Deidara felt the vibration in the ground just before the subterranean bomb went off. He opened his mouth to warn Sasori, but it was too late.
The explosion knocked Deidara off his feet. He sailed backward through the air, hit the ground with a bone-jarring thud, skidded several yards and sat up, dizzy. The aftermath of the brilliant flash still lingered on his retinas, blinding him.
After a moment, his vision cleared, and his gaze focused on a small, pale hand. It lay near his feet, motionless, the palm upturned, the fingers curled, revealing the painted nails. Sasori's hand…but it ended at the wrist.
Shit.
Deidara leaped to his feet. "Danna!" He looked around, breathing hard, and his stomach sank as he saw more pieces of his partner scattered across the ground. "Oh shit…" He picked up Sasori's hand, grabbed something nearby that might have been part of his shoulder, then spotted half a face—like a broken mask—laying a few yards away. He picked it up, his throat knotted.
The heart, where was the heart?
After a few more minutes of searching, he spotted it: a dark cylinder on the rocky ground next to the massive pit where the bomb had detonated. Small, dark wires—or were they veins?—poked out from the surface.
Deidara dropped all the other pieces he'd been carrying—it wasn't like they'd do him much good now anyway—and ran toward the heart. The back of his neck prickled, and he whirled around to see a kunai flying toward him.
Deidara drew his own kunai and threw it. The two knives met in midair with a clang, deflecting each other. All around him, ninja leaped out from behind outcrops and boulders.
"I don't have time to play with you bastards." Teeth gritted, Deidara plunged his hands into the clay pouches at his hips. He scattered clay spiders across the ground; a sign activated the jutsu, and the spiders scurried toward his enemies. One by one, the clay bombs detonated. Screams pierced the air, and blood spattered the rocks.
Once he was sure all the enemy ninja had been killed, Deidara crouched and gently, carefully picked up Sasori's flesh core. It pulsed in his hand.
He had to get back to the base. Soon.
Deidara thrust one hand into his pouch. The mouth in his palm opened, chewed up a wad of clay, and spat a tiny white bird onto the ground. A poof of smoke filled the air, and when it cleared, a bird twice his own size stood in front of him. Deidara hopped onto its back, and the bird took flight. "It's okay, Sasori no Danna," Deidara murmured. "I've got you. We'll be back soon." Could Sasori even hear him? Probably not. He'd said his mind was inside this thing, but still, it didn't have ears or eyes. Sasori probably had no idea what was going on, if he was even conscious.
Deidara cradled the cylinder against his chest. He wished Sasori had given him more detailed instructions about what to do in this situation. Did the core need to be kept warm? Just in case, he wrapped it in his cloak, protecting it from the wind. His fingers tightened around the small bundle, holding Sasori's heart close to his own. He looked down at it, and a strange feeling washed over him.
He held Sasori's innermost self in his hands—his vulnerable little center, with all its hard protective layers stripped away. It was so small, so warm. Like holding a tiny animal.
How strange, seeing him like this. Sasori was always in control, always on top of things. Deidara was supposed to be the bumbling one, the one who needed rescuing. He'd never expected to be in this position. If Sasori died…
His chest tightened with panic at the thought. He wouldn't, couldn't let that happen.
"You're my friend," he whispered. Even knowing Sasori couldn't hear him, he had to say it at least once. "You're the only friend I've ever had. I won't let you die."
Sasori hovered in darkness and silence.
He was restless. He was angry at himself for falling into a simple trap. Most of all, though, he was bored. In this condition, there was nothing he could do except wait and hope that brat remembered his instructions. So he waited.
Sasori hated waiting. It was even worse without the distractions of sight and sound. In the darkness, time had no meaning. Each minute stretched into an eternity, and he found his thoughts drifting back…back into the past, where he didn't want to go. Back to his home in Suna.
A little boy stands in his room, looking out the window, waiting for the sight of a man with red hair, a pretty brown-haired woman. He sees two people walking down the street. His heartbeat quickens and his stomach fills with a swarm of butterflies—It's them! Surely, this time…
But it is not them. The strangers' faces come into focus, and his heart sinks. But they will come back soon, surely. He thinks longingly about their warm arms around him, closes his eyes and tries to summon them with his desire alone…
Sasori pushed the memory away. He wasn't that little boy anymore.
Yet somehow, now, he found himself falling deeper and deeper into the pit of memory, with no sensory perception to grab hold of, nothing to anchor him to the present.
A little boy lays awake at night, gazing at the framed pictures next to his bed. His chest aches. Chiyo-baachan has told him his parents will come back—all he has to do is wait—but he is tired of waiting, and he wonders, at times…what if they don't come back? What if he'll be alone forever? He begins to cry, muffling his sobs against the pillow…
Why was he thinking about this now? He didn't need love. He'd transformed himself into a perfect, self-sufficient being. He was…
Alone.
He'd been alone for most of his life, of course. He should be used to it. Yet now, loneliness pierced him like a blade. He felt as he had so many nights when he was a child, longing for his parents, laying awake in bed and thinking about the day when they'd all be together again—a time which seemed to never draw nearer, but to recede further and further into the future with each passing day.
It was so dark, this sealed-off space within his own heart. So empty. His memories loomed over him and surrounded him, threatening to eat him alive.
"Sasori…I…I must tell you something."
"What is it, Chiyo-baachan?"
"Your parents…are not coming home."
"Wh-what do you mean?"
"They…they are no longer in the land of the living. They have been dead these past three years. I am so sorry. I know I should have told you, but I couldn't. I…Sasori? Look at me, please."
"You—you lied to me. You told me they were coming back."
"I know it was wrong to keep it from you. But I…"
"Leave me alone!"
He remembered—how he'd run crying from her, flung himself face down on his bed, and sobbed, feeling betrayed, empty, lost, feeling as if his entire world had just collapsed.
And the memories kept coming, like a rain of blows that wouldn't stop.
A boy standing over his parents' graves, tears coursing down his face…kneeling, embracing his mother's gravestone, his cheek pressed against cold stone as he cried, wanting them with all his being, wanting their comfort, their love.
But they can never comfort him again. They are dead, rotting, like everything rots and dies—those warm arms that once held him close, now cold and maggot-eaten, the flesh decaying from faces never to smile again…
No, no. He tried to push the memory away. Meaningless. What was love, anyway? Just another animal need, no different than the need to eat or piss or fuck. He'd left all that behind.
Yes, whispered a voice in his mind—his own voice. You ran away from it. Ran away from other people. You retreated deeper and deeper into the private world of your puppets, your art. They became your friends, those puppets—because they were safe. Because they couldn't lie or die or hurt you. You spent your adolescence buried in your workshop, perfecting your marvelous weapons, caressing them as a lover would. You learned the secret of making human remains into puppets to preserve their skills and beauty forever. And then a wonderful thought occurred to you: What if you could become a puppet yourself? It sounded so attractive. No death, no pain, no aging…and the loss of your humanity was a small price to pay. You didn't want to sleep anymore, because you had bad dreams. You didn't want to eat, because food had lost its taste. You didn't want to hold or be held, because touch brought the potential for pain.
Now he didn't sleep, didn't eat, didn't feel.
Yet he was afraid. For the first time in years, perhaps decades, he felt the icy sting of fear: fear that he was dead already and this was hell, fear that he'd be trapped here forever in his own memories, his own consciousness, never to touch another person again, never to hear another voice, never to be held.
Hell wasn't hot, after all. It wasn't even cold. It was…nothing. A place of waiting—eternal waiting, with no end in sight, no comfort, no hope of escape or rescue. Just this unbearable stillness--a fate worse than any torture he could conceive of.
Sasori clung desperately to reason. He was conscious. That meant he was alive, that his flesh core was intact. Deidara would bring him back. He'd be fine. There was no hell, no afterlife. Wasn't that why he'd become so obsessed with immortality?
But what if he'd been wrong?
This…this was absurd. He was Sasori—immortal, untouchable, powerful, feared and respected. He'd survived countless battles. He was a hardened shinobi.
Why, now, did his soul tremble?
Despite all his efforts to silence it, his heart cried out with the voice of his child-self: Someone help me! Please, I don't want to die. I don't want to be alone. Kaa-san…Tou-san, where are you? Chiyo-baachan…are you there? I'm sorry I left. Do you still love me? I'm sorry for everything. Let me take it back. Let me be a child again. Let me love and be loved. Deidara…Deidara, are you there? Help me! Help me…
Even in flight, it took over eight hours to get back to their hideout. At last, Deidara spotted it below—a dun-colored building, mostly hidden by the rocks and trees around it—and swooped down. He hopped off the clay bird, ran inside, down the hall, to Sasori's workshop. He grabbed one of the spare bodies hanging from a hook on the back wall and lay it down on the work table. The body looked identical to Sasori's, lacking only the eyes and the cylinder in its chest.
Holding his breath, Deidara bent over the motionless body and slowly, carefully slid the cylinder into the round hole.
A moment passed. Then eyes appeared in the puppet's empty holes and blinked up at him. "Deidara," Sasori whispered.
"Oh, thank God," Deidara said. "I was afraid I might be too late. I—"
Sasori flung his arms around Deidara and hugged him tight, face pressed against his chest.
Deidara froze, stunned. Sasori rarely touched him, except to smack him with his tail or slam him against the nearest solid surface when Deidara was getting on his nerves. The last thing he'd expected was…this. Cautiously, gently, Deidara hugged him back. "Hey…danna…you okay?"
Sasori trembled against him. "I had to wait in the dark," he whispered. "I hate waiting."
"Sorry. I came back as fast as I could." Deidara lay a hand on that vivid, sunset-red hair and stroked it. It was as soft as he'd always imagined. "It's all over now. Everything's fine."
Sasori clung to him a moment longer. Then he took a deep breath, released him and averted his gaze. His fingers clenched and unclenched. "My robes," he murmured, "bring me my robes."
"They kind of blew up, un."
"There's a spare in my bedroom closet."
Deidara fetched a robe. Sasori grabbed it, turned away and hastily slipped it on. He still wouldn't meet Deidara's gaze. He looked uncharacteristically subdued, almost sheepish. Then he glared at Deidara over one shoulder. "If you breathe a word about this to anyone, I'll kill you."
"About what?"
"You know what I'm talking about. Don't make me spell it out."
"Oh, un…hugging me, you mean? Sure, un. I won't tell anyone. Why would I?"
"The rest of Akatsuki would get a good laugh out of it, I suppose. Who could blame them? It's absurd. The great Sasori, breaking down like a frightened child…"
"It's really not that big a deal." In all their two years together, Deidara had never seen Sasori so embarrassed. If the puppet master were capable of it, he'd probably be blushing. "Do you need anything?"
"No." Sasori turned away, shielding his eyes with one hand. He sat on the edge of the work table, his shoulders tense beneath his robes. "How did they know we were coming?"
"Who?"
"The Iwagakure ninja, of course. They must have set that trap for us." He stood and began to pace. Then he walked out of the room, through the front door.
Deidara followed him outside as Sasori muttered to himself under his breath: "Paper bombs hidden beneath the soil…deceptively simple. Were they observing us from a distance, ready to set it off as soon as we approached?" He shot a glare at Deidara. "Well? Were they? You're the explosives expert."
"Un…I don't know. It's possible."
"I need to go gather up Hiruko's pieces. He was demolished in the explosion, wasn't he?"
"Yeah, but…gathering up the pieces would like all day, and there's no way you'd be able to put him back together…"
"Don't tell me what I can and cannot do, brat. Hiruko is my favorite. I'm not going to leave him in fragments on the ground."
"Well, okay, un. Let's go."
Sasori shook his head. "I want to do this alone. Lend me one of your clay birds." It wasn't a request; Sasori's tone made that clear.
Deidara handed him a clay figurine. "Just be careful not to get blown up again. Please?"
"This time I'll be ready. I won't make the same mistake twice."
Deidara nodded and made a hand sign. With a poof, the tiny figurine became a huge bird, and Sasori climbed on. Deidara watched him fly away, dwindle to a tiny speck in the sky, and disappear.
-To be continued