I realized I never uploaded this or the next chapter here. Oops. (I primarily use AO3 if you don't already follow me there.)

This is basically a mini "omake" chapter that I decided it was weird to tack on to the previous chapter, but it has some stuff in it I liked and wanted to keep.

xXx

Tori woke slowly, and somewhere between dreaming and reality, realized she was not in her bed. She was on some type of carpet, curled up under a very weird blanket. She shifted slightly, and part of the weird blanket flopped over her side. A sleeve. She was under a coat.

She cracked one eye open and scanned the dim room around her. It was a completely normal bedroom, with a double bed shoved in one corner and a desk in another. There was a poster over the desk that she couldn't make out.

And she was on the floor. For some reason.

Tori's head felt very heavy, and she suspected moving too much would be painful. She had drunk a lot last night. She remembered climbing onto one of Deidara's clay birds after him, which had been a horrible idea in hindsight because he too had drunk a lot. And then… they'd gone somewhere very loud, and… they'd come back… and… and…

She carefully turned her head back towards the bed. She heard the rustle of the sheets moving, then half of Deidara's face appeared over the side, his blond hair mussed by sleep.

They stared at each other.

"Why'm I on your floor?" Tori finally asked.

Deidara blinked sleepily back at her. "I offered you the bed," he said. "But you called it a 'nest of sin' and refused to move, yeah."

That didn't sound like something Deidara would be gentlemanly enough to do, but that definitely sounded like something she would say.

Deidara's face disappeared as he rolled over, pulling his comforter over him. Tori wiggled around and tried to get comfortable under the 'weird blanket'– which she now realized was his Akatsuki cloak. Or someone's Akatsuki's cloak. She was getting fuzzy memories of Hidan drunkenly stripping his clothes. But… no… he'd had a leather jacket, maybe…?

Getting comfortable wasn't hard. The thick carpet of Deidara's room was almost as good as her stack of camping mats in the dungeon.

When she was starting to doze off again, Deidara announced, "Man, I am dead ."

"And yet you're still talking," Tori mumbled. Her hangover was a bone-deep horribleness, and she yearned to be unconscious again.

He either didn't hear her or ignored her. "You got me really fucked up last night, yeah."

Tori pulled the cloak over her head.

"You just kept pulling out bottles of alcohol," Deidara continued. She heard him yawn. "I should've brought you along drinking ages ago, yeah."

Tori snorted under the cloak. It hurt her dry throat. "If you're so easy to win over, I should've bought you booze months ago."

Deidara let out a snort of laughter, which turned into another yawn. Then he was silent.

Tori drifted in and out of sleep for a few hours, and eventually Deidara got up, stepping over her twice as he padded around his room. At some point she realized he was changing clothes and pulled the cloak back over her face. He left the room, and Tori decided to try and drag herself out from under the warmth of the cloak.

She stood up. The room was a bit shaky, but after a few moments she was able to make out the poster. It was for an action movie Tori had never heard of, featuring two actresses in skimpy kunoichi costumes covered in exploding seals. Of course.

There was a tiny bathroom, its door half open. She went in and spent a few moments sitting on the toilet with her head in her hands. Deidara's blonde hair was all over the tiles. Of course.

She looked at herself in the mirror. She looked like she'd been running down a hill, tripped, rolled through some mud into a pond, wrestled with an alligator in that pond, then dried herself off with a blow dryer. Of course.

She was wearing a shirt. She did not recognize this shirt. She had no memory of obtaining this shirt. It was yellow, which wasn't a good color on her, and had short bell sleeves that made her shoulders look incredibly wide. She would never have picked this shirt for herself. It was markedly cleaner than the rest of her.

She opened the door Deidara had exited through and stepped into the hall. It looked like the hall on every other floor of this building, although she recognized this one as the one with the working washing machine in the laundry room at the end. Several Akatsuki members had their own rooms on this floor, although she'd never been in one before she'd ended up… sleeping on Deidara's floor?

While she was standing in Deidara's doorway pondering her situation, Kakuzu came out of his own room.

"I don't want to know," he said. She just stared at him. She was confident she and Deidara hadn't done anything, but she understood what this might look like. "We're having a meeting," he told her.

"Why," she croaked out, but he had already turned and exited through the door that led to the stairs. She followed him.

They were the last to arrive, and the rest of the Akatsuki sat around the table in various stages of being utterly destroyed. Deidara had his head in his arms, while Itachi was slumped back in his chair with his eyes closed. Kisame actually had sunglasses on and was grimacing as he sipped from a giant mug of coffee. Hidan obviously hadn't showered, and he was covered in smears of mud and blood as he snarled at a very tired looking Kakuzu. Hidan's shirt was also missing.

How the hell had they gotten into a club, if both she and Hidan looked like they'd lost a fight with a bear? She was pretty sure that's what the loud place had been. There had been… flashing lights. Music. Gyrating.

"You came back alive," Konan observed to her, sounding surprised.

Tori wasn't sure why the entirety of ninja-dom thought civilians would keel over and die at the slightest inconvenience, but she was too hungover to argue that point.

"I feel like my bone marrow is ghosts," she said.

"What a wonderful sentiment," Konan said, and gestured for Tori to sit down. Her notebook was already in place, pen besides it.

Tori sat. She picked up her pen and stared at it.

"This is an informal meeting," Pein announced. "I want to know what damages you did last night."

They all stared at him. Was Tori going to have to write down all the shit they did? She didn't think she could even write her name. Luckily, Deidara saved her.

"None," he said confidently. "Absolutely none. We were good, yeah."

"Kayaba Castle is missing," Pein said. There was an awkward silence.

"That was us?" Kisame asked.

"It was worthless anyway," Kakuzu said, venom in his voice.

"But the ghosts," Tori protested, having uselessly written half the date.

"Stop talking about ghosts," Itachi, who had yet to open his eyes, monotoned.

"I don't care what you do in other countries," Pein continued, unperturbed. "But the castle is a national monument, and Kusa has already requested any information Ame knows."

There was a long silence, and Tori managed to finish writing the date and Castle: Gone . Hidan looked like he wanted to say something, but that it wouldn't be worth the headache his own voice would give him.

Was the barrier around the castle still going? No, surely Pein would mention that if it were. Tori did not need to speak. None of them needed to speak, like a classroom all silently agreeing not to ask teacher any questions in the last five minutes of class.

Sasori, sitting pretty and hangover-free with a superior look on his face, spoke up. "There were Oto dregs squatting in that castle. Blame them."

Konan raised her eyebrows. "You engaged other ninja?"

"Sasori can give that report himself," Kisame said, standing. "I am going to fry every food I can find in the kitchen."

"Great," Hidan said, getting to his feet as well.

The rest of them stood to file out, slowly and painstakingly. Tori, of course, had to stay to document whatever Sasori reported, because her life was horrible. She grabbed Deidara's sleeve as he passed.

"Hey," she croaked out, sounding much like one of the frogs she'd murdered. "Do you know where this shirt came from?"

Deidara stared down at her like he was just realizing she was wearing anything to begin with.

"Huh," he said. "Dunno. Weird, yeah."

He left. Tori continued to feel flummoxed even as she gave herself a headache trying to follow Sasori's report. Sasori was as concise and to-the-point as usual, and she'd literally watched the events in question, but her entire morning was one long struggle. Or… oh god, there'd been bright sunlight from the window she'd passed. Was it even morning anymore?

"Well, that's good news at least," Konan drawled when Sasori described Tori's modified bijuu seal working.

There was a distant thought Tori's couldn't quite form in her brain. She probably… no one had told her she wasn't allowed to just fuck off to go barhopping, but captives didn't get to do that. Even if her co-workers maybe didn't hate her, she was just some civilian girl and a liability. Who knew what she'd said to people during whatever she'd done to get this shirt? She'd just gone off and done it, and before that she'd been doing secret yogurt-based fuinjutsu experiments and helped murder people and countless frogs, and everyone was just willing to roll with that. Something had changed, had shifted, and it felt like it should be monumental even though her poor brain couldn't seem to fit all the pieces together properly.

In this world, freedom was something you had to take, it seemed.

When they were done, Tori shoved the notebook away from her more dramatically than was strictly necessary. Konan watched it skid across the table with a bored expression and didn't comment.

Sasori turned to her and said, "That shirt is hideous."

He wasn't wrong.

"Or rather," Sasori continued as Pein and Konan left, "there's nothing wrong with the shirt. Your body just makes it look bad."

"I'm never taking any poison from you again," Tori mumbled. Her head hurt too much to start an argument with him.

Climbing back up the stairs felt a little bit like climbing the side of a cliff with weights strapped to her limbs, but she made it up to the kitchen, where Kisame was indeed frying every possible thing. It smelled fantastic.

She filled a glass with water from the sink and sat at their destroyed kitchen table. The rest of the Akatsuki similarly loomed around the table, watching Kiasme cooking in patient, pained silence.

When Kisame turned around to present plate number one of hangover food to Itachi, he asked Tori, "Are we ever going to get a new table?"

This was, technically speaking, her responsibility.

"Ask our treasurer," she told him.

"Eat on the floor," Kakuzu said, standing over the table with arms crossed.

"...ask Pein," Tori amended.

"Hey," Hidan said, kicking a leg under the table to hit the legs of Itachi's chair. "Can you genjutsu away a hangover?"

Itachi took a bite of food and spent a very long time chewing it.

"Maybe," he said.

"God, why would you let him?" Deidara asked. "Isn't that against your religion or something?"

"I was just asking–"

Kisame handed a plate and a set of chopsticks to Tori, and she immediately shoveled several bites of food into her mouth. It was warm and full of delicious umami, and she thought she might be on the brink of joyful tears again.

"Kisame, you're my favorite," she said through a mouthful. He flashed his teeth at her.

Kisame's food was good, but about a third of the way through the plate, Tori decided it could be even better, and she opened the fridge and pulled out the hot sauce.

"SO IT WAS YOU," Hidan suddenly screamed, and Tori instinctively ducked behind the fridge door. "I should have known you were the one taking my shit, you fucking bitch–"

Tori did not need to dodge anything, though, as Itachi made a very pained face at Hidan's raised voice, and then Hidan got up and wandered off to yell at an illusionary Tori in the living room.

"Don't let him ruin the couch too, yeah," Deidara complained when there were several dramatic ripping noises.

"Hmm," Tori said, dumping hot sauce over her food anyway. "That sure doesn't make me feel safe."

They ate, sitting around with their plates in their laps and minimal conversation. It was weirdly communal, but it didn't feel forced or awkward. This was the purest of shared experiences: everyone hungover and tired, sharing the bliss of eating greasy food in their shitty kitchen.

Hidan eventually staggered back into the kitchen and flipped Itachi off. Tori squinted at him while he picked the pan right off the stove and started eating directly from it.

"Is this what Jashinism is about?" she asked.

Hidan froze. Deidara groaned loudly and Kakuzu let out an annoyed huff. Tori waved vaguely at them.

"Shared suffering," she explained.

Hidan stared at her thoughtfully. There was a piece of browned onion stuck to his cheek. He cracked a grin.

"Close enough," he said. "Man, Chibigami, you fucking suck, but you're alright sometimes."

"Hot sauce?" Tori offered, and the grin shrank.

"Don't antagonize him," Itachi told her. "Why do you keep antagonizing him?"

"Oh, like you're one to talk–"

Later, when they were done and Itachi went to clean up Kisame's mess like a good partner, Tori turned to Hidan and asked:

"Do you remember where this shirt came from?"

"No idea," Hidan told her, but apparently he remembered more of the night than her or Deidara because he added, "but you went into the hotel and came back with it."

"The hotel," Tori repeated slowly.

"You really don't remember shit," Hidan proclaimed and then laughed meanly. The sound made her temples throb. "They wouldn't let you into the club because you were shirtless and covered in blood, so you went into the hotel across the street and came back like five minutes later with a shirt."

Tori frowned, digesting this.

Did she… steal someone's shirt? How?

"Oh yeah," Deidara said, eyes widening. "Yeah, yeah– I remember that, 'cause, like, who doesn't let a shirtless woman into their club?"

"It wasn't even a lot of blood," Hidan agreed.

Tori was struggling to conjure up a memory of this at all. She remembered the clay bird fairly well, and she had random flashes of being in the club. She remembered complaining it was the same beat the entire night.

She did not remember robbing someone in a hotel. How would she even do that? Wait for someone to come out of their room and sneak in? Beg for help? Climb up a fire escape?

"Hidan," she said slowly. "You're shirtless and covered in blood."

"Yeah," Hidan agreed, smirking at her. "But people can't stop me from doing what I want."

"So you…" Tori trailed off, feeling her headache returning in full. So Hidan would bully his way into a club, but not help her get into a club, but also he'd stand around waiting long enough for her to go solve her own problem.

Last night was honestly the best she'd ever gotten along with him, even if he'd gone off and murder a genjutsu-Tori twenty minutes ago. Maybe Itachi was right and she shouldn't antagonize him.

"You're fucking welcome," Hidan told her smugly, and all she did in retaliation was pour more of his hot sauce on her food.