When he next awoke, it was in an incredibly pleasant spot. Soft sunlight shone on his face, and a wonderful cushion of grass supported his body. The temperature was absolutely perfect, not too warm or too cold, and the humidity was at just the right level. There was the sound of rustling leaves and birdsong, and if he really strained his ears he could just barely hear the soft trickle of a creek or river. When he finally opened his eyes, he almost wanted to cry with relief. He was in Konoha. He settled for a contented sigh, and laid back down to gaze up at the sky. There weren't a lot of clouds at the moment, but there were still enough for him to watch. He didn't want to close his eyes again so soon.

After a few minutes, he sat up, discreetly glancing over himself and immediately being a bit surprised. He was...perfectly clean. While he'd been in the past, he knew for a fact that he'd gotten at least a little bit of blood on him, especially while cleaning and bandaging Hidan's feet. There was absolutely nothing. The only debris on him was a few stray blades of grass from where he was currently sitting. He still had all of his kunai and all of his wire on him, even though he was pretty certain he'd lost them at some point in the past due to setting up traps before sleeping just to wake up years in the future. Some had followed him, that first time, but not all of it.

He almost moved to pull out the first aid kit from Ino, to check the supplies in that, but restrained himself. No, it would be better to check that once he got home. Doing it out in public like this would look very strange, and would invite questions from anyone who saw him. Waiting would be easier than trying to answer questions regarding his strange behavior.

He heard the telltale crinkling of a chip bag, and looked off to the right to see Choji and Ino approaching him. They had noticed him, he was certain, but the way they were acting indicated that he hadn't been gone for very long...if he'd been gone at all, from their points of view. Had he been gone? There was no evidence of his journey through the past on him, at least none he could find. It was truly like he'd never left, though disappeared would likely be a more accurate word.

A knuckle rapping on his forehead pulled him from his ruminations, and he saw Ino standing directly in front of him, bent over with one hand on her hip and the other poised right in front of his head. She had that annoyed looking pout on her face, and straightened up with a small huff once it was obvious that he was actually paying attention now.

"Jeez, Shikamaru, I said your name like six times! What's got you so spaced out, huh?" she asked.

Had she really said his name six times?

"Yeah, she did...you don't usually space out like that, are you okay?" Choji replied. He'd said that out loud. Oops.

He thought for a brief moment before responding with a sigh. "Yeah, I'm fine, just had a super weird dream is all. It was really vivid."

Choji nodded and offered him a chip, which he gladly took with a smile. That was the only explanation that really made sense. The whole ordeal must have been a very strange dream. How else would he be perfectly clean, with all his things, and clearly having not disappeared at all? The vividity of the dream was certainly perturbing, especially since he could still remember everything so clearly even after waking up, but as long as the process didn't become a reoccurring thing, he saw no reason to really worry about it. If it did reoccur, then he could talk to Ino about it. The Yamanaka clan specialized in the mind, after all.

"Well, as long as you don't space out like that on our mission, I'll be willing to let it go. But if it becomes a problem you better come to me, Shikamaru!" Ino ordered.

Shikamaru just rolled his eyes. He remembered now. They had a mission to go on in a couple hours, and had decided to hang out for a bit before going and getting ready to leave. Choji had gone to get a snack, Ino had followed to try and get him to choose something she deemed appropriate, and he had decided to take a nap while they were gone.

"It won't affect the mission, Ino. I'm sure it was just a one off thing. It's getting about time to go get ready though, isn't it?"

Ino squinted a bit at him, but ultimately just huffed a bit again. "Yeah, I guess so. Meet you guys at the gate?"

Him and Choji both nodded, and they all parted ways to go to their respective homes. It was a peaceful walk to his small house in the Nara compound, and he was glad he didn't have his mother waiting inside. Shortly after the war, he'd decided to move out on his own. Sure, he was clan head now, and technically he was meant to live in the clan head's house, but...he refused to live with his mother. He loved her, but the woman was too damn troublesome to deal with every day. He also hadn't felt right just kicking her out, either, so he had elected to just leave. She had objected to this decision, and tried to bring up the needs of his future family, saying that they'd need a larger place than what he had went for, but it was clear that she also didn't want to leave the house she had lived in for over twenty years. So, they'd come to an agreement. Once Shikamaru actually married and was soon to have children, they would swap their houses. For now, he lived in heavenly silence, and his mother wasn't forced to suddenly leave her home.

He casually gathered up everything he'd need for the mission, and started to take off his pants to put on some mesh armor beneath them, but...something fell out of his pocket, thunking to the floor. He paused, aborting the action of taking them off and pulling them back up. He looked to what had dropped out, and he could swear his heart stopped. It was a shiny silver pendant, with a long chain. The pendant was familiar, a triangle within a circle. He reached out, feeling shaky, despite not visibly shaking at all, and when his fingers touched the warm metal he recoiled ever so slightly. He reached out to touch it again, this time actually picking it up, and upon discovering that it was indeed very much solid, his mind ground to a halt.

It hadn't been a dream at all...it had been real.

The entire mission was a blur. It had simply been a diplomatic mission to Suna, but their relationship with that particular village was so solid that he doubted anything short of actively attacking them would change it. It ultimately wasn't too important. He had managed to retain control over himself and his emotions in the presence of others, but a few small cracks in his façade showed, mostly when he was alone.

He had barely been able to sleep. His mind was on constant overdrive, trying to piece together exactly what had happened to him, why he'd woken up from when he'd first taken his nap completely unchanged. Why, even though everything else was the same, he had retained the amulet Hidan had given him. Had the timeline changed? Everything seemed the same, and he couldn't ask questions without arousing concern or suspicion. Had he been in an alternate timeline while in the past? If so, how much was different? How much was the same? Was Jashinism actually a religion here, or was it truly just Hidan's delusion like they had concluded?

He was sure he was getting some dark circles, but had managed to snag some concealing makeup once they actually got to Suna in order to cover them up. He was able to keep from spacing out, from getting lost in his thoughts, but barely. Ino seemed slightly suspicious, but never said anything. Even if she noticed something specific, even if she knew something was truly wrong, she held up her end of the deal. It wasn't causing problems on the mission, so she was letting it go...at least outwardly.

By the time they had returned home, Shikamaru was becoming more and more desperate for answers. Answers he couldn't get. It had even been invading his dreams, the memories of everything he had witnessed replaying while he slept. It was maddening. Some nights he awoke still smelling blood and cheap booze, or still hearing the beat of taiko and melody of the shamisen. Other nights he woke up feeling the oppressive humidity of Yugakure clinging to his skin, or with the taste of sulfur brushing on his tongue. He was rarely ever able to truly fall asleep again after those dreams, and had to get more concealing makeup to keep covering the dark circles.

He had no idea what any of this meant, and it was slowly chipping away at him. The uncertainty, the lack of any sort of closure. Sometimes he shed frustrated, hopeless tears over it all, though only in the dead of night with only the shadows as witnesses. He needed to figure this out, to get at least some answers...and it was one of those late nights that it occurred to him. There was a way to get answers. Maybe not all of them, but at least most of them. There was one other person who would have potentially experienced it.

Hidan.

The man was still buried in the forest, the deer watching over the unmarked grave to make sure he stayed put. The zealot was immortal, so he'd still be alive down there, and the deer wouldn't stop him from digging him up, especially since he had been the one to put him there to begin with. The thought of freeing the man was not a good one, though. He'd much rather the horrid shinobi stay buried...but he also knew he couldn't go on like this. He couldn't continue living with so many sleepless nights and unanswered questions. He didn't really have a choice but to dig him up.

That didn't mean he had to dig all of him up, though. After all, Hidan only needed his head to be able to talk, and that's all he needed from the zealot. There was only one potential complication in his plan, though. Spending roughly six to seven years in complete isolation and sensory deprivation wasn't exactly easy on the psyche. He knew enough from Ino to know that that degree of a lack of stimulus could break the mind, and he didn't know if people could recover from that. If Hidan's mind was broken beyond repair, he had no idea what to do. He'd have to find a way to ask Ino if it was something that people could heal from. Even if it was only rarely, if it was possible to heal from then Hidan would recover. He had to.

While he debated on how exactly to approach Ino, he made plans. He learned how to make privacy seals, and set them up all over the second bedroom in his house. He even managed to find a way to disguise the view from outside the bedroom window, so anyone who was just casually glancing over would see only an empty room. It was now impossible to hear any noise coming from that bedroom, and there were even chakra sensor dampening barriers. Even if Ino showed up, she wouldn't be able to sense any chakra coming from that room.

Eventually, he ran out of things to plan for and all that was left was asking Ino if people could heal from the psychological damage of complete isolation and lack of stimuli. Frankly, he had no idea what he would do if she said it couldn't be healed from. It would make all the work with seals he just did for nothing...and he had taken around six months to learn all of that. He may be a genius, but fuinjutsu was difficult. He doubted he'd ever attempt to learn any more than he had.

So one day he approached Ino's flower shop. It was, ironically, given his true reason for visiting, the anniversary of Asuma's death. She greeted him, and he lazily returned the greeting with a raised hand, immediately grabbing a pre arranged bouquet of flowers and bringing it to the counter. When she saw just what flowers were in the bouquet, her eyes flashed in muted grief.

"...visiting Asuma-sensei, huh?" she asked

Shikamaru nodded. "Yeah...I've been thinking a lot about him lately...especially...well..."

Ino nodded, ringing up the flowers at a very steep discount. "...will you tell him I said hello? I'll probably visit later, but I'm just a bit busy with the shop right now. There's no one else to watch it today..."

"Yeah, I will." he paused as he took the flowers handed to him. "Hey...this is probably gonna be a weird question...but...I remember you told me about the effects of long term sensory deprivation once...is it possible for people to recover from that?"

She gave him a surprised blink, silent for a few moments before answering a bit uncertainly. "I mean...there have been a couple cases, but...it's really really rare, and it took a lot of care and effort to get them to the point where they could actually speak again. Why are you asking that?"

He shrugged. "Don't worry about it. Just thinking about the bastard that killed him. Wondering if his immortality and healing applies to his brain, too. If it does, then he's probably still at least semi-conscious and suffering...I know I already avenged Asuma, but...I don't know, sometimes it makes me feel better to remember that that Akatsuki member is still suffering in that ditch, you know?"

She looked mildly concerned, but seemed to understand at least partially. "Well...I can't say I feel the same way, for me it's plenty that the guy's as dead as he can get, but...I can get why you feel like that. You took it harder than anyone else when he died...it's okay to talk about it, you know that, right?"

Shikamaru nodded. "Yeah...I know. I'm gonna go visit Asuma-sensei now. I'll tell him you're coming later."

She seemed to want to say something else, but ultimately just nodded. "Okay...see you, Shikamaru."

Shikamaru gave a lazy wave over his shoulder and walked out of the shop, bouquet in hand. He went straight to the cemetery, and soon found himself standing in front of the grave of his dear teacher. The cemetery was silent, only the occasional breeze disturbing anything. His stomach was clenched in knots, and he felt awful about this...he felt so guilty that he was planning on digging up the one who had killed him. But he couldn't back out of it. Asuma would rather he keep going, even if he had to do some unsavory things sometimes. He'd much rather have that than for him to slowly waste away like he had been. Before speaking, he made sure that there was no one in earshot.

"Hey, sensei...I'm gonna be doing something soon, and...it's gonna suck. But...I have to do it. I need the answers it'll give me. Some crazy stuff happened to me a little while ago, and...I haven't been dealing with it all that well. This is gonna help me, so...I hope you'll forgive me for it. Anyways...Ino's gonna come by later, she's busy with her flower shop right now. I'm sure Choji will visit as soon as he gets back from the mission he's on right now. I'll...see you some other time...see you, Asuma-sensei."

He placed the flowers down, and reluctantly left the gravesite. Now that he had his answer from Ino, he had to do what he'd both been dreading and looking forward to for so long.

He had to go unearth Hidan.

The whole process was just as troublesome as he'd expected. He had been out here for hours, with a shovel for the dirt and his shadows to pick up any larger rocks. Sweat was clinging to his whole body, and moving the rocks and dirt was getting more difficult as time went on. He may be a shinobi, but he wasn't built for continuous manual labor like this. He knew a bit of earth jutsu, but none that would really help him with this. In fact, he really only knew Mud Wall and Mobile Core. So he'd be able to either erect walls around the hole, or just push the bottom of the hole even deeper into the earth. Both of which were very counterproductive. He wasn't even all that good at either technique. He'd attempted the Hiding Like A Mole Jutsu, but he'd never been able to get all that far within the earth using it. He was better with fire techniques, which was a bit ironic given his shadows. So, he was left with manual labor. He was unfortunately unable to form his shadows into a shovel that he could control...despite having tried for a little bit.

His muscles burned, his breathing was heavy, he was sweaty, and he just wanted to take a goddamn nap. But he couldn't. He'd already known he'd have to do this all in one shot, because him suddenly beginning to spend a lot of time in the forest where he never had before would be bound to raise questions. It was best and least suspicious if he simply spent a good chunk of one day here. It left less time for him to potentially be discovered, and far less opportunities for anyone curious to try following him.

It took a long time, but eventually he saw a lump of flesh. It wasn't the precise lump he was looking for though, unfortunately, but at least it meant the end was in sight. He kept digging around, finding a hand, and a leg, and he was pretty sure that was a chunk of shoulder. Eventually he found what he was looking for, though. He found Hidan's head, and plucked it up out of the dirt. The man's hair hadn't grown, and it was so caked in dust that you couldn't even tell that it was meant to be silver. His eyes were closed, and if he didn't know better he would have assumed him to be dead...but there was chakra. Not a lot, definitely not active, but it was there.

He was about to turn and jump up out of the hole, but before he could something caught his eye. A dull shine, just off to the side of where the head had been. Hidan's amulet. He hesitated for a moment, but grabbed it, stuffing it in one of his empty pockets. He didn't think on why he had grabbed the thing, and just jumped out. Looking consideringly at the head, he quickly came to the decision that he did not want something this filthy inside his house. It was gross just looking at it. He sighed, and walked towards the small branch of the Naka river that ran through the clan forest, kneeling down at the bank before dunking Hidan's head under the water.

Knowing that the man was indeed alive, and was fully capable of screeching obscenities even as a disembodied head, it was...disturbing that he remained silent. There was no reaction whatsoever to the cool water of the creek, no reaction as he scrubbed none too gently at all the grime coating the man's head. He really hoped that Hidan was able to recover from this...if he wasn't, he didn't know what he'd do. Hopefully it wouldn't take too terribly long for the man to regain consciousness.

The water flowing away from him had turned a disgusting muddy brown, the dirt coming off of the severed head slowly but surely. It was...so gross. The hair slowly lightened back to silver, and the skin also gradually paled until it was almost as pale as porcelain. Much lighter than the shade his child self's skin tone had been. But...spending seven years in a hole would do that to someone. No sunlight exposure meant skin would be far lighter.

Once he finished scrubbing off Hidan, he also made sure to scrub off the unearthed amulet, which thankfully went much faster. He then left, hiding Hidan's head in a small cloth bag that he carried with him. He doubted he'd encounter anyone on his way home, but he couldn't be too careful. If anyone actually saw him with Hidan's head...well...the fallout of that would be much too troublesome to deal with.

It was only once he was not just inside his house, but inside the heavily sealed room that he pulled the head from the bag. He set Hidan down on a soft pillow he'd made sure to procure for this, on a small table he'd arranged in just the right position for the man to be able to see outside, but not have sunlight directly in his eyes.

He told himself it was because the stimulation of seeing things outdoors could aid in recovery better, and the pillow was because he knew Hidan would bitch about the pain in his neck anyways and hopefully this could lessen the bitching a little bit. Looking at the severed head though, something still didn't seem right...so he pulled out the amulet he'd dug up, placing it down so it encircled the man's head and the amulet itself would be visible if Hidan flicked his eyes to look down. That looked better. The man had already seemed empty and incomplete, seeing as he was currently just a head, but the lack of the amulet had just made it even worse. He didn't let himself think of why.

What he did do, however, was leave the room to go take a shower himself. He was dirty and gross and just wanted to be clean. He already knew that it would likely take some time before Hidan regained anything even resembling consciousness, so it wasn't like he was missing out on anything. He'd likely have to deal with the dreams and nightmares for months before Hidan could awaken enough to give him answers.

Just knowing that the end was in sight was enough to ease at least some of the issues from that. Not that it helped much, because now he had all new issues to contend with that would keep him up at night. Mainly his guilt at digging up Hidan.

He had buried the man dismembered in a ditch for a reason. The vile man had killed his sensei in a horrid way, and was gleefully cruel the entire time. He had taken sick pleasure in it as his sensei battled for his life, and as he breathed his last. He had purposely injured him in nonlethal ways just to cause pain, because he enjoyed it. He reveled in cold blooded murder, and even though shinobi had to be prepared to kill if need be...enjoying it was another matter entirely, and it was sickening.

It seemed so incredibly selfish to do this. To dig up the zealot just because of a strange experience leaving him with sleeping issues. Shouldn't he just endure it? Maybe go to the Yamanaka and see if they had any thoughts on how to help him get over it? Yes, he knew that getting answers for what happened would help him greatly, if not fix the problem entirely. But was it really the only way? Should he really have unearthed the man he hated most?

Would Asuma be disappointed in him for this, or would he understand why he did it?

Great. He was having all sorts of second thoughts now, only after he'd already done all the hard work in digging the guy up. He couldn't have had these earlier? Perhaps when he was running his mind in circles figuring out all the pain in the ass fuinjutsu he'd plastered over the room?

Well, it wasn't like he couldn't just put Hidan back after he got what he needed. It wasn't like he was actually going to truly free the man. He'd still go through with this, because at this point he'd come too far to just go back on it.

It didn't help him get any sleep that night.

A/N: HI everyone! It's only been a little over a week since the last chapter, but I've been on a ROLL. I have this as well as most of the next chapter already written out. Shikamaru is now back in the present, and contending with the crisis of everything that just happened to him. Next chapter we get to actually interact with Hidan again! Yay!!!

I will admit, I'm not entirely certain how to actually end this story, so...after the next chapter would be the final chapter. Chapter 9 would be the final chapter, so we are approaching the end of the story. As always, I hope you all enjoy it! Thank you for reading!