Story Title: Hideaway

Author: RandomHatThief

Pairing: HidanXOC

Warnings: Cussing

Note: It's a little angtsy I know. It's an old idea I've had for a while now. I've tried to put it down before and it never worked then either~

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or any of it's characters; like Hidan or his general past. I do however claim Itoe(the girl in the story) and I admit to having added my creative freedom to the little information on his past to make the setting of the story.

xXx

A breeze very blew her hair out and she blinked into it. The sun was still just setting, it had always taken this place so long to get dark at the end of the day.

Something they had relished in each day as they raced back across the fields from the woods where their "secret hideout" was located. They had always loved the way the late sun had turned everything orange and yellow as they ran through the grasses and made the grasshoppers burst into flight.

They had always stopped at the intersection where they each turned to go up hills over long driveways to their homes. They would each gaze at the others house as kids, fantasizing about the times they had each been to the other. When they had seen different pictures and sat on different couches to eat different after-school snacks.

She looked off to her right and gazed at his old house. The windows were cracked and the door balanced precariously on a single hinge now. Spiderwebs seemed to lace the place back together from the years it had lay abandoned. Her own home was broken down as well.

She'd already been in her old room several times. Her bed had given rise to at least a two inched solid cloud of dust when she'd sat on it. It still sort of smelled like it used to, but much much mustier. She let out a sigh and watching it freeze in the cold air before jumping down from the roof of her home. The wood creaked under her weight and she let her brows pull together.

'I shouldn't have let my childhood home get into such shambles...' She looked back behind her before she made her way -slowly- down the path she'd run across as a child. A sweet, innocent, trusting child.

She still thought of herself as a child sometimes. Little things excited her when she was in a good mood. Today was not a good day. She felt a long-refused depression seep into her thoughts as the crickets chirped around her and the grasshoppers leapt out of her way.

'That's all that's left around here. Crickets and grasshoppers.' She thought to herself bitterly.

Soon she was at the place where she would normally have pounded his fist with her own and ran back the way she'd came, or high-fived him and raced him somewhere. Maybe to the hideout -which had fallen to pieces long before the houses had begun to decay properly- or the beach, which was really just the exposed back of a creek just through a thicket and behind a few rocks.

They had followed the creek up until they'd found it and henceforth called it their "vacation hideout", the fort there was less grand than the main headquarters but they took pride in the hammock their fathers had helped them install between two dogwoods trees.

Those were such good times, back when they were young... and even once they were older. After they had grown out of Boogie-Monsters and Cooties and separated a bit to hang out with their own genders. They had always had their hideaways. When school was tearing at their brains and gym was ripping their hormonal self-control to bits they had always come home and snuck across the fields and into the trees to their secret places after dark.

No, they hadn't ever done anything there in the dark with no one around, though she was sure the aspect crossed his mind as much as it had hers, and that was okay. They held each others secrets, their guilts, and their joys. They really were the best of friends and she as almost positive they still would be to the day.

But something had happened, he'd found religion. His classes became more unimportant than they were before and he dropped most of his friends, choosing to hang out with older kids. She had always waited for him in the hammock and asked how the Cult was going at night. And right before it happened he had stopped talking about it. He'd not utter a word of his God nor a verse she had been trying to remember. She had fully supported him in his life choice, it was his after all, and the only thing that would bother her was if she wasn't involved.

She wasn't one to take up something because someone else did and she wasn't about to change that -no matter how cute his puppy-dog eyes were- so she had never adopted his religion to her own life, but she had memorized verses from his Holy Book and listened eagerly to tales from it as he'd read them aloud -on these nights they had made a small fire for him to see by.

Then it happened. She had heard the brutal stories and harsh rules of Jashinism and had been expecting him to murder for some time now. When the familiar screams of his own mother woke the neighborhood late one night she had watched from her window as he massacred the small town.

There was a certain grace to him movements as he spun and flipped and angled his body with the weight of his newest plaything; a triple bladed scythe with a rope attaching it to his belt. She managed to find some sick pleasure in hearing him sadistic laugh ring though the walls of the village. She went over the verses he'd chanted night by night and spared a thought for her parents.

She was their third and last child. Her brothers had moved away long ago and wouldn't die tonight. She was fairly confident her parents -and maybe herself- wouldn't survive the night when his own hadn't. His laugh echoed through her room as his destruction grew closer to her home, her heart began to race but she forced her mind to peace.

She dropped a note she'd prepared long ago and propped it on the bed so that it would intrigue him to read it, his name printed on the front of the folded paper. And with that she stepped from her room and padded down the hall. Her parents were in shambles in the living room. Her father was armed and her mother desperately wrung her dishtowel, muttering about how he could do such a thing and that he was such a good little boy. When she caught her mothers gaze she saw a flash a fear that sent an uneasy prickle over her skin.

She allowed herself no doubt in her choice of action and walked to her mother's side. Her father joined them, rambling about it being okay. Trying to comfort his wife and daughter -whom seemed like she knew nothing of what was happening. Then she looked in his father's eyes. She knew it all and she had a plan. Not a rescue plan, not an escape plan, a plan of how she wanted to die. Her mother saw it too and the tears rolled down her worn cheeks.

"Mom, Daddy," She closed her eyes after catching both her parents' gazes. Her loving, doting parents that had never done anything to deserve the death they were about to get, "I... I love you both, so much and... a-and I'm going to miss you if I live through this. Don't come looking for me, I know what I'm doing this time." She hugged her parents fiercely and let her mother cry a little more, tears threatening her own eyes.

"Itoe no! You're not going anywhere, I can beat him. You and your mother will be fine. Go into the back room and don't make a sound." He said hurriedly and goaded them back from the door.

"Daddy." She stared at him now, her eyes boring into his with a determination he knew he couldn't change now, "I can handle this. Please, I might not die. I have something I have to say to him and I know how to get my chance. I love you, I have to go now." And with that she walked out the door.

They didn't follow her and she could hear her mother break down and hit the floor sobbing, it hurt her to slip her last note under the knocker and run off through a back trail she'd found to the hideout.

She had grown well since being able to slip through these gaps effortlessly and she got a good many scratches on her way. The simple scene she was looking for calmed her racing heart. If her best friend was going to kill her for his religion then she wanted to die hear, in the hammock by the creek. She laid herself down onto the dirty white woven fabric and waited.

She dared let a tear slip as she heard the killing pause, then her mother's scream that would echo in her mind and haunt her dreams until she died.

xXx

He was on the last house on his mission, hers. She was always good to him and he had decided long ago that if something like this were to happen that he would go the other way and end here. Then if she wanted her life so desperately that she would leave him altogether, she would have the chance to flee.

He quietened his sadistic ecstacy as he neared her door. A pale square caught his eye and he slipped it from the knocker. It was a simple note from Itoe. It read;

Hidan-

Let's play a game, just like we used to, eh? Go to my room for the next clue.

-Itoe

P.S. Please kill them quickly.

And so he did. He slit their throats and chopped off their heads for good measure -in case they decided to hold onto their lives despite their bodies being gone already as many had done so far. Then he walked easily down the familiar halls of her house and into her room, where another note lay perched on her messy sheets. It read;

I'm hiding Hidan, you have to find me. I'm where we always go to be at peace.

Kill me there if you're going to. Call it a last request. Love you.

-Itoe

He felt something tug on his heartstrings then. He knew exactly where she was hiding, where she wanted to die. And if the roles were reversed he would probably want to die in the same place.

But could he kill her? Did he have to? Why had he killed the other villagers? Why did he not kill the other "cult members" as she had called them?

He had killed them because they were sinners, wrongfully judging the ways of others and wasting their lives on greed and lust.

He didn't kill the other Jashinists because they didn't sin.

Had Itoe ever sinned? She was a virgin without so much as a first kiss and had no love for the money the people around her had. She never asked for more than she needed -unless it was her birthday or something and then she received and had yet to ask. He admit that she did cuss, but that was hardly a sin. He did it himself.

And most importantly he recalled the night when he had brought his Holy Book to their meetings and read to her. She has loved hearing it, she had asked honest questions about things he explained and even debated a little, quoting verses back at him as well as he knew them himself.

Itoe had never sinned, she could live.

He hurried down the paths and hopped over the dead(or dying) bodies of the people he'd seen all his life. They groaned insults if they could and he smashed their faces with the hilt of his weapon as he went.

xXx

She had dried her tears long before the bushed rustled and he emerged. Blood covered his sleeveless shirt and it had several tears from what she could only fathom were feisty old men with knives. She -rather complusively- wanted to force her shaking legs to get up so she could wipe the blood off his face and out of his hair -slicked back as he'd been wearing it lately- but she stayed where she was.

"Found you." He let a crooked grin stretch his mouth and his magenta eyes lit with a fire she'd seen too often in her life, and it still sent pleasant bumps across her sin half the time.

"Glad to see you can read." She smiled back as best she could and managed herself up from her laying position on shaking arms and frayed nerves. He noticed and his smile faded.

"You're scared." He pointed out and she shrugged.

"Only terrified. But I'm sure some of it's still shock." She smiled and her eyes got watery when she set her gaze. She narrowed them and dipped her head down, muttering curses at herself.

She felt the fabric move under his weight joining hers and took a deep breath before she looked toward him, not focusing on his face. The scythe was propped up against one of the dogwoods and he had his arms propped lazily half falling off the hammock. His head lolled back and he let out a deep tired breath. She giggled a bit and earned a glance from him.

"Lemme guess, I won't believe the day you've had?" He chuckled dryly and watched her, every few seconds her nose would wrinkle and her eyes would close. She was holding back the tears she so desperately needed to cry.

"I'm sure yours is worse than any shit I could come up with." He said and she cast him a momentary glare, then she smoothed her face and looked at the dirt.

"It's okay you know," her voice cracked as she spoke and he watched her face carefully, "I don't really mind you going psycho and killing people; not even my parents," her voice shattered then and she had to recompose before she could go on, "and I wanna ask so much of you; for you to stay here, to let me come with you, I'm sure some part of me wants you to kill me," she laughed dryly at that, "but mostly I guess I just want to make sure I say goodbye." She confessed it all then, she hadn't really meant to. It had spilled over.

Hidan didn't know what to say to his lifelong friend. She had just slapped her oh-so-guarded heart on her sleeve and gotten ready to regret it. He couldn't hurt her if he really tried, even if Jashin poofed up and demanded it of him. He knew his next words would mean more than he could ever make up for. So he chose one of the ones he knew best;

"Itoe," he didn't know what to do so he hung his head. Maybe he should put his heart out there too, "I don't know what to say to that. I don't know how I feel about it. I do wish you could come with me, if I do leave, but I'm not sure you could han-" he was stopped by a hard slap to his cheek. He looked up at her now, she'd stood and spun on her heel to tower over him, glaring vicously through wet lashes.

"Of course, I can handle it you dickwad! I can handle anything you can fuckin' throw at me! You killed my parents! You killed your parents! And did I get all mad at you for that? Did I start crying because I don't have Mommy and Daddy to run to anymore? Hell no! I can handle and psycho religious massacres you wanna put on Hidan! But I won't fuckin' tolerate you implying that I can't handle it!" She shrieked at him and he couldn't help but smirk.

She was always cute when she was mad, even like this. Her face was covered in scratches and her cheeks were glistening with saltwater and he still found her adorable. Her eyes had always been a lighter pink than his and her hair black as night. Now she had it down in its jagged manor and laying on her bear shoulders as her nightshirt slipped off its perch. He took a moment to note that she was in her pajamas, he oversized T-shirt and... well, she normally wore loose, thin sweats but apparently she had decided to forgo them and prance about her dead town in her underwear.

He stood up and her angry-sad gaze followed his eyes as he ended up taller than her,only by a few inches but still. He wrapped his arms around her and she buried her face in his bloody shirt.

"I'm sorry Itoe, I know you can handle it. You can handle anything, you always have. But you're right, I do probably have to leave and you can't come." He said, sounding rather sad himself. He dreaded the silence that would surely come from her not being there and the many prayers in which he would have to ask forgiveness for his actions of mercy and -he'll admit it- love.

She didn't look up at him as she asked the question that forced her limbs to quake, "Are you going to kill me then?" The silence from him made her shake harder as she tried to stop herself.

"No. You haven't sinned, you don't deserve it." He angled his head down so he could bury his face in her hair, "you're biggest sin was letting me fall for you, stupid, stupid, beautiful girl." And he had left early the next morning.

She smiled now, looking at the dingy old strings of the hammock in the light of the bright moon. She closed her eyes and walked out of the woods.

Bones lay here and there, some carried off by God knows what and chewed on, and she stepped over them.

She left her little village and kept up what she was doing now that she was grown from the 15 year old girl she had been at the time.

She was 21 now, her black hair was white and longer pulled back in a still-jagged ponytail, her pink eyes were red and her rosary thudded on her chest at the rhythm of her steps. The triangle in the middle of the familiar circle gave her comfort in her darkest hours and the deep, echoing voice whispering sanity back once she had murdered in its name reminded her of her goal.

She would find Hidan and once she did she would hear from his mouth all the deeds he had done and all the times he'd had. They would share stories of their lives after their separation and she would see exactly how much he had changed.