And turn and go up to the open door boldly, and knock to the echoes as beggars for roses.
A night in one of Deidara's long travels across the continents, he stops over Suna. There are still construction sites on where he last exploded the place, from capturing the Jinchuuriki. He's careful to use a jutsu to conceal his presence – last he heard, the Kazekage had been resurrected, now alive and well. The clay bird where he is flies over the streets, quiet and invisible. He's not here for a mission, just for curiosity.
He stops over one of the many windows of the Kazekage's palatial abode. If the rumors and reports can be trusted, he'll find what he's looking for in this particular room.
He steps into the dark room of Kankuro's work shop. Pieces of metal and wood are scattered all over, tools in disarray on a shelf. It is a welcome difference from the eerie cave where Sasori does his work.
It's silent, with only insentient eyes and deaf ears to greet him in the dark. On one long table, there's the puppet face who once had been the Third Kazekage, Sasori's favorite among his collection. So far, only the face and torso has been reconstructed, but Deidara doubts this will be used again for battle. The secrets of hitokugutsu had died with Sasori, never to be known or used again. But this is not what Deidara had sneaked in to see.
He saw it sitting on the chair, clothed in old-style Suna garb of a dark green high-collared robe that reached the floor and covered his arms. Scorpion. It regarded Deidara coolly with dead eyes. From its position, the Scorpion puppet seemed to contemplate the broken remains of the Third Kazekage.
Deidara takes a seat on an empty chair beside it.
This is the puppet body of the Sasori he knew. Those hands placed on the table, as if lightly grasping something fragile and invisible. It had always amazed Deidara how Sasori made this body look so human. The skin is made of some soft resin to imitate real flesh. Those hands look soft to the touch, slender fingers the texture of candles tapering to waxy nails. Delicate and almost-there green veins just underneath the epidermis... they don't look like hands of a shinobi.
Slowly, he touches both of those hands and covers them in his own tanned, callused ones. The closed lips of his palms brush Sasori's knuckles. He's never touched Sasori like this, in life. A cold breeze rushes in the room, making the puppet's red hair move ever so slightly. Deidara proceeds to brush a finger on Sasori's cheek – there are lines running from the edges of the lips to his jaws and chin, no doubt a change made by Kankuro.
It reminds him that the body he's touching is simply another of Sasori's hundreds of puppets. It is no longer him. He's touching something not quite a corpse, but a shell or vessel.
Scorpion does not move. It neither accepts nor denies the touch.
Deidara hears the sound of conversation and rustling footsteps outside. He squeezed Sasori's hands in his own and imagines that the lifeless thing held on. He relaxes his grip and the hands fall slowly back to the table. One last good look at the puppet who had once been Sasori (just a moment to sustain me, its enough), and he walks to the window and leaps to the clay bird waiting.
Just as the door opened, the wings flapped silently and Deidara flies on. There's a mission in another country to attend to, tomorrow.
~oOo~
AN: This is loosely inspired by Caitlin R. Kiernan's "Ode to Katan Amano", it's a podcast of a short story, and has a good description of an abandoned puppeteer's workshop. It's better than this. Seriously, search for it. I listened and thought, 'This is so Sasori'.