SCARS
Prologue
"I tear my heart open, I sew myself shut
My weakness is that I care too much
And our scars remind us that the past is real
I tear my heart open just to feel."

The forest was slowly getting denser, and the brunette suspected that she was getting closer to her destination. The rocky, barren place where it was said that Kakuzu had died had offered her no clues as to the whereabouts of his body. Hidan would be her last hope.

I thought they couldn't die, she lamented, continuing on through the woods, not completely sure of where she was going. When the news about the deaths of two Akatsuki members had first been whispered, she refused to believe it. It was impossible, wasn't it? Maybe Kakuzu, but Hidan was immortal. He had to still be alive.

She sighed, settling against the trunk of a big tree and sliding to the ground. The leaves crunched below her sandals as she stretched her legs out in front of herself, moaning quietly at her sore muscles. Work at the tea shop was putting her out of shape, she decided, retrieving her bag of cured meat. It was tough to chew, and she quickly decided that she wasn't nearly hungry enough to work that hard to eat. As she was putting her lunch away, however, she noticed something out of the corner of her eye.

Through the foliage, a large deer peered at her, his massive antlers rustling low branches on the trees he passed below. She stared back at it until, slowly, more deer began to appear around her. A little unnerved, she climbed to her feet and threw her pack back over her shoulder, opposite her katana.

"What exactly do you guys eat?" she asked nervously. "Not people, I hope." When the deer made no move to answer her, she started walking again. "Well, I have stuff to take care of, so I'll just be going. You wouldn't happen to have seen the guys I'm looking for? Tall one with a creepy face; one yay high with white hair and no shirt? Probably both corpses…?"

The deer continued to stare curiously at her, and she pursed her lips in irritation and hopelessness.

"Great. I thought so," she muttered, stomping on childishly. "Thanks, anyway." As she tromped, a fallen log caught her ankle and she tripped, spilling her belongings out in front of her. "Ugh!" she cried. "This is all your fault, Kakuzu-san! Why did you guys leave me behind?"

Furiously, she wiped the tears from her eyes and gathered her things back up, tossing them carelessly into her sack. When her eyes fell on the last item, she paused. Gathering it up and holding it to her chest, she resisted letting the tears flow freely once more.

In her mind, Hidan's voice cursed at her, "Get up, Crybaby! What kind of pussy warrior are you?"

"I'm not strong enough," she sniffled. "I'm not strong enough to be alone." She hardly noticed the muzzle that pressed against her cheek in what could be taken as comfort. Looking down at the glossy surface, she laughed humorlessly. "Hidan-san… What did you expect me to do with a jewelry box?"

"Girls like shiny shit like this, right?"

"I guess," she answered, examining it. Opening the box, she found it chimed a little tune, and she grinned. "Thanks."

He laughed, "Now you can ask Kakuzu to buy you something pretty to put in it."

"No way," she scowled. "I'm not the immortal, here."

Putting it away, she gave the buck a pat. "I must look pathetic," she sighed. "To tell the truth, I feel pretty pathetic." She decided that the deer looked interested in what she had to say, and she went on, "Want to know how I met them? Of course you do. See, it was almost a year ago, I think…"

A/N: If you haven't already guessed, this fic is going to be pretty self-indulgent. I spend so much time worry whether or not my characters are Mary-Sues, so I'm really not going to stress it in this one. Of course, I'm still going to try to make the girl as fleshed-out of a character as possible. I feel that any OC who ends up hanging out with the Akatsuki has to be sort of a Mary-Sue anyway, because they are ruthless criminals, after all. That said, I'm writing this primarily for me, and if others can enjoy it, all the better.

Also, I want to warn everyone here that, though the language in this prologue is fairly mild, it will get worse from here on in. I'd assume that you wouldn't be a fan of Hidan if you were offended by this, but I'll still warn you here. I'm going to keep it set at the T rating, because I don't think that the "F-word" warrants an M rating. And there probably won't be much in the way of extreme gore or sexually explicit scenes, anyway. If that changes, the rating will, too.

The lyrics are from Scars by Papa Roach.