Authorial Blah Blah: There are several references to a few of my favorite things in here. If you find them and recognize the allusion, then cookies to you.
Disclaimer: I am not writing this for profit. If I was, I wouldn't have blatantly stolen Masashi Kishimoto's characters.
"Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be." -Orson Scott Card
They met—not for the first time, but for the first time that they weren't trying to kill each other—in a rather unpredictable fashion. Or maybe it was predictable. He was having a hard time distinguishing between the two, considering the circumstances. He was travelling through some forest somewhere in the southwestern part of the country. He couldn't recall exactly where anymore. His travels were mostly a blur anyways.
So, he was in a forest and there was a clearing, and he could tell that he was moving toward it. The clearing had a small river—small as in almost not a river small, but it was a body of water that flowed in a somewhat straight path so it was a river to him—and then he was standing on one side of the river and she was on the other. And they were staring at each other. She was tense, but she didn't look ready to fight him, not yet. He took this as a positive sign.
And this was where the line between predictable and unpredictable began to blur. Because he had felt her coming as surely as he felt that his right foot was, indeed, still attached to his body. She hadn't been masking her chakra, and it stood out to him in the dead space that surrounded him like a beam of sunlight through a patch of gray clouds.
And he had known it was stupid to reveal himself to her because, honestly, he had been running for the better part of two years by that point, and he knew how to hide and he knew she would be terrible for his hide-and-go policy, but he was just so damn bored and frustrated and, probably most of all, lonely.
But he had stopped there, and he had unmasked his chakra, and he had allowed her to see him. So really, their meeting was mostly predictable with a side of unconventional.
He shifted from one foot to the other and stared. She blinked, still tense.
She broke the silence.
"Deidara of the Akatsuki," she whispered, her voice flowing to him over the burbling of the river.
"Formerly, hm," he said out loud, encouraging her to speak at a normal volume, encouraging her to speak to him, period.
She raised an eyebrow and shrugged, "Deidara, Formerly of the Akatsuki, then."
He knew that she called him that for lack of anything better, but it still grated on him to hear his name associated with the stain of Akatsuki, to know that his name would always be associated with it.
Truthfully, it was the color of her hair that helped him remember her name. He could still hear the Kyuubi brat screaming it, calling out to her because she was the friend that didn't leave, wouldn't leave.
He didn't know any of that then at that first meeting without bloodshed, though. So, he said her name in tandem with the Kyuubi's chanting in his memories.
"Sakura."
At his pronouncement, she curled her fingers into the pink tresses of her namesake, pushing them behind her ear. They weren't long enough to stay.
"I'm surprised you remember my name," she said, as though he could really forget. He had watched her decimate a boulder right in front of him with one fist. It had been glorious art, really. Plus, she had killed Sasori, which was something else glorious, if not quite art.
But he didn't say any of that because he didn't want to talk about the past, even though that was all they had between them other than the river. So, he just shrugged.
"What are you doing out here?" she asked when she realized he wasn't going to continue the conversation. He noticed that she was slowly letting the tenseness leak out of her shoulders and legs. He also noticed that she was still talking to him.
"Playing dead, hm," he stated mostly to keep the conversation going, but also because it was true. She raised a slim pink eyebrow and snorted.
"Fair enough."
"What about you, hm? I'm pretty sure we're not exactly close to Konoha right now." He thought she wouldn't answer because the question was personal, but she just fidgeted with her hair some more and kept talking.
"Similar reasons, I guess."
He furrowed his eyebrows.
"You're running away, hm? As a missing-nin?" It didn't seem like something she would do, from his limited knowledge of her. Maybe he had just been assuming she was like the Kyuubi brat.
But she snorted again and rolled her eyes.
"No, dumbass. I guess I'm just trying to get away from it all or something. Or maybe I just need a vacation from my life for a while. I don't know." She sighed, and the sound of it carried like she really was pushing out her soul.
He could relate.
"You know if you run out of the village they're going to assume that you ditched, no matter your intentions, hm," he added because he didn't really want her to get in trouble if she didn't want to be in trouble.
He didn't know why he cared.
"I'm not completely stupid, you know," she bit out, anger showing for the first time on her face, but she released it just as quickly. "I've been on a mission to help this town in Wind Country. The people there were suffering from some disease that none of their nurses or doctors could cure, so they hired me to come. I finished up about a week ago, but I requested more time from Tsunade-shishou. It was kinda impulsive, honestly. It's just…as soon as I got done and thought about going back to Konoha, I panicked. It was awful. I've never resented my home, not ever. But in that moment, I just wanted to be Haruno Sakura without all the bullshit that my name implies."
While he listened to her talk, he also couldn't figure out why she was talking to him at all. He knew she didn't like him. The look on her face after she broke the boulder said it all. Yet, she hadn't automatically attempted to use that same strength to knock his head from his shoulders. And she was telling him something, well, personal. She was telling him something that, obviously, most of her friends didn't know about.
Maybe they couldn't know about it. Maybe, because of all the bullshit surrounding her name in Konoha, she couldn't say a word. Maybe she had never thought to say anything before because it was only when she was free of the shackles of Konoha's Haruno Sakura that she felt the weight of the responsibility to be herself.
Maybe she needed to tell him, someone completely unrelated to Konoha, because there was no one else to tell.
Again, he could relate.
By this time, they were both sitting on the river bank on their respective sides. Their positions mirrored each other, knees drawn up to chest, hands placed behind to support weight, eyes looking anywhere but directly at each other.
She was staring down a leaf that was floating along the river, glaring at it. He watched the same leaf. He swallowed before speaking.
"I faked my own death. I was fighting this little Uchiha shit, hm," he started. He saw her move her eyes away from the leaf and onto him. Apparently, he had caught her attention. "Somewhere around the end of this fight, when we were both low on chakra and neither of us was winning, I thought to myself, 'this is fucking pointless.' Don't get me wrong, I fucking hate Uchiha's, and if I knew that I could have killed that kid without blowing myself up, I would have done it. But, he wasn't really worth my masterpiece. He wasn't even the Uchiha I really wanted to kill. So, I made it seem like I blew myself up, used the last of my chakra to create a clay clone of myself, talked to the kid to make it seem like I was going to blow up to throw Tobi off, then used the transportation jutsu to switch myself with the bomb clone at the last second. Little shit still fucking got away, hm. I fucking hated Akatsuki, still do, for forcing me to join their shit group and hindering my art, so I knew my options back then had been to either die attempting to kill the kid—again, not my original target—or disappear. I disappeared, but because my name carries bullshit everywhere, I've been avoiding civilization, hm."
It was only after he had finished that he dared to meet her eyes. They were searching his face, the green orbs travelling around the contours of his face like a map, reading where he had been and where he would go. Finally, she smirked a little, but the expression didn't fit her face as though she hadn't been born to smirk.
"I've always known you weren't dead, you know. I never told anyone though. I mean, it's not like you were back at the Akatsuki raping and pillaging or whatever the fuck else they do. I figured if you ever reappeared, I would just act surprised and feel guilty, then."
He almost stood up at her admission from how surprised he was.
"How the hell could you have possibly known that, hmmm?"
She just laughed into her hand a little at his wide eye—she could only see the one, after all.
"Well, I am a medic-nin, and human bodies, no matter how burnt or destroyed, always leave a trace, especially a ninja's body. When ninja die, the core of their chakra is burnt out and distributed to the natural world, so people who are sensitive to chakra, people like me, can feel that alien chakra assimilating into natural chakra. Anyways, I was in a small town close to where you 'exploded' when all this went down. I was looking for 'the little Uchiha shit' you were fighting. So, naturally, I went looking when that bomb went off because it was massive as hell, and I figured that Sasuke was probably involved in something like that because he can't seem to stay out of trouble. When I got there, I found a smoking crater and several destroyed trees but no bodies. I could sense the chakra from the fight, though, and your Akatsuki ring was sitting conveniently—half-mangled, I might add—in the center of the crater. When other people started to get there, namely my teammates, they just assumed that you had blown yourself up. I didn't bother to correct them. We weren't looking for you. We were looking for Sasuke. And since his remains weren't barbequing there, I didn't say anything."
He didn't have a very good reply to all that, so he settled for, "Hm, thanks I guess."
She waved her hand at him. "No big deal. Thanks for not making me feel like an ass for not telling anyone."
He knew she meant 'thanks for not blowing up anything/anyone important.'
"That would have been counterproductive," he explained with a smirk. She chuckled a little.
"Too true."
They sat and talked for quite a while more with only the river as the barrier between them. The sun set sometime between her pushing her fingers into the mud and him attempting to splash her with water.
When she saw the lengthening shadows, she rolled her shoulders and began to set up a small camp. He blinked at her and tilted his head to the side.
"Whatcha doing, hm?" he asked casually. He could see perfectly well what she was doing, but he wanted her to confirm it, to say the words.
"I'm making a camp for the night. No point in trying to find a better place to stay. I doubt it'll rain anyways," she answered, glancing up at the sky to confirm her guess. Then, she suddenly looked down and fiddled with the zipper on her sleeping bag. "You could join me if you wanted."
He blinked again before quickly standing up. She looked up at him in surprise and a tinge of disappointment. She thought he was leaving, or that was what he assumed anyways.
"I'll get some firewood, hm," he stated firmly before turning into the woods behind him.
He came back not long after with an armful of wood. She was laying on top of her sleeping bag, looking up at the stars, her hair surrounding her head in a quiet circle.
Pushing chakra into his heels, he walked across the river and stood staring down at her. She adjusted her view from the stars to his face and smiled at him, which looked far more natural than the smirk. Finally, she sat up and pulled herself to her feet.
"Here, I'll help." She took some firewood from his hands, and they worked together to create a fire pit and a small cooking fire. She heated up some rations for both of them, and they ate in companionable silence. When the time came for sleep, their sleeping bags sat on either end of the fire. Neither offered to keep watch because neither thought they needed one. Both of them were capable of sensing chakra from a good distance.
As they lay with their eyes closed, attempting sleep, she spoke.
"Thanks for talking to me."
He could hear gratitude for more than that in her voice, but he didn't mention it. He knew she wouldn't want him to. This moment was meant to be uncomplicated.
"You're welcome, hm. Thanks. For the same thing, I mean. I deserve it less."
He didn't deserve a great many things, though he rarely admitted it. However, this moment impelled him to say it, to open himself to her in one more way. He heard her shift in her sleeping bag, the fabric rubbing against her legs.
"Most people deserve someone to talk to, yourself included. Solitude doesn't become you." She said it like she was telling him pink didn't match his skin tone, but his breath caught nonetheless. Because she also said it like she believed it, and no one had believed it ever. Just her.
With those words, her breathing evened out and he knew she was asleep. He opened his eyes and stared at the same sky she had been admiring not long ago, and he felt content for their conversation and for the fact that they hadn't used their names since their initial greeting so they couldn't hear the weight behind them.
With those thoughts, he fell asleep.
In the morning, she was gone with only a small slip of paper resting on some food rations, promising 'I'll find you again.'
And she did, though it didn't happen until three months after those moments by the river.
One moment he was walking through a forest close to the western border of Fire Country—he had been sticking just a little too close to Fire in hopes of seeing her—then the next he could feel her. Her chakra pulsed around him and danced like a heartbeat—thump, thump—under his skin, making his toes curl in anticipation.
Then he could see her, approaching just as slowly.
When they could each make out the distinct facial features of the other, she offered a small smile. She pulled a thin, long box from a pouch on her pack. He furrowed his eyebrows.
"What's that?" As far as first lines go, this was not his best, but it was honest. He could have asked what she had been doing, how Konoha was, how her friends were, why she hadn't come sooner. But he didn't think it was appropriate.
Her smile widened.
"These are sparklers, and while they don't make much noise, I thought you would still appreciate their symbolism," she said as she shook out an equally long, thin stick. From the rattling in the box, he could tell that there were countless more like it.
"What do they do, hm? Where'd you get 'em?" he asked in rapid succession, afraid the second question wouldn't come out if he didn't say it quickly.
She looked up from where she was fiddling with the box, "Hm? Oh, well, I got them from Konoha's Founding Day celebration. And seriously? You've never seen a sparkler?" Her eyes said that this was a crime worse than defeating the Kazekage. When he didn't do much more than shrug, her eyes lit up in excitement, presumably from being able to show him something new.
"Well, watch and learn, my pupil." This teasing and easy friendliness was very new and very different, but not unwelcome, and he moved closer to her.
She pulled a lighter from her pouch—he didn't ask why she didn't use fire ninjutsu—and ignited the thicker end. Immediately, small stars of light and fire began to sizzle and drop from it, and it hissed in her fingers as it slowly grew smaller. He didn't find it all that impressive, though he could see where it had gotten its name.
Then she motioned him to move away from her. He complied. And she began to spin with it, moving it up and down, and the light created this beautiful glowing afterimage that trailed in its wake, disappearing almost as quickly as it came to life. And he was impressed.
The sparkler gave one last fizzing hiss and died. He stood staring at it, at her.
She got a little sheepish and turned away just slightly.
"So, I had this idea." She spoke softly, her voice creating waves in his mind like those made by the glowing sparkler.
"Yeah?"
Instead of responding, she shoved a sparkler into his hands and pulled one for herself. He gripped it tightly in his hand while she lit it.
When hers was dropping stars like his, she motioned for him to watch. Then, in perfect kanji, she traced the characters of her name in the air. They disappeared as soon as they were created.
And he understood.
And he did the same.
And they stood there and wrote characters and words and phrases and sentences that were as ethereal as everything.
So when she wrote in the air Deidara Formerly of the Akatsuki and smiled at him, he wrote Haruno Sakura and smiled back.
More Authorial Blither: I intended this as a One-Shot because, as people who have read my work can attest, I have difficulties in finishing projects. However, this will be upgraded to a Two Shot. Because that's as much as I can write before mysteriously disappearing from a story.