| [Nov. 14th, 2011|02:59 am] |
Staring, mostly.
He’d seen a glimpse of it before, when they’d wheeled her past and flung her into her cell, but she hadn’t been glowing then. Her belly had already had a scar stretching from hip to hip, cut low and healed knotted, like barbed wire. Now a handspan width of it had been sliced into again and sutured closed with ugly black stitches, square under her navel.
Her navel which was glowing.
A complex, blurred design stretched over the majority of the lower half of her hollow stomach, cradled between knife-edge hipbones. It looked like they’d shoved a seal inside her, right into the root-structure of her chakra.
For the first time in his life, Asuma wished he knew a damn thing about fuuinjutsu.
Very carefully, he forced himself onto his knees. His dislocated arm dragged, pulling brutally on the popped socket. He’d need to do something about that soon, but Katsuko first.
“You’re a firefly, beautiful,” he told her raspily. “Does it hurt?”
Katsuko paused, as if she didn’t have an answer immediately to hand and hadn’t thought to look for one. She glanced down and poked gently at the seal, which made every hair on the back of Asuma’s neck rise. “It’s kind of numb, actually.”
“I didn’t say poke it,” he said. “Don’t antagonize it!”
She laughed -- then realized he was serious, and ducked her head sheepishly. “Sorry,” she said. “Guess this is new for you.”
Asuma’s stomach dropped into his stolen boots. New for you. As if being dragged away at any hour to be sliced open, stitched back together, and thrown down here to rot was perfectly normal. As if there was no point of thinking about pain, or what any of it was actually for, because tomorrow it would probably happen again and first kisses were more interesting.
He shifted, and her blanket slipped from his back.
“Sweetheart, you’re breaking my heart,” he said softly, and reached through the bars for her with his working hand.
Her brow creased non-understanding, but she came to him, taking his hand with her fever-warm fingers and curling up against the grate, as if she could bleed through the bars. He squeezed her hand, bowing his head to rest his forehead against metal, mouth brushing the rabbit-fur softness of her shorn hair. |
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