A/N: My mind feels all strange. It felt bad before, but then I read things about chemical reactions and it felt better. Would Wikipedia be medicinal? I don't know. I have work to do anyway. Can't go on Wikipedia. Buzz.

I really should not be writing last minute. I don't have time to edit anything or correct for whatever odd mental state I might have been in at the time of writing. Zzz. Ah well. The first half was written while I was not feeling strange, at least.

Fun times. Have them. Yes.

.

Yahiko

Click. "I don't know what happens now."

Hidan turned around at the near-simultaneous sounds of the door locking and Yahiko expressing confusion. "You've been saving that up the whole walk back, haven't ya, Sunshine?"

"Yeah," Yahiko admitted. "The walk was really good. It helped me think. I realized that part of why this feels so bad is just that, well… I don't know what's going to happen."

Hidan sat on the bed. "Let's try out hairstyles! Maybe keeping your hands busy will be like walking."

Yahiko shivered. He isn't going to tell anyone. I'm fine. Still, nerves fluttered in his belly at the thought of demonstrating his skills. What if I do something wrong? But Hidan had invited him to style hair, and it was not wrong to do what he'd been asked to. Yahiko got on the bed behind Hidan, sitting forward on his knees so that he would be taller. "Maybe."

Yahiko expected to start talking after that, but to his surprise, he did not. He combed his fingers through Hidan's hair to loosen and separate it in complete silence. Hidan was silent too; only a light flicking of his ears gave away how he was enjoying this. Yahiko could not have explained why, but it was the sight of Hidan's ears flicking that got him to start talking.

"I've never really had…" No, that didn't feel right as a beginning. He had normal, casual friends now, didn't he? I have friends I don't share everything with, who I haven't known forever. Yahiko licked his lips and tried again. "Will it be like what I have with everyone else? With you?"

Hidan tilted his head back so he could barely see the tips of Yahiko's hair. "Those are different questions. I'm not like everyone else."

Yahiko giggled nervously. "Yeah, I don't think anyone else would do this. So what do you want first? Braiding?"

Hidan shrugged. "I'm not a fan of braids, but I'll try it. See what it feels like."

"Okay." Yahiko began to lightly braid Hidan's hair. "I still don't understand it. I don't get how you can change forms so easily. I've been thinking since we last talked about it, and… Don't people expect things based on what you look like? I think that's what I was trying to ask about before. How do you stand to change that?"

Hidan scratched his cheek with one finger. "Eh. I have to admit, that's just because of power. Nobody gets to apply any expectations to me in the first place. I don't even know if anyone has any. I don't see any change. But if I was someone you could expect shit of, who couldn't just do whatever the fuck I wanted, I might."

"Oh." That's what I've always been thinking about him, ever since I started wondering how he got away with it. I guess I already knew that. "What about me? I don't just sweep away other people like that."

Hidan grumbled to himself. "I don't know too much about that… I can give it a shot, though." He thought to himself for a minute. "What if...you treat it like having a menu of options?" Hidan tilted his head back again. "Being able to change other people's thoughts is a kind of skill. What expectations do you want other people to have?"

That was not a question Yahiko would ever have thought to ask. "I don't really do that?" He concentrated on braiding. The steady rhythm of his fingers really was like walking. An answer came in no time. "I don't. I figure out what I'm supposed to be doing and shape myself to that. I haven't tried to work the other way around."

"Maybe you should," Hidan said. "Surprise people. Like what you're doing with the nature spirits - go out, do shit, make discoveries. Then come back and say something like, 'I've been doing this. I know this now. Here's what you can expect of me.' Don't wait for other people to tell you. Tell them."

I can see that. I'm supposed to be strong, forward, brave. I can totally do that. "I'll try," Yahiko promised.

Hidan pushed his head backward, reverse-nuzzling Yahiko's fingers. "What do you think of expectations in general?"

In the time it took to think of an answer, Yahiko finished braiding Hidan's hair. "Let's go to the mirror and see how it looks," he mumbled.

In the bathroom, Hidan tilted his head from side to side, studying the way his hair did not move. His hair was short enough that braiding was an effective way to immobilize it. He curled his lip. "I don't like it. I like movement, flowing, shining, that kind of shit. This is the opposite of that."

"Alright, I can undo them."

"I like the way it feels though. It pulls on my scalp just right. Not too tight, but enough to tingle and make me feel all dressed up and formal."

Yahiko sighed. "Maybe bands and clips would work better for you then. But I don't have any."

"I'll keep an eye out for some," Hidan promised. "Though I don't go shopping a whole lot, so I dunno if I'll see any. I see things that people drop on the ground, and that includes a lot of hairties."

"You won't find clips that way!" Yahiko was horrified at the idea. So he took a deep breath, and summoned up his courage. "I'll look out for some. For you." Hidan turned around and hugged him. Yahiko found that he no longer needed to summon up courage as he patted Hidan's back. Having an interest in accessories now seemed like something normal. It was the responsibility of any good friend. Nagato would do the same.

Nagato…

When they were back on the bed, with Hidan sitting crosslegged and Yahiko sitting forward on his knees behind him as before, after Yahiko began to undo all the braids, he apologized. "Sorry. I thought of Nagato while you were hugging me."

"What about him?"

Yahiko undid braids in silence for a couple minutes while he thought of an answer. I'm so glad that Hidan will let me think as long as I need to. Anyone else would want an answer quickly. Thank you so much, Hidan! He bit his lip. "I thought about him in a way where he was like me, but different. Better."

"Better how?"

"More like what you'd expect. He's not at all strange. He's a perfectly normal guy."

"That's better?"

"Yeah." Yahiko combed his fingers through Hidan's hair again, trying to settle his hair back into being straight. Maybe I should use a real comb. But this feels nice… "I think of expectations in general as being powerful. They matter. They hurt. They're really strict, too."

"Expectations are in other people's heads," Hidan said. "You think other people think in really strict and harsh ways?"

Yahiko hesitated. "I don't have any reason to think that…"

Hidan shrugged. "Reasons shmeasons. Do you?"

Yahiko flushed. I'm a lot more judgmental than I thought. When did I get like this? I'm not really that nice, after all. "I guess I do."

"That's not bad," Hidan said.

What? "What?"

"It's not bad to think that. You're not a bad person. I dunno why you expect other people to be harsh on you, but it doesn't matter why. It doesn't mean anything about you at all. It's not like you deliberately decided that. I don't think people decide what they expect." Hidan wrinkled his brow, as if he needed to think about his own words.

Yahiko flushed deeper. "But...isn't it judgmental of me?"

"Nah." Hidan flicked one ear. "You have to expect something. Why this and not something else? I dunno. But you're supposed to expect something from other people."

"It's bad to judge people," Yahiko said. His words sounded mechanical to his own ears. It felt like he was repeating someone else's words. Whose?

"I judge you to be cool," Hidan announced. "I always have. Is that a bad thing?"

"No. Well…"

"It doesn't count as judging if it's good?"

Yahiko focused on his fingers. "It's literally what a judge does when he sentences you to prison forever."

"That's it. We need a whole other word reserved for good judgments," Hidan declared. "You're right; the word 'judge' is used mostly in bad ways. We need a word for the same concept that's only ever used in good ways to balance it out."

"Okay, let's invent a word." Yahiko chuckled. "How do you do that? Just make up a combination of sounds?"

"No, no." Hidan shook his head as much as he could with Yahiko's fingers in his hair. "Language isn't random. It picks up things that already exist and makes new shit out of them. We gotta find a word to repurpose."

"Oh. Alright. What is a good judgment like?"

Hidan rubbed his chin. "It is like… Like something I didn't have to find out. It was just there. I looked at you, you looked nice, and you were nice, so I was right. No surprises there. It's not like something I had to make. It was just there." He grinned. "How about find? I find you to be awesome."

Yahiko tested it out. "I find you to be smart and helpful." He laughed. "I like it! It sounds like I discovered something that you always were, whether or not I noticed. It sounds like a compliment."

"It's settled, then." Hidan leaned back. "So you judge other people to be harsher than they probably are. What do you find other people to be?"

Yahiko realized another benefit of using the word "find" in this way. Judging is something you can do regardless of fact, but finding is a word that only applies to facts, to things you see that really exist. I can't find someone to be something that's completely untrue. I have to find what they really are. "They actually don't expect as much as I thought. I guess when you have to deal with demons and vampires, nothing else seems important."

Hidan waited a few seconds. Then a few more. Then, just for extra emphasis and caution, a few more. Finally, he softly asked, "What do you find yourself to be?"

Yahiko stopped moving. The question echoed around his head. What do I find myself to be? According to the definition of the word "find" that they had just invented, the question was strange. Very, very strange. "I don't really do that," he realized. "I don't find good things about me. Other people tell them to me."

Why? He had never thought about the way he thought about himself from this angle before. Why do other people always have to be the ones to say good things about me? Nagato always says I should say good things about myself, but I don't. Other people do that. Why don't I? Am I… He developed goosebumps at the thought of those horrible thoughts he had heard. Am I encouraging thoughts like that? Why would I do that to myself? How could I be so mean?

Hidan shook his head as if to drive off flies. He didn't even care about the way his hair was pulled. It was more important to be able to think clearly. "Hey wait a fucking second." Hidan saw clearly that two things were different from each other. "The way you think and the way other people talk about you are different." He glared at nothing. "What if they weren't?"

"I can't change my thoughts. I've tried." I think I've tried. Have I really? Have I really tried to be nice to myself?

"I'm not talking about that. What if other people said not-nice things about you?" Hidan tilted his head back to look up. "Chase and run. Bite and flinch. It's basic fucking action and response. If people weren't so constantly positive, would you not have to be so negative?"

Yahiko blinked. "I don't think that's how it works… Doesn't the way other people talk become the way you think? Something like that. Right?" I don't know much about psychology, but that's the usual dynamic. Isn't it?

"Not always," Hidan said. "There are a shit ton of things that can be happening up there."

He's right. I thought empathy and people caring about how I felt was the thing that makes people feel better. But Sasori helped me a lot by not feeling what I felt and not directly dealing with it. Maybe my mind works differently. "Okay," Yahiko agreed. "But how would you test for that?"

"Easily." Hidan took a deep breath. "I'll admit, you can be really dense sometimes, Sunshine. You take forever to think things through. I wouldn't ask you to make any kind of quick decision."

"I know," Yahiko replied. "I wish I could think more quickly. But I seem to make good decisions if I have the time to think about them properly. I can decide things about my life, and other far-off things like that. I just don't react quickly to the immediate stuff."

Hidan smiled. "Hey Sunshine?"

"Yeah?"

"Did you hear that? You just said more balanced things about yourself."

Yahiko stopped organizing Hidan's hair into different bands. "I did?" I said good things about myself. I said I make good decisions. I said that! He began to smile. "I did. I did!"

Hidan pushed his head backward. "Howsabout we celebrate with some pretty colors?"

Itachi

Itachi heard his phone pinging, of course. He ignored it. Lying on the floor across from Deidara and breathing deeply was much more important.

"Uh-oh," Deidara said after the fifth chime in a minute. "I don't think that's good, yeah."

Itachi closed his eyes. "Right now, I choose to be disconnected. They can wait."

Deidara sighed. "Me too, hm."

The chimes eventually stopped, leaving them both in relaxed silence. Itachi focused on his breathing. In, out. In, out. Idly, he wondered which religious group he would go to for soul healing if he ever had need of that service. He was torn between the Buddhist group and the lake. In, out. In, out.

"Deidara?" he whispered.

"Yeah?"

"Why do you ask questions about the state of the world?"

"It's important, yeah." Deidara sounded confused by the question. "I have to. It's being shoved in my face, yeah, so I have to pay attention to it."

"Did you ask such questions before the recent revelations?"

For several seconds, there was silence. "I guess I did. I wondered what the point of people's lives is and what it meant to be lonely, yeah."

"Is there any particular reason why?" Itachi asked gently. "You don't have to answer. I've seen you react poorly to the subject of death before."

"No, I'm okay, yeah." Deidara sighed. "I was in the military, hm."

"Ah."

"I saw people get blown up."

"I'm very sorry to hear that."

"That's why I was thinking about that stuff, yeah."

Itachi allowed them both to return to silence. He's lived through greater challenges than I will ever face. The answers to these questions aren't entertaining to him. They are deathly serious. Next to that, what troubles have I ever faced? Am I at all qualified to give advice? It seems advice is all I have to give, so I must.

"Itachi?"

"Yes?"

"What about you? Why do you think about this stuff, yeah?"

Itachi did not answer immediately. Instead, he brought up memories of his life. Looking for caterpillars on trees in the playground, alone. Reading books, alone. Holding Sasuke. I thought I would teach him everything I knew. But Sasuke was different too, and had no problems playing with that blond kid. He never asked about the things Itachi knew.

"Because it is my way of approaching something I have never really touched," he finally answered.

"What is that?"

"Others. The world." Itachi opened his eyes. The white graininess of the ceiling greeted him. He traced his eyes over the bumps and ridges on its surface. "I, too, have wondered what it means to be lonely."

Deidara blinked. "Huh. I never noticed before. But you're right - I don't really know what you think, yeah. You don't speak up much. I don't ask. I'm sorry, man."

"Most people do not." Itachi closed his eyes again. "Not until they have hard thinking of their own to do, and they come to me for advice or insight."

"I'm sorry."

"You don't need to be. It is the main service I offer to the world."

"That sucks, hm." Deidara twisted until he could just see the side of Itachi's arm. "You wanna hang out more, hm?"

"I do not know what 'hanging out' means," Itachi admitted.

"Damn!" Deidara frowned. "There I was feeling all different from everyone after I got back, hm, thinking nobody else knew what I felt or what it was like. But you were there the whole time?"

Itachi chuckled. "The things that go unnoticed."

"Hanging out is just like this," Deidara said. "It can look different, but it's always the same thing of being with someone else and talking or doing something together, yeah. Like the card game this morning. That was a group hangout."

"I see."

"Wanna hang out at the bar? We could grab drinks, hm, and look out for possible demons."

"That would be very pleasant."

Konan

After giving Kakuzu his phone back, Konan tilted her head in thought. Finally. It is good to think of things that have nothing to do with my world. A world I cannot return to and which may be on the verge of being destroyed…

Never mind that. It does no good to dwell on things I cannot change. She returned her mind to the subject of Hidan. "This indicates interesting things about his memory problems."

Kakuzu, thankfully, seemed to have calmed down some. "How so?" he asked.

"When I confronted him with upsetting things he later forgot, he seemed to be upset because he was thinking about them. At the very least, he faced those things directly." Konan tapped her fingers on the armrest of the computer chair. "What he described here is ever so slightly different. It is a similar void in his mind, but one he is aware of, that does not cause distress, and which nothing can be done to alter. His memory problems are just one of at least two ways that he handles difficult topics."

Kakuzu narrowed his eyes. "Hidan remembers the things he doesn't remember. He may not be able to tell you exactly what happened, but he remembers the basic meaning of it. But if he never thinks about the topic at all, then there is nothing to remember."

Kakuzu learned something about this problem and did not tell me? "Please clarify."

Kakuzu stared at her. "He didn't tell you?"

"I would like your perspective." Has Hidan said anything about his memory problems? He may have. I don't know.

"He was normal friends with Nagato. Then the redhead talked to him while he was in a fugue. Now he's convinced that Nagato is a superhumanly amazing person who deserves the title of best friend." Kakuzu crossed his arms. "It doesn't seem like coincidence."

Konan kept her face still. That touching promise Nagato made reached him? How? I thought it couldn't have. Hidan was not the one who heard it. How can he possibly remember what he did not experience? Out loud, she only said, "Interesting."

"Did he tell you about the basement clone?"

Basement clone? "No, I do not believe he has."

Kakuzu told her the story of how Hidan's clones seemed capable of going into the basement, but before they could test the theory, Hidan had decided that she was not to be interrupted. "Why would his clones have abilities he doesn't have?" Kakuzu asked. "I don't recall reading about that in Ruta's document."

Konan was more interested in another part of the story. How did he know I was not to be disturbed? He appears unaffected by the symbol's influence, and cannot even think about the basement. When someone is in the basement with the symbol, their mental state will be at least half composed of the symbol's influence. I thought he would be unable to detect such a mental state. "How did he know I should not be disturbed?" she asked.

Kakuzu looked at her strangely. "How could he not?"

"I thought his power to detect others' feelings would not work in the basement," she explained.

Kakuzu glared. "You didn't think to tell me about that?"

I suggested we view each other as allies, but we are not treating each other as allies. "My apologies." In my defense, Kakuzu is difficult to get along with.

Kakuzu rolled his eyes. "No point speculating from a distance. The only way to know is to ask."

"Yes." Konan found her thoughts drifting off in other directions. Something is unusual here. What? The general situation of talking with Kakuzu, speculating about Hidan's clone's clones, felt odd somehow. Twisted. Was this what should be happening?

Whether it should or shouldn't be happening, this is my life now. I speculate. I talk with the other Akatsuki members as equals. I question things. No longer do I simply do what needs to be done. No longer do I take orders. No longer do I give orders. My old life is gone, and this is what has replaced it. Of course it feels unusual. Why should it not? A world in which I only have to ask in order to know is strange and unusual. This is not my world.

Konan closed her eyes. "I cannot return."

"What?"

"I cannot return," she repeated. "My world is gone. It is inaccessible to me, and… It may not even exist anymore. It is all gone." She opened her eyes. "Why would I discuss something that is completely, irrevocably, gone?"

Kakuzu looked down at her silently. "My condolences." He sounded sincere. Since when does any version of Kakuzu express condolences?

"They are gone," she whispered. "I continue to see them, but they are not here." She rotated the chair, turning away so she would not have to face Kakuzu. "You are not here."

Kakuzu watched her silently for a while. Konan pretended she did not know that. I am out of place here. The only version of Hidan I have is strange, a bizarre being. The only versions I have of anyone are all different. My world may already be destroyed, and I am here with strangers. They seem unreal. Who are they?

I want to go home.

So she did. It was that simple. Konan stood up, forcing the computer chair aside. "Let's return. Search for those papers. Get everyone tested. Determine whether or not Hidan's clones can enter the basement, and why. Make alterations, if that is what the papers say." Be somewhere normal for once!

Kakuzu said nothing. His eyes scanned from side to side, searching for a way to make sense of whatever the hell was happening here. Aside from that, he nodded.

Sasori

How nice it is to not have to think. How nice it is to bury myself in something. Sasori was currently buried in the task of sketching. On the desk in front of him and to his left stood the money block. On the desk in front of him and to his right were the two rods Nagato had made. The shed was nicely lit by the afternoon sun. It was quiet, still, like a time capsule. Time might as well have not been passing.

Sasori pulled out his phone. Am I glad I thought to fully charge you. You're going to need it. He was going to have to perform intense research into the structure of batteries. If I want to build something, it's going to need a power source. What better place to insert one of these rods for control? But of course, I can't just ram a rod through a battery and expect it to work. I might need to build a custom battery.

Sasori knew a fair amount about the external mechanics of car batteries: what needed to be done to keep them working. However, he did not know what actually happened inside. His research was very interesting and enlightening. I should probably go with a battery type that doesn't use liquid acid. This plate type looks promising, but I have not the slightest idea how to put acid into mats. Where would I buy acid mats anyway? Lithium-ion might be better. Oh, no, it says here that they're less robust. Crud. On the other hand, maybe I should go with liquid acid. It has problems, sure, but the rod probably needs to be in direct contact with electricity. How vulnerable are these things to sulfuric acid?

It was refreshing to think this way. Simple mechanics, the logic of what interacts with what and how, was very soothing to the mind. It was straightforward. It made sense. Sasori didn't have to do any of his own thinking, because other people had already done the research and invented the things. He was having a very good day.

Quickly, he began to sketch out possible designs. He also wrote down a list of questions to ask, who to ask them of, and likely places to get the parts he would need. Ah. Home. Home is wherever I can think like this.

Time passed. He did not notice.

.

A/N: I am glad for the existence of this last scene here. Thank you very much for existing. My brain feels very soothed.

Cuddle up with someone or something that makes your brain feel better today!