Hidan flinched as the not-so-gentle hand of the prison nurse pressed antiseptic to his face. "Stay still." Tsunade snapped at him.
"It fucking hurts," Hidan growled back.
"It should. It means it's working, and you're still human. Something I think you forget from time to time." Tsunade lectured. She was by far the best doctor in the joint and wouldn't smack you with something for talking back to her, but she had a mouth on her, and it didn't shut once she started. "You keep getting into fights. You're going to be put into solitary."
The bastard deserved to get his face smashed in. If there was one thing that Hidan couldn't stand, it was fucking with kids, literally. They shouldn't get to prison. They should have their stomachs sliced open and be left to be eaten by wild animals. Hidan would volunteer for the slicing part. "Hmph."
Tsunade pushed the bandage on his face harder than she needed to make her point. "They restrict mail in solitary." Hidan jaw set. He should have never told her about Hinata. Him and his big mouth.
Hinata hit her stapler, no staple. Again, no staple. She opened the stapler. She was officially out and still had a stack of papers to finish. She sighed, got up from her desk and headed down to her father's office, and started in his desk drawers, crouching down to dig.
Hiashi was a neat person, but he didn't throw things away. So if there were staples in here, they were probably buried at the bottom of the drawer underneath the row of toner casings from printers they didn't own and perfectly wrapped labeled outdated cords to ports computers didn't have anymore. If anyone needed to hook up a setup of outdated computers during the apocalypse, they could do it with the contents of these drawers.
"What are you doing?!" Hiashi barked.
Hinata snapped up, smacking her head off the ledge of the desk, and fell back. "I'm looking for staples." Hinata covered the sore spot on her head and looked at the ledge that betrayed her. Her eye caught something she didn't expect to see under her father's desk. A folder tapped to the underside. Her father stalked around the desk and yanked her up by her arm. "Ow!" Hinata snagged her arm back.
Hiashi snapped a glare at her for complaining before opening one of the drawers and snagging out a box of staples, slapping them in her hand. "Get out."
Hinata stared at him for a moment before obeying. Her father had a temper, but it wasn't usually so explosive. Hiashi knew that his calm disappointment was more than enough to keep her in line as a child. She couldn't even remember him raising his voice other than the times Hanabi started a screaming match, something Hinata would have never dared to do.
The door was slammed in her face as she got to the other side, and she blinked at it for a moment with staples in hand.
What was that about?
Hidan looked at the calendar. Ugh, should he mention it? It always felt stupid to remember dates in her life, but if he didn't mention her birthday, neither would she. This day was on brand for him to remember, at least, but he would also feel like a piece of shit for making a joke out of it which was his default.
Hidan bounced the pencil on the page. He wished he had the complete lack of filter people thought he had. Would he say just about anything? Yeah. Would he do shit just to see what happened? Yeah. Would he do shit that pissed someone off because he knew it was going to piss people off? Without question. But this was a long-term relationship that, at this point, he didn't want to fuck up, and that made everything hard.
Hinata knew he was a bastard and expected him to be one, but when it came to things he thought might actually make her upset, Hidan just couldn't do it. It would nag at him. He would rather write another whole letter that omitted it than sit with that feeling that she might write back that it hurt.
Because she would, Hinata wouldn't stop sending letters just because he was an insensitive bastard that intentionally hurt her feelings. She would just tell him how it made her feel, which was a dumb idea. Most of the creepy bastards in prison would abuse that to tell her the worst things just affect her. They would get a sick kick out of making someone squirm.
Really, he didn't get into enough fights with the type of people he was locked up with because he had to weigh beating the shit out of the worst people imaginable and being able to get his next letter.
It was a thin line, but at this point, the only thing keeping him out of a small padded room for the rest of his life was the idea that this exchange might end. Would Hinata wait for him if he wasn't able to write back for two weeks? A month? Would she try again if her letter got bounced back? Would she try to figure out why, or would she just give up?
Hidan had a sneaking suspicion that his stupid girl wouldn't let that stop her, but he didn't want to test that because if he was wrong… then what? Congratulations, dumbass, you ruined the fun to prove a point.
Okay. If he mentioned it in the form of a question, he would look disinterested, right? Then Hinata could agree and tell him her feelings about it, and he wouldn't have to reveal that he actually wanted to know.
Hinata smiled. Did Hidan write down every date for everything she ever said? Why was the picture of a little list of important dates or a graffitied puppy calendar with circles making her giggle? Hidan paid more attention to her birthday and anniversaries than anyone else in her life.
Hidan probably didn't even know that he was the only person outside her family to even mention her birthday last year. He even joked that he would send her a gift, whatever she wanted, which he did from time to time to just ask her what she liked without directly asking.
After all this time, Hinata would have thought that he would have given up the act and been more direct. Maybe it was pride, or maybe it was because these letters were checked by the prison staff.
How much of what he said was an act? Hinata could pick out things that were obviously out of place after years of letters, stuff he added just to keep up his persona. At this point, she wasn't even sure if he believed in the religion. He missed holidays he claimed it had and didn't mention it nearly enough to make sense for someone who literally started preaching during a trial.
The only thing keeping her from thinking it was all fake was the feeling that she didn't want to get to the point of over-humanizing him and making him what he wasn't in her head.
Had Hinata humanized him more than she should have? Yes. That was always a risk when communicating with someone who did the most horrendous things imaginable. People didn't want to assume that people were just horrible people that did the worst thing imaginable without reason. People wanted a logical reason for why people did things. People wanted to believe that random acts of violence didn't happen because they wanted to feel safe.
Unfortunately, statistically, almost all acts of violence and murder were most likely to be done by someone the victim knew and trusted. Of course, then people wanted to try to blame the victim for putting themselves in a situation, not seeing the signs, or even causing their incidents because it was so hard to believe that some people were just horrible murderers.
Hinata never forgot that Hidan was a murderous bastard who did things for shock value and a reaction, but that is why she also was rather sure that he didn't tell the whole truth when he confessed.
It always bothered her that Hidan never used the excuse that his victims sinned. It would have fit his defense's narrative that he was just an insane religious nut job, and he screamed on in the trial more than once about why someone shouldn't have done something because it was a sin.
Hinata was of the opinion Hidan actively avoided it because he didn't want people to know that he knew that the people he killed were awful people.
It was clear in his letters that his moral code was 'awful people should die.' It was in his complaints of other inmates, complaints about the death row being abolished, and even he thought he should have gotten the death penalty for getting caught.
But that was Hidan always taking things to the most extreme.
Unless he was embarrassed.
Like reminding her that he remembered her uncle's memorial.
Hinata took a last look in the mirror at her black dress and went to Neji's door to knock. "Are you ready?"
"Yeah," Neji answered solemnly.
Hiashi barely waited by the door of them, only to snidely comment that he would have left if he could have driven himself, but he hadn't been able to drive with his bad shoulder in years. Since the night his brother died.
Maybe that was the reason why Hinata had some form of respect for Hidan. When Hidan was caught, he confessed to all of his murders in detail.
They still didn't know who murdered Hizashi Hyuga.