Yugito acquires marks all along her skin. Dark circles below her eyes, and a pattern of bruises along her arms, all down her back. Courtesy of Hidan, those; little pinched bruises, impressed upon her skin with his fingernails, some of them healing yellow-green and some of them still fresh, colored purple and maroon from blood pooling under the skin. From a distance, the marks look like florets. Stylized roses. A garden imprinted upon her flesh, slowly withering as she heals.

Kakuzu is sure Hidan's aware of the affect, and probably derives a great deal of amusement from it. As for himself, he thinks about the real garden she might someday host - the decayed remains of her, at least. Maybe real roses, feeding off the liquid remains of her innards, her shattered bones. That she will host a garden is a possibility, but a remote one. More likely Zetsu will devour what he can, and discard the rest in some corner of the wilderness where her remains will disintegrate in slow peace.

He enjoys watching her. Yugito is beautiful, almost preternaturally still, a layer removed from the ordinary. Like them. She watches Kakuzu back, with flat, dark eyes. Animal eyes, eyes belonging to a creature altogether different, something lean and damp-furred, that moves with quiet feet. Like nascent desire.

Surprisingly, she isn't terrified of him. Perhaps there's just too many things coming upon her for her to be paralyzed with fear, and not terrified does not mean not nervous, but still. She's something more interesting. Occasionally, she even summons up enough interest to be bold; surprising, and pleasing too. Although boldness or cowardice will soon make no difference. In the meantime he trammels the depths of her, scratching away at the dark soil to unearth filthy, grit-blackened pieces of essence. The pale and still-emerging pieces of her, cotyledons burdened with dirt and dross. Kakuzu fancies it all a learning experience. Most shinobi die without ever really knowing anything about themselves, so if she must die, at least she goes like this: with answers, here and there.

He metes out shards and fragments of himself, too, to her. Hints of answers. Shows her the threads, a deluge pouring out of his body. Like water, they can be both gentle and not. A soft, much-compressed, strong wreath. Between her fingers the strands thicken, draw up fat as night crawlers, and more stir and wrap her to the wrist. Further tendrils crawl up her forearm. Yugito watches their progress with her lips drawn tightly together, and when the first feelers touch the crook of her elbow she pulls away.

Kakuzu watches idly. He can feel her heart rate ticking under her skin, crawling higher as she pulls and he doesn't let go. The inside of her arm is pale. The veins, where they rise close to the skin, are skim-milk blue. She looks at him reproachfully, and he finally eases off the pressure exerted by the cords and allows her to slide her arm free. She's fine, of course; he held her firmly but with even pressure. Yugito moves her fingers as if surprised she still has them, glancing down at her hand, turning away. He has to sigh. It's that or laugh, at her reserved self, the stiff-legged, stalking pride she clings to.

As far as these things go, hers won't be such a bad fate. She could have far worse ones. A long walk to the noose, but then it's quick. And in the meantime, she almost hosts a garden.

00000

She wakes up and wakes up and wakes up. Her brain is being bundled up in cotton. She can't think very well. She's not sure if it's dreaming or waking, or madness or not, or possibly on purpose (the word might be denial) and the closer she gets to the end of the line the more she just wants to roll over and ignore it, go to sleep and never wake up. It would be so much easier that way.

But until then.

She wakes up surreally, with Kakuzu oh-so-gently carding her hair.

She wakes up nose-to-nose with Hidan, a skull mask painted over his face.

She wakes up and Hidan roars, "First to fall fails! GO!" and she is throwing hard punches into his face, as hard as she can, Kakuzu's additions to her seal pricking as she pulls as much chakra as she can. Hidan is not punching as hard as he can and she is just fast enough even with the cat mostly suppressed to dodge his hits and land her own. It's still not fair. It's never been fair. She plays anyway because sitting out equals losing. She snaps punches into his face and feels his nose splinter under her knuckles. Loves that feeling, just for a second. Really loves it. He claps a hand to his face, spins, reels, comes back at her with the bone fragments already knitting together, sputtering blood, his grin wide, wild. His roundhouse punch ignites novas in her head. She keeps her footing barely barely barely. The rocks rattle, like applause. It's so hard, so hard, to stay upright. She catches him one-two under the chin and slips, doesn't fall.

Kakuzu sits on a rock to consult his map. He doesn't even glance up at them as they go spinning by.

She wakes up and the cat's whiskers tickle her face, claws prickle and knead against her stomach and breasts. Yugito lies still. She breathes and doesn't move an inch. The cat's fur on her skin is as soft as water. The pads are hot as brands. She cracks her eyes open and the Nekomata's pupils draw to slits. The eyeteeth protrude just barely from beneath its upper lip, the black mouth that seems to curve in a sarcastically amused smile.

"You're meant to be trapped," Yugito whispers. She'd thought it the one fringe – very fringe – benefit of the whole farcical death march: that Kakuzu's shoring up her seal would bijuu-proof her mind for what time she had remaining.

The Nekomata purrs like a steam engine. "Oh, the cat came back, the very next day… trapped, yes. Confined? No."

Lie. Yugito says nothing. It is at least kept from her waking mind, now.

The paws work against her skin. The Nekomata has six toes. Somewhere, they think that's good luck; Yugito thinks it's a sign of something, at least.

"I told you something was coming for you. Something big." The cat sounds murderously pleased. It pauses to swipe her with its rough tongue, the surprise of that leaves her blinking and shifting when it's gone.

"You shouldn't be pleased," Yugito wants to point out. "They don't mean to do you any favors." But the cat, she knows, is spiteful. Perhaps it identifies with them. Felines are well known, after all, for toying with their prey.

She wakes up and she is swathed in a greasy, dark wing, slung on someone's back, moving and blinking and breathing. The wing unwraps, reveals itself a cloak instead, and Kakuzu gazes down at her calmly. "Awake?"

She has no sure answer for him.

00000

They stand in the circle and chant, and she dies.

"Fun while it lasted," says Hidan.

00000

On their way out of Rain Country they stop for lunch on the roadside, near a small shrine. Hidan swings his scythe over his back and hunkers under the overhang to gnaw at the field rations and shelter from the rain. It doesn't really help because everywhere is wet, in Rain. He feels like he's fucking drowning in his own sweat, in the cloak; the hem drags into a puddle, collects mud that obscures the uncompromising black wool and red clouds.

Tucked back in the alcove is a small, worn figure, and he's aware of it even while he ignores it. Fucking little heathen gods, fucking little heathens. His god is a roar like a forest fire. A rush of gale winds. An encompassing thing. Not something small, stunted, that must skulk on back roads waiting for travelers to come and think of their neglected souls.

Kakuzu doesn't bother with shelter. The rain doesn't bother him, even though it soaks his hood and runs in chilly rivulets down the back of his neck. He ignores it, calmly pulling down his mask, unwrapping his own rations. He puts his back to the godling's house too. Fucking heathen, he is. Fucking atheist. Hidan tries and tries and what does he fucking get.

The ration is dry and hard to chew. He has to take mouthfuls of water along with his bites, although that doesn't make the meal any more pleasant. Finally Hidan snorts with irritation and gives it up. The whole fucking place is pissing him off.

Kakuzu doesn't turn around when Hidan stands up and stretches. Annoyed with that and everything, Hidan turns around and scuffles back into the shrine. It's dim and moist in there. He thinks about trying to smash the little figure, breaking the altar in two. There's not much on there anyway. A cheap hairpin, a few withered petals. This is a mostly forgotten shrine.

Hidan gazes down at the altar for a few minutes, wavering between smashing it, turning away, and… something else. Finally he lowers his head and smirks. Gods are gods, after all. Enemies sometimes may greet one another.

The strand of beads nearly escapes him when he digs into his pocket. The thread is broken and only part of the loop remains strung, now. He finds one of the red coral beads, slippery and cool between his fingers, and drops it onto the plinth. It clicks on the stone and rolls as though it might fall clean off the edge, but on the way some indiscernible dip in the altar catches and holds it.

He snickers to himself and slips his hand back into his pocket. There are lots of beads left, still, even though he'd lost plenty of them breaking the cord getting the necklace in the first place. It was okay. There were lots of them still.

His partner's footsteps are nearly silent against the stone, put the patter of raindrops sheeting off his cloak is loud. Hidan partly turns to watch Kakuzu and the altar both, observe the way the man casually shakes water off of his cloak before stepping deeper into the shadow. His eyes are bright, pearly points in dim shelter. It's impossible to tell whether he approves or not when he glances down at the altar.

"A sacrifice to another god?" the man finally asks.

"Che." Hidan shakes his head violently and sneers. "It's a fucking insult, seriously."

"Ah," Kakuzu says eventually, and maybe he gets it, that the godling should be crushed, that the only person who thinks to acknowledge him belongs already to another god.

In the silence, Hidan pulls the whole loop of beads from his cloak and swings it in front of his partner. After considering for a moment he slides two more off the string and places them to accompany the other.

"You don't think it will call bad luck?" Kakuzu's eyes flicker at him quizzically.

"Hah! How the fuck should it do that?"

"She might follow." His partner inclines his head towards the altar.

"Bitch is dead," Hidan sneers. "'s not like we're in a fucking fairy tale."

00000

They walk and walk like always, across the whole broad country. Kakuzu still feels the ripples of preceding events in his mind; it reminds him of something, but he doesn't remember what. That's not a surprise. Everything reminds him of something, and so many things have passed. Why should he care to remember them all? If things aren't normal again yet, they will be soon enough. Everything is brief, when you have forever to get over it.

"Fire country," Pein orders them. "A target awaits you there." And for the moment, they turn their path in that direction. Kakuzu is thinking of returning to the shore, afterwards. After Akatsuki has fallen and he is free again. It's been a long time since he's gone into the water.

Everything is the same. Everything is different. Hidan leaves a cluster of beads at every shrine they pass, and sometimes in random places too. Tucked in the cup of an abandoned bird's nest. Jammed too tightly to be removed into a heating unit's vent. Dropped into the teapot, when they stop for a hot drink, at a shop along the road.

They keep a tight watch. Akatsuki members are always wanted men.

Hidan turns out his pocket by the campfire one night and beads cascade from the fabric, a clicking red torrent, pattering across the loamy ground. More than should have been in there. Kakuzu sits stiffly and watches Hidan swear, shake his hand and dig in his pocket and finally pull out the half-loop of beads, which long ago he depleted.

"Bad luck," he says. "I told you."

"Fucking bitch is dead!" Hidan roars. "Fucking bitch, you're DEAD!"

They pick up camp and stamp out the fire. And they walk all night.

00000

There's a dead woman following their shadows. Stepping softly in the ghosts of warmth left by their footprints. A patch of cold air. A breath in a still room. Red coral beads dropped like white pebbles, and duly followed.

Ghosts. Not something that Kakuzu has had so much experience with. He's seen others plagued by them, before. Uneasy spirits.

He doesn't see her, but he can imagine. Lithe and silent, Yugito watching them, her eyes dark and clear.

Hidan snatches his robe up in handfuls and shakes him back and forth. "Fucking bitch," he snarls, he grins. His eyes are almost aflame with fury. "She's dead. She can fucking watch this if she wants to."

He's all hard muscle and heat. Lightning licking across the teeth. Kakuzu meets and matches him. Hidan is an irritant, a grating wound. He stings, like citrus drizzled into a cut.

It's all right. Kakuzu's dealt with worse before. From others and from him.

He'll take this as it comes, and go on and on and on, living.

00000

The thing about death is, it comes so softly, even after such a long time. He thought it would be eager to take him. Snatch him up, pull him under, in one fast rush. But no, no. It comes as softly and as heavily as a cat. A cat walking up on him, to curl on his chest and share breaths. And a soft cushion of earth beneath him, and distant chirping. Crickets, like red, for luck. His heart is stuttering. Ticking like a thrush's wings against a window pane. His brain is dying. He's seen this, so many times, played out on other bodies.

The leaf-nin approaches and he opens his eyes, turns his head against the soft ground. Kakashi, copy-nin, leaf-nin, enemy, is blurred through the fog blowing up over Kakuzu's vision. The fog is ice-fog, perfectly white, freezing cold, gleaming and beautiful. He's been so many things over countless years. A wise man, now losing thought. A leader, now led.

Feet scuffle over the earth next to him. They are too small, and narrow, to belong to the copycat. Kakuzu glances up through his hair; it's come undone, free of the hood, and now falls in oily black strands across his vision. Through his fringe he can clearly see Yugito's pale face.

She crouches next to him and he feels the pressure of her cold hand on his shoulder. If she really tried, she'd be able to roll him onto his back; she doesn't try. He just shifts, slightly, with the pressure.

"Where the hell's Hidan?" he mutters. "How… it's…"

So many things, over such a long life. Stolen from others, bought honestly, earned on his own. An injustice, that he'd fall this way, coming to almost nothing at the end.

She doesn't speak to him. Just presses her hands hard against his side. It's mostly the earth holding his body together, now. Soaking up what passes for his blood.

"The crickets." It seemed desperately important to let her know. The chirping is deafening, almost a roar; he can't hear his voice over them. Can't know if he's speaking more comprehensibly than a mumble. But… vital, that he try. "Are you listening? Tonight, they're…"

Teacher. Gambler. Leader. Lover. Enemy. Ache. Twist in the spine. Thorn in the side. Young. Old. Falls-nin. Sea's son… host to a garden. Keeper of a thousand secrets. Hearer of so many dead.

He sees her catch her lower lip with her teeth. Her mouth moves, but the crickets overpower her. They are truly a roar now, truly, an unbroken pour of sound. Breaking over his head, running down his back, soothing and stinging at once. Water. The ocean?

When did I come here, Kakuzu thinks. It's been so long…

The waves break over his head. And, nothing.