There were both encased in Earth. One was dead, and the other was holding on, praying fervently to his God for deliverance. Sometimes he prayed that Kakazu would find him and put him back together, but after weeks of this eerie silence, he realised that his partner was probably dead. No closer to death then he had been before, Hidan sulked, finally seeing the precious gift of immortality his God had given him as a curse.
A stirring in the earth around him wakened him from his half-death, and his senses scoured the area around him. He could sense no chakra that would suggest a person nearby. Inwardly, he sighed.
Something long and thin slid along his cheek and he scowled as well as he could with a mouthful of dirt. Another worm, investigating the taste of his flesh no doubt. He cracked an eye open but could see nothing in the inpenetrable darkness of earth.
Another of these worm-like objects touched him, and then another and another. Hidan thought that the sensation was familiar. Burial and never-ending boredom had slowed his thought processes to a crawl. It was his way of coping with the stretch of eternity.
It wasn't until he felt dirt shift around his torso that he realised his head had been re-attached to his upper body. Kakuzu's black threads had somehow reached him underground and were stitching him back together. Hidan smirked, wondering if Kakuzu was standing over his burial site now, painstakingly putting him back together. Perhaps his partner wasn't so bad after all.
When Hidan had finally been put back together, he flexed his fingers against the dirt, testing their strength. It seemed that his incapacitation had not weakened his limbs as much as he had expected. He still felt strong.
He waited for a time, wondering if Kakuzu was digging him out. When he felt that hours had passed, he realised this wasn't the case. Confusion set in. Why would his partner put him back together but then not free him? It didn't make sense.
It took almost a week for him to painstakingly dig himself out of his earth prison. He spent the entire time cursing Shikamaru and Kakuzu for putting him in this situation. When finally he felt empty air against his bloody fingers, he almost sobbed in relief. Hidan had never been claustrophobic, but facing an eternity of burial had changed his perspective somewhat. There was living and there was living.
The light hurt his eyes, but he couldn't bear to shut them. He could see again; colour, light, trees, grass. He would never take life for granted again. Fuck akatsuki, there were better things to be doing with his life.
There was no sign of his partner. All that was left was the black threads that now littered Hidan's slowly healing body. He felt them tug lightly towards the east, and with nothing else to really do, he followed their prompts.
Hidan came to the place where their last battle had been fought against the Konoha brats who had wanted to avenge their dead teacher. Fuckheads. In the middle of the clearing lay a large crater and Hidan stood at the lip of it, looking down to the centre.
There was no body, only a handful of black threads, half buried in the ground.
