which her small legs can carry her, she might be able to scratch him if she goes for an unexpected sort of area, but she has full confidence in herself that she could do much more than that. Pein is a danger before her, could be her life ending abruptly before her, so he chose it to be, but Hanabi does not see that because she has always been sheltered and does not know how Oshima operates. (Does not know who Tayuya is. Will learn eventually, and at first be unimpressed, until she watches Tayuya fight, and then she will understand. But it takes seeing to believe with Hanabi, and always has.)
"I have not."
Her hair is long. (So much longer than her sister's.) And it hangs mostly in her face, the style she has always worn it in, because it's either that or a ponytail. The polar opposites. Hanabi has trained herself to be able to see through all of her hair when Hiashi was training her, and so it does not and will never again bother her. To be slightly apprehended at all times is less a good idea and more a great idea, because to have setbacks is to become even more powerful once they are taken away.
If Hanabi needs to, she always has a ribbon in her dress pockets.
But she has never worn it.
"I'm speaking to you now."
(Have you forgotten?
And she never believes that she will.)
"And so you have my full attention."
(Not like you deserve it.)
But there is no way she could know that.
(Not really.)
To a certain extent, procreation is deeply involved in such things. And yet in another way it is desperately not. There is no such thing as "deserve" in matters of life or in matters of death; people sometimes understand the latter, but rarely ever do they fully understand the former. You do not earn what you have. You do not work to achieve things. You achieve them by the simple fact of achieving them, and to every extent are you undeserving.
Pein has made
such a speech before.
(And his brother had begged for mercy.)
And learned quickly.
If the cloud will bear you their-
(-nanimo aru ka na.)
Individuality is nothing.
Because all individuals are the same when they are dead.
(And so Tayuya-dono is different.
Because Tayuya-dono will never die.
He will see to it.
And his faith will never be lost.)
Not
ever.
(And so he and Itachi are complete opposites. He and-)
"Hyuuga-san."
His face is slate. Pierced slate.
(Piercing in its entirety. But people avoid him instead of truly facing it.
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. Psalm 37:1
And so is death.
So it goes.)
But he says nothing more.
(Completion.
A startled gasp, shudder, and Tayuya's vulgarity is what-
"My liege.")
Nothing more.
(If Pein's face is a slate and Hanabi's entirety is a slate, then Tayuya cannot wait to meet them both. The wielder of all the chalk there ever was, and Tayuya will never stop writing.
Not ever.)
But in reality-
(-does not exist. Clock is striking again and again and again, and Hanabi is not watching it. It is far away. Too far for her to hear or see - much less touch. That clock on her wall. Because she doesn't and has never cared much about what time it is. Hanabi is-) far too mature for her age. (Far too much like her cousins. Like Neji. Like Itachi. But Hanabi does not know many of her Uchiha cousins yet, not yet. But she will.) Sooner or later. (Sooner comes even more quickly than usually anticipated.)
Her eyes are hard.
(Her blade is sharp.
Would sound amazing cutting her hair right now.)
CUTTING!
(her skin.
His skin-
will not reach,
but eventually
will.)
If he molds her correctly.
(When he molds her correctly.)
"Yes?"
(Voice like stone.)
He nods, countenance soft. Deceptively-
"Yes."
Soft.
His eyes and piercings catch the light, throw it up,
throw it back,
as if there was none. (As if there is everything.
To be feared.
To be gained.)
And THERE (is.)
His hair is a deep carotine and that in itself is deceptive. As Pein is deceptive. (Always.) Laughter. (Loud. RAUCOUS.) There is nothing and everything to the two of them, a predatory manner in the way he watches her. In the way his eyes touch over the soft contours of her body. (Of Kasumi's body. But never of-)
Tayuya is a storm.
A perfect
storm.
And so it is that Pein is here instead of there. (In some holy books, the name of
GOD IS CAPITALIZED
(GOD IS IN THE TV!)
but never are the names of everyone else within the books - and to their detriment, perhaps to life's detriment, there are others within such books - understated to empower the overstatement of what is holy. Never. Except in Pein. Except in the Manifesto. And it is within that Manifesto that Pein himself is
understated
so that he might never doubt the power She holds over him.
Over all of them.
Amen.)
"Do you understand?"
(She can't possibly.
And he knows this.
Which is
why
he
asks it.)
Hanabi stares.
"No."
It's short.
(Like most things she she says.)
like most things she is.
(Hanabi is-)
vile.
(like Neji. Like Tayuya.
But Hanabi could never and will never be compared to God. Hanabi is a blind, blank slate of a servant, and Tayuya, Tayuya is God. There is nothing that compares to her, no one that can, not Deidara-san or Sasori-san or Itachi-san. Not anyone. Hanabi will never compare because she will never have to compare. Because it is unspoken. Because she is unspoken. Hanabi is as Hanabi does- as she ever will and will not be. As is her headache and her desire to be alone and how wonderfully illegal it is for have a real sword on a school ground. Of how wonderfully illegal everything associating the Akatsuki is.
Hanabi will not join the ANBU because she is not made for it.
Not sane enough for it.
Too easy to sway.
(By Pein.)
-sama.
(-sensei?)
She doesn't care.
(Pein.)
"Not particularly."
"You do."
He reaches up to take a card that's been tucked behind his ear - two cards as it were, subtle in nature, great and powerful in meaning - and takes them carefully away as he would a flower (for Konan does wear flowers in her hair, does she not?) and holds them in the air afront him a short while.
He flicks them with one finger
(apart)
and they shoot away from him with a tsk of disdain. (His rough fingernails on their glossy backs.)
It will happen again different circumstances.
Two Tarot cards:
THE DEVIL and JUSTICE.
Perfect and inflexible. (As Pein himself might be described.)
"Pick them up."
-is not a request.
"And tell me what they mean."
They land at her feet.
(And so she picks them up and stares at the images-) as if she could see through them. As if her eyesight was even greater than it already is. The Uchihas are completely in opposites to the Hyuugas in that their eyesight is failing, while the Hyuuga's has never quite been any better. That is how it is. (-stares at them for a while. Tensely. Because she unknowingly expects something from them that she will probably never receive. It is a silly kind of hesitation. It always is.)
"..."
(It's a long pause, not because she cares of his opinion of her (-yet), but because-)
"The end of the world."
She stares at it.
"No." He shakes his head, watching her all the while, brown-red-orange eyes aglow (but not with fire - this one must understand. As if there is nothing about Pein to understand except that, to fire, he is entirely unyielding. He has never been touched about it, nor has it stroked his face in the way it has stroked Tayuya's. Has stroked her insides.) There is no difficulty in his voice. No tonal change. (As there is no tonal change to his skin. Pein stays out of the sun.) Pein is a better boy than Tobi has ever been. Will ever be. (Because Tobi is dead. And Pein is not. Neither is Itachi.
But that
is an entirely different story.) A different study. The way Pein studies Hanabi - the way Sasori studies everything. He is quite serious (quite deranged, and they are alike in this way, except in Pein you can see it immediately; with Sasori your eyes must be trained, or your chest must be gaping and open in front of you. There is no other way to see it with Sasori. With Pein, all you have to do is meet his eyes. But that is, of course, much harder than it sounds.) Long black hair, pale eyes, pale ivory skin. In the same way Pein first longed to cut Itachi does he-
(He had run a screwdriver through the Uchiha's hand upon first meeting him, because Tayuya had ordered it done. They had sat very still and watched one another the entire time, and Pein had punched the metal through witha rough, uncultured finesse, straight through the tiny strip of flesh and skin that hung between the bones of the pointer and middle fingers on his left hand. And he had stared straight into the hateful bones of Itachi's blinded eyes and the Uchiha had not flinched.
Not
once.
Not even when Tayuya told him to put a screw all the way through it and into the wood.
He hadn't budged.
And Pein had been satisfied.
Afterwards, Sasori had carefully sterilized the wound and Tayuya had admired Pein's handiwork on their table of choice, her face painted with a sick glee. There had been no scars, which Pein thought was a pity. Pein has a great and obsessive love of scars and scar tissue. And he had said quietly-)
-long to cut
Hanabi.
"That is incorrect."
And only today will he forgive her.
"You will come here tomorrow."
It is not a question.
He takes the safety pin from his right ear.
Steps much
much
closer to her.
(Taking his time. She does not move. And he is reminded
of that time.
And the lower muscles of his stomach jump
as he wishes) wishes (had a screwdriver. And that table.)
Oh-
He reaches, takes the side of her face with his fingers,
and almost-gently
tilts
her
head
away from him. He undoes the pin with his teeth.
"And the answer you give me will be the correct one."
He does not say the if.
(The
"if you do not I will cause you pain, such as my name might infer;
do you understand the English word?") She might. She might not. That is another day's lesson.
"Until then."
He drives the pin through the fleshy lobe of her ear and gluts in the feeling.
(Spectacular.)
"You will keep this."
And this time
he does not ask if she understands.
And this time
he does not have to tell her to address him correctly.
(Do what I say.)
Hanabi's eyes are not wide.
(They should be.)
They do not wince with the burning pain of the slow piercing.
(She will go to the jewelry store and get a ring for it.)
They do not flicker with an expression.
(From the moment he approached her, he knew she was going to hurt her.)
"... If it must be so."
And so it must be.
Pein smiles to himself.
(and it is cruel.)
"Amen."
WHAT: Pein finds her practicing in the Kendo club's area and recruits her to the Akatsuki. Only with less words and more confusion.
WHEN: December the 29th.
WHERE: ... Stated above
WARNINGS: FUCKIN LINE BREAKS. References to torture. Piercings. Confusion. Anger. 12 year old girls with swords.
(The clock strikes-)
Is a slave.
(Is a master.)
Is a child amidst a field of growing adults. (Hanabi is a lot of things.) Was a lot of things. (But she isn't-) Violent will never be the word. (Her cousin always has it coming. Neji Hyuuga is spoiled in all of the ways she is spoiled, in all of the ways they have always unconditionally hated one another.) Like fire. (Purple flame. One can't spell the word Violent without Violet. And Slaughter does not exist without Laughter. Not now and not ever.) Words are just words, really. (Is a dancer.)
Never a dancer.
Never pretty.
(Because she is only twelve. Will be thirteen soon. And what then? Will her punches become less delicate and more intensive? Will the-) She swings her sword, and the air is cut. (She is not cut.) The air is broken, penetrated with it's sharpness, and you can hear such a noise with all too much clarity. (Because it is her. She is.) And she rips the blade out of the wooden practice pole that the kendo club usually use to whack around after school with no grace. (Hanabi is not a part of such things. She considered joining, so after school, adorned in a too-thick-for-August dress and looking all too much like an Victorian aristocrat, she watched. It was comprised of mostly boys, and with no aim, no style did they wave the wooden swords in each other's directions like children. Hanabi left within five minutes.)
And so she comes now, at the same time every day, with a real sword, and leaves marks into their beaten wood, deep cuts, and soon enough she will cut it clean through in its entirety, and the mark will have been made in its most permanent of ways. Hanabi likes to finalize things.
(Strikes ten.)
In the morning.
(It's cold.
Her dress hangs to her knees.)
And Pein hangs, hovers, listless, motionless, in the blade's reflection. He is bathed in shadow, in solemnity, and it is evident he has been watching her with his onion-layer eyes for quite some time - it is evident by the way he is so fully absorbed by the movement of her body, by the graceful arcs of her. He studies her appreciatively, plainly, without hiding himself and without seeming to mind if she notices. (The first test is that of-) Perception as perception will be. Pein's own body is silhouetted by the light of the dojo, which is faulty. It is evident that his eyes have been on her for quite some time.
Which is strange since
he was not standing there a moment ago.
(She had not sensed his presence at all. Which was
exceedingly strange.)
In a way, presumably, that Neji is not.
He stands and there is a soft language to it, an ancient one that neither of them can entirely understand but only one of them appreciates for being something other than simple tongues. He stands and there is a soft and steady flow to his lack of casualty. (Lack of-) His piercings catch the light but subtly. It's easy to wonder if the people that know him best either forget or make a point of consciously remembering that they are there in an organized, aristic pattern that dapples his nose and lips like sunlight. (Sunspots. Blackened love, blackened God. And so it is that Pein lives without ever really understanding or appreciating human emotion. And by the same attribute is he drawn.) But Neji was not the first.
Neji
is never
the first.
(Not once.)
Gently spoken words.
"It's as I thought."
And he says
nothing more.
She stares into her sword.
Into him.
(Do unto others
as you would have them
do unto
yourself.
Hanabi is an odd person, has studied multiple languages in great detail and curiosity, and after mastering the concepts of the four most dominant world religions she found she has no faith. She has no faith, no particular morals, and not much of anything, upon realization and concentration in the subject, and she is perfectly content with such a development. Hanabi is the kind of person that is wide open for manipulation, if such a thing were to cross her by, because of her complete and utter faithlessness. She has no life to leave behind because in her own eyes, Hanabi has no life.
It's a strangely comfortable existence.)
And slowly turns around.
(To look at him.
He is nothing like her at the level of sight. He is much taller and she is short and undeveloped, the body of a child and the mind of a blank journal. Everything is potential, but there are no words. No thoughts. Hanabi is a slate, blank in all of her glory, blank like her eyes and the fact that she's a cruel little girl who has a particularly good hand for fighting. Hiashi has taught her well. Because instead of teaching her not to talk to strangers, he taught her where to punch and kick and cut so she can defend herself. So she can win the fights that Hiashi bets on her to win, so that she can provide a little entertainment at the Hyuuga dinner parties. Her childhood was boring.
Nothing more.)
And now she is alone.
(With him.)
Staring.
(Blankly.)
"Unlikely."
But Hanabi has only always been alone.
(Neji by choice.
Hiashi by sad fate.
Hinata by her own fool shyness.)
As Hyuuga are destined to be.
As Pein was until-
(My liege.)
To assess what others will think, to assess what they have never thought before and what it means, what it says about them and about what they are. (Never who. It is a rare individual Pein associates with the word "who".) Because it is Pein who understands the true severity of what it is to be a deity, what it is to be the pinnacle of humanity without meaning to be. It is not something one becomes. Rather, it is the entirety of one's own countenance. It is Pein's-
(blood.
Face.
Cold.
Slick.)
Everywhere.
It is only unlikely because it is impossible that Hanabi recognizes him for anything that he might be. He was wearing
a mask on Halloween
after all
and only Tayuya and those who might recognize his voice understood what lay underneath. Konan (Kasumi, but he has not called her that for a long time, inside his head, and he has been calling her for near a week - at the speed Pein thinks, with the amount of thought that passes through his head and mouth and eyes so suddenly, so easily, so constantly, it is inevitable that the nickname itself has become her identity, to him. As her blue hair is her identity, to her. Blue. A magnificent color. But T. S. Eliot wrote of a violet hour, not a blue one. Just as Pein writes of Red. Eternal red. The new moon. The new dawn. Akatsuki. Revolution.) It is is impossible for him to think that she has truly understood him. That she ever will.
(But it is Pein's goal
that she understand him.
To some extent,
at least.)
He does not step forward or backward.
The unspoken question.
(Dead
birds-)
Do you know who I am? Why I have come for you?
But she does not. And so it is
not
truly worth
asking. (Such a question.) There are broken pinwheels, splinters of wood in the light. Broken bones in the light. (Did Pein break them? Does he remember?) And there is a soft, uplifted moment where he feels his lungs inhale, inflate with breath and watches her do the same. Breath that is inevitable as the end. Likeness that is inevitable as the truth of dissimilarity.
You are nothing (like me).
And yet she is exactly
what he needs.
Pein knows this.
(Pein knows-)
My liege.
Hanabi stares. (Doesn't know what to say. Doesn't feel like saying anything at all, and that is the very, very least of it. Doesn't know this person for the life of her, and so she doesn't care. Doesn't need to care. Hanabi eats, sleeps, and breathes a lackthereof. And Pein is-) Not a name she knows. (Just an English word that means-) Not a name she should ever know if she had any kind of morality, but lucky for Pein (Neither of them believe in luck.) that the absence of those things is evident. (Absence of-)
Her stare is monotonous.
And abruptly-
"Go away."
-does she speak.
(She wants to be alone.)
And she turns back to the wooden pole, raising the sword in her hands, and bringing it down with a hard and loud connection of force and accuracy behind regularly sharpened metal. (The wood isn't broken.) - And she rips the sword out of its wake with her underdeveloped muscles, twirling it around her wrist to bring back into her grasp with a heavy and intensive blow. (It says nothing. It is neither a threat nor an invitation of any kind. Hanabi is practicing. Pein is-)
Someone she doesn't know.
(If she were lucky-)
But she's not
(-believes in nothing.)
And Pein does not believe in fate.
In the same way Hanabi does not believe in fate.
To every actions, there is always, will always be
an equal and opposite reaction.
(Perfect. Whole.)
Neji believes in fate, because Neji is constantly fighting against it.
Hanabi is simply fighting.
(Cold blood.
"BROTHER. BROTHER STOP.")
Pein's diet is not the same as Zetsu's.
But he likes blood more than he should.
(Likes violence as if it were a woman. As if it were a body to-)
Tayuya's vulgarity is one of the many things he adores about her.
But there is no way for Pein to really understand the meaning of the words.
As he understands all words in a linear,
mathematical sense. (Poetry as arithmetic.
The Prophet as the Saint.)
"Do you know where 'away' is?"
The first of many trick questions.
(It begins.)
Hanabi raises her sword.
(But does not turn around.
Will not turn around.
Not for Pein and not for Neji and most certainly not for-) But Hinata didn't show up, and it angered Hanabi in so many ways it was rediculous. (Because she hates Hinata. Because she hates a lot of people for a lot of reasons that make so little sense to her that it drives her insane. Hanabi's life revolves around the simple gift of just making sense. And so when things go astray, Hanabi becomes angry. And when that happens, it is mostly people like Neji that recieve the brunt of it.)
She is quiet for a moment.
Before she speaks.
"When it is said to Go Away, there is always a destination in mind."
Clearly.
(But her voice is young.)
"But the point of the statement is for the other person to not know. And even if they do, no one is at a loss."
"Is that the point?"
And the way he says it is so aloof, so scholarly. As if he is a teacher, as if he is something ascended. Ascention. (There is more than one thing that Pein is obsessed with but it would never seem that way if you studied him the way most people do. It is evident that he is obsessed with her but never has it been quite so evident as to-
"Why the hell are you following me?"
Blank stare. Long piercings that extend to the very bridge of his nose. He almost expected her to punch him in the face. And she almost did. To this day, there are still times when he wonders why she refrained. There are still times when he wonders if she wonders why she refrained. There are so many things - so many songs - to sing in the dark, and how many has Pein truly heard? If he really recounts and regails himself he could probably name around twenty of the thousands upon thousands of ballads that have been strung through his pierced ears, have been slipped carefully like letters through a slot into his pierced head.) Pein has no comprehension or understanding of the word
LOVE
and so it is that he relies on obsession instead. Relies on Tayuya. (Instead. Lover, sinner, revolution, death. Death as rebirth. Pein knows what the Phoenix would say to this. Knows what the Pharaoh said before him. So it goes.) There are too many goddesses of destruction for women, as they are, to go unheeded - for the same reason Tayuya hates all women, Pein has an almost doggedly loyal respect for them simply for being and behaving as they do. He is no real fan of human beings, this fact in itself is indisputable, but he understands that God has taken the form of a human woman in this realm, and beneath her is his place.
Her voice had been cutting, like a knife into his skin.
He'd lavished in it.
"What do you want you little fag?")
He watches the shadows and how they move with an
antique
mystery to him. (A Detective's real-)
Watson.
(El-e-men-tary!)
"You've forgotten my presence."
And that is a grave mistake.
(Hyuuga-san.)
Hanabi turns around completely at his statement.
(Out of confusion, perhaps?
Out of irritation.)
Blade in her hand, her right hand, held in such a way that if she ran towards him at the speed of which her small legs can carry her, she might be able to scratch him if she goes for an unexpected sort of area, but she has full confidence in herself that she could do much more than that. Pein is a danger before her, could be her life ending abruptly before her, so he chose it to be, but Hanabi does not see that because she has always been sheltered and does not know how Oshima operates. (Does not know who Tayuya is. Will learn eventually, and at first be unimpressed, until she watches Tayuya fight, and then she will understand. But it takes seeing to believe with Hanabi, and always has.)
"I have not."
Her hair is long. (So much longer than her sister's.) And it hangs mostly in her face, the style she has always worn it in, because it's either that or a ponytail. The polar opposites. Hanabi has trained herself to be able to see through all of her hair when Hiashi was training her, and so it does not and will never again bother her. To be slightly apprehended at all times is less a good idea and more a great idea, because to have setbacks is to become even more powerful once they are taken away.
If Hanabi needs to, she always has a ribbon in her dress pockets.
But she has never worn it.
"I'm speaking to you now."
(Have you forgotten?
And she never believes that she will.)
"And so you have my full attention."
(Not like you deserve it.)
But there is no way she could know that.
(Not really.)
To a certain extent, procreation is deeply involved in such things. And yet in another way it is desperately not. There is no such thing as "deserve" in matters of life or in matters of death; people sometimes understand the latter, but rarely ever do they fully understand the former. You do not earn what you have. You do not work to achieve things. You achieve them by the simple fact of achieving them, and to every extent are you undeserving.
Pein has made
such a speech before.
(And his brother had begged for mercy.)
And learned quickly.
If the cloud will bear you their-
(-nanimo aru ka na.)
Individuality is nothing.
Because all individuals are the same when they are dead.
(And so Tayuya-dono is different.
Because Tayuya-dono will never die.
He will see to it.
And his faith will never be lost.)
Not
ever.
(And so he and Itachi are complete opposites. He and-)
"Hyuuga-san."
His face is slate. Pierced slate.
(Piercing in its entirety. But people avoid him instead of truly facing it.
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. Psalm 37:1
And so is death.
So it goes.)
But he says nothing more.
(Completion.
A startled gasp, shudder, and Tayuya's vulgarity is what-
"My liege.")
Nothing more.
(If Pein's face is a slate and Hanabi's entirety is a slate, then Tayuya cannot wait to meet them both. The wielder of all the chalk there ever was, and Tayuya will never stop writing.
Not ever.)
But in reality-
(-does not exist. Clock is striking again and again and again, and Hanabi is not watching it. It is far away. Too far for her to hear or see - much less touch. That clock on her wall. Because she doesn't and has never cared much about what time it is. Hanabi is-) far too mature for her age. (Far too much like her cousins. Like Neji. Like Itachi. But Hanabi does not know many of her Uchiha cousins yet, not yet. But she will.) Sooner or later. (Sooner comes even more quickly than usually anticipated.)
Her eyes are hard.
(Her blade is sharp.
Would sound amazing cutting her hair right now.)
CUTTING!
(her skin.
His skin-
will not reach,
but eventually
will.)
If he molds her correctly.
(When he molds her correctly.)
"Yes?"
(Voice like stone.)
He nods, countenance soft. Deceptively-
"Yes."
Soft.
His eyes and piercings catch the light, throw it up,
throw it back,
as if there was none. (As if there is everything.
To be feared.
To be gained.)
And THERE (is.)
His hair is a deep carotine and that in itself is deceptive. As Pein is deceptive. (Always.) Laughter. (Loud. RAUCOUS.) There is nothing and everything to the two of them, a predatory manner in the way he watches her. In the way his eyes touch over the soft contours of her body. (Of Kasumi's body. But never of-)
Tayuya is a storm.
A perfect
storm.
And so it is that Pein is here instead of there. (In some holy books, the name of
GOD IS CAPITALIZED
(GOD IS IN THE TV!)
but never are the names of everyone else within the books - and to their detriment, perhaps to life's detriment, there are others within such books - understated to empower the overstatement of what is holy. Never. Except in Pein. Except in the Manifesto. And it is within that Manifesto that Pein himself is
understated
so that he might never doubt the power She holds over him.
Over all of them.
Amen.)
"Do you understand?"
(She can't possibly.
And he knows this.
Which is
why
he
asks it.)
Hanabi stares.
"No."
It's short.
(Like most things she she says.)
like most things she is.
(Hanabi is-)
vile.
(like Neji. Like Tayuya.
But Hanabi could never and will never be compared to God. Hanabi is a blind, blank slate of a servant, and Tayuya, Tayuya is God. There is nothing that compares to her, no one that can, not Deidara-san or Sasori-san or Itachi-san. Not anyone. Hanabi will never compare because she will never have to compare. Because it is unspoken. Because she is unspoken. Hanabi is as Hanabi does- as she ever will and will not be. As is her headache and her desire to be alone and how wonderfully illegal it is for have a real sword on a school ground. Of how wonderfully illegal everything associating the Akatsuki is.
Hanabi will not join the ANBU because she is not made for it.
Not sane enough for it.
Too easy to sway.
(By Pein.)
-sama.
(-sensei?)
She doesn't care.
(Pein.)
"Not particularly."
"You do."
He reaches up to take a card that's been tucked behind his ear - two cards as it were, subtle in nature, great and powerful in meaning - and takes them carefully away as he would a flower (for Konan does wear flowers in her hair, does she not?) and holds them in the air afront him a short while.
He flicks them with one finger
(apart)
and they shoot away from him with a tsk of disdain. (His rough fingernails on their glossy backs.)
It will happen again different circumstances.
Two Tarot cards:
THE DEVIL and JUSTICE.
Perfect and inflexible. (As Pein himself might be described.)
"Pick them up."
-is not a request.
"And tell me what they mean."
They land at her feet.
(And so she picks them up and stares at the images-) as if she could see through them. As if her eyesight was even greater than it already is. The Uchihas are completely in opposites to the Hyuugas in that their eyesight is failing, while the Hyuuga's has never quite been any better. That is how it is. (-stares at them for a while. Tensely. Because she unknowingly expects something from them that she will probably never receive. It is a silly kind of hesitation. It always is.)
"..."
(It's a long pause, not because she cares of his opinion of her (-yet), but because-)
"The end of the world."
She stares at it.
"No." He shakes his head, watching her all the while, brown-red-orange eyes aglow (but not with fire - this one must understand. As if there is nothing about Pein to understand except that, to fire, he is entirely unyielding. He has never been touched about it, nor has it stroked his face in the way it has stroked Tayuya's. Has stroked her insides.) There is no difficulty in his voice. No tonal change. (As there is no tonal change to his skin. Pein stays out of the sun.) Pein is a better boy than Tobi has ever been. Will ever be. (Because Tobi is dead. And Pein is not. Neither is Itachi.
But that
is an entirely different story.) A different study. The way Pein studies Hanabi - the way Sasori studies everything. He is quite serious (quite deranged, and they are alike in this way, except in Pein you can see it immediately; with Sasori your eyes must be trained, or your chest must be gaping and open in front of you. There is no other way to see it with Sasori. With Pein, all you have to do is meet his eyes. But that is, of course, much harder than it sounds.) Long black hair, pale eyes, pale ivory skin. In the same way Pein first longed to cut Itachi does he-
(He had run a screwdriver through the Uchiha's hand upon first meeting him, because Tayuya had ordered it done. They had sat very still and watched one another the entire time, and Pein had punched the metal through witha rough, uncultured finesse, straight through the tiny strip of flesh and skin that hung between the bones of the pointer and middle fingers on his left hand. And he had stared straight into the hateful bones of Itachi's blinded eyes and the Uchiha had not flinched.
Not
once.
Not even when Tayuya told him to put a screw all the way through it and into the wood.
He hadn't budged.
And Pein had been satisfied.
Afterwards, Sasori had carefully sterilized the wound and Tayuya had admired Pein's handiwork on their table of choice, her face painted with a sick glee. There had been no scars, which Pein thought was a pity. Pein has a great and obsessive love of scars and scar tissue. And he had said quietly-)
-long to cut
Hanabi.
"That is incorrect."
And only today will he forgive her.
"You will come here tomorrow."
It is not a question.
He takes the safety pin from his right ear.
Steps much
much
closer to her.
(Taking his time. She does not move. And he is reminded
of that time.
And the lower muscles of his stomach jump
as he wishes) wishes (had a screwdriver. And that table.)
Oh-
He reaches, takes the side of her face with his fingers,
and almost-gently
tilts
her
head
away from him. He undoes the pin with his teeth.
"And the answer you give me will be the correct one."
He does not say the if.
(The
"if you do not I will cause you pain, such as my name might infer;
do you understand the English word?") She might. She might not. That is another day's lesson.
"Until then."
He drives the pin through the fleshy lobe of her ear and gluts in the feeling.
(Spectacular.)
"You will keep this."
And this time
he does not ask if she understands.
And this time
he does not have to tell her to address him correctly.
(Do what I say.)
Hanabi's eyes are not wide.
(They should be.)
They do not wince with the burning pain of the slow piercing.
(She will go to the jewelry store and get a ring for it.)
They do not flicker with an expression.
(From the moment he approached her, he knew she was going to hurt her.)
"... If it must be so."
And so it must be.
Pein smiles to himself.
(and it is cruel.)
"Amen."