Genre: Anime/Manga

Category: Naruto

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. If I did, the plot line would suck and it would make no sense at all :)

Note: This is my second attempt at an Akatsuki fic. I now know more about the group and its members, especially this—Sasori's the cranky one and Deidara's the hyper one; not the other way around

You'll notice that during the story, there'll be something like this: &&&&&&&. That's for flashback scenes. The setting is just one place, so we have no need for the same grouping to act as a scene change

Time was slowly slipping away. The sun had long since set into the horizon, taking with it the glorious red, yellow and orange hues of the sky. In place of that were regal colors of purples, blues and, somewhere very far from the naked eye, inky blacks. The beam of radiance that provided any light at all was coming from the full moon. It created shadows of the objects it hit, including the lone Akatsuki ninja.

Deidara was out, sitting on the rooftop of their little hideaway that was planted in the middle of the vast trees. They were in the deepest forests at the moment, out near the borderline between Fire Country and Grass Country. The blonde shinobi would come out from the place they temporarily called their home during the night and just stare up at the sky, for no reason at all. In his mind, he didn't need a reason. He was there, lying on his back with his hands behind his head, watching the stars, just because.

He thought back when he was still young and still learning in the Academy. His parents thought the mouths in his palms were birth defects and even the doctor didn't know how they grew to be there. Deidara always thought it was some form of kekkei genkai, but apparently it wasn't. He would always have to wear gloves to hide them; his parents told him to. They loved him, they said. They only wanted to protect him from his peers, they said. But deep down inside, he knew that they were ashamed of him.

But regardless, he wore the gloves anyway. It was only when he was home that he would take them off. Sometimes when he did, he would see his parents glance and, for only a second, give a look of disgust. Deidara never confronted his parents about this.

One day, when he was doing an art project, one of the mouths had swallowed clay. The boy's face suddenly paled and he grew frantic—you weren't supposed to eat clay; you could die from that! He was about to call his parents when, much to his own surprise, the mouth spit the clay back out, in the form of a little bird. The next day, his classmates were awed at his creation, for they had thought that he made it by hand. Ever since then, he would make something new and bring it in to show his peers.

Another day, about a month or two later, they were teaching a lesson about chakra control. The blonde had concentrated and the chakra was released…and the clay owl he had brought in that day exploded. They had thought someone from the other class had snuck out and tampered with his 'hard work' as a practical joke, but Deidara knew better. Inwardly, he smiled and wanted to test out more of his clay figures.

The Iwa ninja sighed as the memories of his youth came back to him. There were lots of good times in his childhood, but it was vastly outweighed by his struggles. A few years later, shortly after he graduated, rogue ninjas from Taki came and started to randomly kill off civilians. But Deidara and his family didn't know that; they lived father away from the village, near its outskirts.

All three of them were caught by surprised when the Waterfall ninjas barged into their home. The two men tried to fight them off, but sadly…

&&&&&&&

A dying scream rang throughout the house for a split second. Blood soon stained the walls and a bit splat on the face of the young child of eight. Said child's eyes widened in fear and his words were choked back. He was speechless.

He heard the sound of a kunai falling to the floor but paid no attention to it. Deidara looked into the eyes of the people who killed his father before his green-blue orbs narrowed down with anger and fury. Quickly grabbing the clay he was working with before the attack, he took his gloves off and stuffed it in the mouths of his palms. They were spat back out in the form of clay spiders, which he threw at the ninjas.

They were about to either block them or cut them with kunai, but Deidara released his chakra and the spiders exploded in their faces. It was at that time when the Iwa jounin came in (simultaneously, he put his gloves back on before anyone else notices) and captured the men.

"Are you all okay?" one jounin asked. The future-bomber quickly ran past the jounin and kneeled down next to his father's body. He tried to look for any signs of life; he would not believe his father to be dead. But after five minutes, the young ninja clutched onto his father's clothing and started to cry.

&&&&&&&

Ever since then, his mother had been hard on him. She would never let him go out unless it was for a mission or for errands—she wouldn't even let him out to train. It was even a miracle that he could even keep up with his teammates, strength-wise. Deidara was literally a caged bird (Not biting off Neji's thing). He would always touch the glass of the window and look outside pleadingly, asking anyone—absolutely anyone—to come by, notice and free him from the prison he was trapped inside of.

During his time inside, he would actually paint. It wasn't until later in his life that he would develop the philosophy, "Art is a Bang!" so he settled for painting. The boy would mostly find certain sceneries from books around the house and try to recreate them on the canvas. The blonde would always show his mother; they seemed to please her and he always wanted to be on her good side.

A year went by like that—with only occasional outings. His mother had gone out one day, to get a few things from the store. She left the house and the green-blue-eyed nine-year-old sat in his room, painting as usual, waiting for her to return. He painted a beautiful picture of a green forest clearing with a glittering lake in the middle and blue skies above. He finished his work and waited some more, anxious as to when his mother would come back so that he can show her his latest work.

She never returned.

He lived alone for a while, living on the money he could find and the money he had saved up on missions. If he spent the money carefully, he could probably survive a long, long time. The soon-to-be Akatsuki member was pretty content—he could go outside and train and he had a pretty stable life. His teammates and sensei found out, however, and confronted the Tsuchikage about this situation.

After getting a surprise visit from the Tsuchikage, they had sorted out that Deidara would be able to live on his own. Everything was normal from then on. He never admitted it, though, but he was lonely. There was no one in the house to talk to most of the time, unless he invited his friends over. And there was no one to come into his room and compliment his paintings. No one to help him train. No one to ease him when he was so frustrated. There was no one—just himself.

Soon, he started to change. The bright and seemingly Naruto-like person he used to be was fading away into the darkness of the past. A new him—one that was forged by loneliness—had developed. He started to be more sarcastic and a bit cold. The person who used to paint beautiful picturesque sceneries started to get involved with explosions. And so his new form of art had matured.

Nevertheless of the change in persona, he continued to do his duty as a shinobi of Iwa. It wasn't long until he got tired of the place he grew up in and everything in it…

The blonde was eighteen and was surprisingly promoted to the level of jounin at fifteen-years-old. His mastery of the explosion arts had increased ever since his youth, and he no longer wore his gloves. Only a few of Iwa's inhabitants thought of Deidara as a "freak" but his comrades would always defend him from any oral slaughter. He was able to make clay figures that could expand into enormous sizes for travel.

It was only a few months in from his last birthday when he preformed his art for Iwagakure, in leaving the village once and for all. Then, he sought out Akatsuki.

They had let him in and partnered him with Orochimaru's former partner, Akasuna no Sasori. Secretly ecstatic that his comrade was an artist like himself, he thought that they would get along pretty well. They did, most of the time. After seeing his partner in action, he noticed a huge gap between their strengths. So he had started to call him 'danna'.

The blonde made a few good friends, such as Kisame. He and the shark-man would always joke around in the hideout because, frankly, they were the only ones who provided the little comedy relief within the organization. Zetsu would occasionally join in, as would Hidan, but only if didn't go against the teachings of his religion.

Then the insanity began when Zetsu had rescued Tobi and took him in. The two didn't get along well, period. In fact, from the moment Tobi stepped foot inside the hideout, it all just went downhill.

&&&&&&&

"Everyone, this is Tobi." Zetsu introduced. Tobi looked among the members that stood in front of him as the venus flytrap stated their names. His eye befell upon the last one to be called, Deidara.

"Hm…It sure must be lonely, Deidara-sempai, to be the only girl among the Akatsuki…"

"What did you say, you little punk!?" Deidara yelled. Kisame and Sasori held him back from charging at the boy and mutilating his body. Tobi had a surprised air to him as he quickly apologized for his mistake.

"Calm down, Deidara, don't hurt the newbie." Kisame said. He had to use all of his strength just to restrain the man; when he was enraged, he's pretty hard to hold down.

&&&&&&&

He chuckled softly as he recalled about the explosion coming from Tobi's room later on in the day. They had assumed the blonde as the main subject, but instead of finding clay, they found a cherry bomb. He had claimed to be talking to Leader-san the whole time in which the incident happened, which was true. He had just used a bunshin to do the work, that's all.

Life in the Akatsuki was better than it was back home, he assumed. Everything was fun. Ever since he joined, the stoic part of him just faded away and he started becoming his old self again. Even so, he couldn't help but think about the past sometimes. The green-blue-eyed man heard footsteps approaching his way. They were very light and almost faint, so it was a giveaway.

"What brings you up here, danna, un?" he asked, staring up at his partner

"I just thought I would come out for some air…" the puppeteer replied, taking a seat behind him. Deidara took the liberty of resting his head on Sasori's lap.

"But you're a puppet, danna, you can live with the air inside, un."

"Even so, I have the right to come out, ne?"

"…True, un…"

There was a few minutes of silence—the blonde still staring at the stars with the redhead joining him. It had taken them a while, but they had grown closer and formed a more…intimate connection. Of course, they still get into spats about the true form of art.

"Before I came up…were you thinking?" the Suna ninja asked

"Yeah…"

"About what?"

"Mm…The past up until now…un"

"Funny. I was doing the same thing…" he replied, "I remember when you first came and you asked to join Akatsuki. I didn't think you would get in because you looked so frail and scrawny—"

"I was not scrawny, danna, un." The blonde intervened

"—I was surprised, however, when you gave Leader-san your answer for what you did that would make him even consider letting you in." he continued

There was more silence before Deidara smiled. The clay artist got up and helped his partner up as well.

"Let's go inside, un. It's late, and besides, I think I hear the sounds of Kisame getting drunk. No doubt that A: They need all of us to stop him and B: We can use this for blackmail." He suggested, giving a Naruto-ish grin. Sasori chuckled.

"Right behind you, Dei-kun."

The two had walked back inside, where they found Kisame holding a bottle of sake. Hidan and Kakuzu were trying to restrain him from breaking anything and Itachi was getting annoyed. Zetsu and Tobi were nowhere in sight. Soon, the pair had entered with a hammer that oddly resembled the one from Super Smash Brothers Melee™. Zetsu swung the hammer sideways, hitting the blue-skinned Akatsuki member in the right side of the head, knocking him out. Knowing Kisame, Sasori took extra precautions and tied him up. The blonde put a small cherry bomb in the man's cloak that was set to explode when he woke up. Then, they all left for their bedrooms, leaving their sharky comrade on the floor. As he was about to sleep, Deidara also thought back to the time when Leader-san had asked him what he did. The former Iwa ninja remembered his response clearly.

"Using my clay bombs, I nearly destroyed Iwagakure."

My final masterpiece for my home village……………and my finest

-Owari-

Well, that was kinda short and crappy. Oh well, I tried.