Relative Immortality

Abby Ebon

O.o.O.o.O.o.O

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, or Naruto.

Notes; why would someone want immortality? Well, mostly so you don't die, right? What if it wasn't so simple as that? What if it was because you didn't want to endure the fact that your death would be the final decent into madness for someone whose blood you shared? What if it was for love of them? For worship of them…

Dedication: for Phantom Thief Kyuubi, who asked for something like this, where Harry has a brother; Hidan.

O.o.O.o.O.o.O

-Buried-

Suffocating beneath the dirt and grit, Hidan still was not yet dead. He could not take a breath, he could not scream. He was smothered, lips kissing soil, and mouth long since dry. He dared not bleed. Blood was life, a small death, and if he died – bled and dried and withered – too much, it would be his final death. He could not, would not, die here.

It was an annoyance, the dirt, the dry earthy grit pressed to skin and sensitive bits of flesh and bone and muscle, not meant to be exposed to so harsh elements. At first it had been pain, and fear, then numbness, now – annoyance, less then either of the former. There was also boredom, it grated his thoughts, his body, in shreds and pieces as it was – still was whole, still was one – he wiggled his pinky or his big toe, and knew they wiggled. It offered some amount of amusement, knowing his limbs, as severed and disconnected and buried as he was, still obeyed.

They would not for long. Numbness would become bleakness, and deadened limbs would –eventually - not respond to him, then he would be as good as dead. Still, he would continue on alive – if not breathing, if not seeing, if not hearing – alive, for far longer then anyone on the surface would suspect.

What had been done to him, buried alive as broken shards of his former self – it would be considered cruel, were they aware that he was just as aware as they, to what his fate would be. He would linger, buried and forgotten, living on – aware of his final, slow damning death. It would be a while yet.

Blood was life, and life was counted in the years leading up to death. What people did not know, did not realize, was that 'life' which they thought the dates of which were preordained; even after the events of birth and death were written in the stone of their tombs, shifted and fluxed and fluttered, consistently like a second heartbeat.

When something went wrong, when life was threatened to be only days, to hours, to moments, well the life that they had had pervious claim to, if it be years or months, did not merely flutter away from them like a willful bird.

No, it went to Jashin, or – more rarely – to Hidan, by proximity, by ritual – by murder, by shared pain, and shared death. Jashin was natural death, as far as things could be measured, he would live as long as anything else – mortal or god – did.

Hidan was young, yet still a death god, living off stolen life that was not his own, and surely not a mortal anymore; in comparison, so long as Hidan remembered to thank Jashin when he killed, to celebrate his gift was granted to him by a god – he lived off that stolen life expectancy, and that flux added upon his own years. Even so, his years – his life expectancy did not shift, no matter if it was threatened. It was a solid thing, weighing down and dragging upon him, Hidan knew the day, the hour and moment that he would die.

It would be centuries.

Still, not even Jashin could explain, how the one whom Hidan lived for, survived. Hidan closed his eyes, as much as he was able. Once, his little brother had had a life flux, a fragile fluttering thing, as any other might – even within the womb of their mother. Hidan had been able to see (not sense) how long people would live since he was very little. He would always remember his mother with perfect clarity, no matter how long he lived on upon the surface, while her bones turned to dust. Her eyes had been vivid green, unnatural, Hidan had gone looking for that color, and found its likeness only in an overgrown forest when the sun light glittered through leaves.

She had been as pale as he, and Hidan had clung to her. Once, her auburn mane of glittering ginger hair had been in likeness to his. Taking blood – taking the flux of a natural death – had given his hair the likeness to silver. It was just as well, in this way, his likeness to his brother could not be denied; both had startling silver hair, though silver and black was streaked within his brother's mane.

His mother had fled, and Hidan never knew why – though he had his suspicions, Hidan had never known his father. And his mother, beauty as she was, had been scorned for it. She had left, and taken the fragile life of his little brother away. In those early months, Hidan had felt it against his own heart, like the flutter of butterfly wings in his gently cupped hands, or a kitten's purr beneath soft fur. It hand been gentle, insistent – but it had been there, always near him.

Then it had been taken away.

Hidan had been, from that day on, insistent to find his brother. Though he unreasonably – childishly, loathed his mother. It was not long afterward that he had been approached about training to be a ninja, and had agreed – seeing those skills as something inherently necessary. He had taken on a fierce bloodlust, for in his search he was constantly reminded, seeing first hand, how fragile human life was. How fragile his baby brother, not born, was. Would be. Still, he feared that he would find nothing, because maybe his brother had died in childbirth, or shortly after. Hidan would never know.

It was his singular driving fear; that he would never know.

Hidan had choked it down, smothered it; had killed for the sake of killing, to prove that he could feel death, if near enough. Had he not been near enough to his brother to feel that flutter-in-flux of life begin, and grow, by days – by months? Hidan had determined that his own blood would link his gift with his not-born brother, though there was no evidence of this. No proof but Hidan's own imagining and wishing.

Then his mother – their mother – not even a year later, had died. Hadin had not even known why – or how. Yet, Hidan had felt it like a physical pain, an ache in his heart and sinking within his midsection, as if he had lost a limb. He had been forced abed, visions of green lights and dancing skulls and dark laughter haunting him. It had reassured him all the same, to his core he knew – he would not have not known if his had brother died. He would have known. His brother was alive. Had to be.

Seventeen years passed in this way, with Hidan looking for a brother he had never set eyes upon, six years junior to his twenty-two. Yet despite the odds, it had not been, in the end, a fruitless search; for Hidan had found his nameless little brother. Streaked silver hair, green eyed, Harry Potter.

Not so nameless at all; in fact, quite infamous.

O.o.O.o.O.o.O

Note: As of July, I officially know what it's like to have fruit flies; I imagine the general idea of a plague as very unpleasant – yay, new writing material - the fact that I wrote this...drabble, one-shot, chapter-prologue? Yeah, it sort of proves the little buggers drove me a little bit mad. I'm recovering.

I got sort of stuck after this, and I usually have first-chapters longer then this, truly. I am sorry about shortness? Should I even bother with writing more?

Ah, the questions I ask myself.