Genre: Gen
Warnings: G
Fandom: Naruto.
Notes: Sasori and Deidara, in Suna. Old fic is very, very old. I think when I wrote this I was still uncertain whether Deidara's scope could actually be removed; that or I just thought it would be very awesome if it was really kind of grafted to his head. At any rate, here it is.
Deidara hates the land of sand the moment he sets foot in it: the featureless dunes, the grit that homesteads in his eyes, his nose, the back of his throat. No wonder danna killed everyone and got out, he thinks. I'd start raving here too.
His scope is usually so lovely and dependable. It glides along like an eel in the rocks, telling him things. The first time the grit clogs it up and plunges one hemisphere of vision into darkness Deidara is so shocked he thinks he has died. Is dying. Is under attack and has failed to realize it. Sasori has to stop him from hurtling off on a clay bird. He makes Deidara sit still, and opens up half of Deidara's head and tinkers. Patiently, he wipes everything down until it all meshes again.
"You must take better care of things in the desert, idiot," he says, in the same long-suffering desiccated tone he always uses when he thinks Deidara has been particularly stupid. "Suna is not like other countries. Suna is only indifferent to its ninja. It does not love them."
Sasori has performed meticulous maintenance or Hiruko morning and night since they entered his homeland. Deidara was never to Suna as a loyal Iwa-nin, and in his partnership with Sasori they have avoided the place. Watching his clay birds sweep into the sunset gives Deidara a new angle on his partner: humans are as small as fleas here. As insignificant. They eke out lives like lichen stippled on a rock.
It must have been easy to want immortality here. In this place where every growth is paid for with gallons of blood, swollen eyes, blisters and scabs and peeling sunburned skin. So that even now in his life-without-life Sasori thirsts. The desert is still with him, inside.