bones

by stones

He calls her Woman because that's what she is.

He likes her bones.

She has ribs-- the same number as anyone else, but so much more. He likes to run his finger along them and sometimes hook them underneath, all the while noticing the skin stubbornly stopping him. It is warm, dry, and sticky and feels rough under his fingers. He doesn't notice it, however, because the only thing he can think of are her bones. Her ribs encasing, protecting her heart. He images them shattering.

She swats his hand away and he lets her because he knows one day that she will die, her flesh with rot, and her bones will be waiting. He dreams of it.

The day he graduates is a day he will forget. Everyone is happy, smiling, and he pats his friends on the back, telling them, "Fuck yes. Enough of this preschool bullshit." They nod in agreement, but he knows. They don't understand jack shit.

His mother comes toward him without a smile as he expects. She comes to congratulate him by putting a small hand on his shoulder. He grabs her wrist and pushes it away.

"Fuck off, Woman," he tells her.

He sees her fingers curl as she steps back. He would like to snap them, he thinks.

They have to put their hands on his shoulders and pull him back because sometimes he forgets where he is and sometimes he forgets who he is. In his mind he sees bones and he must find them. He scratches, claws, grins, and squeals with delight, because he knows what is coming, he knows they are waiting. And for a moment it is just him and bones. The rest of the world? There is none.

It isn't until he is standing a couple feet off, hands scanning the bewildered faces as he laughs, that he notices the blood on his hands, the foul stench that he knows is supposed to reek but can't quite scrunch his nose at.

He remembers his name when someone whispers, "Hidan," and he understands what he's done when someone says, "Stop."

It's wrong. That's what it is.

When he returns home, he tries to avoid her. He hears her voice, calling for him sweetly. He thinks of her jaw. He would like to rip it from her mouth.

"Fuck off, Woman," he tells her.

"Watch your tongue, Hidan," she tells him outside of his door. He sits on his bed and doesn't even give the door a glance.

"Why?"

There is a significant pause as she searches for the answer. "Because you're too young."

He doesn't see them, but still he dreams.

He looks at his hands and sees only flesh.

"Monster," he says.

Because that's what he is.

--

He likes to hold them before he kills them because that's what they deserve.

They touch him nicely and he tries to enjoy it, but the feeling is nothing compared to the intense rush he feels when he finally wraps his hands around that tiny little neck, and flicks his wrists. But he lets them indulge themselves because it's the least he can do.

"Soon you'll be a tourist guide," one of them laughs.

He would like to tell her to shut her fucking mouth, but if he did so, she would not be holding two of his fingers, guiding him toward the forest. She stumbles on her feet as she grins at him, her teeth white against the dark of the night. They glisten magnificently, he thinks. He would like to rip them out.

"No more killing for you," she continues to tease as she stops and finally turns around to face him, swaying slightly on her feet as she rocks her hips.

"Is that what you think?" he whispers as he steps toward her and pulls her hand. He wraps an arm around her waist as he pulls her in quickly, earning a gasp from her. He can feel her hip bone digging into his groin as he buries his head into the crook of her neck, into her thick black hair. He grinds his body deeper into hers, almost painfully, to feel it more.

"This village is going to shit," she tells him after she whines and lifts her hands to hold onto his shoulders, steadying herself. "No one cares about fighting for good."

He doesn't tell her that he never did. Instead, he slowly pushes her down to the ground before climbing on top of her. He lets her know that she isn't going anywhere by letting his weight fall down upon her, trapping her underneath him. As she breaths, he can feel her chest rise and fall, her bones moving in rhythm.

She tries to kiss him and he laughs. She takes it as a teasing game, but that is not the case. He pushes her away, laughter fading. And when he starts to hold her wrists and when he starts to bite her jaw and not her neck because in the jaw he can feels the bones under his teeth, she knows something is wrong.

But there's nothing she can do because it is too late.

She mumbles a jumble of words, ranging from pleads to cries to help. But her favorite, and he has to admit his too, is, "No."

"Yes, yes," he repeats pleasantly, and she lets out a dry sob because he is making fun of her plead, the begging for her life.

He is pressed against her fully, mouth by her ear, when he rips down her shorts and pushes away her panties. He laughs into her ear in an almost mocking way as he rocks forward, and she grips his shoulders as she gasps.

"Oh," he breaths as he clicks his tongue and wiggles his hips to situate himself better. He looks to her face, eyebrows bent in a concerned way and lower lip in a frown. He shushes in her ear, tsking at her scrunched lips, her wet cheeks. But then he presses his face against her cheek and kisses her jaw, smile back as he lightly laughs.

There are tears in her eye and blood on her skin, but he doesn't even notice. He never does. But he does see her ribs, protruding out as she gasps for breath. He does see her sharp jaw open and close each time he pushes forward. He does see her collar bones stick out as she braces herself. And he sees her fingers, bones bent as she tries to hold onto him.

When he finishes, he pushes himself off of her and onto his knees, and looks down at her. He can see her skin, soft and milky, but doesn't think he cares for it. Her breasts, full and plump, look fleshy as she falls sideways. He sees her spine when she curls into herself, and he can't help himself but reach out and run his hand along them. He realizes he is holding his breath as he is doing so.

She turns onto her back once more and twitches away. "Don't touch me," she hisses.

"It's a little late for that," he teases, his voice high with amusement. She glares at him, not finding this at all funny.

"You're dead," she says and repeats it again. He watches as she scrambles onto her knees. Her hands go toward him and he allows her to do this because she is no threat. And even if she was, at the moment, he feels damn near immortal. "Dead, dead, dead."

He knows what she is going for as she reaches into his pant leg, hands shaking as he watches leisurely.

"Dead," she says, ripping the kunai from its holding, having trouble pulling it from his pant leg because it catches the cloth and leaves holes. She finally gets it free and pushes it toward him. If he wasn't so distracted by her slender fingers, the thin bones within them, wrapping around the kunai, he could have blocked it more than easily.

But he, in the last moment, moves his head and she skims his ear. There is a burning sensation when she does though, but he can barely feel it. A small piece of flesh lands on the ground beside them and they both glance at it. He would have been more mad, but as it is, that is only a piece of skin.

He doesn't care because it means nothing.

"You're dead," she says. "I will tell. They will know."

"That you got fucked?" he repeats, smile on his face. He tilts his head as his hand shoots out and grabs her wrist. As a reaction, her fingers open and the kunai slides from her hand. There is a crack as he twists her hand. "It's about fucking time, I say."

"The village will know," she continues, blood running down her lip. He wonders if he had hit her, but can't seem to recall. He doesn't seem to care to remember because he sees her teeth, biting down magnificently against each other.

"Like you said," he whispers, wide smiling morphing into a satisfied grin. "The village is going to shit."

When he gets back home, he does not even care to be quiet. She wakes up and knocks on his door, disturbing him with an annoying, "Hidan?"

"Fuck off, Woman," he says and looks back to what he is rubbing between his fingers.

They are white in his hand. They glisten magnificently.

He keeps them.

Because they too are bones.

--

He knows he was born to follow Jashin because Jashin was made for him to follow.

The sudden deaths only bring even more idiots, mouths agape as they walk around the cozy village. He looks at them as he stands leaning against a wall. Once in a while, he will catch a dumb girl's eye, promising her things to come. Sometimes he will look a man up and down, thinking how nice and strong his jaw bone looks and how sturdy it must feel in his hands.

But he knows he can't do anything more until he completes his first ceremony, and he knows who he has saved it for. He knows it is the perfect time. When night comes, he knows what to do.

When his skin turns black and he see the white ribs, the white bones, he breaths deeply and tries to calm down. He can't go so high now. He has just begun.

His mother's jaw hangs as she sits on the ground, silent as she cries. He smears red in a circle with his foot, completing a triangle on the inside. He digs into his jacket and pulls out the spear. His mother flinches as it flicks to its full length.

"Woman," he sings in a twisted, excited tone, smile so wide on his face. "Let's see what you are made of."

She tries to say she is made of stupidity, foolishness for not killing him when she had the chance. She is made of every sin she had ever committed, every bad thing that had taken over her completely. Everything that had made him into what he is. But he doesn't mean it in a metaphorical sense. He wants to see her bones, poking against her skin, coated in a sheet of red so he can lick the bitter taste off, revealing the amazingly dull white.

He stabs himself and his mother screams. He can feel the pain, the beautiful euphoria, consume every inch of him. His eyes roll back and he closes his lids as he groans.

"Beautiful," he moans, head looking up. "So fucking beautiful, Lord Jashin."

When it is over and he collapses to his knees from the overpowering feeling, he looks up at his crumpled heap of a mother. He inches closer and pulls out a knife. He laughs.

He is standing when he opens his palm and sees a few small bones, as beautiful as he had always dreamed, before determining he needs more. "Fuck off, Woman," he says when he steps on her limp hand, void of structure, of bones. Glancing to the side, he can already see his neighbor's lengthy spine.

"Angel," he whispers.

Because that's what he is.

--

He is immortal because he is more than just a man.

He is a sinner, condemned each time he does not perform his ritual, each time he does not feel the pain he knows should be his. He is a saint, given life by his God, given duties by his sense of responsibility. He is a lover when he stabs himself in his heart and shares that one moment of painful tearing, of gentle dull pain as his enemy dies front of him with a light gasp, pleased that everything is finally over. He is a brother when he rubs his hands together, the blood of both mixing together.

But more importantly he is immortal because he knows what is it to live and he knows what it is to die.

"He killed his entire clan," his partner mumbles next to him, fingers lightly flipping over a wad of bills.

"Why?" Hidan asks, partly annoyed.

He doesn't see it, but he knows Kakuzu has lifted his shoulders. Hidan looks back to his blade and runs a finger along the glinting metal.

"That's fucking idiotic to me," he says. "For no reason." He snorts and lifts his scythe before hurling it into the ground, sticking it into the dry soil. He then thinks about the Uchiha, about his delicate features that are so strong. He thinks he would have liked to test them. He thinks he would have liked to collect his mother's bones.

"Rot in hell, jack ass," Hidan spits before he leaves Kakuzu, who would have been confused if he had cared.

Hidan is more than just a man because he doesn't care that sometimes his pride must be hurt.

He sometimes lets his enemy think that they have killed him. Him, Hidan. The immortal. But they don't know and won't until he laughs straight into their face, his spit flying onto their cheeks. He kills them just as easily and sacrifices them to Jashin, and his God gives him his reward.

The bones start to pile up.

"What's that noise?" Kakuzu growls one day.

"My prayer beads," Hidan snorts back, putting his hand over his pocket to silence them as they bounce into each other. And then one day when Kakuzu demands to see these prayer beads, Hidan pulls them out, white pearls tied together by a nice string.

Kakuzu tells him those could go for a good amount of money.

Hidan only tells the fuckface to shut up.

Because there are things in this world that are priceless.

Bones are only one of them.

--

He picks himself up, battered, bloody, and on the verge of dying because he knows he can walk away to see another day.

He picks up his newest piece, the largest he has ever collected and decides that maybe he won't buff this one into a tiny bead. After all, Kakuzu was the only one he wasn't able to kill. The bone is not his to manipulate.

He spits to the ground and wipes his dirty mouth with his arm. The cloak on the ground is battered and torn. He rubs his prayer beads as he turns away, his sandals scratching against the dirt road as he makes his way.

He continues to live.

Because that's just the way it is.