Heaven Forbid

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or any Naruto-related elements.

Author's Note 1: Sorry, sorry, sorry for the incredibly long period between chapters. Although everyone has told me it is unsafe to release personal information on the internet, I feel as though I owe it to my fans for an honest explanation. So here goes. I started this story over the summer, when I honestly had nothing better to do. I had just graduated from middle school, but I was among the few who was not excited at all about high school. Needless to say, I was barely prepared on the first day of school. Now, the homework isn't as bad as I would have imagined, but there sure is a helluva lot of it. In addition to the greater amount of schoolwork, I decided that rather than doing PE with the rest of the 'losers', I would join a sport. Unfortunately, I'm not a very sports-oriented person, so I decided to join a sport that would be easy enough for me to do—running. Cross country, if you'd like to get technical. Anyhow, a few weeks of practice, and I realized that it consumes you. Not just time and money, but your very soul! Well, that's a little exaggerated, but it did take a lot of effort to participate in. Plus, we had this whole gift exchange at every race, so my wallet was emptier than usual by the time the holidays rolled around. High school life is so much more stressful than I thought it would be, and again, I sincerely apologize for the enormous amount of time it took to get this chapter out. Thanks sooooo incredibly much to my fans who have stuck with me thus far!

Author's Note 2: As you may see from the above note, I have had trouble squeezing in writing time for this story. Not only that, but I have had so many writer's blocks that I could build a tower out of them. Sorry, bad metaphor. Anyway, this chapter isn't as great as I would like it to be; actually, this entire story could be better. I would just like my readers to know that the majority of this has been written out on a whim with no particular plot in mind other than some elements that may or may not have been revealed yet. Heh.

Author's Note 3: Deidara is the shit. ILY, Dei-dei!

Author's Note 4: Sorry for all the author's notes. I just needed to let it all out, you know?


Chapter Four: Presence

If there was anything that Tenten could have dreaded more than her showers 'with' Hidan or going to bed 'with' Hidan or doing anything that incorporated contact with Hidan, meeting the rest of the Akatsuki probably took the cake. Due to their prior sightings of each other, the brunette was rather embarrassed and a little nervous that they might think her to be nothing more than a toy of the devil spawn commonly known as Hidan. Besides, they were her captors, and heaven forbid that she would ever associate with any of those sorry bastards (unless one of them was a girl and she had not yet 'met' her—if that were the case, then she wouldn't want to associate with the sorry bitch).

The brunette marveled at her vocabulary. It seemed the foul-mouthed man was rubbing off on her.

"Why?" she finally asked the man, whom she had been having a very engaging staring contest with while pondering her unusually crude language. "Why do I have to have dinner with them? I won't like them. I know it. And they won't like me. It's not like I'll be going to go and have fun and train and whatever with them."

"If I need to go somewhere where I can't take you, I'll have to leave you with someone. I thought you might've liked staying with someone you knew instead of a fucking stranger, but I might've been wrong." He shrugged in that usual uncaring, indifferent demeanor of his.

She gawked at him, disbelief written plainly on her face. "If you could do that, then why the hell did we have to go into the bathroom together?!"

Hidan thought for a moment, his brows furrowed together. "Fuck, why didn't I think of that?"

Tenten resisted the strong urge to slap her palm to her forehead (she feared losing any more brain cells than she already had in the company of Hidan). "You are an idiot, you know that?"

"Shut the fuck up and go to the damned dinner table."

"Fuck you," the kunoichi quipped before complying and marching self-righteously to where the rest of the Akatsuki had gathered for the evening meal, leaving Hidan to follow her in all her fury.

As fate would have it, she was so busy focusing on her self-righteous marching that the girl did not pay particular attention to where she was self-righteously marching, and thus self-righteously marched straight into a strange man with a plant encasing his head.

Stepping back and rubbing her head after their collision, Tenten stared at the man. "You…have a plant on your head," she finally said bluntly, still staring at the bizarre appendage.

"Yes. I know."

"Oh. Okay, then." With a step to the side so that he could pass, she smiled pleasantly at the abominably strange man.

A nod of acknowledgment was all that he offered before walking by her, either effectively ignoring her stare or simply not noticing through the leaves that probably impaired his vision.

"Nice to meet you!" she called amiably after him, before she noticed Hidan storming towards her. "What took you so long?"

"Dumbass!" he hissed. "Don't talk to Zetsu unless you want to get yourself fucking eaten!"

"What? Why?" Tenten asked in confusion. "He seemed alright to me."

"He's a fucking cannibal!"

If the girl was confused earlier, now she was utterly befuddled. "So…he likes to eat vegetables? How is that a bad thing? He'll get more vitamins and miner—"

"Moron! He eats people! He'll eat you if you piss him off, got it?"

Man-plants eating her… The last time the weapons mistress had heard something so farfetched was when Gai went ranting on about his glorious victory against Kakashi. Something about an orange-peeling contest using only their mouths, she believed. Although…she still couldn't figure out how the Copy Ninja used his mouth to peel an orange, what with his mask and all.

"Why the fuck are you laughing? I'm serious!"

Without knowing it herself, Tenten had begun laughing hysterically at the cannibalistic man-plant idea, and she clutched at her side as she felt an impending cramp, although she didn't stop laughing right away.

"S-sorry!" she gasped between her receding giggles, hiding a wide smile beneath her hand. "It's just that I've never heard of a man-eating plant-man before." The brunette erupted into laughter again.

"Shut up!" Hidan fumed, ever so angrily. "Shut the hell up and get to the goddamned table!"

Not wishing to endure the wrath of the man, Tenten rushed towards the kitchen that doubled as a dining room. The kunoichi soon found out that not only was the Akatsuki leader brutally literal, but he was also incredibly cheap as well, thus partly explaining Hidan's room's plainness.

Now, being the teammate of Rock Lee did things to Tenten. She did not entertain the thought of being completely outdone by Lee, lovable though he is, so she trained and trained and trained until she achieved her peak speed, although she never did match up to Lee's normal pace. But because of her intense training to catch up to her teammate, she grew accustomed to running quickly when the situation asked for it. Of course, the brunette felt that this particular situation was asking for quick running and more, lest she be caught by Hidan and forced to face his temper.

However, she ran so fast that she slammed into the kitchen door, effectively knocking it down with a rather loud thud.

"Ow."

"Hey, it's Hidan's chick, yeah!"

A disapproving glance upwards showed that the man standing above her and peering curiously at her face was Ino's male counterpart.

"First off, I'm not 'Hidan's chick'. Secondly…are you a transvestite?" The words escaped Tenten's lips before she could ponder the stupidity of asking an S-class missing-nin that question.

Fortunately for her, he only jumped back with a shocked facial expression whilst the other men just pointed and laughed uproariously. At least, the ones who exposed their emotions did. The rest just sat there…and stared…like a bunch of lifeless vegetables…yeah…

"I've been trying to figure that out since Day One, girlie," Hidan muttered from behind her as he picked his way through the splinters that formerly made up the door.

"I'm Deidara, yeah," the man said, ignoring her earlier comment as he held out a hand for her.

"Tenten." She accepted his hand with a slight smile, seeing that this man was quite a bit more amicable than her forcibly assigned warden. "Sorry about the door."

Deidara shrugged. "Sasori no Danna carved it, yeah. Thanks for destroying it."

The kunoichi began laughing lightly at his unexpected response, but stopped when he stared at her. "What?"

"I'm serious, yeah," he said. "I'm glad you broke it."

She snorted, "Did you hate this Sasori or something?"

"Eh, not really, yeah. He was cool, yeah, but his view on art was screwed up. Art doesn't last forever. It goes with a bang, yeah!" At the last sentence, Tenten noticed a little spider creeping over the wood shards before making a small explosion.

"Holy shit!" Apparently, Hidan, who had been carefully picking his way through the mess, did not see the spider. "Deidara, you fucking asshole! Fuck you!"

"No thanks, I don't swing that way, yeah," the blonde replied, a mischievous grin plastered on his features. Tenten stifled a giggle with her fist.

"You know what, fucker? Shut the fuck up!" Hidan, grabbing the girl's arm, forcefully stomped to the table (from which the rest of the Akatsuki had been watching the exchange curiously with raised eyebrows) with her in tow.

"My, my, Hidan. Beating on the poor girl for your own blunders? That's pathetic, considering you left yourself open for the insult," the large blue man near the head of the table spoke snidely.

"Hidan," Tenten hissed through the corner of her mouth, suddenly forgiving the man for almost dislocating her arm, "what the hell is wrong with the people in the Akatsuki?"

"What do you mean?" he whispered back, genuinely confused.

She stared for a moment before looking back at the table. "You have a man who killed his entire family except for his angsting brother, a shark-dude with an oversized razor, a cannibalistic plant, a guy who looks like one of my friends who's a girl, and…you. Something is seriously wrong here."

"There's nothing wrong with me!" he exclaimed indignantly, though he retained a quiet tone.

"You stab yourself with a stick to honor a god who loves bloodshed. Normal?" She scoffed at her own words. "I don't think so!"

By now, their voices had elevated to a normal-er volume.

"Well, you're not so goddamn normal yourself!"

"More normal than you!"

"As-fucking-if! You carry around a bajillion fucking weapons in a fucking scroll! What the hell is the point of a fucking kunai holster or a shuriken pouch?!"

And now they were screaming into each others' faces.

"Have no fear! Tobi is here!" exclaimed a new person who flung himself through the opening where the door once stood and onto Deidara.

"Augh! Tobi!" The blonde man shoved the person off him and onto the splinter-covered floor. "I told you not to do that, yeah!"

"But jumping on Deidara-senpai is just so much fun…!" whined 'Tobi'. Tenten noted that he wore an orange mask with one eyehole and had black hair. He stood shorter than most of the other Akatsuki, about her height, perhaps.

So in depth was the kunoichi in her observations of this new character that she was completely oblivious to the fact that the blonde was grinding his foot onto the head of the smaller man, whose face was planted on the ground.

"Ow…! Tobi's face hurts! Stop stepping on me, Deidara-senpai!" came the muffled moans of the victim.

"Shut up, Tobi!" the pony-tailed man shouted back, much louder than necessary.

"Shut up, Deidara!"

"BOTH OF YOU, SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Hidan intervened angrily, his face turning an interesting shade of red in his raging state.

Tenten, who had been feeling in a particularly nasty mood all morning, snatched a tomato from Kakuzu's plate and held it up next to Hidan. "Look, look, look! Twins!"

"Shut up, bitch!" He grabbed her arm yet again, dragged her to an empty chair, and practically threw her onto the piece of furniture, almost breaking it in the process.

"Shit!"

"Please don't break the furniture again, Hidan. Decent chairs aren't cheap in this part of the world," reprimanded Kakuzu, still sour about losing his tomato but unwilling to take another for fear of having to buy an extra tomato later when he went food shopping. Every little bit counts, after all.

"Fuck you!"

Itachi, who had been sitting silently in his seat throughout the chaos, stood up. "I'm leaving. Kisame, come." He walked out of the room without even checking to see if his partner followed suit.

As usual, the shark-man did, but not before throwing a malicious smirk at all the remaining people. "It would be advisable for all of you to keep the noise down to a bare minimum. Itachi's not in a good mood and neither am I, for that matter. Don't take us too lightly, okay?" Though his words were casual, they held a dark undertone that Tenten couldn't help but gulp at.

"Watch what you say, Kisame," Kakuzu sneered. "We may be in the same organization, but what we do hardly requires a team effort. Being down a couple of members might even benefit us financially."

Kisame just bared all his sharp teeth in a grin and followed his partner out of the room.

Kakuzu resumed eating his food without a bat of the eye, but the rest of the people in the room—Tenten, Hidan, Deidara, and Tobi—remained silent, staring at nothing in particular.

That is, until Tenten realized Hidan had never let go of her arm after forcing her onto a chair. And that his grip had tightened slightly than she had remembered last.

"Ew, you're holding me," she said, prying his fingers off her arm. "That was way too long for comfort."

The man snorted. "I've had you up against a wall—helpless, mind you—and you're grossed out by my hand on your fucking arm?"

Deidara made a disgusted face and pulled Tobi out of the room with him. "Let's leave them to their grown-up talk."

Kakuzu added in, "Really, Hidan. I don't want to hear about your erotic frolicking with the prisoner while I'm eating. It'll be a waste of food if you continue."

"Shut up, you stingy bastard," the other shinobi responded disdainfully. "All I wanted was some fucking food, got it?"

His partner gave no reply, so Hidan helped himself to two platefuls before holding one out to Tenten. "Take it already," he ordered when she just stared blankly at the food. "We're not eating here with the idiots anymore."

"But I'm still eating with one," the brunette muttered lowly as she took the plate from her keeper. "Thanks."

"No problem."

They walked alongside each other into Hidan's room in an uncomfortable silence. The silence remained as Hidan sat down on his desk chair and began eating while Tenten situated herself on his bed before digging in. The only sound to be heard was their chewing.

"You're uncharacteristically quiet, girlie," Hidan said between bites.

"So are you," she rebutted, "No loud chewing and slurping and whatever."

"I only do that in public. Just to annoy all those morons, y'know?" He went back to eating without waiting for an answer.

"Lovely."

In their mutual silence, any sound made seemed to bounce off the walls and echo several times before finally fading into complete silence until another sound was made.

"Do you have a boyfriend in the Leaf?" he suddenly asked.

Tenten choked on her bite, thrown into a bout of violent coughing. When she finally swallowed the food, she rasped, "What brought on that question?"

"Dunno." He shrugged. "I figure that if we're gonna be stuck forever, I might as well get to know you. 'Sides, the silence was weird, and I got nothing better to do."

She stared at him for a minute as he ate, seemingly in thought, before she spoke again, "No."

"No?"

The kunoichi rolled her eyes. "No, I don't have a boyfriend. Are you in a relationship?"

"Nah. Almost everyone's an enemy of Akatsuki, and fraternizing with the enemy is a big no-no, so the only chance at a relationship any of us has is to be gay since the only girl in this organization has the leader hanging over her shoulder." He wrinkled his nose. "Besides, I'd have to ask Jashin-sama's permission first, and I hear the ritual to go through is painful as hell."

"Why do you do it? I mean, the whole ritual thing and stuff… It all seems kind of pointless if you don't like the pain that much…"

After granting her a quick glare, he leaned back in his seat and stared at the ceiling. "I said I wanted to get to know you, girlie. Not the other way around." It came out quieter, more serious, than he had intended.

"That's just not fair, Hidan. I'm not telling you anymore if you won't tell me anymore." She crossed her arms, turning away from the man with a slight pout.

"Alright, alright! I'll tell you!" Turning his head slightly, the man grumbled, "I fucking hate awkward silences…" He faced Tenten again and began his explanation. "In a world like ours, everyone needs acceptance. People like me—y'know, outcasts of society and all that shit—we probably have the hardest fucking time looking for someone who'll accept us. That's probably the only reason there are as many of us in this godforsaken organization as there is. I'm one of the newest members, so I'm not really 'part of the club' yet." He made air quotes to emphasize his point. "'Sides, Leader's a fucking bastard, so I don't even know why I'm part of this fucking gang. Anyways, Jashin-sama found me when poor li'l outcast me needed acceptance, and the rest is history." He sucked in a deep breath. "The end."

"Wow…" Whatever Tenten expected, it certainly hadn't been something so deep from the man, no matter how crudely spoken. "That was…different."

"I know, holy shit! Hidan can fucking feel! What a fucking surprise!" he scoffed, folding his arms with an angry expression.

"That's not what I mean," the brunette amended hurriedly. "It's just that I always pictured you as a shallow guy. No offense." The older shinobi muttered a quiet "none taken" at that. "I never would have thought that you would be that observant of other people."

"You mean Leader being a bastard? That's not that hard to see."

She rolled her eyes. "No, I mean the thing about people needing acceptance."

"Oh. Thanks…I think."

"You're welcome." The girl closed her eyes in a genuine smile. When she cracked one open, she felt surprisingly pleased to see that Hidan had joined her with a very, very miniscule smile—but it was a smile nonetheless.

However, it quickly morphed into a sharp glare that accompanied the light-haired man's grave statement, "If this ever leaves the room, I swear I'll rip all your hair out before poking your eyeballs out of your pretty little face."

Although her initial reaction was to scrunch up her face in disgust, she paused for a moment with the sudden realization, "Did you just call me pretty?"

Hidan, apparently, became very conscious of the fact that he just complimented the girl. "Uh…I…what I mean was…uh…" His pale face flushed as he searched for an answer to why he admitted that he though she was pretty, even if in the middle of a death threat.

"Yes…?" Tenten was now truly curious about his opinion towards her. True, there was little romance in her life before, but now that there was no Neji to chase or Lee to jokingly flirt with when she was rejected, the kunoichi was feeling extremely deprived.

"I meant…uh…" Hidan was mentally berating himself on why he let that one little word slip and the fact that the very same little word caused him so much unnecessary frustration. So he thought the chick was cute—so what? So did Deidara, and he was almost positive that the blonde was gay. No straight man should love art as much as Deidara did.

Thankfully, Tenten interrupted his humiliating ramble, "Ah, don't worry about it. If it makes you feel any better, I think you're kinda cute." With a wink, she walked out of the room, taking advantage of his stunned silence.

Needless to say, the Akatsuki was not feeling quite so thankful anymore. "What the fuck was that?!" he hissed to no one in particular prior to noticing that she had ditched him. "Shit, where'd she go?!"

Meanwhile, the brunette silently chuckled at the ease of her captor's distraction. These alleged S-Class criminals may have been very strong physically and spiritually, but it didn't appear that their mental state was up to par with the rest of their body. Ah, she amazed herself with her own brilliance.

As she pranced happily through the halls, she suddenly remembered that she had absolutely no idea as to where the exit might be located. In fact, she realized that she was quite lost in the seemingly endless path of twists, turns, and doorways leading to nowhere.

"Where the hell am I?" Taking a few deep breaths to stop her impending panic attack and calm her nerves, she closed her eyes and listened carefully for an air current. Although her senses weren't as fine-tuned as, say, Neji's or Kiba's, she had honed them enough to pick up on important observations.

Whoosh

There it was! The kunoichi's eyes shot open, and she raced towards the source of the sound. Where there was an air current, there was an exit, after all.

As the sound got louder, she sped up, applying chakra to the soles of her feet to be sprinting as fast as possible in case she happened upon one of the Akatsuki. Although she would not have been completely surprised to see one of them on her way to freedom, she did not quite expect one to be standing directly in her way.

Right before she slammed into none other than Deidara, Tenten cursed herself at forgetting to 'expect the unexpected'.

"Holy shit, yeah!" cried the blonde as the pair fell over and into a rather compromising position. Actually, in all fairness for the artist, the position wasn't so much as compromising as it was coincidental that one of Deidara's hands was unfortunately close to Tenten's bosom.

She screamed. "Something just licked my boobs!!" She tried to pull away, but Deidara, having seen her obvious flight from the Akatsuki base, had immediately wrapped his unoccupied arm around her back so that she pinned on top of him. "Let me go!" She tried to hit him, but when unsuccessful, kicked his leg.

"Hey, yeah!"

"There you are, you little asshole!" Hidan stomped next to them. "Oh, fuck, this is gross. Do you really think Deidara is more attractive than me?"

"What the hell are you talking about, yeah?"

The other man shot his comrade a harsh, violet glare. "She runs away from me, and two seconds later, she's screwing you! That is messed up in so many ways."

"I am not screwing him!" Tenten loudly corrected.

"Yeah. She just…ran into me…yeah." He pushed her up, got up himself, and shoved her into Hidan. "You can have her anyways. She's cute and all, but definitely not my type, yeah."

The brunette clearly looked offended by that, especially considering that the blonde's hand had just molested her only moments before. Before she could retort, however, Hidan angrily slung her over his shoulder and stormed back to his—their room.

"What the fuck was that?" he shouted at her after practically throwing her onto the bed. "What did I tell you I'd do to you if you tried to run away? Remember?!"

"Fuck it, Hidan!" she snapped back. "I'm a goddamned human being, not a pet! I can't stand being here in this godforsaken hellhole with godforsaken dicks like you!" Her voice escalated with the urgency. "I hate this place, and I hate that I'm always with you, and I hate at how goddamned dependent I've gotten on you, asshole!" She flipped over and buried her face in a pillow, her sobs muffled by the sheer fluffiness of the cushion, leaving Hidan to ponder the meaning of her words.

Dependent? On him? Now that was just absurd.

"Tenten," he softened his tone to a more soothing level, quite the feat for one such as himself. But that was all he said, for he moved onto the bed beside her and began rubbing her back delicately, almost as though he were afraid to touch her. Moments later—he didn't quite know how they ended up like that—but the girl had moved from her position onto the bed so that she was sobbing into his chest, her hands clenching the back of his shirt with a certain urgency the man was unfamiliar with. Next thing you know, he figured, she'd be saying that she needed him.

What a laugh. As if that was going to happen.

A few minutes afterwards, the brunette had calmed down slightly, and she looked up at the man with puffy, red eyes. "Hidan," she whispered through a sniffle, "I don't want to need you."

Shit.