For Nobara

Chapter 10: Three Ends

I wanted to make myself my own original cover art so I decided to try it out and made Nobara. I know it isn't much, but I'm happy to finally have a cover of my own. So confetti for everyone! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

Anyways, back to the original timeline!

· ☽ ·

From the window, Kakuzu watches the skyline silhouettes, the heavy downpour fogging the Hidden Rain in a veil of gray. The strong shower of pitter-patter against the glass hasn't at all changed much. But as he stands stiffly in the cold of Pain's Tower, somehow, everything looks all too terribly strange for him to feel at ease.

"Do you know you have a strange look on your face?"

As his eyes swivel to the corridor, his brows wrinkle back into a permanent frown at the bulk-bodied puppet master by the narrow space, but Sasori himself remains unfazed even as those green eyes narrow vindictively.

"If you're looking for small talk," Kakuzu says lowly, "then you'll only be wasting your time."

"I'm not here for small talk," Sasori answers.

"Then what do you want?" The green-eyed man hasn't been the most patient either. He's been on edge and just a little bit more he might just kill another Akatsuki member again.

"I didn't take you as someone so foolish, Kakuzu."

And at that remark, Kakuzu's jaw immediately tenses as he suppresses the urge to dismember Sasori right then and there with his tendrils. But when he glares at the puppet master, he didn't expect to be looked at in a way that makes him suddenly feel foolish too.

"It wasn't like you to do that," Sasori continues, as if the other man doesn't already know it. "You should know better than any one of us what that child is to us."

Kakuzu clenches his fist. "I know that."

"Do you?" Sasori asks cynically and Kakuzu's gaze darkens. "I'm not here to fight you but... how sure are you about that, Kakuzu?"

Because Sasori wasn't mistaken that day, when he saw that look in Kakuzu's eyes, when he willingly went out into the rain for her when that masked man stepped away from her. Kakuzu held her like he was afraid, he took her out of Ame in his own volition and Sasori was their spectator.

There hasn't been anything that made the green-eyed man afraid before, and now Kakuzu thinks he should have listened when he had the chance. Because it felt difficult to leave her... to leave her in the borders of sand to be found by someone else that isn't him.

But if it means that he can spare her, then he can bear it.

He has to.

"I'm speaking on behalf of Leader... What you're doing is pointless," Sasori says warningly. "No matter where he is, Akatsuki will have that child."

He?

Kakuzu almost laughs bitterly. They don't even know anything about Kigura aside from her prospects of being useful. They don't even properly look at her.

"You're only putting yourself in a compromising position."

"I don't see how this is any of your business," the green-eyed man says harshly, slipping only for a moment. His expression, it's far too real for Sasori that the puppet master wavers. The flash of expression on Kakuzu's eyes beneath all that inhumanity and blood tainted on him remind Sasori of an age-long loneliness.