“I… have no idea.”
This is possibly the worst response you could have given, and had you known what was coming next you would have thought much harder of an activity you could do.
It is Tobi who chirps up, waving his arm about frantically.
“Tobi knows, Tobi knows!” he starts to yell, “Pick Tobi, he knows what to do!”
You have to duck to avoid the kunai-knife that flies over your head in Tobi’s direction. When it misses the masked-nin by an inch, you whirl your head around to glare at the thrower. Hidan, seeing your expression, tsks.
“I was just fucking doing what you all wanted to.”
Tobi, oblivious to the recent attempt on his life, calls loudly,
“Let’s play Spin the Bottle!”
This causes a loud ripple of groans, including yours, but nevertheless you decide to play – simply because Pein has threatened all of you with unspeakable evils if you don’t.
It takes a few moments for all of you to sit round in a circle, and a few more for Hidan to down the contents of the sake bottle – because using an already empty one is unthinkable, in his eyes. But once everything is done and ready – the immortal ninja now swaying from side to side next to you – you begin to play Spin the Bottle. You are first to spin, as you drew the shortest straw, so take the round glass in your hand and flick your wrist.
Everyone waits, watching the bottle spin and spin, until it finally comes to halt in front of Zetsu. The pair of you share a glance. You huff over-dramatically.
You rise to your feet and walk across the circle to Zetsu, well aware of the cat-calls from the others. In front of Zetsu, you bend down and quickly lean in past his fly-trap, giving him a small peck on the cheek. However, when you go to pull away a hand lunges out and grabs you in a vice-like hold, causing you to wince.
“Zetsu…” you say in a hushed tone, trying to pull your arm free. He looks at you, his grip growing tighter with his thumb pressed into the joint of your arm.
“And what’s wrong with people talking about this?”
He jerks your forward with a tug on your arm, sending you crashing into him. He leans in and throws his lips on yours, to which you panic and begin to scream but you can’t pull away properly so it ends up as a sort of terrified mewl.
Seconds later you find the pressure of his lips thrown off you, as, when looking up, you see Itachi and Kakuzu with their hands on Zetsu’s shoulders, forcing him back.
“Get off her.” threatens Kakuzu, a set of tentacles erupting from his arm when Zetsu fails to let go of your arm – the skin on the lower part now blotchy with blue and red. The tentacles wrap themselves around Zetsu’s black arm and pull ferociously, literally ripping his fingers from your arm, the force from his sharp nails leaving gashes in the skin. You can’t help but scream in pain, having not expected it. More tentacles burst from Kakuzu’s various other stitching, wrapping themselves around Zetsu’s limbs to hold him in submission. From there he forces the plant-headed ninja to stand and walk from the room silently – his mouth also covered now. Over his shoulder, Kakuzu calls,
“I’ll take him to cool off.”
As they leave the room, the rest of the members look between each other as you hold onto your arm to stop the one deepest cut from bleeding all over the place. The Leader coughs from the corner of the room again, cloaked in shadow.
“I think, perhaps, Spin the Bottle is off the table for the rest of the evening.”
Many of the others agree, whereas Tobi whines profusely – only to be quietened when Hidan, successfully this time, hits Tobi with various heavy or sharp objects.
To have something to do for the rest of the night, Hidan drunkenly suggests a house party. What a good plan. Time for everyone get drunk.
So as a few of the members leave to their various rooms to collect up their hoards of alcohol, you rise to your feet, still taken aback by Zetsu’s strange possessiveness, and walk over to the kitchen sink, placing your arm in the bowl while you search for some bandages above your head in the cupboard.
“You won’t find any,” calls a calm voice from not too far away. You turn to look back at the seating area, noticing Sasori watching you with a vague expression. “Hidan used most of the last of them before. He was doing a ritual that went too far again.”
You tut, looking down at your injured limb – half of your forearm dripping red now. When you look up again, Sasori is stood next to you. Wordlessly he grabs your upper arm and pulls you from the sink, dragging you off towards the bedrooms.
“Uhh… Sasori?” you ask, wincing again as he holds onto your injured arm. “Where are we going?”
“I shall sort that wound out. I can’t have you bleeding everywhere.
Meh, fair enough. It’s not like you could bandage it yourself properly anyway – it’s your stronger arm so using your weaker arm to tend it would be hassle.
* * *
An hour later and you’re sitting with everyone, watching them get progressively more drunk, not really feeling up to it yourself. Each time Hidan hands you a drink, telling you that you have to drink or else, you wait until he isn’t looking then pass it to Kisame – who is MORE than happy to take it off you.
You wait another half an hour to make sure everyone is well and truly sloshed – Tobi swinging from the lighting, Kisame hand-wrestling with himself, and so on – then slip out of the room with no one noticing.
Now in the cool clay-stone corridors, you take a breath, wincing again as a stinging sensation hits you. Once it passes you proceed down the gloomy passageways to a room you know well. You stop outside it, looking at the name-plate on the door. You take a sharp breath, hold it then let it out slowly, reaching out to knock.
Once you pull away you here a gruff, “Come in.”
You twist the door handle and enter the room, immediately seeing Zetsu sprawled out on his bed. He looks much calmer than before.
“Um… hello.” You say meekly, walking in properly to close the door behind you. Zetsu looks up, almost surprised to see you.
“____...” he sits up slowly, wrapping his arms around his knees. “What do you want?”
You take a step forward towards the bed,
“I just wanted to see if you were okay.”
Zetsu pulls a face.
“Fuck off.”
You watch him incredulously.
“What’s your problem? I’m only trying to be nice.”
Zetsu’s lips curl back in a snarl.
“Just piss off, ____.”
You feel your face heat up with something more than just anger.
“Fine! Be like that! I just wanted to know why you’re acting so weirdly!”
You spin on your heel and go to yank the door open in protest, but nearly have the wind kicked from you when a jolt of hot electricity jumps from your injured arm – WHY had you just tried to throw a door open with your injured arm? WHY?
You drop your arm to your side and open the door with the other, but as you go to walk out, Zetsu calls to you.
“____, hold on.”
You look at him again and see a huge change in his expression – he looks upset, guilty… a complete mood change. You notice him staring at the bandage. “Come here,” he says.
Against better judgement, taking tonight’s actions into account, you move towards him, and keep moving until you’re at the foot of his bed.
“Let me see.”
You pull your arm back behind you.
“It’s alright, don’t worry.”
“It’s bad, isn’t it?”
Zetsu reaches out to take your hand but you hide your injury even further behind your body. He drops his head.
“I’m sorry. It was an accident. My black side… he gets possessive and I just can’t stop him.”
“Your black side?”
Oh, of course. Zetsu has two personalities – his black and white. His personality is predominantly white, but his darker, more evil split personality comes out every now and then. At times, the inner war can be so great that it can literally split control of his body – the white controls one side and the black, the other.
“That’s why it was your black arm that grabbed me…”
Zetsu doesn’t say anything, but stares at you with disheartened eyes. Inwardly you suddenly take pity on him. Poor guy, it probably isn’t easy, especially with limited control.
“It’s okay, Zetsu,” you say, leaning down so that your head is in line with his, “I understand. It wasn’t your fault, it’s okay.”
Zetsu looks away, pulling an almost-sulking face. You sigh inwardly. Poor guy.
“No hard feelings, hey? Cheer up.” Quickly, and without warning, you lean in past his plant again and give him a small kiss on the white side of his face. Before he even has time to react – which was your plan, just in case – you pull away and walk out of the room, closing the door gently behind you with your good arm. Zetsu is left in stunned silence on one side, and you are left in shock at your own actions on the other. However, you quickly shake it off and run to your own room, locking the door to stop any wandering drunkards from getting in later.
* * *
The next day you sit outside the back of the Akatsuki base, intending on getting a better look at the cuts that have kept you up all night. For some reason, in the early morning, they began to itch and burn and sting like nothing could stop them. You are worried they may have gotten infected.
So, on a row of stone-slab steps you sit down and begin to undress your bandages, swearing under your breath every time there is a pang of pain. Why does this hurt so much? You’ve been stabbed before on missions, so why now?!
You undo the last layer of bandage then take a good look at your arm.
“Oh mother of…”
Three of the scratches have scabbed over and healed up quite nicely, but the fourth is still sticky and wet, cutting deep into your arm. As Hidan would say, it stings like a mother fucker.
“Ouch, ouch, ouch, ow, ow, oucchhh.” You complain, wafting your arm up and down slowly to get the fresh air into it, hoping it would lessen the throbbing. “Oh please just stop it, he didn’t mean it so stop making it worse!” …pleading with a wound. Not your proudest moment, you admit, but you don’t want something like this to affect your relationship with Zestu. You know he is a good person… aside from the slaughtering hidden villages and all that… and you admire him greatly. You’re not putting one wound in the way.
About to start cleaning away the blood, hissing as you touch the edges, you stop when someone drops a hand on your shoulder.
You look up into the yellow eyes of Zetsu. Again, he is looking back at you with disheartened eyes.
“Come with me,” is all he says, taking his hand from your shoulder to let you rise to your feet.
“Zetsu?” you ask, wondering what the matter is. “What’s wrong?”
“Stop asking that, ____. You’re the one with something wrong with her.”
“But I’m-”
“Well it doesn’t look fine.” He answers, knowing what you had been about to say. “And like it or not, it’s my fault you’re in pain so just come along.”
“Well… alright.”
You follow behind Zetsu as he turns and walks away into the garden, leading you into the trees where you’ve never been before.
“Uhhh…”
“Just keep following.”
You walk for a good five minutes, at which point you stop – nearly walking into Zetsu’s back after his abrupt halt. You peer around his shoulder to see a small area of sunlit land in amongst the trees, within which a green-house is standing. This causes you to giggle.
“How many of these things do you have?” To your knowledge he already had three that everyone else knew of. How many other secret ones could there be?
Zetsu mumbles, walking towards the greenhouse,
“This one is special.”
“How so?” you ask, but feel your arm begin to sting again so look down at it, clutching the area around it to try and force the pain off. When you look up again, Zetsu has disappeared. “Zetsu…?”
You hear a tapping sound. It’s coming from the greenhouse so you look over, noticing the plant-headed man now standing inside it in a square of dirt just big enough for him to slip in and out of as a portal. This is when you notice there is no door. “Umm…”
You can do nothing but watch as Zetsu walks about his greenhouse, picking up various items and snipping various plants. A moment later and he disappears through the patch of dirt again, reappearing beside you seconds later, holding a mortar and pestle. Inside the bowl there is a murky yellow liquid.
“This greenhouse is my special medical greenhouse – the plants inside could tend to most illnesses.”
You look down at the liquid that he is pulverising.
“Really? So what is…?”
“Vervain.” He flashes you a glance, “it was once used as a poison mainly to kill wild animals, but the root can be crushed into a rub-on painkiller.” At this point he stops mashing the content of the mortar, dropping the pestle to the ground. And he looks at you, not expectantly, but hopefully. You feel your heart flutter. He wants to help you - you can tell he is trying to make up for his actions yesterday. His white side is holding the mortar, and it is his black side that is eager to tend to your wound.
“Th-thank you, Zetsu.” You hold your arm out for him and he begins to rub some of the Vervain root in. You wince again, which causes both sides of Zetsu to falter, but he continues a moment later, saying that the pain will stop in seconds. As he applies more, the black side of Zetsu, in a slightly different tone to the normal Zetsu you are used to – mutters an awkward but apologetic ‘sorry…’
Not ten seconds after Zetsu has applied the ointment, you feel the pain being cut off. It’s like a rippling wave along your arm. Slowly you bend and flex, noticing the welcomed feeling of numbness in your muscles. The wound dribbles slightly, but it does not hurt.
“Oh wow, Zetsu…” you look up and smile. “Thank you. That stuff is amazing. We could really use that out on missions.”
Zetsu gives a lopsided toothy grin.
“That’s why this greenhouse is secret. My plants are hard to come by, I can’t just collect them as and when I please. I mean, Hidan would not want to use them, but I would run out fast if the others continued to use them.”
“Oh…” he has a point. A point that, when you think about it, makes you feel warm inside. The ingredients were hard to come by, and yet he has used them on you. You feel your heart flutter again.
“Z-Zetsu?” you mumble, suddenly shy.
“Hmm?” he asks, placing the mortar on the ground beside him. When he is back to full height, and once again without any warning, you step forward, lean up and kiss him. But not a peck on his white cheek. You kiss him fully on the lips so both black and white may know your affections.
Of course, the black side reacts much faster than the white. You feel the pace speed up in the kiss, which you do not see as unwelcomed, but then you slowly become aware of a tingling sensation against your stomach. You feel it creeping further and further up your stomach until it begins to cup your-
The hand is jolted away and you hear a slap. You pull away from Zetsu, confused. His white hand is holding his black hand away from you. With a slight blush on his face, he mutters a quiet, “sorry…” to which he then replies, “I’m not sorry…”
You can’t help but laugh. Not caring which side of him is in control, because to you they are one and the same now, you snake your arms inside his fly-trap and jump, wrapping both arms tightly around his neck as you flatten your face to his, your lips locked with his. His white arm wraps around your waist affectionately, his black hand travels up into your hair and tugs.
It is a weird and wonderful sensation – with white compassionate and black lustful. You have no doubt in your mind, however, that they love you equally as much, in their own twisted, clashing, special ways.
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