All Roads Lead Home

By Insomniac Owl

'Et cum illi pueri dicerent: Ʃίβʋλλα ʋί θέλέις;
respondebat illa: άποθανείν θέλω.'

A/N: this story is built on the assumption that Hidan's sacrifices and immortality have direct ties to his faith, and aren't just religious jutsu.

–

Hidan remembers dying, but he also remembers being found again. He hears shovels first, then voices, and then the dirt falls away and a white sky crumbles into existence overhead, and he's completely blind for about a minute but he doesn't care. The sunlight streaming in through all those layers of earth is not the slick flesh of worms or a rabbit's ragged, wild nails; it's light, and it's warm and clean against his skin.

The two men who find him are not from Akatsuki, but gravediggers. When they reach for his hands and pull entire arms from the dirt, they don't know what to make of him. One is fascinated. The other steps away, politely, and vomits into the bushes.

In the end they call a medic-nin, a red-haired wisp of a woman who closes her eyes when she lifts his head out of the ground. He never learns her name, but she sews him back together, and when she's done he takes her hand and then her neck and snaps them both.

"Well fuck," he mumbles then, wiping at his eyes. "I'm alive."

It had never been a sure thing, after all. There had been times when… but it won't do him any good to dwell on such things now. The important thing is that he's free. He's weak and badly in need of food, but he is standing for the first time in decades, whole except for a bit of thumb lost somewhere in the dirt – and he is laughing.

x

The first person he sees is a woman, sitting at a small table in a restaurant just inside town. She's pretty and thin and not a kunoichi, and this last is important, because Hidan is not yet as strong as he'd been when he was buried. His muscles are still rebuilding themselves, and he is painfully thin, despite the deer and rabbits he's been able to snare. Still, the time feels right. He hasn't made a sacrifice in years; he's behind, and can only hope Jashin-sama will forgive him.

It's a familiar routine, lies and smiles sliding easily from his mouth. They talk for a while and Hidan, when he feels the time is right, invites her back to his motel. She accepts. When he leads her through the door of the room his heart is pounding, mouth dry despite the water he drank at the restaurant.

"What happened here?" she asks as they sit on the bed, running a finger down the edge of his thumb. Silvery scar tissue colors the hollow there, left by the piece of himself he could never find. It looks strange. He feels the cool tips of her fingers against his skin, and shivers.

"Hidan?"

He looks up, smiles. "A battle wound," he says, leaning forward. "You like it?"

The look in her eyes says she knows what she's getting into, but she can't know his anticipation when he nicks her arm with a kunai, or when he brings the blade to his lips. He's out of practice, but the movements are easy and familiar, and he hasn't done this in such a long time….

Then there is the seal and the screams and the blade through his heart, and it's just the same as always. In the moonlight the girl's blood is so dark it's almost black. Kneeling over the girl's body, Hidan waits for the ecstasy with his head thrown back, eyes closed and lips half parted. He sees the blood running down the girl's front and pooling in her lap, and feels only an aching hollowness in his chest where there should be fulfillment and contentment and satisfaction.

"Jashin-sama," he mumbles, "hurry up. I've waited a long fucking time for this."

Seconds pass, and then minutes. Hidan lets his arms fall to his sides, but keeps his head thrown back, hoping. Eventually he lets his head drop too.

x

He doesn't know what he expected to see when he returned to the Akatsuki hideout, but it wasn't this. The place is silent and untouched except for a thick layer of dust; not even rats have gotten in. Any protective jutsus should have faded by now, and Hidan doesn't know what to make of the dusty, perfectly preserved rooms, the stillness and silence. His things lie where he'd left them, but everything is yellow and fragile with age. Paper crackles under his fingertips; a cloud of dust rises from the mattress. Even the air tastes stale.

The others' rooms are just the same: dust over everything; a thick, musty smell in the air. As he opens each door to another empty room he finds himself growing angry, and at the end of the hall he closes the door on Pain's bedroom, leans back against the wood.

"Where is everyone?" he yells. His voice echoes, thrown back by long, empty hallways. "What gives you dipshits the right to leave me like this?"

He's breathing hard, a funny, tight feeling rising up in his chest, and with a yell he throws a fist into the wall. The plaster splinters under his knuckles, which aren't calloused enough anymore to be used to such an action; the skin splits and a little blood runs down between his fingers.

He lets out one half-hearted chuckle. "Shit," he mumbles. "Shit."

He should have expected this, really. He didn't known how much time passed when he was buried, but he knew it was a lot, and it had been ridiculous to think he'd emerge to find the world exactly the same as it had been. But some irrational part of him had thought that. It just never occurred to him that things would be different. Or that everyone he knew would be dead. Standing there at the end of the hallway with the doors flung open behind him, he sees all those empty rooms and throws another fist into the wall.

This time he doesn't laugh.

x

Sometime during his travels he learns that Shikamaru Nara is dead. Perched on a barstool in what used to be Otogakure, Hidan hears this and laughs. The sacrifice of that girl, he thinks, was a fluke; Jashin-sama is still with him.

But as the story unfolds, his smile fades and the alcohol sours in his mouth. Shikamaru died in an accident. There had been no blood and very little pain, and because of this Hidan knows it could not have been an act of Jashin-sama, and can't even appreciate the fact that Nara's dead. Staring, swallowing hard, he leaves his sake unfinished and walks out.

His camp is on the outskirts of the village, and when he reaches it he drops to his knees and prays. In the morning he packs his things, starts walking. With each step he repeats: I am a servant of Jashin-sama. I am a servant of Jashin-sama. Please. I am a devoted servant of Jashin-sama. Oh fuck please please please….

x

He's on his eighth shot of sake, so when the man beside him says Itachi's little brother's name Hidan isn't sure, at first, if he heard it right.

"Uchiha," he says quietly, the name rolling off his tongue like a prayer. "Uchiha?"

The man nods, sipping from a glass cradled in three fingers. "Uchiha Sasuke," he says.

Breathless: "Where is he?"

The man shrugs. "Konoha."

x

He arrives in Konoha on some sort of holiday. The streets are plastered with streamers and red paper lanterns, vendors on every corner and, at the foot of their mountain, a swaying parade with fire-breathers and costumed women. Heathens, Hidan thinks darkly. But it's just a reflex. He doesn't know if he means the words anymore, doesn't know how sincere he sounds or if Jashin-sama, if He's listening, takes him seriously. There's no way to tell. Sighing, Hidan touches his scythe, then pushes into the crowd.

Despite his fame, Sasuke's house is not easy to find. The streets are crowded and the buildings all look the same, and Hidan has to ask directions three times before he finds the right one. He knocks twice before someone answers – and then he freezes. He sees black hair and pale skin and his mind registers Itachi, but then he notices the conspicuous absence of any facial markings. It isn't him; it isn't even Sasuke, but there are echoes of him in the boy's eyes and hair, and in the slope of his shoulders.

"Hi, um, who're you looking for?"

"Uchiha," Hidan says. "I wanna talk to Sasuke Uchiha."

"Uh, sure. He's actually out back right now, but you can come in and I'll –"

"Who's at the door?" A woman's voice speaks somewhere inside, and then her face appears over the man's shoulder. They must be siblings, Hidan thinks, noting the matching eyes and mouths. He hears footsteps, the door opens wider, and suddenly there are five of them crowded into the doorway, peering over each others' shoulders and beneath each others' elbows. They all have black hair and fine, pale skin, but their eyes aren't all black and none of them are red. Still, there's a definite resemblance.

"Who's that?" they whisper.

"What does he want?"

"He's awfully good-looking, whoever he is. You said he wanted Dad?"

This goes on for a while, the five of them murmuring to one another likes doves, and then Hidan sighs. "Look, can I see Sasuke already? I've been waiting at this door for fucking five minutes, seriously."

The youngest girl peers around her brother's waist. "You know our dad?"

"No, your uncle."

They glance at one another, silent, until one of the boys murmurs "Oh, he means Uncle Itachi." Their whispers wash over him then, unintelligible, and when one of the girls touches his arm to lead him in he doesn't wonder what she would look like dead.

"Wait here," the oldest boy tells him when they reach the kitchen, motioning to the table. "He'll only be a minute."

The children nod to him, one by one, as they pass him on their way out, and the last, youngest boy slides the door shut behind him. He hears their footsteps move down the hall, and then silence. After a moment Hidan pulls out a chair, the legs squawking against the tile. He does not sit.

What is he doing here, he thinks suddenly, staring around at the clean white walls. Why has he come? He has some vague, half-formed notion that the sight of Sasuke's face will jog something inside him, and bring back the man he used to be, but really he doesn't know. This is just the last thing he can think of to try.

When Sasuke steps through the door a few minutes later, something seizes up in Hidan's chest. Sasuke must be over fifty, but his hair's still black and his eyes still sharp, and there's an effortless grace in his movements. He looks like Itachi. He looks so much like Itachi….

Hidan had been prepared for some level of shock or amazement, but the feeling that crashes over him then is completely unexpected. Words fail him; his hands tremble against his kneecaps. Small differences between the brothers fade away, and when Hidan tears his eyes from Sasuke's face he can't remember what Itachi looks like anymore. Sasuke looks like Itachi; Itachi looks like Sasuke. This is all he knows.

"Can I help you?"

Sasuke's voice, too, is calm and slightly cool, like Itachi's had been. They have the same bone structure, the same lips, nose, eyes; even his hair, long now and pulled back in a ponytail, looks like Itachi's. He looks… he's….

This feeling, Hidan realizes numbly, is almost religious.

"Can I help you," Sasuke repeats, less patiently, and Hidan shakes himself.

"Yeah, yeah. Uh…." He doesn't know what to say, though, and on impulse steps forward until he's almost within arm's reach. Sasuke tenses a bit, leans his weight back, but no more than a ninja should. There is no sign whatsoever that he knows who he's looking at.

"I knew Itachi," Hidan says.

Sasuke's eyes widen; he looks toward his feet. "You knew him…." He avoids Hidan's eyes, making sure to keep his gaze on the ground, and there is a long silence. Finally he turns and busies himself with the kettle at the stove. "I haven't heard his name in years," he says. And then: "Would you like some tea?"

Something is wrong here. For one wild moment Hidan thinks it's a genjutsu, because this can't be right, Itachi's little brother wouldn't offer him tea, but Sasuke is silent, waiting politely for an answer, and Hidan knows it's not. It's not an illusion; it's not anything. Too much time has passed. That's all.

When Hidan doesn't answer, Sasuke turns back to the stove and pours his own cup, which he settles between his palms.

"You're lying, of course," he says after a while. He is perfectly relaxed, the lines of his shoulders sloping and easy.

"What do –"

"You're too young. It's impossible. My children obviously didn't think of that when they let you in."

Hidan is vaguely aware that his mouth has fallen open.

"Who's got your balls? He has that freaky Sharingan thing and is the best of us all, except maybe Pain, and –" And here Hidan stops, because this is all he knows. "Come on," he says, not liking the desperation in his voice, "seriously."

"You expect me to believe you knew my brother, when you're clearly no more than twenty five years old."

"…Something like that, yeah."

Sasuke stares at him over the rim of his teacup. "My brother has been dead for thirty two years."

"Oh give me a fucking break! So I can't die – you have to have seen crazier shit than this."

Sasuke is silent, lowering his cup to the counter with one hand. The porcelain clinks against the tile. "I think you should leave, Hidan."

Hidan steps forward, hands clenched, wanting to reach out and shake him. "Look," he says. "That kid, the one with the stupid ponytail. Shikamaru Nara. I killed his sensei, and he tried to kill me. Didn't fucking make it, though, as you can see; I was buried for over thirty years, Uchiha, eating worms and rabbits and dirt; you don't –"

"What do you want from me?" Sasuke's voice is suddenly sharp and pleading. His feet spread apart; one hand slams down against the countertop, hard, and when his head jerks up his eyes are narrowed and wild with the Sharingan. "What do you want?"

"I –" He stops, caught off guard, but he forces the words out anyway, each one harsh and hard and desperate. "I thought maybe seeing you would make me feel like a goddamn human being again, because I've been walking for two fucking months and I don't feel alive anymore. Everything – everyone's dead, and you're…" He cuts himself off, sharply, afraid he's said too much.

"Sasuke? What's going on?" The kitchen door slides open, and Hidan gets a brief glimpse of a woman who must be Sasuke's wife, but Sasuke is there in an instant, pulling the door closed again with a sharp click.

"Stay out," he says, his voice harsh and clipped, one hand holding the door shut when she tries again.

"Sasuke!"

Hidan, not paying attention to this, inhales sharply. The tone in Sasuke's voice when – "You knew," he breathes. "You knew I was telling the truth all along you fucking piece of shit. What kind of game are you playing?"

"Leave, Hidan."

"What the fuck kind of game are you playing," Hidan repeats, louder this time, moving forward and reaching up for his scythe, but Sasuke's too fast, just like Itachi's too fast. When he turns Sasuke is holding a sword, a chokuto, and he's bringing it down. Hidan gets out of the way, but he can't match Sasuke's speed, even as young as he is. Sasuke attacks and Hidan evades, the kitchen too small to really bring out his scythe. In the confusion Sasuke's hands and face get mixed up with his older brother's, and when Hidan turns and comes face to face with the Sharingan, bright red and wheeling, all he can think is Itachi.

His heart has time for one high, glad leap before Sasuke plants the chokuto in his chest.

It doesn't kill him, of course, but it pulls him back to reality. But this is not like times before when he snapped back and kept going; the shock of it plunges him into a kind of stupor, and when he turns his movements feel oddly slow and dreamlike. He turns from Sasuke, walks out the back door. He drags a hand across his chest, smearing blood over his skin and hand.

I'm dying, he thinks. His chest feels hot. Something's changed; it isn't working anymore and… and fuck. I'm gonna die.

Sasuke has come to stand in the doorway, blank-faced, still gripping the hilt of his thin sword. It's strange, Hidan thinks. He's imagined this place so many times on his way here, and look how it's turned out. He'll be dead in a few minutes. But he's still on his feet, and after a while he realizes his chest doesn't hurt anymore. All that's left to remind him of the wound is the blood smeared over his hands and chest: he's still alive.

It doesn't comfort him.

"I've moved on," Sasuke says quietly from the doorway. "From Itachi, I mean. I'm over it all, and I don't want to be reminded."

Hidan looks up. One hand is still pressed to his heart, feeling the same thump-thump as always. "Are you gonna tell them I'm here?"

Sasuke pauses. "No," he says, gaze steady.

"…Why not?" Hidan asks.

"I don't have any reason to." Sasuke stands there for a moment longer, an upended chair visible behind him in the kitchen, then turns, steps into the house, and slides the door shut behind him.

Hidan isn't sure how long he stands there. The door doesn't open again, but he hears the children's voices a minute or so later, along with the higher, slightly hysterical voice of Sasuke's wife. Eventually the house falls silent, and Hidan realizes nothing else is going to happen here, ever, that will concern him. So he leaves. And kneels at the outskirts of the village, pressing his hands into the cool earth at his feet. He isn't sure why he does this, unless perhaps it's to remind himself that he isn't surrounded by dirt anymore, that he's free and alive, even if he doesn't feel it.

He prays to a god he isn't sure he believes in anymore, then rises and goes on his way.

end.