Sculpting for Dummies
An: Meh, updating over breaks is hard. The next chapter or so might take a while. Sorry.
And once again, special thanks to my beta, 4eversleeping, for fixing all the mistakes. (If there's anything grammatically wrong, it's probably from the parts I went back and added more to, so it's completely my fault…hopefully I caught them all, though.)
Chapter 21:
The polished black stone of the Konoha memorial reflected Tobi's orange and black swirled mask back at him, obscuring the names carved into the rock. Tobi held up a gloved hand to block sunlight from hitting the stone; his reflection disappeared and he read the stone.
"Any of the names look familiar?" Kakashi asked behind him. Tobi squinted. His eye scoured the memorial.
"Umm…let's see…" Tobi read the names silently. He knew there must be something important he was supposed to see, but…
"Oh, there's someone with the last name as you- 'Hatake Sakumo'. Hmm, a lot of Uchiha…did Itachi do that, or do they just drop like flies?" he asked. Kakashi's head dropped.
Tobi sat back on his heels and groaned. "Look, I don't know what I'm supposed to be getting out of this, but I don't remember anything. Can't you just tell me why we're here?" Between the morbidity of starting out their search at a graveyard and the frustration still not finding anything, Tobi's previous excitement about his past was starting to fade. His stomach churned with a nervous anxiety.
Kakashi kneeled down beside him and traced Hatake Sakumo's name with his fingers. "I come here every day to remember the fallen warriors. My father: he forfeited the success of a mission for the sake of his teammates, and it took me years to realize he'd made the right choice."
His fingers moved to a different name, 'Namikaze Minato'. "My sensei: they say he was the greatest Hokage we've had, because he placed the lives of every villager before his own. He was only twenty-five when he sacrificed himself to seal the Nine Tailed Fox."
Another name, 'Inuzuka Rin,' "My old teammates. Rin was a medical ninja; before she was thirteen years old, she had saved my life more times than I could count." His fingers stopped over a fourth name.
"Uchiha Obito," Tobi read the name in a whisper.
"My best friend: he was the complete opposite of every other Uchiha I've met, but I don't think I'd be human if I hadn't known him. He wasn't a great ninja like my father and the Fourth, but he never hesitated to help a comrade. On our last mission, we were in Rock Country, and there was a landslide. I had lost an eye, and I…I didn't see a falling rock. He pushed me out of the way…and he got caught in the avalanche instead. The last thing he did was to give me his sharingan eye, so that I could protect the rest of my team." Kakashi traced the names again, his eye drooping sadly.
Tobi winced as his head began to throb with a sharp, sudden pain. "Can we go somewhere else, Kakashi?" he begged. He didn't want to hear stories about the Copy Ninja's dead teammates. It was too easy to imagine what it must have been like: trapped under a rock, feeling the life drain out of you, being scared and alone and blind because your eye was gone, knowing that in a few agonizing minutes, you'd be dead…Sometimes Tobi hated his overactive imagination. He didn't want to think about Uchiha Obito or any of the other names on the rock.
He staggered away from the stone without waiting to see if the silver-haired man was following.
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"…The view's nice up here. I've never been up this high before…it's nice," the chuunin began to babble. He and Deidara had been sitting in silence for the past hour. Deidara guessed the man wasn't used to such quiet. There was no noise above the clouds, save the wind rushing past their ears.
'An explosion would be nice right now- loud, flashy, destructive.' He clenched his fists, longing for the mouths in his palms and his pouch of exploding clay. Then he could make a centipede and let it crawl into Tobi's ear and blow the bastard's brains out.
He tossed out the fantasy. 'No chakra,' he reminded himself. And if he was honest with himself, he knew killing Tobi wouldn't help. It would be momentarily satisfying, but Tobi's death wouldn't make him come back. It wouldn't make Deidara any less alone. It wouldn't mean he wouldn't have to go back to Thorn and be haunted by Tobi's house, Tobi's things, Tobi's scent on his sheets and his memory echoing through the studio…
"How long have you been flying?" Iruka continued.
Deidara remembered his first flight- soaring through the sky, filled with hope of a new life, then plummeting to the ground, broken. Why hadn't he learned his lesson the first time?
"Since I was nine, un," he answered. Nine years ago? Ten? Eleven? He didn't bother keeping track of his years anymore. What good had come out of them? 'I could've avoided all that shit if I had died then,' he realized. No Akatsuki, no Thorn, no renegade Uchiha in the forest, no Konoha with their interrogations and their partner-stealing Copy Ninjas…
Deidara almost had to laugh when he realized how ridiculous it was that he'd bothered staying alive. Then his brow furrowed. There had to be some reason he'd survived…but he couldn't think of anything.
"That young? Who taught you?" The chuunin smiled at him, glad for conversation. Deidara stared at him blankly. He watched the expressions morph on his escort's face as he recalled what Deidara had told him in the interrogation room. "Oh…right. I'm sorry."
Deidara turned away from the chuunin and watched the earth sailing by underneath them.
'It wouldn't be bad if I let myself fall right now,' he thought. 'If I fell fast enough, it probably wouldn't even hurt.' It might be nice, those moments of freefall before the impact. It might even be the freedom he'd been looking for, that first time he'd flown. As long as nothing obstructed the fall, he'd die instantly. 'It wouldn't hurt at all.' If he lived, on the other hand…
Deidara let his body lean over the edge of the bird. Beneath was a stretch of grassland. At least it wasn't pure rock, like his homeland. It would have to do. He shifted his weight a little more and let himself begin to tumble over the side.
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Tobi sat on the railing of the bridge Kakashi had dragged him to, tossing pebbles into the water below.
"A lot of genin teams use this as a meeting place," the jounin had explained. He backed away and let Tobi explore. Tobi had walked the length of the bridge, surveyed it from every side (even standing on top of the water to see it from below). Then he sat on the railing and started throwing rocks into the stream.
"Nothing?" Kakashi asked sadly. Tobi shook his head. If this place was important, he'd remember it, wouldn't he? Was he not trying hard enough? Maybe Konoha wasn't his village after all. It was starting to feel like a waste of time. 'Sempai will laugh at me when I tell him,' Tobi thought, then remembered that Deidara was probably on his way home now. The sickly sensation in his stomach returned. Tobi tried to ignore it.
"I got stuck waiting here most mornings when I was a genin. My teammate was always showing up late with some stupid excuse," Kakashi reminisced.
"Rin or…Obito?" Tobi asked. He hesitated over the second name. Thinking of it made his aching head pound harder. Stupid Kakashi and his morbid stories, giving him a headache.
"Obito. Sensei and I both used to yell at him for it…but when I became a team leader, I started doing the same thing. Weird, huh?"
Tobi nodded absently. "Yeah, weird," he repeated. He walked off the bridge. He didn't want to hear about the dead boy; he just wanted to find out who he was and get home to Deidara. Being away from him was making Tobi nauseated. He hadn't realized it would feel that way when he'd agreed to stick around in Konoha.
"You know, that board doesn't squeak anymore," Kakashi told him conversationally.
"Huh? What board?" Tobi wondered.
Kakashi's smile made his mask ripple. "The board you keep stepping over. It used to squeak, but they fixed it a long time ago."
"I've been stepping over it?"
The jounin nodded. "That was the third time. You altered your pace so you won't step on it."
Kakashi's smug observation made Tobi's stomach churn. "Oh. Strange. Where next?" he asked. There was something ominous about the implications Kakashi was making, something that made him wonder if he'd be better off not knowing. It wasn't the first time he'd wanted something, only to find out it wasn't what he'd thought it would be.
Kakashi watched his every move so expectantly, like he expected Tobi to suddenly remember everything and magically morph into whoever-he-used-to-be. 'Well, that's not going to happen,' Tobi reassured himself. 'I can't stop being me, not even for a family.'
As he walked across the bridge to the other side, he stepped very deliberately onto the no-longer-squeaky board.
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A hand snatched the back of Deidara's shirt and jerked him back onto the clay bird.
"What the hell are you doing?" Iruka yelled at him. The artist ignored him and tried to throw himself off of the bird again.
Iruka pulled the struggling man into his lap and pinned Deidara's arms to his sides in a bruising hug. "Stop it!" the chuunin demanded.
"That's what I'm trying to do, un," the blond snapped. He hurled his weight to the left, then to the right, trying to escape Iruka's grasp. The other man held him firmly.
"Why are you doing this?" he asked when Deidara stopped struggling. The artist sagged against him.
"It hurts," he whispered.
Iruka guided the clay bird to the ground. When they landed, he relaxed his crushing grip but didn't let Deidara go.
"If you want to talk about it, I'm here and I'm listening," he said gently. Deidara made a few halfhearted escape attempts, but he found his energy was sapped. He leaned his head back against the chuunin.
"We're in the middle of nowhere. No one is going to overhear us, and I promise I won't repeat anything you say," his escort offered.
"Fuck off," Deidara muttered.
"You realize we're not going anywhere until this is resolved, don't you?" Iruka pointed out.
"It'd save you a trip if you let me jump, un."
"I like traveling. I teach, you know, so I don't go on a lot of missions. It's nice to see the world a little," the chuunin exclaimed.
"What about the surveillance? That'll get old quick, un," Deidara argued desperately. He was ready for it to be over, damn it! He was so fucking tired of it all…
"Not a problem. I'll make Kakashi do it," Iruka smirked.
"'s not the only thing he'll be doing," the artist muttered darkly. Deidara had seen the way the jounin stared at Tobi. He didn't doubt for an instant that Kakashi wouldn't make a move, now that Deidara was out of the way. And how long would it take for Tobi to forget about him completely? Two hours? One? He had abandoned Deidara to go explore with Kakashi within a matter of minutes-maybe hours were too charitable. That silver-haired slut was probably fucking him as he spoke.
He gritted his teeth as a rush of hatred poured through him. That man had beaten him in battle, blasted his arm away, forced him out of Forest Village, and stolen Tobi. If he'd been able, Deidara would have destroyed Konoha for the sole purpose of killing him…or better yet, blow it up while he was away, just to see the expression on his face when he returned and found that Deidara had taken away everything he cared about. Wasn't there a saying-'What goes around comes around'?
Iruka's face flushed- he must have interpreted the blond's words some other way. "We're not…he won't…it's not like that," the chuunin sputtered.
Deidara examined Iruka's face. Him and Kakashi? They weren't together, obviously, but there was something there, in the way the scarred man blushed at the implications. How interesting…
Deidara decided he didn't want to kill himself after all. Him, the great artist, give up just because of some piece of shit in a mask? No, there were so many better options- like revenge. And right now, he could hurt Tobi and Kakashi both in one delicious swoop.
Twisting a little more in Iruka's arms, the artist sealed his lips firmly over the chuunin's.
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Iruka fought his instinct to gasp. If he let his mouth open, even just a little, the tongue that was probing his lips and gliding across his teeth was sure to slip in. The teacher kept his jaws firmly locked as he tried to maneuver Deidara off of his lap.
He still had Deidara's arms pinned to the artist's side. While the position had prevented the blond from jumping off of their vehicle, it did nothing to stop him from assaulting Iruka's lower half.
The chuunin summoned up chakra to propel Deidara off of him and onto the ground. He grabbed the artist's wrists and pinned them above his head before Deidara could react.
"Is this how you like it, sensei?" the blond purred. He winked one half-lidded eye. "I can call you sensei, can't I, un?"
He bucked his hips and squirmed a little, showing Iruka how flexible he could be. The chuunin didn't doubt Deidara was talented. He kept his eyes trained on the blond's face as his body rocked seductively beneath Iruka. He held both of Deidara's wrists with one hand and used the other to push the artist's chest down and keep a little space between the two of them.
"It doesn't matter what you call me, Deidara. I saw the way you tried to protect each other during their interrogations. I heard the way you talk about each other when the other's not around. You and Tobi care about each other too much to be playing games like this," Iruka replied.
Deidara's face tightened with pain, and those bright blue eyes screwed shut. Iruka stopped pushing the blond down and used his freed hand to wipe away the tears that were beading up the corners of his eyes.
Deidara's eyes peeked open, and he turned his head and captured Iruka's finger in his mouth. The artist's tongue caressed it and drew it in deeper until Iruka recovered from shock and pulled it back out.
"If Tobi cared, he wouldn't be in fucking Konoha, would he?" the man spat. "So I can fuck whoever the hell I want, un!" His face flushed red, and more angry tears shone in his eyes.
A slender leg wrapped around Iruka's waist and drew him forward. Iruka reached around behind him and grasped the ankle. Very deliberately, he freed himself from Deidara's hold. The artist glared at him.
"Tobi and your precious Sharingan Kakashi are probably fucking each other unconscious right now, un," he whispered cruelly. His lips turned up into a snarl as he spoke.
As he listened, Iruka's hand squeezed Deidara's wrists hard enough to bruise. His reaction made Deidara snort.
"Yeah, you know it, don't you? You saw how fucking eager he was to get Tobi alone. You saw how excited Tobi was when they left together. I wonder who's fucking who right now. Is Kakashi a top, Iruka… or have you not slept with him yet?" Iruka set his jaw and didn't answer. He didn't have to say anything to an ex-Akatsuki member. Deidara gave him a mock-pout.
"Poor Iruka. Are you gonna go back to him and take Tobi's seconds, or are you gonna show them that you've got a backbone, that you can fuck around just like they can, un?" The artist lay back on the ground and spread his legs open as far as he could with Iruka's knees on either side of him. He ran his tongue over his lips, beckoning.
Iruka swallowed before he spoke. "First of all, Kakashi and I are none of your business, Deidara," he replied shakily. He licked his own dry lips and continued.
"Second, I don't think Tobi would be happy if he came back to Thorn and found you sleeping around. And as much as you pretend otherwise, I don't think you want anyone else. So let's get you back to your village and forget about this whole stop, ok?" Iruka offered. Deidara's legs flailed as they tried to kick him.
"Don't you fucking patronize me! Fucking pretending to take the moral ground. You can't get it up; that's why you don't wanna do it! All you damned Konoha ninja are psychos and limp-dicked fuck-ups, un!" the artist growled. He thrashed and bucked, almost managing to head butt Iruka in his frenzy.
Iruka stood up and pulled Deidara to his feet, still keeping hold of his arms. The clay bird lowered itself helpfully so the chuunin could pull both of them onto its back. Deidara continued struggling as the bird took flight. His legs dug into its white clay sides until they got stuck, and the shifting of weight made the avian creation shake as it flew, but it stayed in the air, pretty much on course.
Iruka kept Deidara restrained, but only to protect himself, not Deidara. The increasingly vulgar curses sounded like music compared to his depressed murmurs earlier. The blond's despair had given way to anger. Iruka was sure Deidara could survive fury. He would be safe until Tobi got back.
Tobi, on the other hand…
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"Kakashi…I don't think this is the way back to the Hokage's place," Tobi pointed out. The part of town they were walking through was completely deserted. Tobi didn't understand how a piece of a large village like Konoha could be such a ghost town.
"We're taking the long way," Kakashi said. He gestured for Tobi to keep walking.
Tobi looked up at the sky. The sun was sinking quickly into the mountains, staining the clouds above with pink and orange.
"Deidara-sempai's left by now, huh?" he asked. He kept his eyes forward as they strolled down the empty street.
"He's probably in Thorn by now, if Iruka managed to work that jutsu," Kakashi corrected.
"So far away," Tobi lamented quietly. No wonder he'd been so unsettled today; they hadn't been this far apart from one another since they'd first become partners. The thought of sleeping alone in that empty cell frightened him, but not as much as the realization that, even if he left right at that moment, he wouldn't be able to reach Deidara before it was time to go to sleep. Thorn seemed impossibly far away, and Tobi felt emptier because of Deidara's absence than he ever had for not knowing his past.
They reached an intersection on the street, and Kakashi pointed to the left. They turned down the left path and continued on. There was still no life on the road. Tobi sped up. Kakashi ambled along behind him, slouched over and care-free.
"You don't have to be in such a hurry," the silver-haired man exclaimed. He stopped and leaned up against a landmark. Tobi turned around and headed back to him.
"Look, we really need to get back. I want to go home in a couple of days, so I need…" the masked man trailed off as his eye scanned the wooden pole Kakashi was lounging on. It joined with two other poles to form a gate. Rough planks of wood were nailed across it to prevent entry. Across the top, faded and tattered, was a frayed banner displaying the Uchiha fan.
"Why did you bring me here?" he whispered to Kakashi. He kept himself perfectly still, as if any movement might stir up the ghosts of the Uchiha clan.
"Do you remember this place?" the jounin asked. He stood up straight.
Tobi understood. He still remembered nothing, but he understood completely what was going on in Hatake Kakashi's head.
"You think I'm him!" he accused.
"Who?" Kakashi feigned ignorance.
"Uchiha Obito. Why else would you bring me to the Uchiha complex? Why would you tell me all those stories about your old team? You think I'm an Uchiha! God, I've been letting a madman guide me around the village," he gasped. He'd missed going home with Deidara-sempai for this? Ridiculous!
"Have you ever seen yourself when you get mad or concentrate your chakra?" Kakashi asked him.
Tobi shook his head. What a stupid question. He wore a mask because his face made him uncomfortable- did Kakashi expect him to carry a mirror around and look at it during battles?
The jounin untied his headband and held it up to Tobi's eye-hole. The blurred eye that reflected back at him was red. He could see shaky black tomoe whirling in the imperfect reflection. Tobi batted the headband away.
"No. No. I can't have a sharingan," he stated. "Sempai hates sharingans." How many times had he heard Deidara's rant about Itachi and his goddamned sharingan eyes? The revulsion he'd seen in his sempai's face made him want to gouge out the offending organ. He shut his eyes, hoping he could will the red-and-black swirled orb away. As he waited in darkness, a thought occurred to him. He laughed in spite of himself.
"So, those relatives you were telling me about- they're Itachi and Sasuke, aren't they?"
"Yeah. Sorry," Kakashi confirmed. Tobi shook his head in disappointment. No nieces and nephews to spoil, no grandma to bake cookies with. Uchiha Obito wasn't the identity he had hoped to find. He didn't want to be a dead man with a screwed-up family.
"Well, that's ironic, isn't it? I run into my family when I have no idea who they are, and when I go looking for them, none of them are here." He opened his eye. "Itachi and Sasuke, huh? Sempai'll never let me live this one down."
Kakashi shrugged apologetically. "Maybe we should come back tomorrow. It's getting dark."
Tobi followed behind him this time as they navigated the lifeless streets.
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Iruka was reluctant to leave Deidara alone at first. He landed the bird outside of the village walls and insisted on escorting the blond to his door. He seemed okay now- extremely pissed off at numerous people, but not suicidal…but he could change moods in an instant, and Iruka didn't know how long Deidara's defensive anger would protect him from himself.
It was the people of Thorn that gave Iruka the reassurance that he could leave Deidara safely. Before they were through the gate, villagers were there, greeting him.
"Deidara, dear, we're so glad to see you! You didn't tell us you'd be away so long," an older woman cooed. The livid expression Deidara had trained on Iruka melted away as he turned to nod at her. Iruka felt weight lift from his shoulders as he realized the blond's anger wasn't transferring itself to the innocent villagers. As much as he wanted to help Deidara, he wasn't willing to do it at their expense.
"I broke my puppy, Mr. Deidara! Pleasepleaseplease make me a new one!" A little girl begged. Deidara didn't smile at her, but he didn't ignore her either. He patted her head, which seemed to satisfy her.
The villagers eyed Iruka suspiciously. "Where's Tobi?" they asked Deidara quietly. "And who's this fellow?"
The blond said nothing, so Iruka spoke up. "I'm a friend of Tobi's. He had some unfinished business at my village, so I'm escorting Deidara back for him," he explained. The villagers relaxed.
"Ninja business?" they questioned.
"Yes," Iruka agreed. The villagers nodded knowingly and accepted his presence.
"Deidara, are you going to be opening your shop back up tomorrow? My mother's birthday is coming up, and I'd love to give her one of those beautiful vases you make," a woman chattered.
Deidara spoke up for the first time since they had entered the village. "I can do it now. What kind do you want, un?" he asked. They worked out the details of the commission as he walked back to his studio. He spoke lifelessly and trudged along like prisoners Iruka had seen walking to their execution. Iruka followed behind, carrying the pack Deidara had left on the bird.
'I wonder how pissed Tsunade-sama will be if I stay here until Tobi returns. It's not safe to leave him,' he thought to himself. He looked around the village as he walked, noting the location of a convenience store so he could swing by later and pick up some necessities. 'It shouldn't be more than a week, right?'
He peeked into the studio. The woman was filing through a box of paint swatches, debating with herself over the color of the stripes to match her mother's décor, she narrated to Deidara.
The artist kneaded a lump of clay on a paint-stained table. He nodded every once in a while as the woman spoke, but he kept focused on his art. His hands, which had been groping Iruka a few hours before, worked water through the clay until he was satisfied with the consistency.
The tension in his back loosened and the wrinkles in his brow smoothed out as he became more absorbed in his sculpting. The woman finally settled on the colors, and laid the swatches on the bench beside Deidara. She turned and left without another word.
"I didn't plan on him starting right away," she admitted guiltily to Iruka outside. "He's had a long journey, I'm sure, and now I'm keeping him from resting." She frowned and looked distinctly unhappy with herself.
Iruka stopped her." A project to work on is just what he needs. It'll keep him busy until Tobi gets back." He smiled with the realization. Deidara didn't need Iruka; he needed his art.
"Oh, I didn't think of that. He got so mopey last time his Tobi was away," she agreed. "Do you think I should send Lin and her friends over to ask for more figurines, then? They'll run him ragged until Tobi gets here," she offered.
Iruka's smile widened. He didn't know who Lin and her friends were, but the idea sounded solid. "I think that would be for the best," he replied. The chuunin took one more look into the studio and saw the peaceful expression on the artist's face as he formed the lump of clay into a vessel upon his potter's wheel. He set down Deidara's bag inside the house and hurried back to Konoha.
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"You don't have to stay in this cell anymore," Kakashi pointed out to Tobi as they walked down the basement hall to the familiar doorway of Tobi's room. "There's a hostel that can put you up, or you can stay with me."
Tobi's feet dragged with exhaustion as he took each step. It hadn't been a long day, but so much had happened since he'd woken up that morning, waiting to hear the Hokage's decision. He'd discovered a past he wasn't sure he wanted, a family that was dead or gone missing from the village, and a name that he didn't want to claim as his own. Deidara, who was hundreds of miles away by now, was not going to be happy when he discovered Tobi was part of the clan he hated most.His head still pained him and he didn't trust his stomach to hold food.
He pushed past Kakashi and opened the door to his cell. Bits of fluff wafted in the air. His mask protected him from breathing them in or getting them in his eye, and they soon settled down again, clinging to his black shirt.
"What's that?" Kakashi wondered aloud. Tobi blinked as he looked around the room.
Stuffing in the air, a murdered Tobi-doll on the floor, one set of bags on the futon instead of two. All in all, it wasn't an unusual scene for Tobi. The tangible proof of his sempai's presence comforted the masked man.
"Sempai killed me again. Means he's angry," the brunette explained. He kneeled down and examined his deflated effigy. The stomach was ripped open and the feet pinned to the floor with bloodstained nails. "Where'd he get nails from?" he muttered to himself.
Kakashi held up a broken piece of bookshelf. "Here," he guessed. "But why's he mad?"
Tobi shrugged."He's an artist. They're very temperamental, aren't they?" He tugged at one of the nails; it didn't budge. "I'm guessing that he's pissed because I stayed in Konoha-that's why I'm nailed to the ground. Sempai can be very symbolic."
Kakashi bent down to pick something up off of the floor. Tobi pulled harder at the nails. Maybe if he used a kunai as a lever, he could get them out…
"Then what's he mean by this?" the copy ninja asked. He threw something to Tobi.
"Oh shit," Tobi gasped when he picked up it up. "Shit shit shit shit shit!" The Deidara doll looked ahead, politely ignoring Tobi's language as well as the bloody fingerprints on its cheeks and eyes. Tobi cradled the doll in his arms as he dove onto his pack.
All the neatly folded clothes were tossed aside without thought. Tobi dumped out a bag of toiletries and dug through them. He found the bottle of stain remover he was looking for, and squirted a stream of the cleaner onto the doll. He scrubbed the cheeks and the eyes vigorously until the red spots began to fade.
When the doll was clean again, Tobi sighed with relief. Seeing Deidara's doll covered in blood was almost like seeing Deidara covered in blood. Tobi didn't mind if his sempai regularly disemboweled the plush Tobi, but the Deidara plushie was the closest he had to the real thing until he got back to Thorn; it had to be kept safe.
"Are you going to fix the tear?" the silver-haired man asked, sounding confused.
"Tear?" Tobi squeaked. He looked down at the doll. Stuffing was starting to peek out of a discreet rip in the chest…right over the heart. Tobi had to swallow to keep from throwing up. He pressed a reluctant finger into the hole. 'please be there, please be there,' he prayed.
He felt nothing inside but fluff.
"Fuck!" he yelled. The heart, the heart was gone! Deidara must have gotten angry at Tobi for paling around with Konoha ninja- Deidara's enemies- and now he'd left and taken his heart with him. It had taken months for Tobi to get Deidara to open up to him like he had
He stood and looked straight into the doll's eyes. 'I'll win it back again, sempai,' he promised. 'No matter how long it takes.'
He started re-stuffing his belongings into his bag. He usually folded his clothes nicely and packed them in a certain order, but he couldn't be bothered with that right now. The sooner he got back to Thorn, the sooner he could fix whatever mistake he'd made and get back on Deidara's good side. He balled up his clothes and tossed them in. One of his shoes fell out of the bag, but he didn't bother picking it up. There were shoes in Thorn. God, he had to get back.
"What are you doing?" Kakashi demanded to know. Tobi pushed past him.
"I have to get home and fix this," he said.
"Fix what? What's going on?" Tobi ignored the jounin's questions.
On the way out of the door, he felt something catch onto the sole of his shoe. He lifted his sandal and looked under it. At first he thought that the gooey spot on the floor was from a discarded wad of gum.
When he realized what it was, his knees gave out and he was laughing and crying all at once. He scraped the flattened pancake of a heart off of the cold stone floor and tried to pick out the pieces of dirt with his fingers. He had seen Deidara mold it, but he still didn't have the skill to form it back into its original shape.
"Tobi…are you alright?" Kakashi asked. He placed a hand on Tobi's shoulder and tried to guide him away from the flattened lump of clay and the ripped dolls. "Why don't you come back inside?" he offered
"It's…it's his heart!" Tobi wailed. He couldn't get it back to the way it was for the life of him. It was dirty and squished and ruined.
Kakashi leaned over the tiny piece of clay and puzzled over it. "I don't get it. Why would he rip the heart out?" he asked.
"He didn't. It's symbolic! He made the Tobi doll, and it shows how he feels about me. When he gets pissed off, he kills it, and in his head, it's what he's doing to me. In sempai's head, the Deidara doll would work the same way. It shows what I want to do to him."
Tobi's voice faltered. He sniffed and coughed before he could force his vocal chords to work again. "He's saying I did it. I ripped his heart out and stepped on it."
Tears and snot rolled freely down his face. Tobi tilted his mask up and dragged his sleeve messily over one half, then the other.
He squeezed the doll in his arms. "I didn't even know I could, sempai. I didn't know you'd let me. You gave it to me and I didn't even realize!" he whispered to the plush toy. One blue eye stared at him accusingly. The other was bleached white from the cleaner and couldn't stare at anything.
"Tobi, it's just a toy," Kakashi tried to tell him. "You can make a new one. Come on, I'll buy you the fabric right now." He reached out and tried to take the battered doll from Tobi.
"It's Deidara. It's my sempai, and I hurt him. I knew he had abandonment issues, I knew it, and I still let him go home alone! How could I be so stupid?" Tobi berated himself. "I had his heart."
"What the…? Please don't cry, Tobi! You…you've still got it," the silver haired man pointed out, gesturing to the dirty lump of clay. "That means something, right?"
"He loves me," Tobi whispered. His breath hitched as he spoke. "He probably doesn't know it yet, but he loves me. He's back in Thorn, wondering why it hurts so much and he doesn't even know why." Tobi's voice broke as he tried to speak through his tears. He threw himself at Kakashi and buried his half-masked face into the jounin's neck.
"I didn't tell him, Kakashi. I never told him how much I love him! I thought, 'I'd better wait, it'll scare him away. He's not ready for that level of commitment.' Now he thinks I don't care about him, that I'm pinned down in Konoha." He sniffed loudly and felt Kakashi tense. Tobi realized that he was practically blowing his nose on the Copy Ninja's turtleneck, and pulled away.
"Sorry. I wasn't thinking. God, I wasn't thinking. How could I be such an idiot? How do I always manage to mess things up? It's a wonder I managed to save sempai at all!" Tobi choked on his words. He recalled how Deidara had reacted after Tobi saved him from his final explosion…how quickly Deidara's mind had supplied 'suicide' as the answer to his problems. His whole body shook with dread. "He's liable to kill himself! Oh, fuck! Tobi, you fuck-up!"
Tobi scrambled to his feet and grabbed his half-packed bag. Most of his clothes, his toothbrush, and the rest of his toiletries were still on the floor, but he left them. They weren't important. He tucked the pancake heart back into the Deidara doll and placed it lovingly into his pack. The Tobi doll was ripped out of the floor in a hurry, leaving scraps of his feet trapped beneath the nails.
"Sorry, Kakashi," he apologized as he ran past the man and out of the building.
Kakashi chased after him. "What about your past? Don't you want to know who you are?" he called after the masked man.
"I know who I am- I'm Tobi. I'm in love with a man named Deidara, and he needs me! Screw the past!" As soon as he said it, he knew it was true. A past would be nice to have, but he didn't need it. Not like he needed Deidara…
The sun had finished setting and the world outside was dark. As he ran, a gust of wind blew past Tobi's head. He couldn't see what had caused it until a clay bird swooped down from out of the sky and landed beside him. The chuunin from the Hokage's office sat on its back.
"You need to get back to Thorn," the man told him. "You know how to fly this thing, don't you?" Tobi nodded. The chuunin hopped off of the bird and Tobi took his place.
"How is he?" the masked man asked nervously.
The scarred man shrugged. "He's mad at you. He almost jumped off of the bird…while it was in the air. He tried to seduce me, then tried to convince me that Kakashi was seducing you. When I left, he was making pots and the villagers were watching over him."
Tobi sighed with relief. "He should be ok until you get there, but I still suggest that you hurry," the chuunin hinted. Tobi nodded again.
"Thanks," he said. He paused. "You said he tried to seduce you?"
The other man smiled. "Don't worry. It was only a 'try'. Now get going."
Tobi funneled his chakra into the bird. Its wings started flapping and it lifted from the ground.
The sky was dark, but the moon and the stars provided a faint light to navigate by, and Tobi wouldn't let a little thing like impeded vision keep him away from Deidara.
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An: And because I'm a horrible person and don't say it enough, thank you to everyone who has been reviewing, regularly or not. I really appreciate the feedback, and it lets me know what y'all want to see happen. And I'm sorry I make y'all wait so long to see what will happen to Dei and Tobi- I've been all around with family over break, and now my big brother's moving and I have to help.
Oh, and because we should end this chapter on a happy note, instead of on my shortcomings as an authoress:
Our fun with spell-check moment…sempai's equals sepia's; namikaze equals kamikaze. Happy New Year, everyone.