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.
Author's Note: Sakura runs into various missing nin. That's it. That's the story. :)
O O O
I wanna say, I'm gonna haunt you for the rest of your days
O O O
Deidara's first – his only – family member that he could remember was a clay bird he made down at the creekside one afternoon.
The bird was small enough to sit in the centre of his hand and sundried instead of baked. It wasn't a very sturdy, lasting creation, but it was beautiful to him. He was four and he was tired of going back to a crowded orphanage where he had no one to talk to and no one to look out for him once he closed his eyes.
He named the bird 'Toku-san' and would tell stories to the little dove sat next to his pillow, to help him fall asleep.
When he was five and discovered chakra, he thought he'd wrap some inside Toku-san and have his family light the night around him to keep the shadows away. Thinned out in the middle and Toku-san was a cherished beacon glowing for him when other things were dark.
When he was six, terrified and angry, no one to help him, Deidara yelled out and Toku-san was no more. But there was light around him, there was fear and pain that weren't his own. An explosion and his little family was gone, but he didn't mourn. Not for Toku-san, his lone guardian in the night. He had found happiness.
Deidara had a new kind of support. Nothing in which he could confide, nothing he could hold, but something he could appreciate for its strength, its power. Something he could control.
The brilliance of a moment, intangible and awesome – that was what made life bearable.
Everything, if he told himself enough, everything was fleeting. The good and the bad, and there was beauty in that.
All things come to an end and that was okay.
Even when that thing was the life of someone he didn't particularly hate in any way, that he liked, even, in some ways. He wouldn't mourn for Otsuka just as he had never mourned for anyone before.
Deidara knelt into the mud by the woman's side, took in the bandages that had been carefully wrapped around her middle only to have been cut open again. Rust red, the sheen of fresh blood over old. He looked away from that, allowed a smile when he saw the collar of her jounin uniform. No simple feat; Otsuka had done well. She should be proud. She didn't need to cry, but it was okay, the rain covered that any way.
Shinobi die on missions like this. She had done good, had kept the Akatsuki from finishing the hit. For the time being, at least.
Of course, neither Iwagakure or Akatsuki would be too pleased with the outcome of this mission. They had both attempted to double cross the other, subverting goals and inducing casualties.
Deidara's smile suffered.
From under the hood he held back, eyes opened. It took her a moment, but Otsuka recognised him, returned his smile with an awful quiver of her lips. A lightness in her expression that showed she knew she was dying. Bitterness, too, in the way her muscles twisted. Another spasm and then acceptance.
"Can you – my parents – will you tell them," she swallowed visibly. Unfocused, glossy eyes. Seconds passed and he watched lashes flutter. "No... More than that...Dei-kun, it's Sakura-chan. She's here..."
Slow. Everything was slow.
Cold fingers that shook. It couldn't be.
The sound Deidara had heard of a sword sinking into flesh replayed in his mind, echoing as he turned his head.
His partner, small and swathed in the black, white, and red cloak of the Akatsuki. Arm swinging, blade in hand. Killing intent.
Everything was fleeting.
But for true art, the highest form of beauty, some things needed to reach their peak before they could go.
Deidara moved too fast to fully think through his action. Stop the strike any way he could, even if that meant throwing his body between Sasori and his opponent, arm up and offered as a shield.
"Danna, wait!"
The person staring down at him was new and Deidara thought he was seeing Sasori's real body for the first time. Youthful lines and something that made it obvious that he was not entirely human and organic any more. Body modifications, and a lot of them, if Deidara had to guess. Not that he was one to judge such actions, he encouraged them. But that wasn't the point.
"Move, brat. I want this one," Sasori said, and it was strange to hear something like 'I want' from this man, and with that new voice of his. He was so much younger than expected. Smooth where before he'd been rough. "I'm in the middle of something."
Deidara ignored him, turning away to look at the person on the ground – Was it really?
More shaking in his hands.
Under the coating of mud, under the muted colour stains of fight and grit, was Sakura.
He started to say something and couldn't get the words out. She was on her back, eyes barely open, pupils rolled back with unconsciousness. Passed out, but breathing yet. A tightness in his chest at the sight of her in a yukata and geta and what were those seals around her ankles? Were those to replace the weights she usually wore in her shin guards? Her hair was still cut short and her bangs were longer, side swept. A gash across her forehead. She looked like hell. So pale he could see the blue of veins under her skin.
Deidara's thoughts were running away from him, and there was so much he still had to take in, but his partner's voice brought him back.
"I said I want this one."
Twisting to snap at the stubborn cod, "well, you can't have her, yeah."
Auburn eyebrows raised a fraction. An actual expression from Sasori. Also strange. And there was intonation when he spoke, "oh, why not?"
Deidara felt an agitated growl in his throat. He sank down to both knees; they were unsteady and he thought it was from anger. "'Cause she's not finished yet!"
"I'll be finishing her right now." Sasori waved the sword as if to say, 'see?'
"No – not – she's still got stuff to do, yeah."
Sasori was unconvinced. Hooded eyes on a face so much easier to read than the one he had been hiding behind up until then. He titled his head. "How would you know that?"
As if it were obvious, and it should have been – just look at the way she had fought. That crater was definitely from her, wasn't it? Explosive – "She's my student."
His mentor smiled, more of sneer, his eyes widening. He was amused. "This is your precious student you moan about?" Glancing at Sakura and then to Deidara. "She had pink hair in her photograph. So this is her natural colouring? Hm. Less interesting."
"The pink is natural, this is – no, that's not the point. Would you put...put your...er..." Deidara's arms were shaking now too, and he leaned down on the one that wasn't cut open and bleeding. He could feel his pulse jumping, had to look at the ground to keep his vision from spinning too wildly. It looked like there were two, or was it three, vaguely Sasori-like shapes in front of him. "Shit..."
He must have looked perplexed, because Sasori explained to him what was happening. "An idiot, I'm partnered with an idiot. Did you not realise this blade is poisoned?"
Deidara stopped glaring at the ground to stare, a bit dully, at his bleeding arm. "Wait... What?"
"It was a small amount, I'm sure, what with the rain and the blood from the girl to dilute it, but it will still be effective enough. If slower. Right now, I expect it is becoming difficult for you to concentrate. Mould your chakra. Stay upright."
Well, there went his second option of foregoing a verbal appeal and lacing the man with bombs until he relented. Ah, but Sasori was stronger than him, it would never have worked. Shit.
"You were making a case for that one's life, though. Tell me why I'm to let her live? Help her live."
"Damn it." His words were laden with fatigue and it was difficult to speak. "She's just a kid, yeah, isn't it a bit early to do anything like – like whatever it is you're going to do? Shit, less than a year ago she couldn't use chakra to climb a damn tree and now she's tearing up the earth, yeah...
"Just give her more time. Let her grow into something truly...worthy."
Sasori considered the speech for a long moment. He looked to the blade, up to the clouds that were starting to run out of rain. Left his gaze on Sakura. To himself, a back and forth, "it might be somewhat shameful to have a mere child alongside my other weapons. She was interesting...but imagine her next to Sandaime-sama. And not even in her authentic presentation. Dyed hair."
A moment more and Sasori looked again to Deidara, "and you propose we do what?"
Not kill her? That was as far as he had gotten. Deidara swallowed, felt tired. He closed his eyes to avoid rolling them and couldn't open them again. "Don't you have an antidote?"
He would, Sasori most definitely would...
"Being that you were assigned as my partner," there was the noise of a sword being retracted, some shuffling of fabric, the sound of a seal being released, "I do. You seemed the sort to get accidentally poisoned. How lucky that I'm the sort who is so very thoughtful and plans ahead."
"Kami. So damn difficult. Hand it over, yeah." Deidara had fallen further into his slouch, tried vainly to ignore the feeling of blood vessels that were rupturing throughout his body. Was that really happening? That's how it felt, at least. There could have been a thousand needles pricking him from the inside. Burning metal. Fire, felt like.
He heard his mentor kneel down to the ground. "I have enough for three people."
"Good, great. Get on with it, then." Fuck. He was going to lose it. Would be better just to black out.
"There are five who are in need of the antidote. Can't very well have her be the only one here to mercifully survive, can we? Rather suspicious." Under his breath, might have been muttering if the action weren't so uncouth, "not to mention, what a way to expose your weak point, idiot."
Deidara didn't listen, he was too busy cursing. Hurt to speak, but there was a definite relief in cursing. Admittedly, though, he might have gone without calling his mentor a bastard. But Sasori sounded way too damned amused by the situation. He asked, "who will have the best odds?"
"You."
"Not me! Kami, yeah. Give it to her and the other two who can still make it."
"Hm. So we will be leaving behind three witnesses. What a grand idea. Leader will surely approve." Another pause. The man was only patient for his own leisure. "And what will I do with you?"
"Make more of the antidote when we get back to the base, yeah!"
"Mm. Quite the assumption I will carry your worthless carcass back."
Deidara groaned, wasn't sure if all his words came out right. "Just give her the damn antidote will you, danna..."
How much damage had been done? Was it reversible? She would have to recover out in the open, in this sort of place.
He was going to leave her. Again.
"Playing at being noble. A little rough on the delivery, being that you speak like a savage." A pause. Each word was a little quieter, harder to make out through the clamour of blood beating in Deidara's head. "That one used her last words so you would save this girl here – I apologise, your student, as you keep calling her. That seems to be what happened. Is this how you repay favours? Almost makes me reconsider."
Sasori pressed a needle into Sakura's wrist, positioned it between Deidara's fingers there so that the syringe was cool against his skin. As if he were saying, Deidara thought, you can't see it but I'm doing what you asked. Be grateful. He did say, "if she does make it, I'll give her a few years, brat, before I collect."
Deidara might have smiled. That was okay. Time enough, he was sure, for someone like her.
Sakura would be fine.
O O O
The team sent out from the governor's offices found them – the four nin and the dead carriage driver.
They were all carted back to a nearby town, set up in a makeshift medical bay on a veranda attached to a residential complex. There were others lined up on odd pillows and blankets, injured and recovering from explosions at the offices. The same person who had treated them had used rudimentary civilian methods on Sakura's shoulder; wrapped it tight with bandages. Stiff and she couldn't move that arm. More bandages around her head. She kept getting sick.
A row of casualties worse off than her; Meiko, Yuuji to her left, both as ill and weak as she was, and Otsuka at her right. A film of sweat, grey and yellow skin, lips mauve and eyes sunken in.
It was different from recovering bodies and remains from the mines, different from taking her hand out from Utsumino Shinju's chest. Waiting and it was slow. The rain had stopped outside, and along with the mist in the air, cool and thick, there hung the smell of an inevitable death as a body shut down system by system.
Had it been hours or minutes? But Sakura held onto to Otsuka's hand, promising it would be all be okay, lying through her teeth, then promising she wouldn't let the woman's dream go to waste. Otsuka had been unconscious for all of it.
Sakura made a lot of promises and she thought she wouldn't be able to keep any of them.
She didn't remember when she let go of the cold hand, but she must have at some point. Out from exhaustion.
When she woke up, Otsuka was wrapped in cloth and two men, Iwa shinobi Sakura didn't recognise, were taking her off the veranda. Sakura watched them, thought to herself that wasn't Otsuka they were moving. Not any more. She watched them walk into the fog.
A team come to take them back to the village, stretchers for the living and the dead.
The return trip to Iwa was sectioned up like the one out – a ride on the roads, hours on a train, an open carriage for the final leg. In waking moments, Sakura would look over to the body in white next to her and read the shinobi identification number scrawled over the cloth, read the seals to preserve the tissue until an autopsy could be performed.
Sakura knew what the examination would reveal; injuries from the explosion, from where Otsuka had hit her head on the ground, the sword wound opening her abdomen, the poison that eventually killed her.
And that was where she had to stop thinking, had to stop talking with Meiko who struggled with the same questions. And they would both fall into silence and think about what had happened.
Hadn't they all been poisoned as well?
Yuuji might have joined them when they talked, but the older jounin had bandages around his throat to heal the wounds from where a thread of chakra had punctured his skin and ripped into his vocal chords. He glared out at the landscape whenever he was conscious and not occupied with getting sick.
Nightfall a day after the mission and they were outside Iwagakure. Meiko couldn't take the solitary contemplation any more, and with a moment to themselves, escorts busy with other things, she turned to Sakura. She said, voice hopeful and hushed, "if we were poisoned, then don't you think it must have been Deidara-san that helped us? Didn't you say you thought he was there in the beginning, Sakura-san?"
Sakura didn't answer. Because when she did, the next question was obvious. If Deidara had been there, if he had been the one to somehow help them with the poison, then why hadn't he saved Otsuka, too?
And she didn't much feel like considering the answer to that. If it was hard for her to think about, then for him it must have been...
"Wasn't he your sensei, Sakura-san? Don't you know why he would – ?"
She didn't know. She didn't want to guess and worry and agonise over something which that person wasn't around to answer. So instead she apologised to Meiko and turned her head away. Too many things unanswered.
By morning she was sitting up on another hospital bed, running her hand over another set of bandages.
Sakura tried and failed to do very much with the arm under the, as of yet fully healed, stab wound. She'd already been in surgery and was instructed not to move it, but she was curious. The rest of her was sore though not in any dire straits, aside from low chakra levels. Must have been from the poison.
Waking up in such a state was routine, she thought and scratched at the intravenous line hooked into her wrist.
Alone with nothing to do, no messages to send, no training to work through. Alone for the first time in many weeks. She could meditate, frowned at the idea. She frowned at the window above her head, a little square of light too high up for her to see out.
'Routine...'
She rubbed at her wrist more.
This would be a fun report to write to her superiors in Konoha, let alone her pseudo superiors in Iwagakure. How to explain? How to say she didn't know much of anything about what had happened?
A knock at the door and it was opening before Sakura had finished answering. She was surprised to see the man who walked in, clipboard in hand and looking distracted. His name was Sato, if she recalled, which wasn't so easy for some reason. Odd, she was usually quick with names.
Sato wasn't a medic-nin, Sakura definitely remembered as much as that. Ah, but then, he had been Deidara's former cell leader.
"You look less surprised this time, Sakura-chan, more accepting." Sato was reading the paperwork in his hands, hadn't looked up at her yet. When he did, his eyes were deep in shadow and the lines on his face were sharper. But there was still that smile and dimple she thought she knew in some way. "That's unusual. Unless...why do you think I'm here?"
Sato was wearing his jounin outfit, minus the vest. Very casual and she thought it was from preoccupation; his hair was untidy, like he'd been running his hands through it. His stance was looser, expression more open.
Sakura eyed him up and down before she answered. "To talk about Deidara."
The man nodded. "That could be the reason."
"But it's not?" Sakura felt a knot of apprehension in her chest. "Shouldn't I be discussing this with..."
Well, she couldn't report to the Tsuchikage.
Sato saw her struggle with her words. Lips quirked. "It's all right. You can trust me."
And she nodded.
"It's not entirely about Deidara," he went on. There was a rolling chair in the room and Sato nudged it across the floor until it was at her bedside and he took a seat there. Placing the clipboard on his knee and under his elbow as he leaned forward to steeple his hands. Up close, she could see there wasn't any happiness in his expression, barely a veil of politeness over frustration.
She watched his eyes find her wrist from where he was leaning over and he frowned at the action. Louder than he had been before, "stop that."
Her hand stilled and Sakura's heart beat hard. A knot of apprehension inside her. No, more than that. Her eyes were hot and the muscles around them tensed.
"Sit still, will you?" The man took a deep breath, tried for composure. But there was an edge to him and she heard it in his voice. "Now, from the beginning, I'd like you tell me what you can remember about the nin who engaged you on the Kusa mission."
Sakura bit at the inside of her bottom lip, but that was all she could do before she was talking, recounting all the details her detail-oriented mind had catalogued and admitting what she hadn't been privy to witnessing. She was careful to state where she had made assumptions and connections, like when she had flattened what she had thought to be the puppet user, only for him to have escaped somehow.
But Sato was quiet until Sakura came to the part where she had passed out.
She said, "in his...mouth there was some sort of mechanism. It had poisoned gas inside it. I couldn't move, he had a cable wrapped around us and so I just... I was careless. And from the blood, I couldn't see his face. He just watched until I blacked out. I can't remember if he said anything more."
"And then some time later, after succumbing to the poison, you woke up."
"Yes."
"And Nishiyama was revived already?"
Sakura hadn't been his first appointment, it seemed. She nodded, and she heard her muscles move. Her throat felt constricted and there was water in her eyes. "Yes. She had already moved... Yuuji-san and myself ...next to...to Otsuka-san. She had tried what she could for our wounds."
Sato was looking away, eyes unfocused and he was smiling. She saw the flash of white from his incisor and he shook his head. To her, but it was like he was far away, "he gave the antidote to you. He didn't even try to give it to her..."
She was crying, then. Awful, painful. "I don't know why. I don't know why, I don't know why, I'm sorry –"
"Sakura-chan."
She looked up and gasped as a hand struck out for her face, grip wrapped around her jaw, pressure like a clamp. Sato was up from his seat, standing over her so that she felt very small. His hand was too large and his fingers pushed back into her neck, making her choke. "Don't you cry."
She didn't. Tears that swelled in her sinuses, made her nose run, and there was tightness closing inside her chest like a fist; but she didn't cry any more.
He twisted her head away as he pulled back. A breath as he sat down, he found that elusive composure after a moment and his tone was normal, unaffected and bland. "What an existence, but it is one we as shinobi must endure. And we must all have our priorities. I'm sorry about that, Sakura-chan. Can you still talk? Ah, good, good. It's okay, just relax. Relax."
Sakura let her shoulders loosen, controlled her breathing. Compartmentalising and her trembling stopped. Inside she was screaming, wasn't she?
The clipboard was retrieved and in his hands again, a folder on it opened. "That's good. Let's talk about our target now, shall we? You remember this one, right?"
A photograph and it was like a gate opened, Sakura remembered conversations passed. Her eyes widened. "Yes."
"It's coming along?"
She nodded. "It is. You were right."
"Good."
O O O
Author's Note: Thank you all! Please review again, maybe ... Little things being put into place...
