The diplomacy of monetarism [collection]
Title: The diplomacy of monetarism
Characters: Kakuzu, Yugito, Hidan
Words: 1298
Summary: In Cloud. Yugito is requested to become a spy.
Author's Note: "In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on." is a quote by Robert Frost.
One
„We either live too close to the sun or too far away from the earth” she told him and he was inclined to believe her, for the people in Cloud were just as ethereal and pale as her or seemed as broad and swarthy as his leader.
The village clung to the side of the mountain like some giant birds nest. So Hidan walked the endless flights of stairs the place appeared to be made of; his lungs straining in the thin air, making him feel winded.
As he watched her, it occurred to him that the look she wore as she returned to her old home could be called nostalgia, if she did not make a constant effort to make herself appear smaller than she was, tried desperately not to be noticed. The way she walked close to the walls of the tightly-packed buildings and never in the center of the crowd, her silence when she was in the same room with one of the villagers.
He probably understood this, the awkwardness of the situation.
As a rule Hidan didn’t look back. After all there was nothing to see, but the rubble of days long gone by, bones of the past and that odd silence he never knew what to make of.
It was the future that held noise, pain and slaughter.
Two
It surprised her that they left her alone. She had felt Hidan squirm next to her for some time, some fretful stirring that spoke of the barely restrained need to move.
And suddenly he was gone. It was something she rather felt than saw, for she kept her gaze trained forward, ever the watchful sentinel standing in front of the gate behind which Kakuzu had negotiated with the elders for long enough for her legs to begin feeling heavy and stiff.
The Cloud nin to her left huffed, caught between annoyance and disbelieve at the nerve of her partner.
She was sandwiched in between them now. Two people here for the sole purpose to guard the guardians. Men whose names she knew, which whom she was acquainted in the same way you were familiar with people who lived in the same community, but had no actual relationship with.
She remembered talking to one of them for the first time, aware of how close he in fact was.
They had been standing face to face, not looking each other directly in the eyes and speaking as if the ground between them was not quicksand but something else they were not sure if it would hold, boasting and building what would later be easy acceptance, but never friendship.
When they returned to their accommodations she was hardly startled to find a note in her pocket, ordering her to meet them in private.
Three
She sneaked away the next evening, because not going was not going to do her any good either.
She also kept the red and black cloak that they made her wear like a stigmata after she had refused to slash her forehead protector.
There was fatalism in it, she knew, but they had already seen it on her and taking it off would be too much like cowering.
So she stood before the group that was assembled, staring at her as if they were not sure what to do, now that she had come.
“We want information” they told her, reciting endless, benevolent verses. “We want you as a spy.”
The words that formed within her mind were surprisingly chipped and cynical. “Of course” she thought, knowing that maybe she wanted those shackles, a tie to what she would always consider her home even if she was to be exiled forever.
They asked and she told them everything.
Four
What greeted her when she returned was an open door.
Light spilled into the corridor, a delusively warm glow. She saw Kakuzu busy himself with something she could not quite see, his body half-hidden.
For a second she stood, shaking and afraid.
As she entered he looked up and a moment passed between them in which she knew that he knew and the other way around, before he resumed doing whatever strangely domestic task he had been occupied with.
She excused herself, fleeing to the next room.
Five
As they went the eyes that were turned towards her were filled with grim expectation.
Kakuzu walked next to her, tall and overwhelming as he was, kind of blocking the wind that blew from the top of the mountain. A thing that gained ferociousness as it stroked the jagged passes.
They left with that seemed like the gale.
Six
She knew he would confront her, but when he did, it was nothing like she expected.
“I’m willing to tolerate certain things” he told her miles and miles away from Cloud.
She nodded for there was nothing to say against the underlying meaning of “my patience has its limits”.
There were those times when he was furious, the feeling poisoning the air like black pestilence and she was never sure, if it was something she had said or Hidan had done only that it had to be one of the two possibilities, for he was too old for anything the world threw at him to touch him. She remembered him turning around, coming undone above where the younger man stood who was a quivering, shaking mess of flesh afterwards.
He was angry now, she could tell. Not as much as she had suspected he would be, but riled enough that he might vent it out on her instead on Hidan.
She gauged how to answer, pondered how the careful assessment was poof of how she was not free.
The truth was that Yugito considered herself moderately smart and should she find herself unsure she had the nekomatas strange, cynical hunches to back her up, that kind of weird, little pieces of emotion that always gave her thoughts a new spin.
So she was aware that her situation now was not unlike the one she had been in at the village before her capture, that the paradoxically not paradox equation was always the same principle of giving up freedom, to gain the same as some rate of return.
He had her on a leash and the realization terrified her.
“So?” he asked and it sounded like a threat as much as it did like an inquiry.
“Yes, it’s alright” the words seemed weak on her tongue, dying as soon as they had passed her lips. Then she added, more confident this time “Life goes on, that’s all I’ve ever learned about it.”
He laughed, deep, booming and real, the tension between them passing from one moment to the other.
“If that is not the cheapest and most all-encompassing of human truths.”
She did rarely sent word to Cloud after that. Never something too informative or too specific.
He sat opposite her when she wrote those little letters, reading as the words formed on paper, his strange gaze never wavering.
And it was the way he acted underlined her assumption that he in fact did not care about the organization. Neither did Hidan in particular and she supposed this was part of why their trio worked in the way it did.
The cat still whispered things in her ear when she least expected it, reaping the mystery from the world, snippets of thoughts and words that were all part of some greater truth. It made her sad to know all of this and at the same time high-spirited as if drugged with confidence.
She chose to let herself crumble into all she was tonight. Not a lapse, because she could hardly afford those, but rather a conscious decision.
Tomorrow would be the day to be up and fighting again.
Characters: Kakuzu, Yugito, Hidan
Words: 1298
Summary: In Cloud. Yugito is requested to become a spy.
Author's Note: "In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on." is a quote by Robert Frost.
One
„We either live too close to the sun or too far away from the earth” she told him and he was inclined to believe her, for the people in Cloud were just as ethereal and pale as her or seemed as broad and swarthy as his leader.
The village clung to the side of the mountain like some giant birds nest. So Hidan walked the endless flights of stairs the place appeared to be made of; his lungs straining in the thin air, making him feel winded.
As he watched her, it occurred to him that the look she wore as she returned to her old home could be called nostalgia, if she did not make a constant effort to make herself appear smaller than she was, tried desperately not to be noticed. The way she walked close to the walls of the tightly-packed buildings and never in the center of the crowd, her silence when she was in the same room with one of the villagers.
He probably understood this, the awkwardness of the situation.
As a rule Hidan didn’t look back. After all there was nothing to see, but the rubble of days long gone by, bones of the past and that odd silence he never knew what to make of.
It was the future that held noise, pain and slaughter.
Two
It surprised her that they left her alone. She had felt Hidan squirm next to her for some time, some fretful stirring that spoke of the barely restrained need to move.
And suddenly he was gone. It was something she rather felt than saw, for she kept her gaze trained forward, ever the watchful sentinel standing in front of the gate behind which Kakuzu had negotiated with the elders for long enough for her legs to begin feeling heavy and stiff.
The Cloud nin to her left huffed, caught between annoyance and disbelieve at the nerve of her partner.
She was sandwiched in between them now. Two people here for the sole purpose to guard the guardians. Men whose names she knew, which whom she was acquainted in the same way you were familiar with people who lived in the same community, but had no actual relationship with.
She remembered talking to one of them for the first time, aware of how close he in fact was.
They had been standing face to face, not looking each other directly in the eyes and speaking as if the ground between them was not quicksand but something else they were not sure if it would hold, boasting and building what would later be easy acceptance, but never friendship.
When they returned to their accommodations she was hardly startled to find a note in her pocket, ordering her to meet them in private.
Three
She sneaked away the next evening, because not going was not going to do her any good either.
She also kept the red and black cloak that they made her wear like a stigmata after she had refused to slash her forehead protector.
There was fatalism in it, she knew, but they had already seen it on her and taking it off would be too much like cowering.
So she stood before the group that was assembled, staring at her as if they were not sure what to do, now that she had come.
“We want information” they told her, reciting endless, benevolent verses. “We want you as a spy.”
The words that formed within her mind were surprisingly chipped and cynical. “Of course” she thought, knowing that maybe she wanted those shackles, a tie to what she would always consider her home even if she was to be exiled forever.
They asked and she told them everything.
Four
What greeted her when she returned was an open door.
Light spilled into the corridor, a delusively warm glow. She saw Kakuzu busy himself with something she could not quite see, his body half-hidden.
For a second she stood, shaking and afraid.
As she entered he looked up and a moment passed between them in which she knew that he knew and the other way around, before he resumed doing whatever strangely domestic task he had been occupied with.
She excused herself, fleeing to the next room.
Five
As they went the eyes that were turned towards her were filled with grim expectation.
Kakuzu walked next to her, tall and overwhelming as he was, kind of blocking the wind that blew from the top of the mountain. A thing that gained ferociousness as it stroked the jagged passes.
They left with that seemed like the gale.
Six
She knew he would confront her, but when he did, it was nothing like she expected.
“I’m willing to tolerate certain things” he told her miles and miles away from Cloud.
She nodded for there was nothing to say against the underlying meaning of “my patience has its limits”.
There were those times when he was furious, the feeling poisoning the air like black pestilence and she was never sure, if it was something she had said or Hidan had done only that it had to be one of the two possibilities, for he was too old for anything the world threw at him to touch him. She remembered him turning around, coming undone above where the younger man stood who was a quivering, shaking mess of flesh afterwards.
He was angry now, she could tell. Not as much as she had suspected he would be, but riled enough that he might vent it out on her instead on Hidan.
She gauged how to answer, pondered how the careful assessment was poof of how she was not free.
The truth was that Yugito considered herself moderately smart and should she find herself unsure she had the nekomatas strange, cynical hunches to back her up, that kind of weird, little pieces of emotion that always gave her thoughts a new spin.
So she was aware that her situation now was not unlike the one she had been in at the village before her capture, that the paradoxically not paradox equation was always the same principle of giving up freedom, to gain the same as some rate of return.
He had her on a leash and the realization terrified her.
“So?” he asked and it sounded like a threat as much as it did like an inquiry.
“Yes, it’s alright” the words seemed weak on her tongue, dying as soon as they had passed her lips. Then she added, more confident this time “Life goes on, that’s all I’ve ever learned about it.”
He laughed, deep, booming and real, the tension between them passing from one moment to the other.
“If that is not the cheapest and most all-encompassing of human truths.”
She did rarely sent word to Cloud after that. Never something too informative or too specific.
He sat opposite her when she wrote those little letters, reading as the words formed on paper, his strange gaze never wavering.
And it was the way he acted underlined her assumption that he in fact did not care about the organization. Neither did Hidan in particular and she supposed this was part of why their trio worked in the way it did.
The cat still whispered things in her ear when she least expected it, reaping the mystery from the world, snippets of thoughts and words that were all part of some greater truth. It made her sad to know all of this and at the same time high-spirited as if drugged with confidence.
She chose to let herself crumble into all she was tonight. Not a lapse, because she could hardly afford those, but rather a conscious decision.
Tomorrow would be the day to be up and fighting again.