Senko: I have decided to try out the DeiSaku pairing! ;) all thanks to MitsukiShiroi's wonderful fanfics, I have now come to like DeiSaku. The idea for this story came from my story "Fate is Inevitable." I have decided to discontinue that story because I wrote it all wrong and if I continued the story, it would not lead to ItaSaku at all; it would lead to DeiSaku. So I decided to discontinue the story and start a DeiSaku ;D

Special thanks to alphadale for beta-ing!

Summary: When Deidara is ordered to find a new partner and Itachi and Kisame needs his help in finding the Kyuubi, Deidara slowly finds himself falling forthe woman he vowed to kill for taking Sasori's life. DeiSaku

'Italics' Inner Sakura and Sakura conversation

"Quotes" Dialogue

Italics Emphasis, thoughts

Disclaimer: Do I look like Kishimoto? No seriously, do I? o.O lol

Chapter 1

The warm rays of morning gently beat against his skin, and Deidara's cerulean eyes opened to greet the world. Still tired and sleepy, he struggled to pull himself up from the bed. It had been approximately a month since his mission to kidnap the Kazekage...and approximately a month since the loss of his partner, Sasori. His left arm had been crushed during that mission. He had a medic-nin inspect the injury and his left arm was healed only slightly. Now, he could still use his arm but he couldn't perform any sort of hard labor.

The leader of Akatsuki had given him half a year to find a new partner claiming that Deidara should have the right to choose the perfect companion, but Deidara strongly believed that the leader was simply too lazy to bother finding a collaborator for him. By the end of half a year, should Deidara not have a comrade, he would be expelled from Akatsuki. So far, a month had wasted away and still he had no luck in finding a suitable partner for him. There were many powerful ninjas, but none of them would willingly betray their village and join a group of S-class missing-nins.

Glancing at the window sill, his eyes spotted Sasori's jade ring. Sasori's jade ring, 'The Virgin' (1).

Deidara inwardly growled in frustration as he remembered the cause of this annoyance. No, it wasn't Sasori's death – it was the person who took Sasori's life. He couldn't deny that Sasori was someone important to him; they shared the same love for art and had been together through tough times. S-class missing-nins like Deidara were alone and despised, perhaps hated, so finding someone they could almost call a friend was really something to treasure.

He vowed to himself to make Sasori's assailant pay.

He had heard that it was a female trained under the legendary Sannin Tsunade. He regretted not taking a closer examination of her when he first saw her. Now, her appearance was faint to him, therefore making it difficult for him to track her down. He couldn't simply head over to Konoha and begin killing off every female.

A knock on the inn's door broke him out of his reverie. "Come in, yeah," he muttered, already fully aware of the two people outside his door.

"Hey, Deidara," Kisame greeted, entering the room. Itachi silently followed behind him, closing the door once he was inside.

Deidara looked up at the two, struggling to dismiss the blurriness in his eyes. "Well, it sure is a surprise to see the two of you here, yeah. What is it you need?"

Kisame let out a burst of laughter. "Straight to the point, eh?"

"I'm a very busy person, Kisame, yeah."

Walking over to Deidara, Kisame and Itachi took a seat on the plain white bed. "Well, you see, Itachi and I need your assistance."

Deidara stared at the two, obviously giving them his full attention now. It wasn't every day that Kisame and the Uchiha, Itachi would ask for help. "Why should I help you, yeah? What's in it for me?"

"We heard from Leader that you have been assigned to find a new partner. Itachi and I can find a new companion for you."

"No," Deidara said bluntly. "I can find my own partner, yeah."

"You know you want our help, Deidara. We know you've brought a couple of suitable partners but Leader has disapproved of them. We know you don't like the idea of looking for a replacement for Sasori. And we know that Itachi is Leader's favorite and anyone, anyone, which Itachi recommends for Akatsuki will be considered immediately," Kisame grinned, "And what if helping us also helps you track down Sasori's killer?"

A hint of interest flashed in Deidara's eyes. "How will you do that, yeah?"

"How we do it is not something you should worry about. You know us; we don't lie. You help us, we help you."

"Fine. What do you want me to do, yeah?"

"Simple. Just befriend some of the Kyuubi's friends and get some information about thehim for us."

"All of his friends, yeah? That might be too difficult."

"No. We only need the ones named Hyuuga, Hinata and Haruno, Sakura."

"Come on, Sakura!"

"We wanna see, we wanna see!"

"Shut up! Stop rushing me!"

Ino, Hinata, and TenTen stood over Sakura's shoulder, looking in anticipation as Sakura broke apart the fortune cookie and took out the slip of paper. They had decided to spend some girl time together and went to a Chinese restaurant and received fortune cookies after dining. Sakura's fingers pulled the ends of the small slip of paper, straightening it out so she could read the words.

Follow your heart. These words will prove helpful to you.

"What the hell," Sakura cursed. "This is it? Damn fortunes, I get the crappiest one. Follow your heart this and that! How come all of you had something about love and happiness in yours and I get…follow your heart? Ugh."

The other three girls burst out into laughter.

Ino stopped her laughter long enough to say, "You just have bad luck!"

'Follow your heart, my ass' Inner Sakura screamed. 'If following our heart was what we should do-'

'Shut up. Don't you dare say it!' Sakura yelled back.

'-we would be in Sound begging to work with Orochimaru so we can see Sasuke-kun again!' her inner self ignored her and finished her sentence.

'You are one huge pain in the-' Sakura began.

"Hello? Sakura?" TenTen waved her right hand in front of Sakura's face.

"A-Are you okay?" Hinata asked.

"Yeah, Forehead girl, you've been spacing out for like five minutes now," Ino exaggerated. "Well it was only a minute but, well, you know."

Sakura flashed a smile. "I'm okay!"

Senko: Well, whatcha think? Sorry it's short, but chapter one is always the introduction, right? This is the intro to the story!

(1) I got the ring info from wikipedia when I looked up stuff about Deidara and Sasori. I'm not sure if Sasori's ring was jade but that's the only word related to color when they showed the info on his ring.