A/N: *sigh* It only occurred to me last night to check. Yep, another plot hole caused entirely by me forgetting things that only happened two chapters ago. I'll go back and fix last chapter so Nagato isn't acting surprised by clones that Hidan already showed him he could make. I know I don't usually go back to edit anything in a chapter that's already published, but I'll let it slide for this since I only need to change a single word.

And now for the major plot event that I really shouldn't have been surprised by.

.

Yahiko

"Wow," Nagato said. He had yet to start the car. "It's really happening. This is the last day we'll be driving in together."

"Yeah," Yahiko whispered. "What am I going to do with my mornings now?"

"It'll be lonely, driving in without you."

There was several seconds of silence. Then Yahiko lifted his head. " Let's do that thing Sasori told us about, where you imagine the future and it makes you all motivated."

"Yeah. Good idea." Nagato shook his head to drive away all the sad thoughts. "I'll have time to think while I'm driving. Or look outside and watch the trees sprouting their new leaves. It could be a meditation."

"I'll, um…" Yahiko squinted. "I'll…finally finish those books I got out. And spend more time with Hidan, and, um…"

"No, try to imagine something specific," Nagato told him. "I can see it now: driving along in the sunlight, watching the leaves. That's motivating. Don't think of some to-do list you'd like to get around to. Think of something real."

Yahiko closed his eyes. What will my mornings be like? Vague, scattered images appeared, but nothing as distinct as Nagato had envisioned. Okay, okay, let's start from the beginning. I get up, get dressed, wave goodbye to Nagato. Then what? This time, nothing appeared.

"Aagghhh," he groaned. He opened his eyes. "I can't see anything."

"Maybe an idea will come to you," Nagato said as he turned on the car.

"I don't think Itachi is right," Yahiko said. "I can see mental images, so I don't have that aphantasia thing you talked about. And I don't think my mornings will be terrible if I don't drive in with you, so I can't be repressing things. There must be another reason why I can't imagine things, some third thing that blocks it."

"Hmm." Nagato thought about it as he drove. Several minutes later, he said, "Well, imagination is a creative process. You start with raw materials, work with them, and get a result. Aphantasia is an inability to get a result. Repression is a refusal to do the work. Maybe you're having difficulty getting the raw materials?"

"What are the raw materials?"

"It's all in your head, so they would have to be mental things. Thoughts, feelings, stuff like that."

Yahiko closed his eyes. Maybe he's right. I don't like to look at myself. I'm not connected to my own thoughts. It made his heart pound, but he reached out anyway. What do I think and feel? I… I want…

He was just about to finish that sentence when he felt the car come to a stop and opened his eyes. They were at their destination. "Keep going if you need to," Nagato urged. "It's fine."

Time pressure was not Yahiko's friend. Um, um… He tried to come up with something, anything, but the pressure made his thoughts scatter like birds. He fumbled with his seatbelt. "Not now. Maybe later. Bye!" He tumbled out of the car and waved. Nagato waved back, but he looked worried. His worried look stayed in the front of Yahiko's mind after the car left. It was only as he was placing his phone and a book in his tiny work locker for the last time that a thought leaped into his head, unforced. I like makeup. Then, an image appeared: himself in female form, sitting with Konan and talking about if his original had ever done this too.

Yahiko's eyes widened. He had not until then realized that he would be so much freer to show his female form to the people he trusted to see it. The future was a wonderland of possibility. He texted Nagato quickly, hoping he hadn't gone inside the shelter yet. I imagined something! It's great! Thank you!

He received a smiley and a thumbs up in return. Yahiko grinned. His last day was off to a worthy start.

Hidan

Hidan put on his strongest pout and prepared several quick retorts. If he says some shit!

Kakuzu did not. He nodded. "Good work."

Hidan lowered his defenses enough to search his feelings. To his surprise, he did not find frustration or anger or anything of the sort. "You mean that? Even though it's not as good as what I got last time?"

Kakuzu raised an eyebrow at him. "You know nothing about this works. Seventy dollars in one go is extremely unusual when you use my strategy. I prefer to stay low. Small wins over time add up. I'm not an adrenaline junkie looking for a win so big that I'd be arrested before I could lay a hand on it."

"Ohhh," Hidan said. "You mean the same thing as how I got those boxes of money. People just kept giving me tips over the years."

"Exactly. You should expect to make as much from this as you would giving people free counseling."

"Gotta admit, I'm glad you got me into this. It's a really nice break from talking to people, and I get to hang out with you in a good mood. Win-win." Hidan raised his fist for a fistbump.

Kakuzu gave him a stern look, then met it. "You're welcome."

"Though, it's been a while since I talked someone through a problem of theirs. Lemme check on Itachi."

Kakuzu stuffed the money Hidan had earned the previous afternoon into his wallet without a word. Hidan knew this and was already out the door. He closed the door behind him, took a deep breath, and let it out in a pleasant sigh. He knocked on Itachi's door.

"Come in."

Hidan entered. Itachi was sitting crosslegged on his bed with a notebook on his lap and a pen in his hand. He rubbed the corner of his mouth with the pen. "I am not sure of the utility of journaling," he murmured.

Hidan scoffed. "I'm sure of the not utility of it. What's the point of writing if you're not writing to anyone?"

"Do you think I should write letters to people?" Itachi asked.

"Save that for people who don't exist, like your dead friend," Hidan said. He sat on the bed next to Itachi. "You're a thinking kind of guy, so for this you have to get out of your head and do more physical things, like hugs. The shit you do normally isn't going to help you deal with something abnormal."

"Really? Is that your experience?"

"Yeah. People always say that when they do shit they used to do with whoever they're missing, it hurts and they can't enjoy it. They feel better when they do something new that doesn't have all those memories tied to it."

Itachi closed the notebook. "That makes sense." He laid it aside. "Has Konan told you of what I said?"

"No."

Itachi sighed. Hidan felt a deep reluctance to go into something that had already been brought up before. "I'll get it from her later," he said. "Tell me other things, that you didn't tell her."

It took a while for Itachi to find his words. To pass the time, Hidan put an arm around his shoulders and hugged him close. Itachi smiled, just a little. "Shisui used to hug me like this. He was like a brother to me."

"Cool guy?"

"Very cool. He was good at the things I was not. He made peace between people that were arguing, while I could not figure out how to introduce myself to a pleasant-looking stranger. He persuaded his parents of things I never thought they would agree to, while I struggled to present my ideas in ways that appealed to anyone besides my little brother. He did a lot for me. He covered me. Losing him felt like losing a part of my self. And… And on top of my grief, I was afraid. How would I live without him?" Itachi pressed himself closer against Hidan's side. "Combined, it was too much. And then my father had to pressure me…"

"He didn't support you?" Hidan asked.

"No. Or rather, I think he thought he was, but it was really just another form of pressure." Itachi blinked his eyes clear. "Support ought to be unconditional. It ought to be given, as the stronger person providing their own strength, rather than the stronger person demanding that the weaker make yet another effort. He asked me to do things and did not spend his own energy to make it easier for me. It was not a gift."

"What about other family members?"

"Mother tended to follow his example. She took pains to bring me my meals and didn't ask anything of me, but she did not defy him when he did."

"If he hadn't pressured you, do you think you would have stayed?"

"I think I would have been living a completely different life. That was how my life was back then. I was older. I was sensible. I was responsible. I was expected to look after my brother and perform well in all things, and to do adult work. I never really was a child."

"Not true," Hidan murmured. "You totally were. That's why you had to run away, right?"

"Well, yes, but I never had a normal childhood."

"It doesn't sound like you were going to have one anyway. Since when are you normal?"

Itachi chuckled. "That's true."

"Who cares about normal or not? You had a childhood. It was like that. That's it."

"All the same… I wish I hadn't been so cruel at the end. I wish I had left peaceably. Slipping away quietly in the dead of night; that would have been more like me." Itachi slipped Hidan's hand off of his shoulder and sat up. "Regardless of the why, regardless of who was victim and who was aggressor, regardless of what can be justified and what cannot, the fact is immutable: I do not like who I was when I left. I regret snapping angrily at my family members back then. How can I make peace with my actions now and stop that from ever happening again?"

"Hmm…" Hidan rubbed his chin. Man, regrets are some of the hardest shit to fix. There's usually not any action you can take, which eliminates 80 percent of everything that ever made anyone feel better. And the feeling of regret isn't actually a problem, so there goes the stuff you would normally use to deal with real problems. He's just gonna have to live with it. How am I supposed to help with that? "I know a thing that's helped some people before. Can't guarantee it'll work, but you could try it."

"Tell me."

"You could try compensating for it," Hidan said. "If you were mean to them, then look for people who need kindness and be nice to them. If you hurt someone, help someone else. It won't change a thing about what happened back then, but people who do this tell me it makes what happened in the past make more sense. Like, it's easier to explain why it happened. 'It happened so I could do this now.' That sort of thing."

Itachi nodded. "Yes, I have heard that too. It's why I try to be kind and helpful to others now. I had been pressured into being that way; it would have been easy to rebel by going into the other extreme, of selfishness. I did not because I wanted to atone."

Aw, crap. If he's been doing that this whole time and it hasn't worked, then I can't help. I'm solidly out of ideas. Fuck. "There's something else, isn't there?"

"Yes." Itachi looked at him. "Hidan, have you ever had an experience that you remember where you didn't seem to be yourself?"

Hidan scratched the back of his head. "No, nothing that I remember."

"That is what this was for me. I haven't told you the true extent of it. I was very nasty. I used a swear word towards him. I spilled the secrets of other family members who I knew would be hurt by it. I even insulted my mother, who as I said, did nothing wrong herself. I remember feeling like normal at the time. But now, I can't remember that time without thinking, 'Who was that?'"

"Cheesus Christmas," Hidan muttered. "That doesn't sound like you."

"I can't help but think that it must have been a mental break of some kind," Itachi continued. "But I felt at the time as if it was a perfectly normal emotional outburst. My mind did not feel altered. I didn't feel sick. It felt like ordinary anger. Do you think anger, at any extreme, could have caused such unusual behavior?"

"No," Hidan said immediately. "Anger only amplifies whatever you would normally do. It isn't going to make a friendly, amiable guy threaten his wife. It isn't going to make a pacifist lobby for war. And it's not going to make a quiet guy who dislikes intense shit blow up a freakin' bomb. I can see you snapping and hanging yourself or running out the door or bursting into tears. But there's no way on the whole planet you would have turned around and attacked."

"That is exactly what I believe." Itachi gripped his head in both hands. "Yet it clashes with reality. I can't make sense of it."

Hidan reached forward and gave him a hug, because he was well and truly stumped and that was the only thing he knew how to do. What the fuck is going on? I've never heard of this before.

"I am glad you have never felt this mental whiplash," Itachi said.

…Wait a sec. Mental whiplash? Hidan remembered a conversation he had had with Ruta about fictional characters who the author had changed their mind about. Evil characters who were revealed to have secretly been good guys the whole time, and vice versa. 'What must it be like to have your whole world slide around under you?' 'Maybe it's motion sickness from their personality swinging around so fast.' His eyes widened. Oh fuck.

"Hidan? Is everything all right? You are very tense."

Hidan let him go, slowly, and sat back, slowly. He stared straight ahead at the wall over Itachi's left shoulder. He was a little pale.

Itachi activated the Sharingan. Hidan had disappeared inside himself, curling up in some small cave just like Kisame had. What could possibly cause Hidan to react that way? "Hidan? What's wrong?"

Hidan blinked. Fictional characters? That makes way too much sense. I mean, that's the only kind of other world I ever knew about. Why couldn't multiverse theory work that way? Wait, what the fuck am I saying? It doesn't make any sense at all! You can't create a whole other world inside your mind! …Can you? Isn't Deidara pretty sure we're in a video game? Oh shit. We might be characters too. He started mentally screaming.

Itachi breathed deeply and told himself not to panic. He got out his phone and called Konan. "Come to my room right away. There's an emergency."

By the time Konan arrived, Hidan had recovered his wits enough to get off the bed and curl up on the floor next to it, rocking back and forth. "What has happened to him?" Konan asked.

"I have no idea. We were discussing how uncharacteristic my past behavior was, how I did not feel like myself. He agreed that my actions did not sound like they could have come from me. He hugged me. I expressed happiness that he has never suffered from this, because he does not remember acting unlike himself. Then he became tense and this happened."

Oh fuck. Oh fuck. What if nothing's real? Oh shit. The idea that he was not living in a real world was terrifying. Hidan gasped and stopped rocking. He got out his phone and nearly broke it trying to dial Sasori's number as fast as possible. After two eternities, Sasori picked up. "What's going on?"

"You, how?" Hidan asked. "In the beginning, you, like, genres and shit. How?!"

"...I used to use the thought that we were characters in a story as a coping mechanism, yes."

"But how?!"

"I'm sorry, I have no idea what you are asking me."

Hidan frantically took deep breaths until he got lightheaded. "Unh. How, I mean, coping? How? How the fuck could that help?"

"That's a good question, actually. I never thought about why it would make me feel better." Sasori paused to think. "Maybe it's related to the way I feel better when something's inevitable. It's out of my hands. It'll happen however it wants, and I can't do anything to change it. I find that freeing. If I can't control it, I don't have to worry about it."

"Are you fucking shitting me? You like it when things just happen to you and you can't do anything about them? But what if the things that happen fucking suck?"

"...What the hell is happening? Why do you sound like Kisame? This is an affront to the natural order of things."

"No it's not!" Hidan was aware that he was shouting. Who the fuck cares? "I make complaints about reality all the time! They don't go anywhere, but that's fine, because I didn't seriously mean them. I mean, I trust that the management knows what it's doing. But what if the management is actually incompetent? What if we're in the hands of a moron? How is that supposed to be comforting?!"

Several seconds of silence passed. Everybody stared at him, including Sasori, in his remote way. "Hidan," he said in a carefully modulated voice, like one would use to soothe a toddler's tantrum. "Are you having a psychotic break, or are we actually under incompetent management?"

"I don't know, maybe," Hidan said. "I know our originals' management was fucking terrible. What if ours is too?"

Sasori let out a long, weary sigh. "I don't think I want to know how you know that."

"Yeah, you probably fucking don't. I don't! How the fuck can you find that shit comforting?!"

"Take deep breaths," Sasori instructed. "If you're still having a panic attack by tonight, we can have another meeting."

Hidan took deep breaths. His head spun again. "Mm…mkay. See you then." He ended the call and dropped his phone on the floor along with his arm.

Itachi edged off the side of the bed and joined him. "You are afraid that the gods might be misaimed?"

"No, not the gods. Excuse me. I have to go run around in a complete panic somewhere." Hidan stood up, looked around, and left the room. He raced to his own room and jumped out the window, heading for a part of the forest where he could scream out loud.

Meanwhile, Konan and Itachi looked at each other. "No," Konan said preemptively. "I do not have any idea what that was about."

Nagato

Nagato noticed Whisper sniffing at him again, so he called Konan over his lunch. "Hey."

"Hello."

"I just wanted to report that Whisper is sniffing me again. Would you like to visit tomorrow?"

"I would." She paused. "Assuming, of course, that Hidan's panic attack has abated by then."

Nagato nearly choked. "What?"

"You care about him, so I thought you would like to know. During a conversation with Itachi this morning, he seems to have developed a belief that the gods, or some other party, are somehow mismanaging this world. I apologize if what I say now is incorrect; he was not very coherent. He will be spending all of today in the forest panicking."

"...Should I call him?"

"This is entirely uncharacteristic behavior. I cannot predict what the results of that would be. If you do, please tell me what happens."

Nagato called Hidan. Hidan picked up immediately. "Hey, Moonlight!" He sounded completely normal. "How's it goin'?"

"Konan told me you were supposed to be having a panic attack?"

"Well, yeah, I was. But it turns out I only have a limited amount of fear in me." Hidan yawned. "Not that I'm not worried and ready to freak out again at a moment's notice. I just need to recharge first. I've been following this butterfly for the past half hour."

Oh thank goodness. There's the Hidan I know. Nagato smiled. "Would you tell me what you were freaking out about?"

"I'd rather not. I'd rather have everyone around."

"Another meeting tonight?"

"Yeah. Dei's probably gonna call me a huge wuss."

"Why would Deidara do that?"

"Well, he already thought about this, and he didn't freak out and run around screaming."

"I am burning with curiosity. Please, don't tell me any more. It'll already be a painful wait."

Hidan sighed. "Moonlight…"

"Yeah?"

Hidan hesitated. "Eh, maybe later. Thanks for calling."

"Uh, sure, you're welcome."

They hung up. Nagato stared at his phone. Why did that last exchange feel so familiar? He couldn't figure it out, so he put it aside and concentrated on eating lunch. He sent Konan a text: Turns out Hidan physically can't panic for that long. He's fine now. Then he resumed thinking about Yahiko, like he had been doing all morning.

Maybe now that we don't have matching work schedules, he'll come and meet Jonesy. He would love Jonesy. Nagato imagined Yahiko sitting on the steps of the play yard, laughing as Jonesy licked his face. They would get along perfectly. He has such a way with animals. Nagato remembered the night Konan appeared. Just before she showed up, a beautiful white moth had perched on Yahiko's nose. It had been the most beautiful thing Nagato had ever seen. He had tried to kiss Yahiko on the cheek, only to turn aside at the last moment. The beauty of the memory mingled with sadness. That was how it always was. Sometimes he would work up the courage or some opportunity would make it easier for him to confess, but at the last moment his courage would fail and he would find habit taking over, filling his mouth with words that were not true. Not lies; they were perfectly fine words. But they were shallow and lifeless and never addressed what was real and meaningful.

I lie to him. I make him believe things that aren't true. Nagato sighed. I need to stop. I know I need to stop. But it's like I'm so surrounded by lies that telling him the truth would almost be inappropriate. I try to imagine it and it feels forced and unnatural. How can the truth become natural?

Yahiko

Now that I've gotten used to it, I'm actually really glad Hidan confessed to me. If he could be so brave, I can too. If he can reveal things so personal, I can too. With him setting an example, nobody'll even be surprised. Following his confession with one of my own would be totally natural. Yeah. It's starting to feel like I can really do this!

.

A/N: Yes, that's right. I never planned for these characters to find out for sure that their originals are fictional and they are too. I really should have. I mean, every time they meet up they end up talking about the structure of the universe. It was kinda inevitable.

Ooh, I can't wait to see how that meshes with...

Hee hee.

Seriously though, I have several objections to the way Kishimoto treated his characters. He was downright mean to several of them, and dishonored many others that should have been interesting and useful and likable. I particularly dislike how mean he was to Deidara and to Konan. The animators might as well have made a giant pair of hands come down from the sky to rescue Sasuke and flip Deidara the bird, and it would have been more subtle than what actually happened. Dude, what the heck?