Broken.
Everything was broken. His body, his pride, his art. Just... broken.
His body was experiencing an unrelenting pain, one that was sure to leave more scars than the blond could count, if he somehow survived.
He didn't want too, though. He wanted to die, to go out with that blast he had ranted on and on about so many times to unhearing ears. To be free of the pain, the hurt, hatred. To become his art, to become one with the Earth, to die at his own hands. Death was the only escape, and it was so close.
But he knew when he heard those footsteps he was going to live. That the owner of the noise would still save him despite his obvious efforts to kill himself in the huge explosion created to destroy everything and everyone within a 10 kilometer radius. He had succeeded, yes, but there was one survivor. Himself.
The situation was anything but humorous, yet Deidara found himself caught in a bought of hysterical, psychotic laughter, struggling to breath. It was helpless laughter, fake and hollow against the chirping of birds and the sounds of the forest.
He wasn't art. He wasn't special. He wasn't dead.
So he laughed, because all of it was funny. He was just Deidara, some Iwagakure ex-shinobi that liked to blow shit up and call it art. But how did he ever consider it art, even for a second? Its beauty was worthless, unable to kill even its creator. And if something didn't even have the worth to do what it was born to do, what was the point in its existence? What was the point in his existence? Nothing he ever did mattered, anyway.
He laughed because he was constantly being proved wrong. Sasori, telling him that art would never be fleeting, it would never only last for a mere moment, and vanish as quickly as it had been born. Art was meant to be eternal, to last as long as possible. He was wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. A word too familiar for comfort.
He laughed because it hurt. Reality's a bitch, they say, and it came right back to bite Deidara in the ass. He had been prepared to die, yet death had avoided him. Avoided the fate his art had been born to create.
Laughter was the only option. He couldn't cry. That was weak, shameful. It would just continue to jump around on the bits and pieces of his shattered dignity, burying it into the dirt, never to be found again. So he laughed, because that's all his body would allow him to do.
And laughed, and laughed, and laughed.
Until a hand made contact with his face. Gentle, soft, yet hard and fiberous against his skin, like sanded wood. And that's exactly what it was. His laughter ceased, his face going limp and forming an expression similar to that of shock or hysteria. Deidara's vision blurred before he could make out a face, a horrible red flooding his eyes. But the smell of the shinobi kneeling down next to him was too familiar to forget. The color of his messy red hair. The touch of his reassuring hand against his charred, fleshy cheek. Strangled sobbing was evident, yet no tears fell onto his face where they should.
Sasori.
And suddenly, he wanted to live.