Okay, lots of author's notes here! I have many ideas for oneshots between Hidan and Temari in this setting, so I decided to get some stuff out of the way. Since these are AU fics set in a CHURCH, I needed to get both Hidan's and Temari's opinions about Jesus and love and the Bible out there. This is that. Of course, this is a wonderful reason now, but at the time I was writing it, I really just needed to relieve a lot of the pressure of the arguing going on in my own church right now. The dissension pretty much rips my heart out, and my sixteen-year-old opinion doesn't seem to mean much to most people. So this was also a way of getting those opinions and that pain out of my head and onto some paper...or a screen, whatever.

So, YES, this contains a lot of my own opinion (not all, but some.)

And also, I'd just finished reading the breathtaking Quotidian by firefly and it left me feeling as if humorous Hidan/Temari was pretty much against the law until a set period of respectful seriousness had been fulfilled.

The next chapter(which I was going to just mash together with this, but then did not like) will be the one thing to crush all your hopes of a Hidan/Temari romance. Because I will never, ever write such a thing...well okay, I admit, we change as we grow older. Correction: the me of me right now will never write such a thing. I'll give you a hint, though: I support Temari/Shikamaru forever (insert standard change-as-we-grow-older-correction.) Alright...I think that's it. Besides the fact that Hidan and Temari belong to Masashi Kishimoto...

Objective

by green see-through ghosts

NOTE: AU and Hidan's bad mouth. Also, talking about WORLD-WIDE LOVE. If you can't handle it, I advise you take small steps and begin by loving someone similar to you. Eventually move on to someone different...and even more different...etc.

Hidan:

Ever since I was a child, there have only been a few people that I admired. One was my grandfather, a man who lived and died for a cause of his own. One was my mother, a woman who showed me that love and pain could never be separated. The other was Jesus, the son of God who realized that I could not control my circumstances, but held me accountable nonetheless.

When I was five, my Grandfather was murdered by the police of the small, Mexican town I was born in for being radical and inquisitorial. My mother found the funds to ship herself and her three children to a place where living was not deemed a crime, and there we lived.

When I was seven, I began talking to Jesus. Instead of the tough and course language I leaned from the people around me, I spoke only the plain truth to him, in words that I thought he'd accept. It was years before I realized that he did not care how my words were presented to him; still, I remained as eloquent as I could, believing then, and to this day, that he was worthy of my respect -- even if no one else was.

When I was fourteen years old, my mother committed suicide to escape a physically and sexually abusive relationship. She did not overdose, or shoot herself, or slash her wrists; we found her in the harbor, feet buried in the muck, lashed to the pilings of the dock with a knife in her gut and a last letter to her last surviving child sealed inside a zipped plastic bag and clenched inside the hand that was not clenched around the salt-washed butcher knife. She told me that she hadn't given up on Jesus, and that he hadn't given up on her; instead, it was simply her time, her time to be free of the indignity and pain and suffering. Because, after all, there came an end even to Christ's endurance of the cross.

Alas, the church decided it was not her decision to make; indeed, decided that she had been the one to make the decision without guidance from Jesus. Born and raised Catholic, I was told that she was sent straight to hell for her sin of suicide.

I cursed Jesus -- once, terribly, irrevocably. But he forgave me, as he did every other sin I'd ever committed, and we left the domed church, the chanting, the icons and the rituals, behind in my search and his guidance for the truth.

I'd spent years testing churches; the routine was simple. I come in, the unchristian Christian, and wait for them to transform me. Some traits would never be erased, but it was part of their test to see if they could actually pin what mattered and what was as fleeting as a wisp of cloud on a hot summer's day. And if, at the end, they succeeded, Jesus and I would move on. If not, I tried to help them see the error of their ways.

Ten years later, I reflected back over the journey with bitter-sweet memories. Was I perfect? More so than many, but no more than most. Could I be called a hypocrite? Of course, when one pretends to be a hypocrite each day, they must accept the use of the term in connection to their name. Did I understand? There was nothing to understand in perfect and indefinable love.

--

Temari:

There's a distinct difference between choosing to become a Christian and being born one, though I was never entirely sure where this difference actually mattered. I mean, I understood that the drug-addict who'd recently committed probably took more stock in the words, "My chains are gone/I've been set free," than I did, but then again, I figured that my knowledge of scripture and the application of it to everyday life would probably make up for it. Well, until I was about fifteen, that is. I guess a passionless life is sort of like a world without a sky: once you look past the fun and games, there's nothing to greet you but black emptiness.

So there I was, bored and depressed and wondering why God wasn't speaking to me, easing my fears and troubles and creating a lifeline with his love. Then I realized -- and yes, I was proud of this at the time -- that maybe God wasn't speaking to me because I wasn't speaking to him. Silly, really, how something as simple as this almost brought me down for good.

I'm naturally serious, and I like to be in control. I like my friends, but I like them as serious as me. I love everyone; you just won't be able to tell until you get to know me. But most of all, I love my Jesus. And in the end, I think that's all I'm going to be able to stand on. I have nothing that I can show him -- anything I've done won't mean squat to him when we finally meet. Nothing good, just that terrible acknowledgment that I was lost if not for him. As a serious person who likes to be in control, there's nothing harder than acknowledging that there's nothing I can do but hold onto him. But no one ever told me that it'd be easy, and I got over my own presuppositions years ago.

So when something challenges my view of the perfect Christian, I take a bit of time to think. And then I tell them -- hands down, serious as can be, that the most important aspect of the relationship between Jesus and us worthless humans is love. And though they usually laugh at me, or accuse me of lying, I hold steady. Human love is difficult and misguiding, but the love of a divine savior…now, that's something different.

--

"Hidan, could you shut up for one minute? Just one?"

"Come-fucking-on, Blondie, I'm praying here."

"I realize that, but I have to get this paper finished-"

"Who fucking cares? Go finish it in the nursery, or something."

"Listen, Hidan," Temari growled as she slammed her fist down on top of the spread pile of papers surrounding her at the long conference table. "All I'm asking is for a bit of silence so that I can figure out this thesis statement, got it?"

"If you can come up with a decent thesis in one minute, I'll fucking leave," Hidan promised. Temari didn't even answer; the jeans and sweatshirt-clad girl typed away furiously at the white laptop in front of her, her eyes darting back and forth from the papers on the table to the computer screen. Hidan watched her every movement with an appraising air while counting silently in his head.

He wasn't entirely sure how he'd ended up waiting for his meeting with the senior pastor in the conference room with Temari, who was working last-minute on a big paper for one of her college classes, but then again, he wasn't entirely sure he minded. He wasn't blind enough to miss out on the fact that the two of them were nearly twenty years younger than most other staff members, and he did realize that the amount of time they spent together was directly monitored by the head pastor. He wasn't sure if this was a good sort of monitoring or not, but then again, it wasn't exactly important to his final goal. And, what the hell, he figured that if he was going to change the church, it might be a good idea to get an ally on his side before moving on to the big game.

Temari only knew that it was his constant muttering that bothered her, not his actual presence. As if they aren't irreversibly entwined, she thought with an inward snort.

"Time's up," Hidan announced after what seemed much longer than a minute. He waited a moment as Temari scanned the screen, rereading the somewhat lengthy sentence she'd created. "Well?"

"…The church as a whole can never begin to heal the damage it has done to the world at large until it is unified under one banner of love; if we continue to bicker amongst ourselves, all that the world will see is all they are trying to be free of."

The moment of silence that followed her words seemed even longer than the first. Then, with a grin, Hidan leaned across the table, a hand raised in the air -- flat, fingers slightly spread, facing Temari.

She stared at him uncertainly for a moment, then cautiously returned the high-five.

"Your bad mouth doesn't really matter," she admitted contemplatively as their palms pressed together for a brief moment of shared warmth and rough skin.

"Got that fucking right," Hidan said with a lopsided grin.

"Why do you act like-"

"What better way to make people fucking think?" Hidan leaned back in his chair, still grinning. "I mean, some of the people in this shitty church make me feel fucking sick."

"You pretend…to make us see? Act to end our acting?"

"Don't go all fucking poetic on me, Blondie," Hidan snorted.

"But-"

"I don't think I've ever told you how much I hate the word but," Hidan said contemplatively. "Well, I'll just tell you now, I fucking hate it. It's a shitty word that shouldn't have a place in our damn vocabulary. You give this list of damn good reasons, then BUT. It ruins every fucking thing it comes in front of."

"Now who's going maudlin? Overly-sensitive to a single word?"

"Shut the hell up," Hidan ordered. "And finish your damn paper."

"Whatever," Temari muttered, a crooked smile on her face as she turned back to face her screen.

A moment later, a low mumbling filled the room, its origin in the slow-moving lips of Hidan.

"Shut. Up." Temari growled without taking her eyes of the screen.

"Bite me," the silver-haired pastor replied.

The grin that filled the space between them didn't make their words mean less, though it somehow managed to betray a sense of both joking and totally serious to both parties. And though neither of them was anywhere sentimental enough to say the words I LOVE YOU, neither did they think for a moment that they weren't true. Not so much by choice as by ordainment; nor by divine will as instinct. Nor did it make them mindless friends; sometimes you love the people you hate the most, and hate them for what you love them.

"By the way," Hidan said after a few minutes. "You don't tell anyone."

"About what?" Temari asked after a moment, glancing up from her computer.

"About my little side-career."

"You mean your acting?"

"Damn right."

"No one?" Temari shifted a little uncomfortably in her seat at the thought of keeping Hidan's confessions a secret from her father.

"Not a damn soul."

I should have just blogged. Oh well. :) Reviews would be wonderful. And, man, I hate saying this (I think it sounds so cheezy!) But if there are any questions, don't hesitate in the slightest to ask me.