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Come to me.
Like the first words ever spoken, the only light in a darkness deeper than Hell. Black talons sift through wet, rotting earth, searching implacably for something precious and lost.
Here. Come to me.
"...Jashin-sama?"
The voice is a single tiny star in a wasteland of eternal night. A dazed, lost little plea, confused and hurting, but there - and empty eyes turn, gazing through the layers of the world, through rock and earth and shadow and death.
Yes, sweet one. I have not forsaken you.
"Please..."
Come.
Gaunt hands find a tattered rag of a soul, a shimmer of ripped and tarnished silver that pools trembling in the cup of their palms. Regret, relief, guilt, shame, anger all soak into dark skin as the broken little thing helplessly spills out its emotions - and yet stronger than any of them is still a deep, desperate love.
"Jashin-sama..."
I have you, the darkness answers tenderly. Hush, Hidan.
And he finds himself sitting curled atop bony thighs, a gaunt arm wrapping close around his shoulders to press him to the white curves of exposed, flayed ribs. Claws sharp enough to sever dreams comb delicately through his hair, their needle points drawing blood when they scratch at the nape of his neck. His nose and throat are full of the scents of ancient black water and centuries of dust.
He relaxes, completely, filled with a drowsy, dreamlike euphoria. His head tilts to settle against a sharp-boned shoulder; ichor slicks his fingers as he curls them reverently into wet, half-liquid flesh. "Jashin-sama," he breathes.
"Precious Hidan." The voice is low and dark and choked with rot, a black whisper that crackles in his ear like dead leaves in frost. "I have you, beloved."
"I know," he murmurs, sinking gratefully into the utter certainty of it. "Jashin-sama, what the fuck's going on? Am I dead or-"
"No, precious one." The claws stroke his naked shoulders, their tips writing bloody ritual into his skin, and he shivers with the wicked pleasure of it. "Your body remains buried in the Nara Forest, alive in a hundred pieces. I have called only your soul to my side."
The controlled, abyssal rage in his god's voice could drive him mad with terror if he didn't know, couldn't feel, that it isn't aimed at him. "Yeah," he says, hanging his head nonetheless. "About that. I'm sorry, Jashin-sama."
"Hi-chan," the voice says, very tender now. "I do not blame you."
Hi-chan, like he's fucking ten again, like he's still the tiny Yugakure genin who took his vows to a dark god in a voice that hadn't broken yet. It always makes something come helplessly undone inside him when Jashin-sama calls him that. "Yeah, well, I still feel like shit about it. I failed you, Jashin-sama, I don't like that!"
"But you did not deny me." The grip on him tightens, possessive, and his throat catches and his heart quickens as the claws pierce his skin. "You asked for no mercy, you offered no compromise. With your last breath in the light you were calling on my name." The words are emphasised with a pressure against his hair, something like a sharp-edged kiss. "Your body was broken, but not your faith."
"I would fucking never-!" He presses his face into the hollow curve of the death god's neck, his fingers into skin that clings to them like wet rice paper. "Jashin-sama, you know I would never, you're everything, I'd be fucking worse than dead if I wasn't yours..." He chokes on his own passion, tears bleeding barely noticed onto his cheeks. "And I'm here, aren't I? You called me and I'm here and you've never let me go, and there's nothing anyone can do to me that could ever make me-"
"Little one, little one," Jashin cuts him off gently as his voice cracks. Caresses slide over his skin and he shudders and burrows in closer, aching for communion, for the agony and bliss of being united with his god. "My precious, precious Hi-chan - I know, beloved, I know. Hush, now, your soul is mine... your place at my side is long since earned, so if you ask it, I will take back my gift. Your body will die where it lies, and your soul will remain with me forever."
For a long yearning moment he thinks about it, but he shakes his head. "With all due respect, Jashin-sama, that's not what I want."
"Then what do you want, my Hidan?"
He swallows and takes a deep breath - not least because he can do those things while he's here, before he goes back into the dark earth with his body in pieces. "I want to keep serving you," he says. "I want to keep bringing you souls and preaching your word and I want to find that shadow-bending little fucker and tear his head off with my teeth. You heard what he said! He blasphemed against you. He has to fucking die for that." He's shaking with anger to remember it. "And I want to be the one who does it."
Jashin sighs out a long, low breath. "And this is why you are my favourite, precious one."
"Jashin-sama?"
"You are my chosen, my commandment made flesh," his god whispers in his ear, and he trembles with devotion. "You are my most precious servant, and no unbeliever has the right to make you suffer." A low, vengeful hiss. "He will pay. By your own bloody hand, sweet one, if that is what you want."
He gasps, a delicious shudder running up his spine. "Yes," he says, fierce as a prayer. "I want to look into his eyes and watch his soul fucking shrivel for what he said. I'll make him crawl on his knees to beg for your nonexistent fucking mercy, Jashin-sama, I swear. Just give me one chance to get my hands on him and I promise-"
"You will have it, beloved," Jashin says, with a terrible certainty, and Hidan doesn't question him.