Hidan
*yawn* Mmm. Nice.
Hidan still felt relaxed and loose-limbed, like someone who has not fully awoken yet. Lying in the back of Kakuzu's pickup truck with his head leaning against the cabin might change that, but for now it was not very uncomfortable. He'd been sitting there for maybe 20 minutes. Perhaps it would start to hurt around the 30 minute mark.
Hidan doubted it would ever really hurt, given the company he had. Konan sat next to him, feeling the way he felt, with the addition of having imaginary rocks strapped to her limbs. Hidan remembered the race where he'd used up his chakra. He hadn't actually used all of it like Konan had claimed; he'd had enough to keep the chakra vessels in his major organs open. Hidan wondered what it would have felt like if his brain had started to cramp. If the chakra vessels in his head and heart had collapsed, he imagined that would've put an end to their explorations really fuckin' quick. So he hadn't used quite that much chakra. But he was familiar with the feeling of collapsed chakra vessels all around the body, and he was glad they both had high pain tolerance. It hurt like fuck.
The beast cramps hurt almost as much, in fact, as his chest did right now. The entire area around his heart was under high pressure. Maybe he had injured himself after all.
No, he hadn't. He knew better than that.
"It was like this back home in the Rain Village," Konan murmured. She had no need to tell him what she meant. At the moment she said it, Hidan was staring up at the leaves overhead. They blotted out all stars, and left the two humans sitting in a parked car around the side of an abandoned hotel feeling as though they were really in a small, warm and very safe den. Insects buzzed all around them, making another bubble of noise. They hadn't been disturbed for the last five minutes since Hidan had heard a small rustle in the forest, and it felt as though they had never been.
"Can I ask about your family? The one you were born with, I mean." Hidan wondered what it was like to be born with a family. To not ever have to introduce yourself, to know how to get along and where you fit without knowing how you know that or, he suspected, knowing that you know it. Maybe it was like how he got along with his own body. He knew his muscles as himself and had patterns of movement he fell into, over and over again. Maybe it felt like that, except with other people.
"You may." She fell silent. Hidan waited a decorous few seconds to say anything.
"What did it feel like? The closest thing I can think of is how I know my own body, and how I get along with all my muscles and I move just like that and not differently, and shit. Is it like that?"
Konan chuckled quietly. "How coherent." She turned her head to look away from Hidan, towards the building. "Maybe for other people, having a family is like that," she murmured. "Not for me, and probably not for you either."
The high pressure feeling spread upwards as Hidan wondered what she meant. "Bad?" he asked.
"No. I just didn't have that sense of knowing where I was or how to move. I still don't know what was wrong." She said this flatly, distantly, looking at blank gray siding.
The feeling spread downwards, as well. Hidan wondered if he should hold her hand. He did. Suddenly the feeling was everywhere, including his head, and Hidan felt mentally like crying except he couldn't think enough to do so.
He let go of her hand. This did not make him feel better in a time span that could be called quick. "Your brain is tired and bad-feeling," he told her.
"I know. It's been everything but quiet for a while." Konan turned over so she was on her side, looking at him. "Give me time." She wrapped her arms around Hidan's shoulders and pulled herself inward, settling her head into the curve of his neck. The all-over feeling came back. Hidan did not resist it this time. He stroked her hair.
"I'm sorry," he muttered. The pressure was still strongest in his chest and had suddenly surged upward to his face. "I fucked up." His eyes felt it.
Konan opened her eyes. "What did you fuck up?" she asked. The bad feeling shifted in her.
"The planning." Hidan held her more tightly. "I didn't think of anything that really happened. Itachi told me about using houses for ambushes and shit when I told them the plan, and I didn't think about it then either. I had this totally wrong idea of everything. I thought I was awesome." He sniffed. "But it turned into a clusterfuck."
Konan reached up to the base of his hairline around his neck. "Sometimes that isn't what a plan is supposed to do," she whispered.
Hidan rubbed away the water dripping down his face. "What's a plan supposed to do?"
Konan explained, "Sometimes a plan isn't supposed to become reality. This is most true when facing an enemy you've never fought before. Nothing will come out as predicted. But, because you thought of how it might come out, you have material to make choices from, and because you made an idea of the situation that you could control, that idea gives you courage." She lifted her head and nudged his jaw. "Half a battle is in the mind. You made an excellent plan. And if it didn't become reality, that was because you didn't know reality. That problem should correct itself with training."
Hidan sniffed again. "So if I just get to know everyone and their powers, it'll all be okay?"
"Yes. Just as I told Nagato." Konan settled down into his shoulder again. "Give it time." She closed her eyes, but Hidan still felt her. The bad feeling was changed. He closed his eyes too and felt at peace. They rested together as one. The wind brushed both their faces. Hidan lost track of if that was her arm or his. It didn't matter. They breathed together.
There was something different, a disturbance. Hidan opened his eyes. Sasori looked back at him, curious but withdrawn. "Yahiko wants to have a party to celebrate," he warned. "We'll handle the planning." The redhead left.
There was another disturbance at the mention of Yahiko's name. Hidan stroked her hair. He had no idea what was happening, but maybe if he had confidence and got to know her more, it would all turn out well. He just had to give them time.
Nagato
I'm staring. That's rude. I should be listening. Nagato couldn't stop staring. Yahiko had only used his cheek for demonstration purposes earlier, and the news was so good that Nagato hadn't paid attention. Facing Yahiko now, he couldn't stop looking. He can't use chakra on it all the time. He needs proper bandages.
"What do you think?" Yahiko looked at him expectantly.
"I think you should get real bandages. Your cheek is freaking me out. I keep thinking of infection or it starting to bleed again."
"Oh…" Yahiko put a hand to his cheek, which was all red, and winced. "Yeah, probably should. But after I do that, do you think we should sit in the kitchen somewhere, or grill outside?"
Nagato smiled. "If flowers magically springing out of stone isn't a sign, I don't know what is. Outside."
Yahiko grinned. "Yeah! They look so happy, too. They'll be perfect."
Nagato wondered, "It's already dark, though. How are we going to have a fire if the stone has plants on it?"
Yahiko wavered. "Maybe Kakuzu could use Stonemaker Jutsu again, and we'll have a fire on that one." He didn't sound very sure.
"We could ask Konan or Hidan."
"No you can't. They're enjoying some together time," Sasori broke in. "It's mean to disturb them for every little thing, isn't it?"
True. Nagato and Yahiko flushed slightly. "Let's go with your idea," Nagato decided. "One stone for flowers, and one for backyard fires. Assuming that one doesn't also get flowers growing out of it."
"If it does, we're never having a party back there again." Yahiko shook his head to emphasize that.
Sasori was already nodding. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but I would immediately assume we were cursed if that happened."
Nagato laughed. "The curse of never being able to hold a backyard barbecue at night. That's a scary one!"
Yahiko burst out laughing too. "We'll just be forever doomed to enjoying our nice kitchen with all our friends!"
Sasori couldn't stop himself from grinning. "I'd blame it on you," he told Yahiko. "I don't know why. You just seem like that kind of person somehow."
"The kind of person who gets nice flowers to grow in stone somehow? I'd love that! Thank you for assuming that of me." Yahiko looked at Sasori with sincere gratitude. "Want a hug?"
Sasori blinked. "Um...sure." He walked over and allowed Yahiko to give him a brief hug.
"Okay! Fire, food. Do we have anything to grill it on?" Yahiko had not previously thought of that.
"We can make something up," Nagato reassured. Amazing. He just makes anywhere he goes a better place. Yahiko was still smiling. His eyes were wide and bright, and his tongue was sticking out a little. Nagato smiled too. Nobody could help it around Yahiko. He drew in closer.
"Hmm, okay. Fire, food, and cook it on the stone or something. Great!" Yahiko turned to Sasori. "And me and Kakuzu still have interesting things to talk about that have nothing to do with demons at all! We're good." He looked back just in case Nagato had seen something he missed.
That look in his eyes… "We're good," Nagato echoed. Yahiko flared brightly, brighter to Nagato's eye than the strongest pulsar. He wondered what that "together time" Sasori had mentioned involved. Did it involve somehow holding Yahiko's hand without any memory of moving? It probably did.
"Okay." Yahiko looked around. "So, I know I blurted it out to Itachi when I got the idea, and Samehada was happy, and I left to go spread the word and saw you sitting in your room looking bored, Sasori, so I never actually get around to spreading the word, unless Itachi did. Did he?"
Sasori rubbed his pointer finger with his thumb. He hadn't been bored. He'd been quietly taking stock of his life and wondering what he could possibly say if anyone asked him about the succubus. He hoped nobody would mention the succubus. He'd like to just forget what had happened. Sasori really hoped being pulled from his body hadn't made anything loose. Honestly, the whole idea of a party sounded terrible.
Nagato eyed Yahiko's still messy hair. Would he let me put it back in order? Nagato desperately wanted to. His fingers almost hurt with desire. No; they did hurt. "Uh, well, I can go check," he justified, and left the room. Sasori and Yahiko had both been attacked. Maybe they could talk through it together. And maybe Nagato wouldn't accidentally tackle Yahiko to the ground for cuddles.
He went down the right hallway where most of them had their rooms. Samehada wriggled up to him and climbed up to his back before Nagato was fully aware of it. "Oh...hi," he greeted the shark. Samehada let out a loud and cheerful rattle.
"What is he so happy about?" Kisame wanted to know. As did Kakuzu, and Deidara, and everyone else who had heard Samehada making such a joyous racket.
"Yahiko's holding a party to celebrate," Nagato explained. Samehada somehow managed to lick every part of his head except his face in the same tongue stroke. "The stone out back has flowers in it, so we're going to need another one Kakuzu, if you're not out of chakra." My hair is sticky!
"..." That's right, Kakuzu's been by himself since Hidan asked everyone to clear out.
"Don't ask," Nagato explained poorly. "We came back from talking about Yahiko's new healing powers, and we found flowers sprouting out of the cracks all of a sudden. We have no idea where they came from."
"..." A second eyebrow raised. Kakuzu looked like he was trying to read Nagato's mind.
"Yeah… He also figured out he has some kind of healing powers. We'll mention it later." Nagato couldn't have figured out a better way to drag these three to the party if he'd tried. Itachi, standing in the back, had great fun analyzing their body language with his Sharingan.
"I want to see this," Kakuzu declared. Nagato wondered if he had any light producing jutsus. He got a flashlight instead and went out to the backyard. The stone platform was clearly filled with fully grown petunias. Their petals looked otherworldly in the white light.
"What the hell?" Kisame asked. "What the hell."
"It looks like someone bought a seed packet and just dumped all of them in, yeah," Deidara concluded.
"Doing that and then using plant-growing powers makes a lot more sense than anything else," Nagato agreed. "Wait. Konan told Yahiko to develop more plant based techniques. We should really find out who did this. They could be helpful."
Laurie, who'd been quietly standing next to Itachi this whole time, piped up. "Maybe we could leave a note?"
Nagato nodded. The worst that could happen was that nothing would happen. Laurie went off to write the note. Kisame sniffed around. He shook his head. "I can't smell anything besides blood, apparently, and there's no blood here." Samehada slithered off of Nagato's back and around the stone, then whimpered in agreement. Kisame patted his head.
"Maybe we could ask Hidan. He's like a cat; he might be able to smell something." Nagato looked around. "In the meantime, we need somewhere else to put a fire. Kakuzu?"
More earth bubbled out of the ground and hardened to stone. Deidara was doing something with his hands. Kisame noticed and asked warily, "What are you doing?"
"Oh, yeah," Deidara started, "just making some really tiny spiders, yeah. Maybe I could use them to start the fire. When are we starting it?"
General
The fire was underway a half hour later, after they decided what to cook. As Yahiko had thought, the stone platform was large enough that there was stone spread all around the fire. Deidara had his hands out in appreciation, and observed that the surrounding stone was hot in only a few minutes. Yahiko clapped his hands and raced in to get the meat. Samehada rumbled unhappily and retreated from the fire, hiding behind Kisame's back. Sasori went to tell Hidan and Konan that they were starting the party.
Hidan was in the backyard before Sasori returned. "A. I know how to cook meat like nobody's business, and B. I've been wondering for the last forever what you guys were so curious about, and I've been going out of my skin!" he justified. "What was it?"
"Flowers," Kakuzu pointed. Hidan followed his finger and went to examine the stone.
"They're beautiful, right?" Laurie asked.
"Fuck yeah!" Hidan circled the stone on all fours. "I smell snake."
Yahiko gasped. "There was a kid that was like a snake, right? He did this?"
Hidan came back and gave Yahiko a punch on the shoulder. "Feels like it. Have fun with your new buddy." He smirked. "If you can find him."
"Find him?" Laurie sounded very worried. "Are we talking about a lost child? Oh my god. Is he okay?"
"I'm pretty sure he is," Hidan said doubtfully. "He's fine, if not super dazzlingly fantastically great. I can probably find him anyway. His feelings are really obvious."
Sasori came back with Konan. Konan thumped down beside the fire. The light highlighted her face and threw the bags under her eyes and her general pallor into sharp relief. The idle conversation stopped.
Sasori sat down on her left, and Hidan on her right. Hidan put a hand around her shoulders and allowed her to lean on him. Konan still stared blankly into the fire. "I get that," Sasori whispered. He stared into the fire too. He had mixed feelings about not being the only one who wasn't in the party mood.
Yahiko looked to Nagato. Nagato silently advised Leave them be, so Yahiko did. Turning to the rest of the assembled group, he asked, "So, does anyone want to hear about Jesus while we wait?"
"Jesus?" Deidara asked. What did Jesus have to do with - "Oh, you mean the water, yeah?"
"Water?" Laurie asked Deidara. Samehada whined, no doubt wondering if he could have any.
Dei nodded. "Yeah. Clay's found around water, yeah, so I went to the river to get some, and I fell in. I actually fell in a couple times." He chuckled nervously. "It was no big deal, I was fine. The second time, my chakra decided to be useful for once, so I was sitting on the water, hm."
"You too?" Yahiko was worried and delighted at the same time. "I was using my chakra to climb trees and jump from one tree to another, like a monkey, and I went to find Kakuzu that way, but I lost focus and fell into the stream. Well, not really. I rolled across the surface of it! It was the craziest thing I've ever experienced."
"And I walked on it," Kakuzu finished. "So now we're wondering if Jesus was a ninja. Who thinks what?"
Laurie's head swiveled like a bobblehead turned sideways. "Wait, you guys...You can do things like that? I know you can move water around, but walking on it...is different…" Why was walking on water any different than throwing water? She stopped and looked down, confused. They were about equally in defiance of physics. Why did she feel like this?
Itachi contemplated the stars. "Our powers are based in chakra. Maybe Jesus had chakra, or maybe he had similar powers based in something else. Chakra may not be the only thing that can grant this ability."
"We asked Konan," Yahiko continued, "and she said every ninja from her world learns to do this. It's common. But, Jesus probably didn't have chakra because he was in this world and not that one, so it probably wasn't the same. I think Itachi's right."
"We're in this world, and we have chakra," Nagato pointed out.
"Yeah, but we're not the same. Even if something happened so there was chakra around, only people from Konan's world could use it. They have different body parts to use chakra with." Yahiko gestured at himself and shrugged. So as long as they assumed Jesus was born to normal people of this world, chakra was out of the question.
"Then what? Where else do powers come from, hm?" Deidara asked.
Hidan scratched his head. "There are some other things that qualify as weird shit, but they do other things. I don't know anything else that makes people walk on water."
That got a lot of eyes on him. The fire crackled all by itself, surrounded by an early cricket and silence. Even the cricket went quiet and hopped away, hearing the silence and thinking it might have been seen. "What do you mean, other things?" Kakuzu asked.
Konan sat up and looked at Hidan too, but for another reason. "You don't have to say anything," she reassured him. Kakuzu narrowed his eyes. Bullshit.
Hidan scratched more. "Well...like...the demon kid, or the other kid, or like those cool powers Yahiko has. Hey, dipface, tell us about 'em!"
Yahiko sat up and touched his newly bandaged cheek. "Oh, well, I can't exactly show them with these on…"
"I'm immortal," Hidan offered. Before anyone could stop him he'd taken one of Konan's kunai and drawn two long gashes down the back of his right forearm. "Use this!"
Hidan held his forearm out to Yahiko, stretching it across Nagato's lap. Several drops of blood spattered Nagato's pants. He recoiled and circled around to Yahiko's right side in a hurry. Yahiko winced and scooted closer, took Hidan's hand gently in his own. "I need water," he requested.
Sasori reached over to the drinks and threw him a water bottle. Yahiko put Hidan's arm down and took it. Unscrewing the cap, he pushed his chakra into the water through his thumb before carefully tilting the bottle. It's going to spill everywhere! The water did not spill everywhere. He was able to hold it together in his hand easily, and applied it quickly to Hidan's self-inflicted wounds.
The water turned crimson. While not as much blood as if Hidan had slit his wrists, it was still a lot. Yahiko applied as much chakra as he could without breaking up the water. His stomach turned at the amount of blood that had already dripped off Hidan's arm, but he did not look away. A rustling at his side announced that Same had joined him.
When he threw the bloody water away a minute later (making the shark squeal in delight and race to lick it up), small indrawn breaths and gasps could be heard around the fire. Deidara and Laurie on the other side got to their feet to see over the fire, and everyone else crowded in closer. Konan's mouth was on the verge of hanging open. Nobody spoke before the miracle in front of them. Hidan's arm was not bleeding at all!
"It feels good, too! No pain, no itching," Hidan reported. Some amazed exclamations and half-whispered Wows greeted this news. Nagato looked up and down, between Hidan's arm in the air and the pool of blood on the ground below it. His mouth hung open fully. There were no words.
Yahiko had long since turned tomato red and started struggling not to smile. He lost his struggle and giggled. "Yeah, my cheek was the same way," he muttered lamely. Why am I even speaking? He went back to trying not to smile.
Konan knocked on Hidan's shoulder, and received his arm to investigate. She called up some paper and formed it into a screen blocking Hidan's view of his own arm, dragging him closer to the fire as she did so. The white paper reflected the firelight and helped her view. She looked closely at new lines of blood starting to well up from the wounds, laid a palm over the skin where blood was not yet starting to leak again, and poked Hidan in one place where he was not bleeding and another place where he was. Hidan winced at the second.
"There is such a thing as medical jutsu," she announced, "but this is not medical jutsu. Medical jutsu may be used to heal wounds and alter flesh. These wounds have not been healed at all. They have only been temporarily closed against infection, relieved from pain, and had their inflammation stopped. This is nothing I have ever seen before." She looked sideways in Yahiko's direction.
He shuffled around. "Yeah, that's what I saw too," he agreed. "Um, all I did was apply chakra. This was an accident, actually. I had the idea of using water to clean wounds, and I used my chakra to stir the water, and then I noticed that it suddenly didn't hurt anymore after I did that. The water spreads it out better, but it's my chakra doing that." He ducked his head, now even redder than a tomato.
"This can't be medical chakra," Konan insisted. "Medical techniques are techniques. They must be used deliberately, and they can be used for anything. A malicious medic could alter flesh for the worse as much as for the better. This…" She shook her head. "It's incredible. Beyond the bounds of realism. It's just what I would expect from you."
The very air seemed to stop flowing when she said that. Yahiko forgot to do anything, including blink. It's just what I would expect from you. Those words hung in the air and in everyone's minds, demanding attention. Each word spoke a universe of meaning. It - good things, healing. Just - only good things and healing, nothing else. What I would expect - what I have always expected, what I know. From you - good things belong to you; you are a good person.
Water pooled in Yahiko's eyes, and not from lack of blinking. All this time, she'd avoided his gaze. All this time, he'd caused her pain, sent her running and sometimes made her fight him off. All this time, he'd wondered what was wrong with him, why and how his very existence was hurtful, tried everything he could think of to change that. And now, she said, as easily as if a committee of gods had declared it truth, that she had always believed he could defy the bounds of realism to take away pain and hurt.
Tears dripped into the grass. How long had she believed in him? How had he never seen it? Yahiko smiled through his tears, a smile nothing and no one could hold back. A weight was off his heart, and he would move all the boundaries of realism to keep it off.
Mental images of her, ideas of what she was, updated around the fire. Nagato took Yahiko's hand. This was proof of what he'd suspected earlier, and he still didn't know what to make of it. How much did they actually know of her? Did anyone know anything at all?
Hidan reached as far back as he could, grabbed the bag of pork slices, and flipped them onto the fire. He reached again, came back with a jar of a little sauce he'd come up with some years ago, and began applying it inconspicuously to the side of the meat that was cooked first. He worked over the forearm that Konan was still holding, waiting for these yahoos to catch up.
Konan was frozen, once more the object of a circle of eyes. She had no idea what to make of them this time. They stared at her with a kind of numbness and shock that gave away no clues for what had caused it. Hidan's tongue stuck out as he performed his chef's duties, the only person not looking at her. What had she done that was so surprising? She heard a small sniffle to her right.
Yahiko was crying. He fought to hold his eyes open against the natural instinct to screw them shut, and was losing. Salt water formed a ribbon on his lips and dripped into his smile. For the first time since her life had shattered so many years before, Konan stared into his face and did not look away. He heaved with sobs, and stopped smiling in favor of contorting his face as if to wring his eyes dry. He brought up one arm to wipe his face dry on its sleeve. This only resulted in a wet sleeve as well as a wet face. Still he trembled, shook, like he was trying to work his way into believing something. Samehada licked at his face speculatively and rumbled reassurance.
Konan felt...ill. A deep weight was in her, stopping her from reaching out to him. He shook with happiness, happiness that sent Konan back to all the memories that were now bitter and all the visions of herself she'd long since discarded as falsehoods. Her teeth began to chatter and her heart beat faster. Fear? Yes, of course. What would happen to him now that he believed in her? Her skin grew cold all over. History had a funny way of repeating itself, didn't it? Her fingers tightened. Anger. She could not allow history to repeat.
Hidan grabbed her wrist and squeezed, popping her fingers open and away from his forearm. Yahiko wiped his face with his other sleeve, much more successfully. Nagato held Yahiko's hand right where it was, and Hidan continued to squeeze Konan's wrist. His purple eyes looked into hers for a glance, before turning away to guide his arm onto the hot stone to retrieve the meat and pile it on a paper plate. Anger or no, Konan would not wrestle herself free of him. She turned away.
Yahiko sniffled still, and his eyes felt sore. He'd done it. He'd made himself into someone she could believe in. A new strength flowed in Yahiko's whole chest, easing the trembling. He would do it. His hands curled with the new strength, and he swore that he would always continue to be someone she could believe in. Nagato's hand tightened too, answering with a determination to stand beside him and help. Nagato was the best friend anyone could hope for. And Samehada was amazing, too. He gathered the shark under his arm.
The smell of the meat sent stomachs growling. Hidan let go of Konan's wrist to reach back for the stack of paper plates, and he served everyone a slice before putting on more. Kisame was gratified to see that Same got a slice, too, which he swallowed whole. They ate in peace. Yahiko's chest and face eased, Konan tore scraps of meat gently with her teeth, and everything was all right.
In every group, there is a certain role which must be fulfilled by one person or another if that group is to become more than a smattering of individuals. That role is "the idiot." The Idiot must be brave and stupid enough to cross the most clearly stated boundaries and bring down trouble, hoping the trouble will vaporize and come down as a soft spring cloud instead. If they do their job right, it does. When the Akatsuki were all finished eating, they looked around. Someone had to do it. Someone had to say it. Someone had to tread on bomb-laden ground, or this party was over.
Sasori cleared his throat. "What does that mean?" he asked Konan.
Konan put down her plate. "Chakra is partly physical energy, partly spiritual," she answered. "His spirit has very strong tendencies toward relieving pain. Those tendencies might be expressed in his chakra." Disaster was averted, the trouble vaporized, and conversation began to flow again. Hidan served the next round of meat, and decided to wait to put on more.
"Wait, spiritual?" Laurie's inner scientist latched on to that. "Do you mean it's been actually proven in your world that people have souls?"
Konan looked blank. "Obviously."
"No, not obviously. Souls can't be seen through any of our measurable senses. There's nothing to definitely, without a doubt, prove they exist. Many people believe they have an existence beyond their body, but no one can say it as a fact." Laurie stuffed her whole slice in her mouth and chewed quickly. She was on her home ground.
"Are ghosts and such present in this world?" Konan asked. She stuffed the rest of her slice in her mouth, savoring it as she waited for Laurie's response. There was still so much about this world she hadn't learned, and what she could glimpse was fascinating.
Laurie's eyes were alight. "The idea of ghosts exists, but we can't be sure of the reality of them. If ghosts really exist, why do so many of the most popular videos or pictures of them turn out to be faked? Either they don't get along with the ways we have of recording data, or they're just stories."
"What about the occasional person who comes very close to death, or even dies temporarily? Their testimony should be evidence enough."
"Not really. Nobody can show where that testimony comes from. Our senses are based in our brains, so if someone who's brain is definitely working strangely reports seeing something strange, is it more likely that their report is real or that their brain was flipping out? If someone with an entirely normal brain that could be shown to have everything 100% in order saw a ghost, it would be acceptable as evidence. But if someone dies temporarily and saws they saw a light, how do you know it's not the light of the operating room or a hallucination?" Laurie argued so passionately on the side of skepticism, anyone would have assumed she believed it. In fact this was a Devil's Advocate argument for her. It was more fun to argue this position than her own one, because she couldn't fall back on high emotion and dogma.
Konan settled back onto her heels. "It sounds to me as if the people of this world are willing to fall back on excuse after excuse to avoid admitting the obvious."
"Maybe," Laurie forced out through her grin as she waved a plastic fork in the air. "That could be entirely true. But the world is complicated. We actually have almost no idea what a 100% normal brain looks like, and normal might not even exist. Everything could be normal or nothing could. When you start to see how much we don't know, it all gets chaotic. You can believe anything you want." She put her arms down on her crossed legs and leaned forward. "But you know what is true?"
Konan pricked her ears forward.
"Some things are a lot more fun to believe than others." Laurie giggled and sat back, satisfied that she'd won. There had been no contest to win, and she didn't know what she'd won, but she felt as if she had won something anyway.
"There was a man I knew, back home, who had the same things to say. But he did not say them in the same way," Konan remembered. "He would say that all is chaos, and that means there is nothing to believe in."
"That's not true!" Yahiko yelped. " It just means you have choices, that's all! Like...I heard once that angels don't look like they have free will, but they actually do, and they just don't use it because they know what's right and what's wrong, so why would they ever choose what's wrong? Did this guy you knew want to be turned into a machine and given orders, or something? Poor guy…" He started to reflexively pat Samehada's head, making the shark purr.
"Sounds boring," Nagato agreed. "It's kind of fun to make mistakes sometimes."
"Even Jesus got himself killed," Sasori remarked. The conversation was getting really far off track.
"Wasn't that the point, yeah?" Deidara asked. "I heard he was supposed to."
Kakuzu facepalmed. Itachi decided now was a good time to add his own thoughts. "He was, because humans are fundamentally flawed and he was supposed to die with all our mistakes on him so we would not be universally damned and would be able to enter heaven after that."
"I didn't know you were religious," Laurie said. Neither had Kisame.
"I'm not, but religion is fascinating, so I have studied it. That is what I remember learning, more or less. It might not be entirely accurate as a representation of what actual believers believe, but I think that was the original idea," Itachi explained.
"If no one follows the original idea, it's pretty useless," Kisame muttered, starting to look jealously at Yahiko.
"No, because if it still exists, someone may learn it again one day and it will be revived. Ideas don't perish." Itachi thought that was self evident.
"Neither does art, yeah!" Deidara got two sodas, gave one to Itachi, and clinked them together in solidarity.
Sasori sighed. Kakuzu weighed in with, "So what is the relation? Her world has a way for people's souls to give them magic powers, and every prophet ever has claimed to have unusual powers and also be related to the divine in some way. It sounds like an entire world of prophets over there."
Hidan shook his head fiercely. "No fucking way! Prophets are religious. This shit she's talking about is spiritual, which is different. They probably have prophets over there too, preaching religions, and everybody else still has souls and chakra and shit. I say false equivalence!"
"If I have a spirit strong enough to give my chakra unusual powers, what am I?" Yahiko asked while reapplying chakra to Hidan's wound. Same rejoined Kisame on the other side of the fire.
"A prophet, obviously." Sasori was only half joking. He remembered that collection of green-blues named benevolence that had a place near him when he needed it.
"That's different, because that's also spiritual," Hidan countered. "A religion is a group of humans who have decided to believe the same thing. It has jack shit to do with spirits."
Konan weighed risk vs. reward in her mind and decided to take the risk. "Your original seemed very convinced that his religion was spiritually based, with Jashin-sama having a direct connection to him."
"That's because whichever fuckups called that a religion should be taught the error of their ways!" Hidan huffed. "He didn't have a fucking religion! He had a god, and guessed that other people probably had the same god, and that was fucking it! Do you see a group of people agreeing on shit in that?"
Everyone else assumed that Konan had told Hidan all about his original's religion at some point, and wondered why they were arguing. Konan knew better and carefully filed this outburst away in a steadily-growing folder labeled "Hidan - ?" Hidan proceeded to forget everything he had just said, which would have been a problem if anyone had asked him about it.
"So what am I?" Yahiko asked.
"Who gives a shit? You're awesome," Hidan disregarded the question as he turned to get a soda.
"Wait, wait, wait. Is that another thing that your world proved is real?" Laurie asked of Konan. "That gods are real?"
Konan nodded. "Hidan sacrifices to Jashin-sama and prays to him, and receives immortality. He cannot be killed by any injury. And yes, his sacrifices go somewhere. If a battle is followed up on, the blood he spilled on it has usually disappeared. Not to mention that the symbol of his religion feels strange to be around. It makes most people nervous to be around him. That can't all be explained by normal things."
"So at least one god is real?" Laurie made sure she had it right. "That changes everything."
"Probably more," Konan added. "When a very large and very powerful village in a neighboring country was attacked, the leader sacrificed himself to save his village from the worst of it by using a technique that reportedly summoned the grim reaper. Or a kind of god of death. It's not very clear what a shinigami is."
"Holy crap," Laurie breathed. "Does that apply to here?"
"No," Kakuzu answered. "The succubus was angry because we don't usually have this 'Jashin' around in this world, remember?"
"He might have been present before, but not as much," Konan clarified. "Not enough to have such effects as I've described. Perhaps the gods are much closer and have much stronger influence in my world than in this one."
"Anyone want meat? There's a little more," Hidan interrupted. His scalp prickled all over with the urge to either scratch or just run away from the fire entirely.
"So what did this Jesus do, besides walk on water? What was he like?" Konan changed the subject. She patted Hidan's arm gently and rubbed his back.
Itachi summarized what he knew of Jesus' life. "His followers later wrote about him in several documents that were codified into the Bible, which is the foundational document of Christianity. These documents claim that he rose from the dead several days later, and was no longer an ordinary human," Itachi finished.
"Intriguing. He really claimed that there was only one god? That can't possibly be right," Konan disagreed. "If there is one god, it comes in such a variety of flavors that are all so different from each other that it would be just as accurate to claim there are infinite gods."
"Like oceans," Hidan mumbled. "There's really only one ocean, if you trace it on a map." Konan nodded.
Itachi shrugged. "One god that is infinite, or infinite gods that are not. It really amounts to the same thing."
"Except that if you thought there was only one god, you'd have to be very careful to specify that you only worship part of it, but if you believe there are many different gods then it's easier to explain," Yahiko thought aloud. "Nobody's infinite, so we'd all have to worship whatever part of an infinite god we're best suited for. It would be a lot easier to say you just worship one or two or three closely related ones."
"Who needs a god in the first place?" Kisame argued.
Nagato calmly said, "Nobody said you had to actually do anything. Just because you have a spirit and it might go more in one direction than another, it doesn't mean you have to do anything with that knowledge. You could just treat it like an IQ test."
"The results of IQ tests are equally believable," Kakuzu joked. Itachi agreed, and was not joking.
"I don't think I'm gonna remember this later. I'd better go lie down," Hidan said in the same tone of voice one uses to say they feel sick. He turned and gave Konan a hug, and stumbled up the back stairs into the building.
Kakuzu stared after him the whole way. "Hidan's never been able to anticipate that before," he said.
"I did tell him that finding things unpleasant leads to forgetting them," Konan justified. "You heard the tone of voice he used. He has good reason to suspect that this experience might be bad enough for him to forget."
"...Thank you." It was a rare acknowledgement from Kakuzu, but he knew very well nobody else could have gotten such a handle on Hidan's memory issues. He'd been trying ever since he noticed them, and she had already gotten a dozen times farther. He could be grateful sometimes.
Konan inclined her head in gratitude, saying nothing.
"Is anyone else a little freaked out?" Nagato asked. "Two different worlds, getting close enough to mess with each other. Is this...you know…"
Collision? That dampened the mood. The fire sent sparks flying as bits of wood exploded. It was noticeably lower than it had been at the start of the party. Samehada left his place in Kisame's lap and stretched next to the fire. Deidara's hands were able to open their mouths when he held them out to the fire and not immediately dry out. He finished his soda and sat quietly, as everyone else was. Now that someone said it out loud, it was scary. Even the designated Idiot wouldn't cross this line of tension. Yahiko chuckled nervously.
"We get to be happy," he said while slinging an arm over Nagato's shoulders. "Let's not worry about that, any more than anything else. What can we do anyway?"
That was the best answer anyone at the fire was going to get.
Deidara yawned. "Hm," he mumbled. "So…"
Nobody wanted this party to end. Itachi and Laurie tried to remember the last time they'd had such good discussion. Nagato and Yahiko had never felt more empowered. Even Sasori said nothing.
Konan sighed. "Sasori, I have something to ask you about." And she got to her feet. Sasori got to his feet and followed, aware of others beginning to do the same. She took him around front to the little shed he would be using as his workshop.
Konan looked around. Her search was directed up and down, indicating that it wasn't just other people she worried about. Sasori wondered what exactly she was searching for. "What is it?"
Her search concluded, Konan asked, "You reported seeing one idea-color predominating, out of balance. The succubus' reaction indicated that was the one. It's certainly too much to be fully described in any human language, but describe it as close as you can. What color was it?"
Sasori hesitated. She was right; it was much too much to be described in language alone. "Blue," he started. So inadequate. "It was an incredibly deep, really strong blue. Way beyond that word. It felt forceful but also distant, like...pulling. I worried about getting too close. It was scary and I thought that something very, very bad would happen if it touched me." He shivered and his teeth chattered. "I...don't…" He squeezed his arm to be sure that his body was there. I don't know why I'm alive right now.
"I understand," Konan said gently. "I've felt that too."
"You have?" The experience was so different from anything he'd experienced, Sasori found it impossible to even understand what the word "same" meant, let alone apply it to someone else's experience. "How? Where?"
"..." There were things she couldn't say about it, and things she really shouldn't. "I really shouldn't say. Just know that your body is adequate protection, and nothing can touch you as long as you are in it." Not even if you try to have it touch you, she didn't say. His fear of it might transfer to her if she admitted that part of her experience. Konan also decided that it would be a good idea to save the part where some minimal part of it actually could reach her for some other time. Never might be a good time to share that.
Sasori shuddered. "If there's something else that could do this, I won't be able to fight it," he admitted. The risk was too much. He would never take any risk of being parted from his body if he didn't absolutely have to.
Konan nodded. "I understand. I will not ask you to, and nobody else will ask for an explanation." Her firm stance on this helped Sasori relax. He thanked her and went back around to see how Deidara and Laurie were doing and offer Laurie a ride.
Konan stayed outside, looking for glimpses of blue among the stars. Eventually she shook herself and went inside. She didn't need to have Hidan's senses to feel the slumber the entire base was in. She drifted silently through the halls, back to her room. Her inner mind was anything but silent. She wondered about the parts she had not told Sasori, and why she had not told him, and about the parts she hadn't wondered about before. She also wondered about Sasori himself. He had been scared. Konan wondered about that fear, and why she didn't feel it. She should. That was very clear.
And yet she didn't. Konan blinked upon entering her room, aware that there was something here for her to remember. If she had feared the overwhelming color that Sasori had described, she could not have taken the blank pages the demon had given her and slipped into Hidan's room to sneak them under his head. She could not have stroked his hair as he lay peacefully slumbering, his shoulders rising and falling in time with his light snoring. She could not have quietly renamed the file she had in her head, crossing out the question marks and completing it.
She did not, and so sleep came more easily than it ever had before in her entire life.
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