What Deidara didn't tell Tobi

Part 2

(corresponds to chapter 6 of Sculpting for Dummies)

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Deidara didn't tell Tobi that the end of his old dream and the beginning of the new was one and the same. He didn't mention what the girl in the orphanage had told him about 'paradise', or how he'd discovered clay explosives.

A little redhead girl, who wasn't more than four at the time, was the one who told him the story. Another orphan had been teasing Deidara about his missing father, and Deidara had hit him and ran off to hide in the backyard of the orphanage. The little girl had been there, and asked if Deidara's parents were in the same place hers were.

"Mine are dead," he'd told her. She'd frowned.

"Oh," she'd said.

"If yours aren't, why are you here?" Deidara asked her.

"Because they live far away, up in the clouds," she'd explained. "I can't wait to go live with them. It's perfect there. There's lots of food, and everyone gets new shoes, not yucky old ones, and all the kids have parents."

Deidara, enticed by the picture she painted, asked, "How do you get there?"

"I don't know. But it's in the clouds. When I find out, I'll bring you with me," she promised.

The redhead girl never took Deidara up to the clouds. She decided not to follow the shinobi lifestyle, and she'd been sent to a weapons factory. None of the other orphans ever saw her again.

Every day after that, Deidara spent hours looking up at the sky as he molded his clay, desperate to catch a glimpse of the village hidden up there. He longed for wings to fly up there, to escape his miserable life and start again with plenty of food and new shoes and a family. He made sculptures of birds and put a tiny clay figurine on their backs, and willed them to fly.

When he started learning how to access his chakra in Academy, he managed to make a clay bird's wing twitch, then finally flap. Before long, he could manage to animate the whole thing. He showed the jutsu to his sensei, who said it was useless. His sensei smashed the writhing bird, and Deidara didn't show him any more of his artwork.

He managed to make the clay expand a week before his class's graduation. He willed the clay to spread itself out, to become bigger, until his clay bird was larger than his body. It took a bit of manipulation until he could find a form that could support his weight, but it was worth it. He took a test flight over a rocky cliff, but decided to wait until after graduation before he attempted any great journey on his clay creation.

Two days before graduation, Deidara stole a peek at the sensei's grade book and realized he wasn't going to pass. In his despair, he left the Academy building, molded another bird, and flew up into the sky. He hated his world on the ground, so he'd find somewhere better.

As he flew further and further up away from Iwagakure, the air became colder and the blond had to take deeper breaths to fill his lungs with air. He ignored the discomfort and concentrated on the flapping of his giant bird's wings. The evening sky was clear, and all he could see was navy blue in every direction.

His deep breaths became gasps. The soft, pliant clay of his bird became hard, and tiny crystals of ice formed on the surface. The movement of the wings slowed and the clay around the joints began to crack. Deidara's vision swam, and it was all he could do to fall down onto the bird and hold on for dear life as it plummeted.

The animated bird saved his life. As it neared the ground, the ice on the wings melted enough for the stored chakra in the wings to make them flap. It slowed the fall enough that Deidara, cushioned by clay, survived with nothing more serious than bruised ribs and a shattered dream.

When he could stand up, Deidara kicked the now-mangled bird. The half-hardened clay hurt his toes, and he sat down and cried. There was no hope left in Iwagakure; he'd fail the final exam and be sent to the mines or forced to become a full time whore. There was no perfect village in the clouds to run to. There was no where in the whole damned world that wanted Deidara. So the little blond orphan sat down beside his great work of art, the mangled bird that he'd hoped would carry him to his dreams, and howled to the sky.

When his tears were spent, Deidara's despair morphed into anger. His clay bird had failed him, and he directed every bit of bitterness and disappointment he had into it. As he placed his hands on the misshapen figure, his turbulent emotions carried his chakra along with it. Without seeking to do so, Deidara filled up his artwork with enough energy to make it combust. It flapped its wings with the power Deidara had given it, and before it made it twenty feet into the air, it exploded.

It was beautiful.

The bird had made Deidara unhappy, and he had destroyed it. It was gone and Deidara was still here, and that explosion had made it possible. There was no one else around to witness it. The entire event, the magnificent flash and the echoing noise and the brief warmth on his skin, belonged to him alone. It was the only thing he'd ever owned that no one could take from them.

The explosions were addictive after that. He spent the rest of that night right where he'd fallen, sculpting tiny clay figures that he animated and destroyed. He didn't work, didn't study, didn't eat, didn't sleep, yet he'd never felt so energized or alive. This was all he needed. He no longer felt hunger or cold. All he wanted was to make a bigger explosion, hear a louder noise, make a larger impact that no one would be able to deny was his.

He would find a way to pass his final exam, he swore. Then he'd be assigned a real sensei, a jounin who could help him achieve a more perfect control of his chakra and therefore create a better explosion.

Deidara stood up and brushed off his despair as he dusted the dirt off of his pants. He would strive to improve his explosions no matter what. And when he reached the point where there was nothing left to improve, he'd die. In the time between the fall and the explosion, he'd witnessed the horror that life could be without a dream. He swore that he'd never let himself reach that state again.

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