When Shikamaru woke up, it was somewhere completely different once more. It was less humid than inside Yugakure still, but more humid than the previous day. So he was likely closer to the village than before. Well, at least now it seemed to be that there was no real time limit on the time travel. He had been awake for all of two hours maximum before laying down to go to sleep again. It looked to be almost midday, going by the sun's positioning at least. He idly wondered how long he'd actually slept, but quickly put the thought from his mind because he had no way to actually answer that and he knew it. He knew he would probably encounter Hidan pretty soon, though, and wondered how old the kid would be this time. He took stock of his surroundings, and noticed that he was actually pretty close to a road. He was far enough away that if he had been laying down and asleep, he wouldn't have been noticed unless someone was actively looking for a person hiding there, but he was still close enough for the road to be pretty easily visible, especially now that he had stood up.
He was also now easily visible to anyone walking down the road, which became clear when he watched the very person he'd been expecting to show up come ambling down the path and pause upon looking over and seeing him. Having been sighted, Shikamaru made his way onto the road and Hidan happily bounded up to him with a grin. He looked the same age as before, which was odd to him. He had the kusarigama from last time strapped to his waist, though.
"Hey, Shikamaru!!! How's it goin? Man, I didn't expect to see you again so soon, it's only been like, three months or something. Usually it takes years before I see you again!"
Shikamaru sighed lightly at the enthusiasm from Hidan. Thankfully it would be easy to get the kid to believe pretty much any excuse he could give. "To be fair, I don't exactly visit Yu all that often. I take a lot of missions in the general area, but not many take me into the village itself."
Hidan nodded. "Yeah, that makes sense...hey, since it's just us now and I haven't had to fight anyone, can we spar?"
Dammit. This would be harder to get Hidan to accept an excuse for. "No, not right now...aren't you on a mission? You shouldn't spar while on a mission."
Hidan shook his head. "Nah, after the last time I saw you, my shitty teammates both quit being shinobi because they couldn't handle it, and ever since then I've just been kinda...stuck. There aren't any other genin they could make a team for me with, and Funeno-sensei wants nothing to do with me so I haven't really been able to do fuck all. I heard some rumors about some kinda hell valley though and I wanted to check it out, so I snuck out of the village to try and find it!"
He wanted to be surprised at the fact that Hidan had been stuck in limbo for three months, but...he couldn't. He would have been more surprised had his teammates continued being shinobi, honestly. He could work with the last bit, though. He knew vaguely where that valley was. He knew that Sasuke had gone there to investigate the history of the Chinoike clan and wound up battling the last Chinoike as a result a few years earlier.
"I actually think I know the place you're talking about...I can't remember exactly where it is, but I know the general idea of where it is. We can always go together."
Thankfully Hidan seemed to take the bait, as his eyes shone. "Really?! Hell yeah, let's go, cmon!!! Which way is it?!"
Shikamaru thought for a moment. "You have a map at all?"
Hidan nodded enthusiastically and scrambled to pull a map out from one of his pouches. It was old and worn, with torn and frayed edges along with plenty of dull stains. As Hidan unfolded the thing, Shikamaru looked at it and after a brief scan he found the area where he remembered the Valley of Hell being. He pointed at the spot, finger circling a small area.
"It's gonna be somewhere in here...from the little I know about it, it has several springs, but they're super rich in iron and other chemicals like sulfur. So when we get close we'll probably smell it before we see it."
Hidan seemed to be almost vibrating in excitement, and after he made note of where Shikamaru had pointed he folded the map back up and stuffed it back in his pouch.
"This is gonna be great!!! It's not even that far, so we won't have to camp, we can go see it and I can be back in Yu before dark too!! Cmon, Shikamaru!!!"
Hidan started bounding off down the path, faster than he'd expected from the genin. Hidan hadn't been the fastest as an adult, so to see this speed from him now was a little surprising. Shikamaru rushed after him, and couldn't help but notice just how happy and excited Hidan was for this little excursion. No...not the excursion itself. The fact that he was going with him on it. He was overjoyed to be able to do something with him. Before, the little adventure had just been because the kid was bored and needed something to do with himself. Now, he was going on an adventure with someone that he cared about, someone that was nice to him. It was...endearing, in a strange way. Did adult Hidan have memories of this? Of him? He had never once seemed to recognize him, but then again he definitely looked different than when he was 16. Hidan wasn't the smartest man, so he could maybe see the guy not recognizing him as his childhood "friend". However, Hidan also knew his name...and "Shikamaru" wasn't exactly a common name. His adult self should have had some sort of reaction, if only to his name. Was he altering his own time line in interacting with Hidan like this? It clearly wasn't affecting his past memories, but would it affect Hidan's? Then again for all he knew, this was an alternate time line where the main difference was just his very presence here. Or it could also be a wildly different time line in general.
He pushed the thoughts from his mind, turning his attention to their travel. He had been lost in thought and they had covered quite a bit of distance in the meantime. If he strained himself, he could smell hints of sulfur, but his own sense of smell wasn't anywhere near good enough to tell what direction it was coming from. It slowly grew stronger though, so they were definitely heading in the right direction. The road ended a bit abruptly in front of them, and Hidan hesitated for a brief moment before pressing forward, Shikamaru following close behind. After a couple more minutes of traveling through the trees, they came out of the foliage to see a small strip of clear dirt that rather abruptly ended at a cliff face. He knew that there was an actual small path into the valley, and luckily for them they weren't all the far away from it. It was visible from their current position.
He turned to look at Hidan, to point out the path, just to see him beginning to climb the cliff. Shikamaru sighed, and jumped up onto the cliff in front of the boy, who skidded to a stop and almost lost his grip on his chakra if his sudden lurching forwards to bend over and grab at the cliff was any indication.
"WHAT GIVES SHIKA, I ALMOST FELL!!!" Hidan yelled.
Shikamaru sighed. "There's an actual path down into the valley just a little ways over there...look,"
He gestured towards the path, and Hidan's mouth clacked shut as the boy seemed slightly embarrassed for not having noticed it. The genin jumped off the cliff face and landed on the ground with ease, and Shikamaru followed. They made their way to the start of the path, and meandered down the twisting path between the cliffs. Hidan looked around in curiosity, and the smell of sulfur got stronger and stronger the further they went.
A few minutes later, though, they found the first body. It was the body of a slim man with flaxen blond hair, and he was lying face down in the rocky dirt, a pool of blood around him. Hidan immediately went up to investigate, poking at the corpse and when there was no reaction, he reached out to search futilely for a pulse. The silver haired genin looked up at him, a bit confused, but very clearly on his guard now.
Hidan withdrew his kusarigama, holding it ready, and Shikamaru was also on guard. He knew that the Chinoike clan had been massacred, and that only one was left alive, but he didn't know if the ones who committed the act were still waiting around. The body was a day or two old, from the looks of it, but that didn't mean that there weren't potential enemies still skulking about, picking off survivors who may not have been in the valley at the time of the initial slaughter. They continued into the valley cautiously, and after a minute or so they encountered another body. Then another...and another. All of them were clearly of the Chinoike clan, with that same blond hair.
After a while, the path finally opened up to reveal the valley itself, and even from a distance...it was clear that the entire place was littered with bodies. The smell of sulfur was overpowering at this point, and Hidan gagged. Shikamaru turned to him, and the boy was bringing his shirt up to cover his nose and mouth. He hadn't been at all bothered by the corpses, so he assumed it was the stench of the sulfur that was doing him in like this. Either way...they didn't need to go any further. All that was here was death. He put a hand on Hidan's shoulder, and the boy's head whipped up to look at him questioningly. He gently steered him to turn around and head back up the path, and the genin didn't argue as they began walking.
Shikamaru said nothing until they were well outside the valley, and back on the main road. He paused, and Hidan paused as well, uncharacteristically silent, and still gripping his weapon. Upon seeing how relaxed Shikamaru was now, Hidan relaxed as well and put the kusarigama back in its spot on his waist.
"Okay...so...I know you just wanted to find the valley and check it out, but because of what we found, it's turned into a sort of impromptu mission, understood? I'll send a report on it to my village later, but for now let's focus on getting back to your village so you can report it. That alright?"
Hidan nodded resolutely. "Yeah. That shit was weird...there aren't even supposed to be people living there, at least none of the rumors I heard said anyone lived there. Shouldn't we have investigated more though?"
Shikamaru shook his head. "No, you're still just a genin, and neither of us have the proper supplies or skills to do a full investigation. Just us finding it and being able to tell them about it is about all we can really do."
Hidan looked about ready to fight him at the beginning, but as he said that neither of them had the supplies or skills to properly investigate, he calmed down. At the end, he nodded his acquiescence, and though he was still scowling a bit, he said nothing more on the matter. They both began heading towards Yugakure, and Shikamaru noticed that the sun was well past its zenith and was slowly lowering. The sky wasn't yet darkening, but would likely be beginning to by the time they got back to the village.
They were about halfway back and Hidan was still quiet, which was odd. Why was he being so uncharacteristically quiet? It was troublesome. He knew the dead bodies didn't bother the kid, so what was it? He didn't want to have to ask him, but it looked like he didn't have a choice. Shikamaru sighed.
"Hey, what's bothering you, kid? You've been quiet, so obviously something is wrong. I know the bodies didn't bother you, either."
Hidan looked to him in clear surprise, blinking. "Uh...what?"
"Clearly something is bugging you, and I know corpses don't bother you, so what is it? What's wrong?" he reiterated.
Hidan gave him an odd look, but eventually looked away, almost...dejectedly? "...just tryna figure out how to report this. On the missions my team took, it was only sensei who ever gave reports, so I dunno how it works. I'm also probably gonna get in trouble for going to the valley at all, and it wouldn't surprise me if sensei at least thinks I killed the people...he's a fucking asshole like that."
Shikamaru was about to speak up and offer help, but Hidan slowed down his run and stopped in the middle of the road, looking down at the dirt in front of him with an almost pained expression. Shikamaru stopped as well, standing in front of the kid. Hidan kept opening his mouth, then closing it as he seemed to try and figure out how to say something. Finally, Hidan spoke up, but it was so quiet and so hurt too.
"...I know you don't think it, but...everyone else thinks I'm a monster. Am I a monster? I know I'm different than all the other kids, but...am I really that bad? Am I really as bad as everyone says? Do I really deserve to have people hate me and be scared of me just because I've killed people?"
Shikamaru was not prepared for this. He wasn't sure what he had been expecting, but it wasn't this. He thought for a brief moment, trying to gather his thoughts as best he could. In the end, he sighed lightly and kneeled down, putting a hand on Hidan's shoulder. He hated who Hidan would grow up to become...but he couldn't just let a kid sit and stew in feelings like these without saying or doing anything. He was only a genin, and hadn't done anything wrong yet.
"Listen. Like I said the last time I saw you, Yu thinks differently than all the other shinobi villages. They think it's possible to avoid death all the time, but that's just not true. Sometimes enemies have to die so you and the people you care about can survive. You aren't a monster-" yet, "-but Yugakure is going to see you as one. Don't let the village get to you. It's gonna be hard, but just remember that shinobi have to kill sometimes, and that doesn't make you a bad person...okay?"
Hidan was looking at Shikamaru with both an awestruck and still hurt expression. Before he could react, Hidan had lunged forward and thrown his arms around him, burying his face in his shoulder. After a few moments, he felt something damp, and realized that Hidan was actually crying. Did...his reassurance really mean that much? Once more he was struck by how utterly alone the kid is. The only person to have ever given him any positive interaction was himself, a foreign shinobi that he usually only sees for a few hours at a time before having to wait years for their next encounter. Hidan's entire village was indifferent to him at best, and some people actively disliked or were afraid of him, including his entire genin team...not that he even had one anymore. After a few moments, he awkwardly returned the hug, and he heard Hidan's muffled voice.
"...what if I don't really care if I kill people? I don't like it, but I don't really not like it either...I just...don't care...is that bad?"
Shikamaru just kept himself from shivering slightly, knowing that this indifference towards killing would one day morph into joy. "...it's a bit strange, maybe concerning, but its not necessarily bad."
He felt Hidan nod against his shoulder. "Is it bad that I like fighting?"
That was easy to answer, at least. "No, that's not bad at all...it means you're good at being a shinobi, it means that you're dedicated."
Hidan paused for a few moments before pulling away, sniffling slightly as he reached to wipe at his reddened eyes. "...you said that Yu is different than all the other shinobi villages, right? That the other villages wouldn't hate me for killing enemies?"
Shikamaru nodded, and he had a sinking feeling as to where this was going. He was very quickly proven right.
"Can...can I come with you to your village? Please? I hate Yu...and Yu hates me right back. If your village doesn't hate people for killing, then...then I could be happy there, right? People wouldn't be scared of me, they wouldn't be assholes to me for killing anyone...right?"
Shit. He really hated to do this to the kid. "No...you can't."
Hidan's face fell, utterly heartbroken...before it twisted into a snarl and he shoved Shikamaru away from him. "WELL WHY THE FUCK NOT?! HUH?! AM I NOT GOOD ENOUGH?!??"
Shikamaru remained calm in the face of the irate genin. "You're plenty good enough, Hidan...but you're already a genin. It'd be damn near impossible to get you accepted into the village even as a civilian, let alone as a shinobi. You'd always be considered a foreigner, someone who doesn't belong...that would be true no matter what village you went to. I'm sorry, but I can't do anything to help you, not with that...all I can do is little things, like teaching you how to give a mission report. Giving reports is pretty much the same no matter what village you're in."
After a while, Hidan seemed to calm down, his face and body language exuding resignation. At least he'd accepted his excuse...he really hadn't wanted to pull out his knowledge of ROOT.
"Fine...I get it, I'm stuck in my stupid fucking wimpy ass village...now just teach me how to give a stupid mission report..." he grumbled.
Shikamaru smirked slightly and stood up, reaching out to ruffle Hidan's hair. His hand was shoved off with a scowl, and he knew that Hidan would be fine, at least for now.
"Okay...so here's how it typically goes..."
Shikamaru walked up to the gates of the village with Hidan, and the silver haired kid stood straight in front of the gate guards with full confidence...or so it appeared at least. He knew Hidan was at least a little nervous, but he was damn good at faking 100% confidence. The guard on the left just looked at them both with a raised eyebrow.
"Genin Hidan, returning from an excursion with an urgent report." Hidan stated.
The guard on the right smirked a bit. "Oh yeah? Who's your little friend?"
"A foreign shinobi I encountered on the road. I've met him several times before, mostly in the village but once outside the village. He assisted in my last mission when we were attacked by bandits."
The guards were slightly more serious now but not by much. "So what, he just decided to tag along?"
Shikamaru shrugged. "Pretty much, yeah. He was looking for something and I had a vague idea as to where it was. He's not lying either, this does need to be reported to the higher ups here."
Now the guards were truly taking this seriously. The one on the left stepped forwards. "I'll escort you both to the missions office, then. You'll be able to make your report to the administrators and they'll decide how important it is from there."
The guard gestured for Shikamaru and Hidan to go ahead, and Shikamaru had no problem acquiescing. The gate guard gave directions every once in a while, but was otherwise silent on their little jaunt through the village. Eventually, they stood outside an office, and Hidan was shifting a bit nervously. When they were finally invited in, Shikamaru had to nudge Hidan a bit to get him to actually move.
In the large office, there was a long table where four older people sat, two men and two women. They all had graying hair, and one had almost totally white hair. It seemed very similar to Konoha, when the sandaime would be sitting with his advisors present for important meetings or reports. He had no idea if Yugakure operated the same way or not, though. For all he knew, all four of them equally governed the village. None seemed to defer to any of the others thus far, but then again, they hadn't even begun speaking yet. It was the woman on the far right who spoke first, her voice cold and uninterested sounding, like she'd rather be anywhere else.
"Hideki-san said that you had something of importance to report, child?"
Hidan straightened up upon being addressed, and nodded. "This morning at 10, I took it upon myself to leave the village to try and find the Valley of Hell, as I have heard rumors about it for months now and I was curious. My sensei refuses to even talk to me, let alone train me, and I can't take any missions because I'm just a genin and I have no teammates as of two months ago. On my way down the road outside the village, I encountered Shikamaru, a foreign shinobi who has visited our village before in the past and assisted my team on our last mission together. Funeno-sensei can confirm. I told Shikamaru what I was looking for, and he claimed to know kind of where the valley was located."
Hidan paused, and the man on the far left, the one with almost completely white hair, spoke up.
"Yes, we read the report from your sensei, we know of him. My question is how he knew where the valley was, when it is not marked on any map."
Their gazes turned to Shikamaru, and he shrugged lightly. "Well, other shinobi have passed by the valley before, without actually going into it, so the general area of its location is marked on our maps, simply because the strong odor of the valley could possibly make tracking someone difficult if they decided to pass through it."
They seemed to accept this answer, and turned back to Hidan, the first woman gesturing for him to continue.
"Right...anyways, we eventually found it, and it's surrounded by cliffs with only one path in that we could see, so we took that route. It was about halfway down the path that we found the first body."
The second woman hummed and nodded. "Yes...it's no surprise. The Chinoike clan had tried to settle there after being run out of the Land of Lightning before the hidden villages truly formed, but...well, there would be no way for anyone to survive in that valley for long."
Hidan shook his head. "No, they weren't skeletons. They were actual bodies, there was still blood and everything."
That got the attention of all four. The man on the left spoke up for the first time now, a dark expression on his face. "Did you kill them, boy?"
Hidan recoiled a bit, surprised by the accusation. "W-what? No, of course not!!! I didn't kill any of em! They were all already dead!"
The first woman waved over the gate guard, and from what little Shikamaru could hear from the muttered conversation, she was ordering him to put together a team to investigate. She then looked to Hidan, her expression even colder than before.
"We have no reason to believe that. Who's word here could we possibly trust, hm? The word of a foreign shinobi who you already know? Your word? You've already killed bandits when you had no reason to, so why should we trust you when you say you didn't kill these people?"
Hidan was shaking...whether in despair or fury or some combination, Shikamaru couldn't tell. What he didn't get was...if the Chinoike were a shinobi clan, and Yugakure clearly knew that, how the hell could one genin, even one as talented as Hidan, be capable of killing them all? It made no sense to accuse him of that slaughter, not at this age. Give him five more years and then it would make sense, but right now? No, there was no way Hidan could have taken them all on.
The younger of the two men looked to him then, pointedly gesturing for him to come forwards as he pulled out a map.
"Mark the location of the Valley on here. We are sending a team to investigate." he ordered.
Shikamaru sighed, but complied, taking a pen from the table and putting an asterisk where the valley was. "It'll smell very strongly of sulfur, iron, and other minerals, so if anyone is sensitive to that, I'd suggest some sort of mask to filter the air."
He was a bit perplexed that immediately after the one woman had commented on his lack of trustworthiness, that they had him mark the location of the valley on the map, but he didn't question it out loud. They needed to investigate the valley, and when they did, they'd find out pretty quickly that there was no possible way either him OR Hidan could have done it. It still rubbed him the wrong way that they were so easily accusing a genin of mass slaughter, though. Was this seriously just because he'd killed those bandits?
The map was quickly handed to the gate guard- Hideki, he remembered- and the man bowed before rushing out of the room. The white haired elder turned to look at him, then.
"Now...I apologize if this impedes your own mission, but you and the boy must stay here until the investigation team comes back. They shouldn't take very long, the valley is closer to the village than we realized. It should only take up to four hours, and as long as you've no culpability, you'll be free to leave Yugakure to go do whatever it is you were doing before encountering the boy on the path."
The man's tone made it very clear that he wasn't sorry at all, but Shikamaru said nothing. He just nodded his acquiescence, and stayed otherwise quiet. He didn't like how they only referred to Hidan as being 'the boy', though. They clearly held no care for Hidan, and seemed to only see him as a murderous criminal, almost. Which Shikamaru knew he'd end up becoming, but these elders didn't know that. All they saw was a boy who had taken four lives, and they didn't care about the reason. They didn't care that it was the bandits who attacked his team, or that their sensei was too busy with an enemy shinobi to help. They didn't care that Hidan had done it to save himself and then (albeit grudgingly) his teammates. They just saw that he'd killed four people, and decided to demonize him for it.
He looked over to Hidan again, who was standing off to the side, a scowl in place on his features. But if one looked hard enough, paid enough attention, they'd also see that beneath the scowl he was incredibly hurt. He was hurt that they just baselessly accused him of a mass murder like this. Shikamaru wondered if this was the event he was meant to see this time. It would make sense, especially if this was the first time he'd truly talked to the people who ran his village. Shikamaru had no idea how he would have felt had the sandaime Hokage accused him of such a thing when he'd first interacted with the man, but he knew it wouldn't have been a good feeling. He kind of wanted to comfort the kid, reassure him that it didn't matter what these people thought, that the fact of the matter was that he hadn't killed anyone, and that everything would get sorted out. He couldn't, though. It would only make things worse, for the both of them. The elders were already seemingly only tolerating his presence, since he wasn't currently in the village as a tourist, but for shinobi related business. They already appeared to at the very least intensely dislike Hidan, so seeing him being overly friendly with a foreign shinobi right now would likely only add to it.
The more Shikamaru thought about it, the more he was sure that this was the life event he was supposed to witness this time. From all the information he knew and had managed to glean, this would have been the first time Hidan was faced with the fact that it wasn't just his genin team and his sensei that hated him. That it went all the way up to the village leaders. Once more, he found he couldn't blame him for eventually abandoning his village. Not when he was treated like this.
In the end, it took a little over three hours for the investigation team to get back. They quickly reported that the bodies were days old, and that they theorized the slaughter to be a clan act. Either way, him and Hidan held no culpability, and they were promptly released without so much as an admittance that they were wrong in their initial accusations. They stood outside on the dark streets, a couple minutes walk away from the administrative building. It was here that they'd have to part ways, as Hidan lived in a different direction than the village gates.
"...sorry that the whole trip wound up awful." he apologized. What else was he supposed to say to the kid? 'sorry your village is fucking stupid enough to accuse a genin of mass murder'?
Hidan just shrugged. "it's fine...'s not like you knew this was gonna happen...it was still fun in the beginning, so...thanks. You gotta go back to your village now, right?"
Shikamaru nodded. "Yeah. I hope things start going better for you soon...maybe you'll get a new team or something."
Hidan nodded, and stepped forwards to quickly hug him, letting him go and stepping back before he even had the chance to consider reciprocating. The kid turned away, and in the dim lighting from the moon Shikamaru could see that the tips of his ears were bright red.
"...bye, Shika."
Hidan once more didn't give him a chance to really respond before rushing off. Shikamaru didn't bother calling out to him, and only turned away to walk towards the gates once Hidan was out of sight. He walked along the path that led to the cliffs surrounding the village, and eventually found himself seated upon one of the cliffs looking out at the peaceful village. It looked idyllic...steam rising from the countless onsen, the soft lights from lanterns lighting up the quiet streets. It was hard to reconcile the fact that this village could be so awful with it's gentle appearance. Just looking, no one would ever guess how horribly they were willing to treat children. How much they didn't care about the lives of people from the red light district. No one would ever guess that a kid could save his team's lives, only to be vilified for it, or that their standards for right and wrong were so shallow that they'd rather kids be severely injured or even killed rather than have any of their own shinobi end a life...or at least that's how it came across to him.
Almost equally baffling was the fact that this village produced someone like Hidan to begin with. That this village wound up with a kid so perfectly suited to the career of a shinobi, despite the fact that they were so averse to what being a shinobi actually entailed. It was strange that Hidan had no problems with violence, with killing, and that his proclivity towards violence was never stamped out. It was shocking that despite no one truly seeming to have taught him, that Hidan was so incredibly skilled. Skilled enough to eventually reach S-rank status, despite coming from a village that was barely able to produce shinobi who could be considered C-rank.
He found himself feeling conflicted again, because he hated Hidan...he hated the man who killed his sensei. But how could he hate a kid who hadn't done any wrong yet? He couldn't hate someone who hadn't done wrong yet, but as he kept encountering Hidan, he saw more and more of the man he would eventually become, but also understood more and more of how he became that to begin with. He didn't want to know any of these things about Hidan's past. It was harder to hate someone so completely when you could understand why they were the way they were. After a long while, Shikamaru sighed, and retreated from the cliff's edge to find a place to sleep. This whole troublesome ordeal better be over soon...it was beginning to weigh on him more and more the longer it went on.
A/N: I will say, I've been struggling with this chapter a lot. I've written and rewritten this several times, and no matter what I put down I can't seem to be happy with it. I hope it's at least alright to my readers, because this is sadly all I've been able to really come up with. If I come up with something better I might rewrite this someday. On the bright side, I have a little bit more of an idea for the next chapter, when before I had like...only the vaguest of concepts. There's still a lot I have to figure out for the next chapter though so it'll probably take about as long as this one did, if not longer. Thank you everyone who reads this!