Sasori didn't want to get out of bed. He didn't want to get up, get dressed, and go out in the cold rain he heard pounding on the roof of the lair. Stupid mission. But a mission was a mission and Sasori had no wish to confront Leader. No matter how strong his misgivings about it were. In fact, the sneaking suspicion that this would be his last mission had been haunting him for quite a while now. A shinobi has only so much luck and he could feel his running out…

"Hmm…Sasori?" The sleepy mutter interrupted his dark thoughts. He grinned at the blonde sleeping next to him. Deidara was the biggest reason he didn't want to go on the mission and was proving to be his biggest obstacle in getting out of the bed they shared. Sasori gently removed the other man's arms from around his waist and slid quietly out of bed. He dressed quickly and gathered his puppet scrolls.

The neon red glow of the alarm clock displayed the time almost violently: 2:47. About half an hour before he had to leave and a good five hours before Deidara would even begin to stir. Sasori rummaged around in his desk, pulling out three pieces of paper and a pen. The first letter he finished in a few minutes; it was addressed to Deidara in the event that he failed to return. The second letter was also to his lover but it took Sasori much longer to write. He hoped it would explain everything to him. What he had been developing over the last few months, why he decided to use it, why he had done it. When done with both he slipped them into identical envelopes and wrote Deidara's name on them, one in black ink, the other in blue. He fervently hoped that Deidara would receive the blue from Konan. She was the only Akatsuki member who would respect Sasori's commands, the ones he was writing on the third sheet of paper. Itachi would also play a role in his scheme but that was only on coincidence due to the positioning of his room.

As an afterthought, he wrote a brief letter to Kakuzu as the organization's medic-nin. He would probably be the only one interested in noting the symptoms for future reference—and the only one about to take decent legible notes at that. Because if it did work, Leader was going to try to capitalize on Sasori's discovery. The puppet master smirked. No one would be able to get past the puzzle…none of the Akatsuki members at any rate. That cabinet held all of his most deadly poisons and experiments. He had designed it to be Tobi-proof but found the rest of his coworkers to be idiots as well.

His writing finished, Sasori kissed the sleeping Deidara good-bye. On his way out, he deposited the bundle of letters outside the door to Konan's room. The woman was an early riser, thank Kami. He stood in front of the lair's main door. For half a second, Sasori prayed to Kami, Hashin or whoever Hidan blathered on about all day, whatever deity that happened to be listening that he might to be allowed to come back alive. Then Deidara wouldn't have only a piece of paper to explain what the hell was going on.

He sighed and stepped out into the cold rain, his form obscured by the drizzle as he walked away.