Deidara burst from the ground, lightly shaking himself to dislodge any dust or dirt clinging to his body. Normally he'd have used his hands to clean himself off but his lack of arms made that impossible. The blond quietly cursed the Kazekage, Konoha as a whole, and the Sharingan for his current situation. He would have to hope the Konoha nin had left the area, because he needed to find his right arm and Konoha shinobi would only be unnecessary complications.
He was still surprised that his exploding clone had been countered. Sure, he'd managed to escape, but the Konoha nin had countered his exploding clone. Of course it had been the Hatake too, with his damned Sharingan eye.
"Hm… I only lost my arm from below the elbow… I have to go find my right hand and the ring I dropped un…" He muttered to himself. The action served both to help him focus and to distract himself from the throbbing stumps that were the remains of his arms. Sasori would probably tell him he was being an idiot, but Deidara couldn't bring himself to care at the moment.
With a sigh, the blond set off to find his arm.
. . .
"Deidara, there's something you may want to know..." The paler half of Zetsu began, watching him carefully.
The blond had stopped his attempts to strangle the masked man - Zetsu referred to him as Tobi - when Zetsu threatened to eat him in his sleep. The odds that the plant man would risk irritating Leader-Sama by killing and eating him while he was sleeping were low, but the threat did make Deidara realize that he was behaving just as childishly as the masked ninja. Which had probably been the plant man's goal in the first place, Deidara realized with an irritated sigh.
"And what is it Zetsu?" He asked, arching an eyebrow in irritation. Tobi, now somewhere to the blond's left, was humming a song so badly Deidara couldn't even pretend to recognize it.
"Well you see..." The paler half of the plant man trailed off uncomfortably, clearly trying to find a tactful to convey whatever it was he wanted to say. The darker half of the plant man sighed in irritation, "Sasori's dead." He finished.
Deidara carefully cleared his emotions from his face, creating an unsettling resemblance to some of Sasori's more realistic puppets. "What?" He asked slowly, exhaling as if he'd been punched.
"Sasori's dead." The darker half of Zetsu repeated easily. "He's some sort of puppet... thing, and we have no interest in disposing of a body like that. You were his partner, you deal it." He added.
"Tobi, time to go, come on." The paler half of the plant man called in Tobi's direction, sounding more than a little uncomfortable.
At some point the strange duo (trio?) left, but Deidara didn't know or particularly care when. He was too busy attempting to wrap his mind around the idea of Sasori being dead. Surely it was some sort of sick joke, right? He'd show up at the base and Sasori would be there, irritated that the blond had wasted so much time and failed to catch the Kuubi Jinchūriki. He'd heckle the redhead about letting a little girl and an old hag escape and the redhead would try and stab him because that was the way it was. Sasori would be alive.
But he wasn't. When Deidara arrived where the base had once been he was greeted by the sight of a collapsed hillside, littered with broken puppets, any traces of the base long gone - destroyed in a fight that Sasori should have been able to handle by himself. Numbly, the blond ran into the wreckage of the base, nearly tripping over multiple broken puppets. When Deidara spotted the limp from of the redheaded puppet nin a pained sound escaped his lips and he froze.
There were two puppets - clearly earlier works by Sasori, a voice in the back of Deidara's head helpfully chimed - by Sasori, one on either side of the redhead, blades that had been attached to their arms lodged through the puppet nin's chest. Deidara got the vague impression of some sort of sick parody of an embrace. Ignoring the puppets, Deidara ran over to Sasori's body. The capsule that contained the redhead's heart, Deidara realized suddenly, had been punctured, spilling blood - almost purple in coloration - across the ground.
The blond carefully removed the weapons from Sasori's chest, letting the puppet nin's limp body fall to the ground. Numbly, he recalled Sasori's claims the he'd live forever in his eternal body, while Deidara was sure to die before him - probably in an explosion. Carefully, Deidara turned Sasori's body over so that the puppet nin would be on his back. He slightly regretted the action when dead brown eyes stared blankly at the sky above them. The task had been difficult and painful - not having arms was terribly inconvenient - but Deidara didn't care.
"D-Danna, wake up." Deidara commanded, kneeling beside the puppet nin. The blond lightly shook Sasori's shoulders, ignoring the fresh waves of pain that shot through the remainders of his arms from the action. "Come on Danna, you always bragged about how you'd live forever," Deidara's voice cracked, "don't tell me you let a little girl and some old hag kill you un!" His eyes were burning.
"Dammit, wake up you bastard, you can't be dead un! You promised me you'd outlive me, you bragged about it!" Deidara shouted suddenly, "It was one of your favorite points in our damn arguments. You can't be dead..." The blonds voice cut off and a quiet sob escaped his lips as he shook the dead puppet nin's shoulders.
He sat there numbly for a few hours, unable to say anything as hot tears spilled from his eyes, streaking his face and falling to the ground. A few stray tears occasionally landed on the lifeless puppet that had once been Sasori.
"Do you remember how I ended up joining the Akatsuki un?" Deidara hoarsely asked suddenly, ignoring how rough his voice sounded.
The blond was shaking now, he wasn't sure if it was from the chill that had crept into the air, blood loss, the shock of Sasori being dead, or a strange mix of all three, but he didn't really care. "I'm sure you do, you don't forget things like that Sasori... We were just outside of Iwa un. You, Itachi, and Kisame showed up while I was on my own, practicing forbidden jutsu. You guys kidnapped me," Deidara paused briefly to gather his thought, "My life was okay before you guys showed up, you know. My dad had recently died on a mission, but he lived a full life and went out the way he'd have wanted to un... I had an older sister and a little brother, friends and family who probably thought I'd died at first. I'm not sure why I didn't try to go back, I could have comforted them, told them I was alive un."
"I think it's because you all changed me somehow, it started with the genjutsu that damned Uchiha cast un. When you three took me away from Iwa I was finally free, the old man couldn't tell me what to do anymore. I mean, I lost a lot but I gained more than I'd have ever thought was possible too un." He sighed, "I hated you all at first, you know. All I wanted to see was what I had lost, but... Over time you guys grew on me, I mean, you became the only people I really spoke to so it makes sense I guess. You guys almost started to feel like family un."
Deidara shook his head."I'm not sure why I'm telling you all of this now... You're dead, I doubt you can even hear me un... But still, even if you can't hear me, I feel like I should tell you, like I should say it." It felt like if he said it out loud, it would be more real. "Sasori, for the past six years you've been the only constant in my life, even if we didn't get along. I liked having something constant un. It might not have seemed like it to you, but to me... You were a friend un." Tears welled up in the blond's eyes again.
Deidara paused for a few moments, attempting to push down his feelings and gather his thoughts. "Zetsu told me that I'm supposed to dispose of your body, you know. For a second I actually thought about doing it un, to spite you. Heh, "I'll show him forever." I thought. But I don't think I can do it, I realized that there's probably nothing you'd hate more than your body being destroyed. You were probably thinking that even if you died, your body would last forever and live on without you un. You wouldn't want your body destroyed; you wouldn't care if whoever found your body discovered your secrets. Hell, you'd probably be pleased if they did because your body and some of your techniques would would be around for generations. There for others to admire un..." The blond rose from his sitting position, joints popping in a quiet protest to moving after sitting in the same position for so long.
"You'd hate me staying here grieving too un, so I guess I'll go now un." The blond turned and left, walking slowly.
It would be a while before he felt like himself again. Part of the blond wondered if he'd ever be the same after losing a friend as close as Sasori had been. Shaking his head, Deidara murmured, "Doesn't matter." Sasori would think he was wasting time, pondering questions that he couldn't possibly know the answers too.
"I guess there's only one way to know how things will turn out, and that's to move on. For both of us un." Deidara sent one last glance to Sasori's corpse before he left.
Updated 11/7/15: Changes in wording to make the fic read better and minor dialogue changes to make people more in character.