A/N: Not much to say here. I like talking, but it keeps me from understanding things. So then, have fun.
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Konan
Konan was really starting to wonder about the gender norms in this world. She had had two weeks to see the rest of the new Akatsuki in action, and had gathered that gender roles in this part of this world were more flexible than in her world. But Kisame made dinner for everyone this night, and that led her to wonder if the norms were not basically the same as hers but more flexible, if they were actually completely different. Perhaps it was normal for men to serve food, and not merely acceptable. His fried fish was quite good, which lent credibility to that idea.
That was just one of many things she needed to take note of. Someone new had ordered a cloak. That was a milestone, which meant she should stop to take note of the situation.
"Nagato," she said. "Do you have a book to take notes in, perhaps?"
He did. She remained in the kitchen as she thought, so that she might notice if anything interesting happened. When most of the others moved to the lobby, so did she. She sat in the chair and used the desk to write, occasionally glancing up.
Cloak-wearing members: 5, she wrote. Hidan, Nagato, Yahiko, Deidara, Sasori. Members who can wear cloaks: 9, including myself. Total members: 10, including Samehada.
Known alliances: Our group to Sakumo's. Nagato with Yahiko. Nagato with Hidan. Yahiko with Hidan. One of the many interesting things she had just observed over dinner was Nagato asking Yahiko how his hangout with Hidan went. Yahiko's answer had been vague and elusive. It was good to see that her plan had worked. Nagato, Yahiko and Hidan. Kisame, Kakuzu and Sasori. She hadn't failed to notice how well they got along. Myself and Hidan. Myself and Deidara. Sasori and Laurie (perhaps Deidara as well). She paused to consider what other connections might be considered alliances. Sasori had taught Yahiko how to make chakra strings once. But no, they did not seem to be aligned towards any particular goal. Kisame and Itachi were friends, but again did not seem to be aligned toward any goal. Did Kisame and Samehada count? Samehada didn't seem to have any goals. If the shark had long-term desires, they were unknown at this point. Konan decided that she was only taking notes on things that were openly known, so she would not count them.
Known enemies: A succubus (Status: defeated), vampires (Status: Negotiations currently in our favor). Known partners: demon boy, snake child, Jashin sama, bicycles, other succubi. Resources: ghosts, trained wolves, bicycles. Hmm. Was it right to count the trained wolves as resources? They were very nearly the same as Samehada, and Samehada was listed as a group member. For the sake of orderly notekeeping, there should be consistency. Either the wolves were members of Sakumo's group, or Samehada was an available resource.
Or Samehada was not the same as the wolves. Konan looked up. Hidan would not stop going on about the revelation he had had about his scythe's movements earlier in the day. He demonstrated what he was talking about by throwing his weapon across the room at Kakuzu, who had his body fully hardened and had been assured that there was absolutely no chakra in the scythe. Kakuzu was fast enough to catch the scythe no matter where it veered off. Kisame watched the demonstrations, as did Samehada. Samehada went to Hidan after he stopped showing off, stood up on his tail, and warbled a question. He touched his mouth to the scythe, made motions like hacking up a furball, and thrashed back and forth.
"Shit!" Hidan exclaimed. "That's right! A blast of chakra made it move! Huh…" He studied his weapon carefully. "I don't think that'd be useful, but it sure as shit would be fun to try. Hey Nagato, what do you know about controlling things with chakra?"
Konan left her list as it was. Samehada truly was a group member, not simply Kisame's shark. In this world, freed from the condition of being a sword, he had developed his own mind and intentions, with the possibility of forming his own alliances. The wolves, in contrast, did not have the ability to form their own alliances or interact with the Akatsuki on their own. From her perspective, they were nothing more than an addition to the Hatakes' forces. That was the same reasoning that had the bicycles listed as both partners and resources. They had existences of their own, which made them a separate force that the group was partnered with, but if that force could be persuaded to help anyone a horde of bicycles could be summoned for literally any task, including using themselves as shields. If they acted like tools, she would list them as tools.
Current objectives. Konan stopped here to decide what she was going to list. Should she list only goals that most of the group shared? That would be a short list, since most of the group appeared to be highly fractured. Only goals that involved three or more people, then? No; the degree of fracture was too great for even that. It seemed like everyone wanted something different.
She would write out everyone's goals, then. She underlined Current Objectives, making it into the heading for a vertical list. Hidan: Resolve the group's mental problems. Nagato: Learn how to handle the fact that he's gay, negotiate with vampires. Yahiko: Learn how to handle his feminine side, negotiate with vampires, communicate with nature spirits. Deidara: Investigate what has happened to his clay bird. Sasori: negotiate with bicycles. Kisame: … She knew nothing about what Kisame wanted. Kakuzu: … She also did not know what he wanted. Itachi: Discover uses for his jutsu. Or at least that had been Itachi's goal, a week ago when he last mentioned his plans for the future. Samehada: … Again, she did not know if the shark wanted anything.
Myself. Now she faced the opposite problem. What was she going to leave out? She knew all her goals, of which there were many and they all seemed very important. She knew logically that she could not list all of them, even if she had the space to. How to shorten the list?
Well… Some of them could be gathered together, and others really did not interfere with the workings of the group, so they could be left out. Some personal problems, like Yahiko and Nagato's, could be considered to interfere with the group because they interfered with interaction. Her personal problems interfered with her ability to function, so they also counted. But figuring out what kind of relationship she had with Hidan or with Jashin sama, say, did not affect her functioning or her ability to talk with anyone, so they would not count. With those standards in place, she could write out a reasonably short list. Myself: Resolve my mental problems, maintain group functioning, uphold alliances and other relations. When she wrote it out like that, her official duties sounded like those of a leader.
Konan sat back in the chair. A leader… The way the members of the new Akatsuki broke down her ideas of leadership was so thorough, so complete, that she had thought of herself as a leader in title only for a long time. But now that she had this list, it was easy to see that she truly did do the things a leader ought to do. She smiled.
Hidan was arguing with the others about why learning how to control his scythe with bursts of chakra was worthwhile. The argument was clearly pointless, since Kakuzu was arguing about why it would not make him better at any form of battle and Hidan was arguing about why it would be so frickin' cool. They clearly were not actually talking about the same thing. Itachi finally spoke up. "You two are not really arguing about the same thing," he said. "In addition, I believe what Samehada did cannot be replicated."
"Just how the fuck would you know that?" Hidan snapped.
"Samehada consumes all kinds of chakra, including chakra in the air. An extra strong burst of a single kind of chakra would only have extra strong effects on the scythe. The combination of different types might be what made the scythe react so poorly."
Hidan frowned. "Shit. Maybe."
Samehada warbled. Kisame patted him near the dorsal fin. "Wait. Didn't Ruta figure out that that thing is like a second body for you? You felt it."
"I don't remember what it felt like," Hidan said with a shrug. "It was way too much, like when you eat something that makes you run around screaming in pain and all you can think is 'hurts hurts hurts' and only after you wash it out do you realize it was salty. That kind of thing."
"Incompetent friggin' cook," Kakuzu grumbled.
"Excuse me." Itachi had on his thinking face. "The experience you describe is not one of combining multiple types. It's actually of the opposite."
"So Sammy purifies chakra?"
"I didn't -"
"Hey Sammy, can you gather up more of a dribble of chakra? Gotta test this."
Itachi sighed. Samehada got to work, convulsing like he was going to spit up a hairball. Instead of spitting, he closed his teeth, holding it in his mouth. Konan sat up in her seat, eager to see the results of this test.
Hidan held out his scythe. Samehada bumped the top blade with his closed teeth. A faint white glow could be seen leaking out. Everyone held their breath as it leaked into the scythe. What would happen?
Hidan's eyes drifted closed, as naturally and smoothly as if he had gone to sleep. "Mm." His brow wrinkled. "Hmm?" Samehada shivered, and more leaked out. "Oh," Hidan exclaimed. "Oh, so that's what you people are talking about with the lake."
Samehada promptly swallowed back the chakra he still held in his mouth, and started chewing on Kisame's arm for more. Kisame barely noticed. "The lake? That doesn't have anything to do with chakra."
Hidan opened his eyes. "It felt friggin' good, like you've said, and… I dunno. I feel different."
"Chakra is derived from physical energy and soul energy," Konan said. "Perhaps purified chakra has effects on the soul similar to the lake."
Kisame looked down at his shark. "Huh." He tilted his head, lost in thought.
Hidan hugged his scythe. Kakuzu shook his head. Itachi, too, looked lost in thought. Konan suspected she knew what he was thinking about. If she was right, his thoughts could be very important. A scythe used in Jashinist rituals. A lake that people treat as a site of worship. A god living in our basement. Hidan's original was a devout Jashinist. Someone of Itachi's mind could put that all together.
Hidan finally yawned and swung his scythe over his shoulder, declaring his intent to go to bed. Others did likewise. Konan stood up and signaled to Itachi to stop. He followed the others most of the way, then remained by the desk. He looked at her like he already knew why she'd asked him to stay, which he likely did.
"What do you think?" she asked.
"I think the scythe may be a conduit for Jashin sama's power," Itachi answered. "The same way as water is a conduit for many things."
Konan nodded. "His original did not need it for his rituals. But then, he may have been a conduit himself."
"The same way?" Itachi asked.
"No. He only…" Konan paused. "Have you heard what was said about the nature of Jashinism?"
Itachi blinked. "I do not believe I have."
"It turns out what god one belongs to is a matter of personality, a matter of who you are. The people who belong to Jashin sama are of a very specific type. They are full of life and delight and enjoy hunting. Original Hidan was not like our Hidan. He was so much more...purified. Ironically, our Hidan is much less like that type than his original was. He exemplified everything that a Jashinist was supposed to be. He belonged to Jashin sama so fully." Konan's voice grew soft. He so truly belonged, so truly loved. What could it be like to feel something so surely? To truly have something to ground your life in with absolute unbetrayable faith… What can it be like to truly believe? I haven't sunk my heart and soul into something that I loved in a long time, if I ever did. I can't be sure I ever did…
She missed him horribly. This new version of Hidan, whatever he could be, could never be what his original was. He could never have that dangerous look in his eyes. He could never have that rock solid unshakeable faith. He could never scare her, frighten her with the unspoken promise of unknown possibilities. Shackled by the need to save his own soul, forced away from Jashin sama, this new version of Hidan was bound in ways he did not know he was bound. When Konan imagined the look in Original Hidan's eyes that seemed to say All of this is not what matters, come with me, it can all blow away in the wind like dead leaves, she felt the tragedy of that keenly. It brought tears to her eyes.
Itachi turned away. "It is late. I should rest."
"Yes." A tear escaped from her eye. All of this, all of it, can be gone. That was what everything about him promised. Now it all was gone, the promise fulfilled, and he wasn't here to see it.
Konan sat down in the chair, closed the notebook. I fulfilled the promise. So now what?
Nagato
Nagato was still awake, lying in bed in the pitch blackness listening to his own breathing. The feeling of dissatisfaction had returned. He looked at his own life, and he did not like what he saw. It's not enough. Inside, he paced back and forth like a caged animal.
I want more. He could almost see the bars of his cage, now. He was starting to understand what fears kept him bound, what thoughts linked those fears together, what lock made them impenetrable, what key would open that lock. I need to talk to Yahiko. Talking to Yahiko, confessing everything, would spring him free. But he could not do it yet.
I don't like this. He could not wait patiently until whatever would give him the power arrived. He continued to pace back and forth in his mind. I want something else. That felt essential. He did not know how, but he sensed that the wanting was an essential ingredient. If he ever lost that desire and stopped pacing back and forth, he would never be able to escape. He had to keep himself hungry, keep himself wanting more. I want…
What did he want? Without something to nourish itself on, his desire would die down. He had to have a vision of what lay beyond his cage. Fortunately, he had one. Nagato imagined Hidan. Hidan's every movement, every laugh, every word all promised freedom. That shit doesn't matter. It can all fall to dust, he seemed to say. When Nagato was with him, the things that held him back faded. They did not fade completely. But for the first time he could see how they could stop existing, that they could stop existing. He could be free to have the life he wanted someday.
Nagato kept Hidan's face in the front of his mind, imagining that laugh, that promise. He kept it in his heart. I want. He drifted off to sleep.
Yahiko
Yahiko was also still awake. Hidan wasn't wrong, but he also wasn't completely right. Hidan had seen Yahiko in his female form, and had completely accepted it. He had said It looks like you. Yahiko had experienced this for himself. It was real. So now there were two realities, one where he wasn't what he should be and one where he was. Which one would he trust in?
Hidan's weird. But his was a weirdness that everyone seemed to agree with. If he accepted it, others would follow. I don't even know if he was right. I can't lie to people. Saying something that later turned out to not be true while knowing that he did not know if it was true was lying in Yahiko's point of view. Not yet. I won't say anything yet.
But what would he believe internally? I want to trust Nagato, trust everybody. They deserve it. I don't want to hold back something that they deserve. That would be cruel of me. But… But what would he be letting go of?
No. I love my parents. I miss them every day. Yahiko closed off his mind, refused to think any more about what them. But he kept thinking about his conversation with Hidan, and he kept returning to what he'd said about his father, and finally he was forced to admit that he had to think about his childhood. Why did I say that?
He pulled his covers up to his chin. Why did I tell Hidan about that? In that context, with what he was asking, it sounds like my dad was being mean. Why would I make him sound like that? I shouldn't have. His parents weren't mean. They loved him. They wanted the best for him. His father had said he would be made fun of if he was too interested in what the girls did, and he was right. He wasn't being mean. He wasn't doing anything wrong. I didn't know how the world was. I didn't know I would get made fun of, or that people would think I was weird, or anything. He was teaching me.
But maybe it was outdated. That was okay, wasn't it? Things could be perfectly good, yet need replacing. Plenty of people had grown up with outdated science, learning all kinds of things about the human body or dinosaurs or whatever that were wrong and that needed unlearning when better science came out, and it didn't mean the original scientists were evil. Yes, it was just like that. My dad was right about the place where I grew up, but now I'm in a new place and it's not right anymore. I just need to learn new things.
Yahiko took deep breaths. It was wrong to be weird back then, but now it's not. The people around here don't even notice magical powers. They'd be fine with long hair. He shivered at the thought of actually letting anyone besides Hidan see that form, though. What? Why am I still scared? Nobody would make fun of me. I don't live there anymore. It's a new world. A new world that didn't look like one, didn't feel like one, didn't act like one. The people he mattered to were real people, who didn't have blinders of any kind. They would think of him so differently if he looked like a girl. Yahiko's teeth chattered.
He smiled at my poses. He liked my hair. He said it looked like me. That mattered not a bit to his heartbeat. Yahiko tried to imagine appearing in that form in front of everyone else. Taking that form, walking out to the backyard where a party was happening, everyone turns to look… What then? They look. They look, and they… Yahiko wrinkled his brow, pushed and pushed to force the scene to move on. It would not. It was stuck at that moment, unable to move forward and reveal what reaction they would have. How would they react? How? Yahiko tried and tried, but was completely unable to generate a vision of what might happen. What is going on?! I know them. I should know how they'll react to things.
He thought of a hundred reasons just like these, a million, everything he knew about all of the people he'd come to call friends. Still the scene refused to move forward, refused to show him how they would respond. Finally, when he was at his most bewildered, he received mercy. I don't think we're dealing with something that obeys logic here. Yahiko realized that Hidan was absolutely right. No matter how much reason he had to trust people, he just couldn't do it. And he couldn't think himself into being able to do it.
If I need to change how I can act, and I can't change my feelings, and changing my thoughts doesn't work, what am I supposed to do? A feeling of profound helplessness made him tear up. I can't change what I'm capable of. So do I just wait for it to change on its own? Do I get help? But getting help is one of the things I'm not capable of. Aaaggghh!
Well, getting most kinds of help was. But Hidan had been supportive. And suddenly, Yahiko remembered something important. He had first learned Transformation Jutsu from Konan. The way she acted had been suspicious, as if she was trying to say something to him without saying it. Maybe she could help. The thought that maybe she was trying to be supportive had made him feel overwhelmed and unable to talk to her back then, just like his boss, but now it wasn't so overwhelming. She could keep secrets better than anyone, and he wasn't so afraid of acknowledging things now that he'd practiced on Hidan.
Okay. I'll talk to her tomorrow. Yahiko's heart continued to gallop along too fast for his liking. He tried to ignore it. Eventually he fell asleep.
Itachi
The next morning, Itachi woke up bright and early, drank a small glass of water, and put on fresh clothes. Afterwards, he reconsidered his choice of clothes. He had one or two more colorful shirts that he had received as gifts, and they had to be worn sometime. He didn't want to be the kind of person who wears black shirts every day. He revisited his closet, taking a longer time to weigh all the choices, eventually settling on a dark blue shirt with aliens chasing each other across it.
He stretched, then exited his room. He didn't expect anybody else to be in the halls yet. He was wrong. Because Konan also awoke early, and she did not have a job to get ready for. "Itachi," she said. She's been looking for me. "Put on something warmer and meet me outside."
He put on his favorite purple jacket and met her outside. She began to walk. He followed her down the road towards town at a leisurely pace, a casual amble. The sun was still low, lighting up the sky but not the trees. Itachi had always enjoyed that kind of lighting. He activated the Sharingan and looked around at the unique beauty of a predawn world.
"I did not ask you everything that I meant to last night," Konan said.
"What else did you want to ask?"
"You told Hidan that his experience with overly salty food was not an experience of multiple things combining, but rather the opposite. What were you talking about?"
"I have thought about the nature of pain in the past," Itachi replied. "Imagining how I would reply if aliens visited Earth and wanted to know what pain was. I would tell them that pain is not its own sense. It is what happens when any sense is overstimulated to the point of damage. What Hidan described sounded to me like the pure, undiluted essence of pain, experienced without any of the overtones or flavors that might tell him what kind of pain it was. The essence of agony."
They walked through the suburb. A child sat outside on the front porch, watching the sky. They waved at Itachi. He waved back with a smile. He and Konan stopped to watch two birds battle for control of a tree, chasing each other through the branches and squawking angrily. One of the birds eventually flew away, the other giving it two last parting screeches before settling down to groom its feathers. The two humans resumed walking.
"Tell me more of your thoughts on the nature of pain," Konan requested.
Itachi replied, "Pain is the recognition of some sense being so overstimulated that the sensory apparatus is at risk of being physically damaged. A sound so loud that it endangers your ear drums. A smell or a taste so noxious that the receptors can't handle it. A light that is too bright. Anything that when sensed, would damage the very organ sensing it.
"Of course," he had to add, "I do recognize that there are more senses than just five. That's why pain is more than a warning of physical danger. I consider emotions to be sensory in nature, unique senses that allow you to know your overall functioning. The brain can physically change in response to patterns of feeling. If some kind of emotion was strong or long lasting or otherwise at risk of causing imbalance in the brain, that feeling would also be painful."
Konan tilted her head. "When I am tired for no reason and it feels as if I cannot manage to get out of bed in the morning, that is very irritating."
Itachi nodded.
"But being tired at other times does not irritate me."
"Being tired at other times is more natural. Being tired in the morning is asking the brain to go against itself, which would cause lots of friction and irritation."
"Yes. Your ideas make sense."
They came to the intersection. Konan turned right, leading them away from town toward the abandoned houses. Itachi checked the sky. The sun touched the tops of the trees. By the time they came anywhere near vampire territory the sun would reach the ground. It was safe.
"When I awoke in this world, I wondered if I was in Heaven." Konan, too, was looking at the sky. "But I looked at the sky and saw how plain it looked. Heaven would not be so plain."
"I'm not sure of that."
Konan glanced at him. "What do you believe Heaven looks like?"
"I believe humans tend toward the things we call 'good,'" Itachi said. "We call them good because they feel pleasurable and right. Things that feel horribly wrong are called bad. So of course humans will naturally try to be good. However, in this world, there are so many other pleasurable things that can substitute and so many definitions of good that the original impulse can be led astray in a thousand different ways. I believe Heaven is much like Earth, except that it lacks those distractions. All people who go to Heaven will improve over time, no matter how they began. And I believe everyone goes to Heaven."
"So I would go to Heaven?"
"Yes." Itachi paused. "Some variant of Heaven. Whatever suited you best." I'm talking about a generic Heaven that doesn't have anything to do with gods. Perhaps there is a Jashinist heaven. I should not presume to know what anyone's particular afterlife will be like.
"So there are multiple heavens."
"That is the only way I've been able to account for the diversity of people," Itachi admitted. "Anything that's supposed to be universal should account for diversity. There can't be just one vision of Heaven."
"Do you have any beliefs, Itachi?"
"No. Nothing I have heard of is logically consistent. I've had to make up my own beliefs, so that they can make sense."
"Faith is not supposed to be logical," Konan said.
Itachi shook his head. "If it doesn't make sense, I can't help but dislike it. It chafes me, irritates me on a conceptual level. Faith in something you can't stop thinking about seems like a contradiction."
"You suffer from too much thinking?"
"I do not suffer."
"Ah."
"There is nothing wrong with me. The inability to stop questioning doesn't hurt. Always wishing to know what I am and what other people are isn't wrong. it simply is who I am."
Konan stopped. "With your eyes, you don't know what other people are?"
Itachi stopped too. "It takes much more than eyesight to understand human beings."
They resumed walking. "Do you understand me?"
"No."
"Do you believe anyone does?"
Itachi thought about this for a long time. They passed the first of the abandoned buildings. Konan turned right, leading them off the road. Itachi knew that she must be leading him to the place where she first awoke.
When they got there, he felt himself on the verge of an answer. Just a few minutes more. They looked down at the small patch of grass, short despite being left to grow wild, matted and dirty and wispy in a few places. The abandoned car dealership loomed over it like a watchful but lazy giant, tracking their movements with one eye while it sat. Itachi understood better what Konan had meant by "plain." Not just plain. Not just ordinary. This spot looks positively abandoned, uncared about, a place where vitality and hope does not belong. No wonder she didn't want to believe that Heaven was in such a state.
"I think the only beings that could understand you are the ones who don't make any effort to, and the only beings that want to understand things are the ones who cannot," he said.
Konan sighed. "That is the central contradiction of power. When you have it, you don't want it as much as you did when you didn't have it. Being powerless, power looks like a tool. You want to use it to change the world. Having power, it looks like a trophy. If it is a tool, you cannot find a place to use it. Where to begin? What seemed so clear becomes confusing. The truth is hard to find."
Itachi looked up at the dealership, saying nothing. She isn't speaking to me, is she?
"You have more power to see and think than many others," Konan continued. "The truth must be more unclear, more confusing. Perhaps you don't even know what I mean by the word 'understand.'"
"I do not," Itachi replied.
"The more things are in view, the more everything becomes a blurry shifting mess."
"I can make out consistent patterns. But to get to the specifics of human experience is beyond me. Merely trying to look adds too much complexity." Itachi shook his head.
"Then perhaps you are right. Perhaps you should not try to look."
"I agree. I shouldn't." He deactivated the Sharingan. The beautiful predawn light had disappeared. Sunlight streaked across the ground, giving the grass a majesty it did not possess at any other time.
"But it is who you are."
"I agree. I can't."
Konan frowned. "How will you try to do something you cannot do?"
"I will not try," Itachi answered. "When you do not try, success and failure cease to exist. Then what before was impossible escapes from its bounds, and what you would have defined as success can sneak upon you as just another thing. Defining success seems to restrict it."
"How can not trying allow you to become something other than what you are?"
"Because that disappears too," Itachi patiently explained. "I only have a self when I think about my self. When I think about what I can and can't do, I create those limits and give myself boundaries. If I stop thinking about my self, it will become less real, and I will have more abilities."
Konan blinked. "You are saying… Thoughts create reality."
"Yes. Thinking something gives it form, makes it real. Turns it from a gaseous cloud into something with liquid or solid form, so to speak."
Konan was silent for several minutes. "Itachi… How does one stop thinking?"
Itachi shook his head. "I cannot help you with that. It's another thing that only happens when you don't think of it."
Konan closed her eyes. "Everything you say sounds exhausting. I will not do any of it."
"Yes, precisely," Itachi said. "Go limp and do nothing at all."
They stopped speaking and stared at the grass.
.
A/N: Writing solidifies my thoughts, gives them more form. My thoughts are not naturally solid at all. I'm one of those people that don't think in words. I think in feelings, memories, vague intuitions of things I can't name but that seem important. I try to think by writing. But perhaps I should also spend time not using language at all? Language is wonderful, but also very confining. Even reading can be too restrictive. That's why comment sections aren't good for me.
Dear whoever reads this: spend some time without language today. All experience, no language, no description, nothing that can be shared with other people. Spend time on things that cannot possibly be shared or valued by anyone else. Spend time on things where the concept of value does not exist. They just are.