Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I do not own Naruto or any of its affiliations…I am merely borrowing its characters and settings to indulge my own fantasies and then share said fantasies with other people who equally do not own Naruto. I am not making any profit off this.

O O O

Bleeding from your head, you should pull it out instead

O O O

Deidara had been on the same precipice before; the moment when he saw all that he could do – appreciated the power he had at his fingertips – the moment when he had been left with a choice.

Only this time, standing at that same precipice, it was Sakura who had the choice. In the next few hours, days, months, however long it took, she would eventually have to make a decision. He wondered what she would think about her potential, what she would decide regarding her ability. But at the moment, there were other, smaller, steps for her to take first.

Getting her hand out of Utsumino Shinju's ribcage was probably the place to start.

Deidara had been a step away when she had done it, he had heard the sound it made, had felt the exhalation Utsumino made at the impact, had smelled the ozone of his lightning as it ran through his sword and died away. Deidara had yelled for Sakura, thinking the sword that hit her had stabbed through her, but Utsumino had never intended for such a thing to happen. He had probably thought to spare the kid from the fight; a minimal jolt to her system to take her out of the equation.

And now the man was dead with a crater in his chest. A fucking crater.

Shit.

Sakura's train of thought – if he had to guess – was probably stuck on how her first kill was unintentional, completely unexpected, and perversely out of place. How many ways could he think to say it? Plain truth, it was a surprise even to him that the man was dead and it hadn't been exactly necessary in the strictest sense. Deidara wondered if it felt wasteful to her – he wondered how she saw the precipice.

He knelt down at his student's side, ignoring the wails of their target, Mitsuru, and wrapped his hand around Sakura's right arm. He was going to have to remove it from the body for her.

"No!" Sakura curled away, prying off his hand. She was crying, dry heaving, choking on the weight around her. "No!"

He cursed, internally and without any heat. If they didn't haul ass they were going to be swarmed by hired thugs sent to check out the explosions. They would be identified as Iwa nin.

Hell. He was going to have to knock her out, wasn't he?

"You..."

"No," she repeated, glaring, not at him, but at some indistinguishable spot on the floor. Her voice was rough from a tight throat, swollen from her cries. "No. I can do it."

Mitsuru leaned from the pillar he had halfway collapsed against, making as if to run for it.

Deidara threw a kunai at the boy, trapping him in place by the scruff of his shirt. He scowled, pointing at the brat and silently daring him to make another move.

"Sensei...I can't..." Sakura was pulling at her arm, trying to shift out from under the swordsman. "I c-can't do it. Sensei..."

"Together, yeah?" Deidara replaced his grip on her arm, used his shoulder to push most of the weight from her. There was the unpleasant sound of her arm coming free and several other things falling out with it. He didn't let her stay to contemplate those things before he was wrapping an arm around her and lifting her to her feet. "You can walk, okay, you have to walk."

She didn't seem sure that she could, but she bobbed her head. She would try.

"Watch the brat." More nodding of her chin, making him smile though he felt no humour. Deidara returned to the body of the missing-nin. The man had a rather nice expression on his face and from up close he looked younger than he had first appeared. Deidara placed some clay on his hollowed chest.

He would detonate it when they were outside. Just enough to make the kill hit harder to surmise.

Deidara found his discarded cloak and replaced it over his shoulders, then stomped over to the boy, who tried to slink out of reach and failed, and jabbed at the back of his scrawny neck. Slipping the thin figure over his shoulder with his good arm, he spun back around and headed for the staircase. Speaking to his student, "you up for sneaking past a few more bastards?"

Sakura mimed 'yes,' her face wet and eyes averted. Gently, he cupped her chin and made her look at him. "Let's get home, yeah?"

He cleared the way out for them. It was still during the slow hours of the day and the establishment above had emptied out because of the brawl below. The remaining inquisitive bouncers were dealt with by way of kicks to the groins and knees to their faces. No one said escaping had to be fancy, just effective; as long as any witnesses couldn't say for certain that it had been an Iwa nin to drop them.

Afternoon rain greeted them in the street. There were people out, but their eyes were unfocused, inebriated, hungry, tired, lost. But there were other eyes he couldn't see, ones that would discern his and Sakura's profession merely from how they looked, moved. Possibly also from how Deidara carried a nearly full grown human with ease. Time to make themselves scarce before word got back to the city's 'management.' He had never valued discretion so much as he did in that moment, carrying Mitsuru across his shoulders and having to keep himself from grabbing at his student's blood drenched hand.

Outside the city limits there was a rendezvous point with Mitsuru's family retainers. From there he and Sakura would be free to go on their own – well in a way – debriefing was expected in the Tsuchikage's Office by the next morning. Looking to his side where Sakura shadowed him, he debated whether or not to report straight away or to put it off until after they had some rest.

Shit. She had killed someone; really, truly ended their life. Shit.

Oh but fuck had it been so beautiful. The raw power, the suddenness of the act!

Shit, don't stare at her if you're going to grin dumbass. As conflicted as he was over the urge to hold her and be supportive or shake her with maniacal glee and congratulations – his student was in a decidedly different conflict of her own. She was in a delicate place – psychologically. Kami. Good thing he had come to peace with his own psychological leanings long ago. No sense to interfere with hers though. It was her own precipice to handle. He had only the responsibility to make sure she didn't fall from it.

Which way would she go? Would she accept it, embrace it, or run from it?

His thoughts went away with ideas, his own hopes and worries, as they ran through puddles and shouldered their burdens.

The rendezvous point. Deidara shifted Mitsuru, bogged down with unconsciousness and rain, and knocked on the door of the building. A tea shop, closed down for business, but there were two people inside. A moment passed in which the two retainers established their identity, then the door was open and the boy was taken from Deidara's shoulders.

"I don't want to see that little shit ever again."

He didn't wait to hear the forced, polite thanks, turning away to find a place where Sakura could try and scrape off the various things staining her body. That was the second step in the ritual; cleaning your body of the act. Forgoing using the tea shop, he took Sakura to a well and pump along the road back to Iwa. She stood staring, uncomprehending, at the pump. Her tears had stopped but her mind was stuck back in the basement.

"What will happen to his body?"

Deidara shifted. He didn't really want to have this conversation but his student needed it. "When the rain stops I have to send notice back to Iwa. Either Iwa ANBU will collect him, or if they're worth shit, Kirigakure will have Hunter Nin looking for him already. Depends on who he was and what the priority is in their village, yeah."

Sakura's face was blank, eyes elsewhere. Her voice trembled even though she tried to stop it. "But what will happen to him?"

"The body will go through autopsy, disposal. As for anything else..." He didn't know what to say to her. Everyone had their own conception of that matter concerning after death.

She didn't react; he didn't know if his words had satisfied her, it wasn't like they meant much to him. She looked...vacant. He wished he had soap to offer her. Something to scrub with. She finally turned to the pump and used her fingernails.

They walked back to Iwa and the rain didn't cease. Harder to see that she was crying, but he heard it in her shallow, irregular breaths.

Hours into the return trip, Deidara tensed the second before an ANBU dropped into the path. Recognising what the ANBU was there for, he gave the phantom nin the name of the strip club and confirmed the dead man's identity. The ANBU disappeared.

Quiet minutes passed. Then, "why do you think Utsumino-san left Kirigakure?"

Because that village is a fucking depressing, artless dump? And why was it now 'Utsumino-san?'

"He probably had a conflict of interest with the village leadership. He might have committed crimes of some sort, yeah."

How could he know? Maybe the guy had tortured kittens or done something equally wicked back in Kiri and then Sakura could feel better about the whole thing.

"Deidara?"

"Hm?"

"...I don't want to die in an opium den."

Well, he could relate. And he wasn't going to allow such a thing to ever happen to her, she should know. "Utsumino died fighting. He took missions knowing the risk. And being a missing-nin is no comfortable existence. It was inevitable something of the sort would happen. He knew as much."

"Oh."

Hell, the guy was probably happy such a splendid end had found him. What a way to go! And from someone like Sakura as well. Not too bad, considering. Kind of thrilling, artistic in its own way. Not that Deidara could say as much to his student.

"Sprout," Deidara said, turning his head to see that she was paying attention. "I want to report that I was the one to kill Utsumino. Is that okay with you, yeah?"

It wasn't that he could erase the fact that she had made the kill, and he didn't want to do that to her, but he especially didn't want Iwa to know she was responsible. He didn't want them to know what her hands could do.

Oh but what they did! Shit, he was smiling again. He hid the impulsive reaction, knowing he couldn't be happy quite yet.

But later that night, standing before the Tsuchikage, it appeared that Oonoki-ojii-sama had no such reservations. It was just Deidara, the aids, and the guards in the room. Oonoki grinned at the news of Utsumino's demise. "Ha! For that dog to think he could come into this country and operate so flagrantly. HA! What a show it must have been! Ah, we should check the books to see how much he was worth, the lousy mutt."

Deidara was somewhat relieved Sakura wasn't around to hear the monetary break down on the value of a life. But maybe she needed to hear the reality of their situation as shinobi. Though, on the other hand, maybe it could wait.

As her jounin sensei, he thought it could wait.

She was out in the lobby when the debriefing concluded, sat on a chair and staring out the windows to Iwagakure in the thrall of a stormy night. Reflective of the sudden situation in which she found herself maybe.

"Sprout." There wasn't much else that needed to be said, if even that much. He just wanted to acknowledge her. They left the Tower, he got her something hot for dinner. Ramen. She stared at it for a long while not eating. Then she laughed and the laughter turned to hiccuping cries that she muffled into her palm. Deidara let her work herself out. What was he supposed to do? Lecture her about shinobi behaviour? It was a rare case when a shinobi started off emotionless, usually it was learned and this was part of that process.

He'd done pretty much the same thing, though, granted he had been younger at the time, but humans were much the same even at different ages when they faced such events. Nine, twelve or thirty – the first time someone dies by your hand – that was something to cry over. Not pretty, not cool, but...

Deidara was sort of relieved his student was no exception.

"You need to eat. It won't help, but you need to eat, yeah."

And because she was an ever acquiescing student, she did.

She took the forest canopy home, got back up on her own when she stumbled, she cleaned up properly in the bath, she got herself ready for sleep. Sakura could do the motions. Comb her wet hair, take out clothing for the next day, set her cloak and sandals to dry. She laid out her futon and sat down on it.

She could mimic the routine.

From his own room he watched her shadow on the shouji screen. She had been sitting up, head bowed down, and considering her lap while he had changed for sleep. Her elbows moved with the fidgeting of her hands. He could see her head was raised to look at the screen now.

"Sensei? Would you..." The shadow turned to look at the wall. He wondered if she was worrying her lip as she was wont to do when hesitating about something.

But then she got to her feet, he watched her leave her room, and then she was in his doorway. She didn't know how to ask him, though he knew what she wanted. He lifted the cover to his futon and she crawled under it, tucking in next to him.

"Thank you. I'm sorry for being..."

"You're not. You're fine, yeah." He couldn't listen to her apologise or deride herself over the kill. Over herself. She was a hand's reach away from him, but she must have felt an ocean apart; Deidara the sensei and seasoned killer, Sakura the emotional student. But even on their first day together he had never seen them as being so different. Despite her efforts to hide as much, she was vibrant – unpredictable – intrepid – Sakura was the things others would mock but he savoured.

She had just never had the right sort of encouragement. And he resolved not to fail her like others quite clearly had before him.

Deidara was grateful she had turned her back to him, it was easier for him to admit as much, "I like you more for being affected by it, yeah."

He had to almost whisper it in order to say it aloud.

Sakura didn't say anything in response and he had expected as much. It was her precipice, she didn't need to hear his shallow admission.

She wouldn't rest easily that night. So he told her about his time as a student under the Tsuchikage, the time he had been kicked out of a sculpture class, how he had tried to learn to play an instrument, how he had subsequently blown up said instrument in frustration and the funny noise it made when it went. He talked about all the things he could think of to keep her mind off what happened in the basement. Sleep took her sometime before dawn and he was there for her when shortly after the night terrors came.

O O O

Such a great sensei, doing good standing by his student when she stumbled after her first kill.

But shit was he not a person who could function well without any sleep. Sure, he could fake-function as well as any seasoned shinobi – it was just a huge pain in the ass. And fuck it, he'd burned the damn eggs again. Shit. Would it be an overreaction to blow up the kitchen because the damn eggs were being fucking pissants?

He decided on boiling the next batch of eggs and using the time it took for them to cook to work in his studio. A distraction from the impatience and short temper exasperated by lack of sleep.

His thoughts were on the fight from the day before and how much he needed that jutsu to help elevate his art. As fast as he was at sculpting his clay, it wasn't fast enough for practical use in a battle. Not when it was one-on-one and he had no time to shape the clay before a sword was stabbing at him. And if he had been outnumbered in the room?

He set out working on a counter to the seal on the secret techniques archive. When the time came, he would be prepared to steal the ninjutsu and leave Iwagakure for good. Each day he found less reasons to stay, and fighting Utsumino had knocked off a few more. He had learned everything the village was willing to offer. With a bastard superior jounin watching his every move and a decidedly luke-warm appreciation for his skills, there was little tethering him to his home town.

Looking after Sakura was about the last reason to stay.

Hell, agreeing to become a jounin sensei was in many ways such a pain in the ass. Why had Oonoki been so adamant he take the position? To keep him occupied and out of the way? Much good that will have done in the end, he thought.

But ultimately he did like having Sakura around. Seven more months? That was an awful long time. And yet, the progress they had made in her training so far was at such an exceptional rate and to end it prematurely would leave him, and her, unfulfilled. He could always... no, it wouldn't work. It could never work. He just needed to stick out the rest of the programme for her. Kami, what if he left her in Iwa alone and then she was assigned some boring, un-invested, neglectful asshole?

Or worse – Sato.

Not that that asshole had ever taught a genin team. Probably ate the one he was assigned.

The hypothetical situation made Deidara loath the man even more.

He spent time prepping clay and making little figurines he could delight in manipulating and then exploding until his student woke up.

Sakura slept through the morning and into the afternoon. When she finally made her way into the kitchen, Deidara had a meal prepared for her. She would need the energy. He'd finally come up with an idea for her ...recovery? Well, something for her to focus on while she sorted out what happened. She could be the type to wallow if not given another task.

"So for today," he started ever so slyly, paused to gauge her reaction, and seeing no immediate reason for retreat, continued, "I was thinking of a hike, yeah."

His student poked at the dish of eggs, rice, and vegetables. "Okay. What about warm ups?"

"Eh, turns out the hike might be the warm up."

"What happens after the hike?"

"I can't tell you, that would ruin the surprise." It was reassuring to him to see her features contort into her typical suspicious look, if toned down some, but it was a start.

"You should pack a change of clothes. And bring your cloak."

She actually raised an eyebrow at that. "How long will we be gone for?"

"It's not an overnight, yeah. Just – bring an extra set of clothes. Something warm."

They left sometime in the early afternoon, hiking while the sun was at its highest. They moved along the edge of the forest, making their way to a particular mountain that stood on the border of the hidden village. It was a towering peak, all stone and no vegetation, a vertical rock face that ran hundreds of metres. The hike was more a climb than anything, but he didn't have it in mind for them to make the summit. There was another destination.

The Tear of the Gods: a waterfall that fell two hundred metres straight into a carved out pool, and extended even higher into the peaks beyond. Impressive, beautiful, boring in certain ways, but more than anything, it was part of his training for the Sprout that day. What better way to clear one's mind and heart than with something so noisy one could barely think over the commotion?

Sakura, who had been stoically admiring the views of Iwagakure and the mokuton forest on their climb up, let herself admire the falls with unabashed admiration. "It's beautiful."

"You like it, yeah?"

She sent him a tentative smile. "I do, yeah, it's something else. Thank you showing me this."

Deidara returned the gentle expression. And just when the moment was getting sentimental, his smile widened. "Good. Now scale it."

Her eyes went wide and her expression soured. She chucked her canteen at his head. "Do you want to me to die!" And then, hearing herself, she spun around to sit on the ground and wallow. A few shaky inhalations, some dirt stabbing with her fingers. "The force of the water alone! Not to mention the temperature... I knew you were unconventional but this is beyond even that."

"As for the temperature – artificially circulate your chakra system at a faster pace to keep it up, yeah."

This idea intrigued Sakura enough for her to throw a curious look at him over her shoulder. After a moment, "is that really possible?"

Deidara shrugged. "I've never tried, I don't have the control you do."

Her eyes went to the falls. "And you really think I can climb up that?"

"I want you to run up it."

His student scoffed at the lofty assignment, picked up a pebble and tossed it into the pool. Water turned teal in colour from the minerals in the mountain rocks. "Why can't you just want me to sit under it like normal training methods."

"Because that method won't help you in the way this will. You want control. This will give you that."

"That and a crushed body. Lungs filled with water." Another long moment and several more skipped pebbles. "Can you run up it?"

He didn't know, he had never tried. Staring at the roaring water with a distant sort of admiration. "Yeah."

A pebble bounced off his nose. "Liar."

"You'll work it out. Put together the schematics and all that." The task had all the components she needed; it was a cerebral, physical, and spiritual exercise. Was it impossible? Hardly. Difficult? Yes, most definitely. "Well, if you're going to take your time, I'm getting to work, yeah."

"What are you doing?"

Deidara looked from Sakura to the falls. "You'll need some lighting, yeah." He took a scroll out from the pouch at his waist and unsealed it to reveal flares within. "Cool, yeah?"

It was another bit of time while he fiddled with his clay before she made up her mind.

"Fine. I'm starting then," Sakura announced, voice strong and level. She stood and pulled off her sandals, shin guards, and her hitai-ate. And giving him a very flat look, walked to the edge of the pool in a spot where the water was less turbulent. She gazed into the water, huffed, set her shoulders, and dove in.

Deidara grinned.

True to her style, Sakura went into the challenge with the goal of ascertaining certain information and then formulating a plan of approach. First she stayed in the pool and determined if she really could regulate her body temperature. It took twenty minutes of treading water until she seemed satisfied. Next she spent some time testing her ability to walk on the most volatile parts of the water surface, testing how well she could stand, run, and vault over its surface. Then she tossed her canteen up into the falls and watched its rate of decent several times over until the thing was just a lumpy piece of tin. But she had gotten what she needed from it.

After an hour she took to tackling the heart of the assignment. The first twenty odd attempts were not graceful, but she had at least resolved to push herself away from the bottom of the falls before she crashed into the water, using a pulse of chakra to get the distance. Her approach was to run and jump over the lowest part of the falls, coming down at an angle before running up, and he thought the theory solid. Aside from the obvious precise chakra control needed to walk on water, She was having trouble adjusting her stride against the velocity of the falls.

She had on her determined frown, though, so he suspected she would get it by nightfall. He took out his work and left her to her own devices, pausing at some point to set off the charges he had on some of the flares lining the falls.

He sort of hoped someone would come to check them out and get to see his student show off.

And a few did did come by, but he never had the chance to brag to any of them as, considering their profession, the spectators kept to the shadows and didn't come forward when it was obvious nothing threatening the village was happening.

Damn, no appreciation. Idiots.

After three hours, by then into the early evening, he called his student to the shore for a meal and something hot to drink. They sat and watched the sunset on a rock outcrop by the falls, the noise allowing them to contemplate things in silence and simply enjoy the moment. They huddled together under the spread of their cloaks and took advantage of the brief respite.

Then it was time to get back to things. The moon was waning, but the sky was bright and cloudless. Deidara watched the stars turn on, listened to the occasional 'shannaro' echo over the sound of the waterfalls, lit the rest of the flares and painted the rocks in shades of reds, yellows, and blues. He tested his focus on sending out multiple clay birds and seeing how far he could send them before they left his control, making sure they went in a direction where he could reclaim them (or detonate them, depending on how he felt).

Eventually Sakura found Deidara on his perch and asked him to move to the top of the falls. She didn't smile, she didn't allow any excitement into her voice, it was just a request. He did as she asked, using shunshin to get to the top quickly, and hung over the edge with his own chakra enhanced footing, waiting with his hand out ready for her to meet him.

And because she was his brilliant, determined, capable student – she did.

"What do you think?" She had to shout to him as he grabbed her hand and swung her off the water and onto the ledge alongside the waterfall. Small and insignificant in the face of mother nature and yet his student had done just exactly what Deidara had dared her to do. She was beaming, out of breath, soaking wet, and he was reminded again how clueless her village was for sending her off into the unknown.

"Eh, you could have been faster, yeah."

Sakura laughed, short and chagrined, and she had to bend at her knees she was so winded. "Ha! You know it's actually harder to walk along the waterfall than to run it? Learned that the hard way..."

"What do you think about walking down it?" He teased.

She straightened, still trying to catch her breath, and stretched out her arms, cracked her back. Her expression was contemplative. "Hm. You know, I think I have a better idea."

Sakura gave him a shy glance and he found himself holding her hand again as she wrapped her cool, bare fingers around his own. He looked down at their intertwined hands. And then she was pulling him, pushing chakra into her leap and they were over the edge of the falls, delighted screams and peals of laughter following their descent.

He grouched at her on their way back about it, but Deidara had never been so damn proud. She wasn't better, she was still going to struggle, but she was going to be all right. Sakura wouldn't run from what had happened.

Second dinner was in order after they had each cleaned up, and he was still grinning stupidly to himself when Sakura found him in the kitchen. He held up a fish head and flapped its bulbous lips at her like it wanted a kiss, but she didn't react. She was holding a scroll in her hands and staring at it as she approached him. Deidara quickly dropped the fish head on the counter and felt stupid suddenly while wiping his hands clean.

"What's up, yeah?" Worried. There was no trace of the jovial air that had followed them home from the waterfall, and after all the hours it had taken to earn it, too.

Taking a long breath before she met his eyes, Sakura was strangely blank when she spoke. "I just got this letter from the Hokage's Office. Konoha is hosting the Chuunin Exams in two months time."

He quirked an eyebrow, but he knew what was on her lips before she said it.

"They want me to go home and prepare to take them."

O O O