**Before We Start**

Disclaimer: I know that this is cursed. This started off as a joke with a friend, and after a few jokes, it became a little too planned out to not just do it. This is going to be a little darker than my usual work, but I hope it's still warm and sweet somehow. I don't think I need to say this, but just in case, I do. I do not endorse this behavior. Do not try this at home.

Hinata thumbed through the mail, pausing on one with familiar government postage. She took that one out for herself and left the rest.

"More mail from you're degenerate?" Neji pulled it out of her hand.

Hinata snapped it back before he could pull it out of her reach. "We're not having this conversation again."

Neji frowned at her. He wasn't happy when Hinata signed up for the prison pen pal program. She knew because he reminded her frequently. "He is a…"

"Murderer, I know." Hinata finished for him. "I knew when I started writing to him. I knew last week when you told me and the week before, and I'll remember when I write him back."

Neji sighed, collecting his bag to leave. Hinata waited for him to say something else, but this time he was going to let it go.

Hinata tore the seal to get to her letter. She had long since learned to read chicken scratch, or maybe he just got better with time. The letters were long rambles, sometimes over multiple days, that didn't usually have a point, but there was something there, even if he wasn't doing it intentionally.

It started when Hinata was in university with a clipboard someone asked her to sign as she came out of class. Hinata hadn't really been paying attention. She thought that she was signing up for a policy for prisoners to be able to send more letters to their pen pals, not become one. Putting her address down should have been a red flag, but she was in a hurry.

Hinata thought about not responding when she got the first letter. In fact, she almost didn't read it when she saw the name on the letter. No one could escape Hidan's name on the local news while his case was ongoing. It didn't help that he was erratic in court, and there was a new story every week about something he shouted disrupting the trial or boldface claimed on the stand.

There was a debate on whether Hidan was actually insane or if his theatrics were just for an insanity plea, but he did brutally murder several people and desecrate their corpses. That was insane in itself.

What made Hinata pick up the letter and respond was a nagging in her gut because she knew one of the victims, and it may make her a horrible person, but she was happy to hear they were dead. The creep from her first internship that she never felt comfortable around. A married man that sat a little too close, putting his arm around the back of her chair, and she knew she wasn't the only one. He didn't try anything worse with her, but that didn't mean that he didn't try it with the others. There were also rumors that he was skimming from the company, so no one was really sad to see him gone.

It made her wonder if Hidan knew.

It was a question she had never asked, and it was an answer she couldn't really determine from his ramblings because it was similar to his theatrics in court. He said what he wanted to, when he wanted to, with very little filter.

It was unclear if there was ever a motivation for what Hidan did, even replying to her. At first, he complained about how 'prude' she was with her wording and speech. He could tell she didn't like it even if she never scolded him specifically for his language. It made her laugh when he started writing out the swear and then scribbling it out for her 'delicate eyes.' So at least, he considered being considerate.

Hidan was a bastard, but he knew he was a bastard. At least he wasn't lying to himself.

"Aren't you late?" Hiashi's voice called from down the hallway.

"I'm heading out now," Hinata told him. "Have a good day." Hiashi didn't respond as he disappeared back down the hall. Hinata wasn't expecting anything, but hope would get the better of her once in a while.

Hinata collected her bag on her way out the door with a sigh. She would have to respond to the letter when she got back.

Hidan laid back in his creaky uncomfortable bed and tried to drown out the usual sounds of prison, including his cellmate's annoying way of flipping pages. If you were audibly sliding the page across another every single time, it was deliberate. Fuck him.

Mail came in the morning, and if his little pen pal was as predictable as usual, she would have replied already, and tomorrow would come faster if he fell asleep. His eyes fell on his small portion of the world plastered on the wall with her little doodles and the pictures she sent. He only had one picture of her, the university ID picture that was originally sent with her first letter. It had been a few years, and she was older. He knew she had cut her hair. He didn't really care how she looked. It would make the mental picture more complete.

It started out funny, the convicted serial killer signing up for a pen pal program. He chased the first few people off, but this girl never stopped sending a letter back. Even when he was purposely trying to get on her nerves, she just scolded him and eventually just ignored the parts of his letters that would annoy her.

Hidan got the picture. He wasn't chasing her off. He wasn't going to get to her. Hinata knew who and what she signed up for, and he wasn't going to surprise her. It took a weird pressure off of him to keep the act up. Hinata never asked him why or how he did any of his murders and squashed his theory that she was writing a book. She could have made one by now if she just collected and printed the letter he sent over the years. It would probably be that long.

Hidan always wondered if the last one he read would be the last one he would receive, and he would have to find something else to make his prison life interesting. He'd be damned if he was going to do something stupid like get a degree in here. There were a few dumbasses who thought they might get their life sentence overturned by showing they 'changed.'

Speaking of damned, the edges of his collage were Jashin symbols, along with the one he was going to get in trouble for carving into the wall… again. He sighed, laying his head back. He wanted to sleep, damn it!

Hinata tucked her hair behind her ear as she crouched down at one of the small desks in her classroom. She pointed at a mistake on the page and waited for her student to make the correction. "Good job." She praised as she stood back up to continue looking around at the children's work.

Kids this young wore her out, and her father hated that she was teaching primary school and not university classes, but she would take helping blow a few noses and being patient with tantrums over being hit on by students to get better grades. She had enough of that during her teaching assistant days to last her for the rest of her life.

Now she just had to worry about the occasional single parent and the, unfortunately, more common married parent, but she rarely had to talk to parents.

Hinata felt a light tug on her skirt and crouched down to another desk. The little girl held her hands up to show her broken pencil and pouted. Hinata could help the smile that spread across her face. Children were so pure and simple. "That's okay. We can get you another one. Pink, green, or blue?"

Hidan crossed his arms, waiting for his state-appointed hour of sunlight and fresh air to be over. Then he could go back to his cell while everyone else went off to do chores.

Why wasn't he doing chores? Simple, they didn't want him to. He got banned from cleaning for spraying cleaner in someone's face because he wouldn't stop talking, then the next time for trying to drown someone in a toilet. He got banned from laundry for trying to put someone in a drier to see if it would be a fun ride. The rumor of him being a cannibal kept him from the kitchen, and maybe that one time, he successfully stabbed someone with a spoon. In his defense, he didn't know it was going to work as well as it did.

All things he told Hinata and all things she never asked a reason for, and sometimes he did have reasons. She seemed to assume he had a good reason, or they 'must have done something too.' To be fair, prison didn't have a lot of completely innocent people, so maybe she was assuming the worst of everyone.

Hidan was nudged and broken out of his thoughts to scowl at Kakuzu holding out a pack of cards. "Stop praying and play with me."

"Piss off," Hidan grumbled. Kakuzu liked one thing in life, money. It's what got him in prison in the first place. An embezzlement case. He wasn't embezzling. He killed the man embezzling from him. Which, in Hidan's opinion, was a 'play stupid games, win stupid prizes' situation. Just because it was rare to get murdered for white-collar theft didn't make it safe. Only after looking into his business did the police realize all the investment money for the business came from people who had mysteriously had someone in their life missing.

When asked, Kakuzu admitted that he had been a hitman for hire for years and had the records to prove it. He went through a few cellmates before they were jammed together. His body count was beyond impressive, so Hidan at least was happy with the match. He couldn't stand the whiny bitches that were in for beating their wives or selling drugs. You got caught doing something stupid. Suffer in silence.

Kakuzu just smacked his arm with the deck again. "Come on. I need you." Kakuzu wanted him to cheat at cards with him, and he wouldn't mind it if it weren't what he did every single day.

"Greed will send you to hell." Hidan shot over his shoulder, knowing that it would make Kakuzu grind his teeth.

"We are already here." Kakuzu shot back.

Hidan shrugged. "Maybe you are." Prison was probably where Hidan belonged, and might as well enjoy it.