Summary: Sakura has survived the end of the world, but she has survived it alone. Separated from her loved one, the world after the disease and darkness offers little hope of a reunion. It would never be worth the risk to go back out into that hall for him, and Deidara hopes to convince her of that, but her will is a great as is.
Post Apocalyptic AU, Pairings: minor Sakura/Deidara Sakura/? Rated M for language.

BIOHAZARD

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So this is how the dead come,
In droves of mangled flesh and bone
Gnashing their teeth on ice
Here to tear down my home.

Don't look away, don't cry
You should know as well as I
That this is where evil resides.

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.

.

She remembered the clouds. Black, low and heavy, they struggled across the horizon towards here, downtrodden with their own weight before the ash began to fall. The men on the street screamed, the women wailed, and the children became banshies till their voices shredded in their throats.

She remembered the fire, and how the men and women in suits wielded it against the mourners before they could turn. Ice and snow would have been preferable, but ice and snow didn't come so deadly out of an exhaust tube. Once cornered and corralled, the bullets fell like rain and no one stood again for a long time. But a long time came and went, and soon they were coming back, reaching for her doors, smashing through her windows and climbing up her fences.

It was all a crazy mess, one she needed to get out of at all costs.

He took her, by the wrist and then by the hand, and led her into the dark. He trampled the infirm for her, plowed through the lame for her, and pushed aside the healthy and the worthy for her. She was one of the first ones out, but she got out alone. He told her, swore to her on all he held dear, that he would be right behind her, that he was coming.

She made it, she survived. They gave her protective wear, food, and training on how to survive in the new world, the world they had been preparing for ever since the government got control of the skies. One of mere thousands, Sakura survived the end of the world.

The busses kept coming, but he was never on any of them. Soon they came in carrying less and less. Before a month was gone, they stopped going into the cities completely. They told her it was because there was no one left. They told her to come away from the windows and sit with the others her age. She told them they were wrong.

She waited.

65 Days after Initial evacuation.

Surviver's Camp

"Where are you going?"

Sakura looked up from her packing to see him, her former boyfriend standing in the doorway, giving her a look that could slay the dead ten times over. His eyes were narrowed points of ice polished from years of hardship. If there was anything she missed of Deidara it was the way he looked at her, stared at her in rapt awe and borderline reverence. If that man had been her fire, then Deidara was her ice.

Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire, her mind chanted. Only in her mind, the voice wasn't hers.

She followed his eyes to the skin tight body suit that was hanging around her waist, leaving her in only her sports bra; scars and tattoos all exposed. Sakura turned away from Deidara and continued to slip the vials into the thigh holster. It was obvious enough where she was going, so she didn't need to answer him.

Her refusal to answer stung and it was visible as hurt overtook his features. His lips contorted and wrinkles grew between his brows before her forced them into lines of anger. "Fuck it! Sakura, what the hell are you thinking? You know how crazy dangerous it is out there, yeah? I always knew you were missing a screw or something, but I didn't think you were pysco."

He sounded angry but Sakura knew better. She heard the way his voice cracked in places and broke in others. He tried to hide it with insults but they just rang hollow. Even now he still held her in awe, the way he did when they were kids trying to get through high school like it was the hardest thing they ever thought they'd face in life.

It seemed so long ago, but she knew it wasn't. It was strange how a complete change in living conditions and way of life could make the past year feel a thousand more removed. Already she had forgotten her locker combination and the way the classrooms looked. Where was the clock she stared at for so long, waiting for it to run out? She couldn't picture it anymore.

It was hard to picture anything other than the images they showed her in the camp academy.

Plenty of kids her own age didn't have the stomach for it, but Sakura made herself stay. She made herself learn of the disease inside and out. She made herself memorize the devastation of her old world and paid no mind to the blue eyed boy who took those same classes with her just so he could watch her when the slides of clouds and gunfire bled across the screen.

He was an artist, so he saw things different, and one of those things was Sakura. She would never know exactly what it was he saw in her, but it made him a different man-or it did once upon a time. She hadn't tried to get to know him again since he found her in the West Wing Bunkers. That was fine. He sought her out enough to make up for it.

"I don't have time to be listening to the male prostitute rail on my life choices," she said, keeping her tone light. She wanted it to sound like she didn't care that he was coming back to her. He didn't need any encouragement. Hope would only hurt him that much more in the end.

He crossed over to stand in front of her on the other side of the bed. "I'm not a fucking man whore, you moron."

More cursing. He was upset.

She clicked her vials onto her thighs and then looked up to Deidara. She took his face in her hand and squeezed, puckering his lips. She could feel through her fingertips how his whole body caught a current of electricity that made him weak in the knees. He once told her it was love, but she didn't believe him anymore. She fixed him with a vapid stare that wasn't heated or dangerous, just apathetic.

"Denial is just a river in Egypt baby, get used to it."

He snarled and slapped her hand away, turning the flesh red for a moment before it dulled back to a peach soft white. "Don't fuck with me, woman. You can't go outside."

"Watch me."

"Damn it-"

Sakura sighed. "Really Deidara, you're worse than Hidan right now. Watch your language a little bit more."

"Who was the one who just brought up taking control of life choices? I'll do whatever the hell I want with my mouth. And don't think you can distract me by bringing Hidan into this." He paused for a breath, looking her over again as her deft fingers moved over the discarded items she deemed non valued. "Don't you know you'll die if you go outside?"

She snorted under her breath. "That's a myth, and I intend to disprove it."

"You're crazy. You have a life here, you have kids who depend on you and families and friends who love you here. People need you here, you can't just treat them like they don't matter."

"Them or you, Deidara?" Sakura leveled a glare at the obnoxious blond. "I think Tsunade can do what I do just as well if not better, and I'm just one person here. They'll get over it, they'll be fine. It's you who won't be able to deal."

"That's not fair."

"It's entirely fair, Dei kun."

He made a wounded sound at the mention of his old nickname. The name she would call him before kissing his face and stealing his attention away from whatever art piece he had been working on. No one else was allowed to call him that so his ears were hyper sensitive for those words, knowing only she could speak them.

"How long have you been planning this?" he asked in a muted whisper.

Sakura paused in her actions, a bit set off by the question. She couldn't remember a time when she hadn't been of the mindset that she needed to reach him if he couldn't reach her. She didn't give a rat's ass about surviving because of the sacrifice of another. She couldn't live like that, with the ghost of his memory sucking the color out of her days for as long as she had left.

And of course, she loved him. Maybe he was gone, maybe he was dead and maybe they were right. But if there was a person out there who had made it, it would be him. She knew it deep in her secret places, where her bones hummed in alignment with the rest of the universe. Her marrow cried out at the falsehood and told her she wasn't being delusion. He is alive, alive, alive.

She looked to Deidara and felt her heart throb a little bit. It would have been easier if she could find it in herself to love him again. It would have been safer if she could be satisfied with this half love she still felt for her Deidara. The mark of their love was still scarred across her heart, but it had healed over and was hard and tanned to match the rest of her life. She no longer traced her fingers over the raised flesh and stretched the pink line till it was unnoticeable. Deidara was a memory, a sweet memory, but not one she could love anymore. Not as long as the possibility remained that everyone else was wrong and she was right.

He is alive, alive, alive, alive….

"I'm sorry. I can't remember how long I've been like this, but I've always know that I couldn't stay here. This isn't living. This is surviving and I can't be a part of this when I know there's more."

He growled, feeling heat and hurt bloom in his chest together. "What's so great out there that you need to leave the safety nest at the risk of your own life? They still walk, you know. There are dead things in the roads and you have no defense against that. You fucking hear me? You're going to die! What's worth that?"

Sakura zipped up her suite and slipped into the underarm holster vest that had her third and forth gun. It fit her like skin and felt sturdy enough to take her where she needed to go. There were needles lining the suit all on the inside, lightly pressed into her skin and ready to administer hyper-grow serum in case of damage. The suit itself would heal back in time as well. She felt powerful and ready.

There was a gas mask on the table by the door and she reached for it, only to be stopped by the blond once more. She saw the look on his face and knew she wouldn't leave until she got an answer. Her shoulders dropped in resignation.

"I need to find him."

He swallowed harshly and she saw the wound she made, the hurt he felt, and the pain that well up between them.

"You don't know if he's even alive. Chances are he died off a long time ago, you need to move up and get over it. That's what they told us about everyone." Deidara breathed deeply, forcing his anger out of him in shaky breaths. "We lit candles and sang songs for them and remembered them with eulogies after the trucks stopped going out. Light one for him and start living again."

"I won't, not until I know for sure."

"Sakura!" he slapped away the mask and grabbed her face, bruising lips on lips laced with desperation. She pulled away and he followed, his hands clamped around her head like a vice despite her protests. She wouldn't leave, he wouldn't let her. Anyone else could walk out on their own and he wouldn't care, but she was his only exception.

Her body stung in the places he kissed her, like frostbite that was so cold the body tricks itself into thinking it's been burnt. She felt heat bloom underneath his frostbite kisses and gasped. His lips crushed hers and trailed down to the crook of her neck, biting once and making her gasp aloud.

He was there, waiting, kissing her lips again. He embraced her and his arms were vices that would never falter so long as they were for her. His touch was fever and it was sickness and it was desperation. If she fought with a man on his last mighty breath before the turning took him, he would be no match against Deidara in his passion.

His kisses spoke to her when he parted her mouth for him. Remember, they said. Remember the first time my lips took yours. We hadn't been planning it, we hadn't been thinking about it. We had been leaning against the chain link fence surrounding the school roof, laughing about clouds when all too naturally we were pulled together, like magnets. Your lips knew my lips from another life and they rejoiced with the union.

Deidara grew rougher with her and she remembered more. Her heart flew back to those time. Remember, his lips sang, remember the way I held you against the bark of the Sakura tree when the twilight sounds broke for silence in that reverent moment. Remember how you felt. Remember that perfect moment. Remember how well you knew this to be true.

It hurt because Sakura remembered. She had forgotten the structure of her school and the location of the clock on the wall, but she remembered the wind and the trees and the long walks and kisses that shook her knees. But she also remembered him and it hurt her heart more than all of Deidara's kisses.

With nothing left to do, she reached up to grab his shoulders and let her knee fly between his legs, hitting where it hurt the worst. He choked into the kiss and detached, gasping in pain as he slumped to the floor, all the while holding himself.

Sakura, without a word, picked up the mask and slipped on the hair net, hiding everything but her face. "You know why I can't let him go, Deidara. I love him."

He moved to stop her and she drove her fist into his solar plexus. His eyes, as blue as glaciers, widened with pain and shock, taking her in too fully, before going slack along with the rest of his body. He fell in a heavy mess across her floor, dead to the world for a few more hours before someone came in and found him knocked out.

It wouldn't be long. Someone was bound to notice either her or his absence within the hour. The camp was small.

"I'm sorry. Maybe the next time we cycle through these lives, the story will be different, but I can't live for you this time." She kissed the pads of her gloved fingers and then pressed them to his temple. A simple sign of affection that reminded her how terrible she was at cutting ties. Deidara would always be a scar on her heart, but he wasn't her greatest wound.

She slipped the mask on and stepped outside, the long nose buzzing as it filtered the air. Behind the nozzle she licked her sore lips and pretended she wasn't crying as the salt from her tears ran over her teeth.

The last few lines of Robert Frost's Fire and Ice ran through her head.

Some say the world will end in fire/ Some say in ice/ From what I've tasted of desire /I hold with those who favor fire/ But if it had to perish twice/ I think I know enough of hate/ To say that for destruction ice/ Is also great/ And would suffice.

She swallowed her tears and forced herself forward. One foot in front of the other, she led herself back to hell.

AN:/ Honest to goodness I thought I published this before going off to Comic Con in the summer and was a little surprised to still see it in my doc manager. Like, didn't I publish this? No? Oh crap, I should do that. I didn't write it recently at all. I just had it lying around with a half dozen other unfinished or partly finished or mostly finished works. Less than a third of everything I write ever makes it out.

I think I wrote the original 900 words of this in like...2010? It was a short head cannon I had of post apocalypse Sakura and Deidara living in a survivor's camp after Sakura is separated form her mysterious lover. And who is this mysterious love you ask? I can't remember. Sad, I know. I think I had an idea of it being Sasori at one point, or maybe Itachi, or Madara, cause those are the usual suspects for me, but I liked the idea of keeping it open. This way, it could be any dude. What do you think, who do you want it to be? All that you have to go on is 'fire' as opposed to Deidara's 'ice.'

It's small, pathetically so, and it's just a oneshot, but it is an update.

Please review and tell me what you think!