Hidan suddenly lurched forward and wrapped me in his arms. I didn't realize that I was crying until he eventually pulled back and started wiping the tears off of my face.

"You don't have to tell me," he told me softly, but I shook my head.

"We met when we were young, we were neighbors. I didn't have siblings, so we spent endless afternoons together." I began, remembering myself as a gap-toothed 7 year old. "Jun and I were best friends. The other children shunned me for being born with such odd hair, but he stuck by me."

Hidan remained silent, softly stroking my back.

"He was a few years older than me, so he became curious about his body before I did, and he.."I swallowed dryly. "He raped me. And it didn't stop. I figured I was ruined and no man would ever want me, so I convinced myself that I loved him."

"That's not true-" Hidan blurted, and I gave him a questioning look. "You- uh-" he flushed. "The part about other men not wanting you because you're- uh- 'damaged goods', or whatever."

I propped my chin on his shoulder and sighed. "Thanks, I guess."

"Sorry," he mumbled, and the urge to smile made me feel worse.

Knowing there was more to tell, I exhaled. "It got worse after that, he was always finding different ways to make me bleed, and then I found out at the ripe age of 16 that I was carrying his child-" I coughed, and Hidan's arms coiled around me again. "-And I thought maybe that would make him ease up, but he hated it. He didn't want it, but I did- and he- he took it from me, and left me to die."

I was crying again, and Hidan was rubbing circles on my back. "He cut me open, but I was used to pain. I was angry and hurt- and he killed my baby-" I choked on the words, hating the swell of nausea rising inside of me.

Hidan shushed me then, just trying to soothe me. "I understand."

I laughed bitterly. "No, you don't."

He pulled back, and I caught the angry look in his eye. "I do." His hands were on my shoulders, and I felt myself wither slightly.

"How could you possibly understand how I feel? You hardly know me."

Hidan's eyes softened, and he suddenly pulled me into a long, soft kiss. "I love you."

Emotions exploded inside of me, and I let myself kiss him back.

After some time being wrapped in Hidan's arms, I fell asleep. I don't know exactly when, but it was somewhere between him tenderly rubbing my back, and pressing soft kisses up and down my neck and shoulders.

I drifted off feeling secure and warm, but awoke to a nudge in the side, curled up alone on his cloak.

I opened my eyes slowly, and glared at the cause of disturbance. Kakuzu was looming over me, a look of disgust in his eyes. "Go wash that out of your hair. And try to appear... Presentable."

I cursed. Today is the day. Yippee. As I staggered to my feet, I waved Kakuzu off and picked up the discarded towel, now covered in pieces of bark and dirt. I shook it out as I wandered toward the stream, where I sat on my knees and dipped my hair into the water.

It took a while to get all the clumpy pieces out, but I was pleasantly surprised about how it turned out. The water reflected a stranger with dark, damp hair, and tired eyes. I squeezed out excess water and started attempting to towel-dry my locks on the walk back to camp.

When I returned, Hidan was awake and stomping out the fire. I nodded to him, and he flashed me a smile. "It turned out well," he said.

I smiled back, "I was surprised it wasn't a total failure... You're actually kinda smart."

"Fuck you," He stuck his tongue out at me, and I returned his gesture.

"Stop flirting and prepare yourselves for travel." Kakuzu interrupted us, ignoring my snort and Hidan's cry of, 'fuck you!'

I bent over to pick up Hidan's cloak from the ground, discovering that it was covered in patches of moist soil. I shook it out and lamely offered it back to its owner. "Sorry."

"Well, shit." He opted to drape it over his shoulder, and I may or may not have drooled.

We left not too long after Kakuzu and Hidan released the concealment jutsus. Making our way down the path, Hidan and I followed after Kakuzu. I tried to keep a few feet between us, the passionate touches of last night still echoing in my brain.

Hidan was in the middle of a rant about those damned heathens when Kakuzu slowed to a halt. I looked up, and Hidan's rant died down. "Sakana, the village isn't far. Continue on foot from here."

I glanced around. "I can easily recognize Yugakure," I finally replied. Hidan clapped a hand on my shoulder, and I looked at him questioningly.

"You got this, kitten." He told me in somewhat of a whisper. I swelled in confidence a little, and softly smiled at him. "We'll see ya at the party."

I didn't respond as the two ninja disappeared in a puff of smoke.

All alone on the misty path, I decided to run my hands through my hair one last time, in attempt to look more presentable. The narrow path I had been following joined into another, larger road. There were peddlers sparsely spread out, most likely farmers hoping to sell their goods to travelers.

Few paid me no mind, but others were desperate for a customer. My stomach growled, and I decided to buy a piece of bread and pressed a large coin into the old woman's hands, bidding her to keep the change.

I slipped into the village, eating my dry bread. The town seemed to be bustling in preparation for the event.

It wasn't hard to find my destination, because there was a flow of people headed toward a large mansion, with workers busy pruning shrubs and placing lights and various decorations around it. I followed a pair of men carrying boxes toward the back door of the estate.

I waited for a few moments, observing the people scurrying around, before approaching the door and rapping on it a few times. A large woman answered the door brusquely, giving me a quick once-over. I cleared my throat, but she spoke before I could: "You're here for the maid position? Good, follow me."

I had been standing in the same spot for five hours when I finally spotted my target; a now-rich matron of an orphanage. She made good money selling the innocent children to Hidan's target; the rich land-owner. Apparently the wealthy villagers were fond of her now that she had money. They were coming on droves to see her, nodding respectfully and bowing to her. I suppressed a scoff, but caught the eye of a handsome young man. He smiled and winked at me, I fixed my eyes on the wall as I felt heat rising to my cheeks.

He had dark green eyes and long brown hair pulled back at his nape, and he was handsome... But he's not Hidan. I inwardly cursed the stupid voice in my head for making me relive the tender touches from the night before. The sound of glass breaking caught my attention and I looked up to the sound of the Matron calling for my assistance.

"Maid, come clean this glass and bandage my hand!" She shrieked at me, waving a bloodied hand in my direction. I scurried over to her, taking her verbal lashing about cheap cups and how she deserved better than this, while picking up all the pieces and apologizing repeatedly. I was delighted to find a few droplets of her blood on a particularly large shard of glass.

I ducked my head and walked away, thanking Jashin for such an easy task. I slipped into the maid's washroom and retrieved my bag, and the vial Kakuzu had given me the day before. Within a minute, I had shed the yukata and donned my shorts, camisole, and cloak. I shoved the Yukata in my bag, (hey, it was cute!) and slipped back out of the room.

It wasn't hard to escape the bustling kitchen either; with everyone so busy with their preparations, I was invisible to them.

Once free of the mansion, I made my way out of town and back to where Hidan, Kakuzu, and I had parted ways. I stood in the shadow of a tree for roughly five minutes, before I realized I wasn't alone.

Kakuzu appeared from the shadows, a few moments after a loud roar came from the direction of the village. "You have the specimen?" I nodded and produced the vial and bloody glass. He grunted in approval. "Hidan should be here shortly, assuming he doesn't toy with his prey."

I nodded again and shifted my stance. A few branches cracked, and I braced myself for another ambush.

Instead, the brown-haired man stepped out from behind a tree, rubbing a hand across his neck, where a gaping wound dripped dark blood. He grinned at me cheekily, brandishing a severed head.

"Ah, it was you!" I exclaimed, as he formed a hand-sign and his henge faded. Hidan stood before me, grinning like a dork.

"I'm surprised you didn't recognize my chakra, dumbass."

Before I could fire back an insult, Kakuzu cut us off. "Hidan, enough. Grab the girl, we need to make some distance."

Hidan suddenly had me flung over his shoulder as the two ninjas teleported us away.

We ended up in a cave not too far away, where Hidan helped me etch Jashin's symbol into the dirt using his blood. Then, I shook the bloodied glass out onto my palm, and brought my target's blood to my lips.

My skin tingled as the transformation took over, my skin deepening to the darkest shade of black, and my skeleton appearing on my skin, as if it were a tattoo.

I accepted the pike Hidan offered me, grit my teeth, and shoved it through my chest. My warm blood dripped down my chest and I felt my heart jump a few beats before resuming its usual rhythm.

A thought occurred to me then; "Won't we need her head for her bounty?"

Kakuzu shook his head. "She really wasn't worth much, she just deserved to die. We'll be paid sufficiently for these two alone."

"Oh," I felt dumb as Hidan patted me on the head.

"Want to pray with me?" My fellow Jashinist asked, already kneeling down in the circle.

I joined him on the ground and bowed my head.

I guess thank you, Jashin, for helping me out today. I'll get better at this ninja stuff and find a way to save Hidan. Speaking of, why him? I get it, he's your prophet... I guess I should be asking, why me? Alright, I guess that's it. I'll talk to you later, big guy.

So smooth, Sak. So smooth.

The next few hours were spent on Kakuzu's back, with a decapitated head way too close to my foot.

I get it, I'm an immortal Jashinist with a history of murder, why should a fucking head creep me out? Well dear friend, let me ask you this- how you ever looked into a dead man's eyes? Okay, well how about just his eye-sockets?

...Yeah. Point proven.

We were heading north, so after a few hours of a bumpy ride with the head, my ninjas stopped and Kakuzu deposited me on the ground roughly. "Go wash yourself off before we continue, I will go collect the bounty money."

He left Hidan and I standing in the forest, covered in blood. I shrugged at him, and followed him toward the sound of water.

A river cut across the land, winding throughout the trees. Hidan and I exchanged a look and went our separate ways.

Finding a secluded spot, I undressed and entered the water. The stream was cool, flowing down from where the Land of Frost and Land of Steam met. I scrubbed blood off of my skin and set to work washing and wringing out my clothes before re-dressing in the now-damp garments.

When I met back up with the immortals, Kakuzu hmph'd and made a snide comment about how long it had taken me. I rolled my eyes and looked at Hidan, who was running a hand through his wet hair. Kakuzu made a derisive noise at my blatant ogling and offered a bag of coins to me.

"Your cut. Considerably less than mine and Hidan's, of course, since we did all the hard work."

"Not true!" I protested, though I didn't care about the money. "I took out the third target!"

"Not really, Hidan did all the work there, too." Kakuzu told me, as if I were stupid. Well, I kinda am, to be fair.

I looked at the silver-haired Jashinist, and he nodded. "What do you mean?"

"You don't think that glass just magically broke on it's own, do you?" Hidan chuckled. He flashed a senbon at me, and I felt myself sweat-drop.

So my totally badass work-of-God moment was Hidan and his stupid ninja needles.

"Oh well, I'm still awesome," I chirped, perking up. "We gonna get goin' now, or what?"

Kakuzu grunted again, I jumped onto Hidan's back, and we took off.

During the next bout of running, I dozed off a total of 12 times before I caught on to the conversation.

"She's actually not being annoying for once," Kakuzu was saying, and Hidan made a slight noise of amusement.

"And for once, I agree with you."

I decided to cut in, being the she they were referring to. "I'd be a lot less annoying if you'd shut the fuck up and let me sleep." I informed them, digging my heels into Hidan's hip. He hissed and called me a bitch, while Kakuzu snorted.

"You snore." He snipped, killing the conversation.

I stuck out my tongue at the back of his head and he made a very rude hand gesture at me. I 'hmph'd' and decided to stop antagonizing him before he threatened dismemberment. Yeesh.

Turning my attention to Hidan, I rested my forehead on the crook of his neck, and let a sigh escape.

"And what's bothering you now, Kitten?" He asked, inclining his head as he ran.

"Boredom, mostly." I replied, ignoring the swell of emotion building in the pit of my stomach.

He didn't reply, so I assumed that he, too wanted to be left alone. 'Whatever, they're dickbags anyways,' the voice in my head decided to return.

Resigning myself to the silence, I decided that maybe sleep wasn't a bad idea.

When I woke again, our scenery had changed. We were now right outside of a village somewhere in the northern part of the Land of Fire. Hidan had taken the liberty of rousing me from my sleep by dumping me onto a patch of dry dirt.

I yelped, scrambling up. I glared at him, and he shrugged at me. Kakuzu was nowhere to be found, so I assumed he was procuring food, a room, or both.

"So, have a good run?" I awkwardly asked Hidan, who made an amused face.

"Not really," he replied after a moment.

"Cool, that's, uh, real nice." Oh my god, he probably thinks I'm retarded.

The jerk continued to smirk at me, so I turned my attention to to Kakuzu, who was approaching with a satisfied look in his eye.

"What's got you so happy?" I asked the miser, to which he replied, "Your mother, it's Two Dollar Tuesday."

Hidan howled, "Oh snap!"

I scowled, "You guys are being mean. I'm gonna tell Pein that you're bullying me!"

Hidan laughed again, and I suddenly imagined him as a hyena, barking out laughter every fifteen seconds.

Kakuzu shrugged, handing Hidan a key. I looked back and forth between them, before asking the most obvious question.

"Where's mine?"

Kakuzu raised an eyebrow at me, "You're sharing with Hidan. And you both owe me 50 ryo."

I forked over the coins, while Hidan did the same, then we followed the miser to the small inn. Our rooms were adjacent, and Kakuzu and Hidan unlocked the doors.

I peered over Hidan's shoulder into the tiny room and sighed. There was a single, full-size bed.

"At least you're not sleeping in the dirt," Kakuzu said, before entering his room and closing the door behind him.

I followed Hidan into the room, closing the door softly behind me.

Hidan made it to the bed, and flopped face down onto it, already snoring.

A snort escaped me, and the Jashinist lifted his head, "'Mere, bitch."

I suppressed a smile, but turned the light off and joined my immortal on the bed.

So a little HidanSakana fluff, hoped you enjoyed that. We're almost through with part 1 & I'm not sure how much I wanna develop this first pairing, but I promise I'll make things good in upcoming chapters. I have some cool ideas, so please stick around for more! I'll probably have the next installment up in two days, since I've been updating so much! I love you all, and as always, thank you!

~Mistress-chan