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16: Sasori

I stood on the stairs, watching the door after Leader had left as though I expected him to waltz right back in and start laughing at me. But the door never opened. And Gaara stood at the bottom of the stairs staring intently at me with a concerned expression on his face. When I finally realized that the door wouldn't open again for a few more hours – and the person walking in would be my mother – I turned to my younger brother and told him to order out and I'd be down in awhile. Then I turned back around and went back to my room.

I dragged the desk chair back to the desk and busied myself with organizing said desk. Since I honestly wasn't a very organized person, I knew that this job would take quite awhile. I faithfully stuck to it until I realized that my "awhile" that I had given Gaara had been turned into "a few hours" and I was sure that my mom would be home by now. So, looking wistfully at my still untidy desk, I left my room and wandered down the stairs.

"Hi honey. How are you?" Mom asked, looking up from the dining room table where she was eating pizza and flipping through a bunch of papers that were messily scattered on the table. Gaara was eating across from my mom, gazing at me expectantly. Obviously, he'd already voiced his opinions of my condition.

"Fine," I muttered, moving to get some food. "How are you?"

She dutifully answered, telling me about her day at work; about all the people who called in and yelled at her and how her boss had assigned her way too much work – hence the papers that I had to push aside when I sat down to eat. Finally finished telling about her seemingly horrid workday, she asked again, "How are you?"

I held her stare for a minute before I went back to picking off all the vegetables that had somehow ended up on my pizza and muttered, "Tired…Depressed, but I'm living." This seemed to set off an alarm in her head and I reassuringly rephrased my earlier description of how I felt. "I'm depressed, but I'm awake and moving around and keeping my mind off of everything that's bugging me."

Mom sighed in relief and said, "Want to tell me what's bugging you?"

I made a face and murmured, "Not really. I'd like to keep them at bay, not let them get to me."

Gaara sat, watched and listened to the exchange and ate his pizza. But finally he couldn't resist and said, "Therapists say that it's a good idea to talk about what's bugging you."

Mom and I stared at him for a minute and then I grumbled, "Where'd you hear that?"

He stuck his tongue out at me and cried, "I spend my time reading books, watching educational TV and listening to the world around me. What do you do?"

I sank into my seat, dropped my slice of pizza and muttered, "Get dumped."

Mom gave me an understanding look mixed with pity and said, "Don't think like that."

I wanted to scream at them. But I knew better; so I took my dissected pizza to the sink, dropped the plate in and went back up to my room. There, I went dutifully back to my desk and continued working well into the night. When I got too tired, I gave up the seemingly impossible task and went to bed.

I forced myself to get out of bed the next morning. The hardest part of the morning was walking out the door and going to the bus stop. I didn't want to be there and nothing I thought would convince me that I wanted to go anywhere. In fact, I could list several reasons to turn around and go home and none to keep me motivated for the day. But I didn't turn around for some reason. Maybe I thought that going would be like I was laughing in Deidara's face because I had managed to get out of bed this morning.

But I was less than happy to be walking around the school that day. I couldn't even glare at the people who whispered about me as they passed me. I felt like every part of me had lost their fight. I felt like I'd finally been rendered weak. Despite it all, I managed to make it through the day and to the meeting after school.

And almost run into Deidara.

When I walked into the room, I wasn't paying much attention to the world around me and practically crashed into the blonde – who was slouching in his position at the center of the room in front of Leader's desk while everyone else pressed up against the wall. I grudgingly slunk past Deidara and took my place by the wall. I ignored Zetsu's constant concerned glances at me and listened to what Deidara had to say.

He told us about the four ranks the gang had – one at weakest and fourth at strongest – and the duties the members of each rank had. The first rank was used to eliminate threats and opposing gangs; the second was used as spies and relaying messages from the third rank to the first; the third rank was used to take messages from the leader to the second rank and negotiate with other gang members when the leader didn't want to. The fourth rank was the one that the leader stood on; he selected his favorite people from each rank and sent them to fulfill the harder kills – like hunting down the people who joined and betrayed or left the gang – and sometimes he'd use them to ask for truces.

Deidara admitted that he had been one of the favorites and made it to the fourth easily and did just what was expected of him. He explained that in order to have the four ranks, they'd had to recruit several people – courtesy of the first ranked members who were trying to prove their worth – and the gang had people scattered all over Kohana. He made it a point to make sure that we knew that we were definitely outnumbered and that it would be hard to even compare to The Guardian with our current fighting style (which we couldn't figure out how he knew about when we hadn't shown him) because the best fighters of the gang could take six people at a time.

When Deidara was sure he'd covered everything he thought we should know about The Guardian, Tobi piped up, "There are four ranks now?"

The blonde looked over at his friend and nodded. "They thought that the extra rank would improve the overall look of the gang and make more room for the new members that they'd inevitably get, yeah."

Tobi gazed up at the ceiling thoughtfully and then nodded and said that it made sense. Deidara stole a glance at me, but I brushed it off as though it didn't really matter – which in many ways it didn't to me.

Everyone turned to Leader, expecting him to make an outraged burst of frustration. But he remained silent, probably contemplating the many ways we'd be crushed if we called a gang war against The Guardian. Suddenly he said, "Okay, well, you're gunna train us. We need to be prepared for a war against them. Speaking of which, any advice on calling on the leader for one?"

The silence was because we were all stunned. I wanted scream at him that it was stupid and we shouldn't call a gang war on them in the first place. I thought that it was pointless; I thought that we were going to lose anyway. So I honestly didn't understand why he wanted us to train under Deidara.

Deidara stared at Leader for a minute before he said, "I'd like to ask Tobi to help me if I'm going to fulfill the task you've asked me to accomplish, yeah. And as for advice, he's not going to answer to anyone. He likes the leader of the opposing gang to personally ask, yeah." He paused and then added, "If you really want to ask him, take a few people with you, because chances are, if he's not planning on invading your territory immediately, he'll probably want to kill you."

We all thought about that and tried to cover the shivers that ran down our spines. Leader nodded and told Tobi to help Deidara. Then, I couldn't help it, my curiosity overwhelmed me and I asked how Deidara knew all these things so well. He'd said that he was a favorite, but since he'd implied that there were more than just one favorite, I guessed that the leader wouldn't just let anyone get away with all the information that Deidara had. I made sure to voice that as well.

Deidara ducked his head and muttered, "Actually, I'd rather not say, yeah. I was personally close to the leader and I have thought about the facts that I'm still alive. I think it might have something to do with him using me for something, yeah."

Tobi seemed to agree with this, but that hadn't satisfied my curiosity. It had only fanned it so that it burned inside me and I really wanted to know what he had meant by "personally close". Not that I didn't have my suspicions, I just wanted to hear Deidara confirm them. But Leader was satisfied with what he'd heard and dismissed us.

I left the room angrily, glaring at whatever I passed like I had a personal grudge against it, even though I probably didn't. I heard someone following me, but didn't pay attention to them. The things that were floating through my head took after the normal teen's thoughts: this isn't fair. But they were accompanied by things like, what other teenager has to put up with all this? Worrying about your ex-boyfriend training you for a gang war against a gang that's way too strong for your wimpy gang? Worrying about dying because your leader tells you to fight with them in the said gang war? Not many that I can think of…

I wasn't looking forward to what was going to happen next. But for some reason, I took comfort in Zetsu and my friendship. I think it might have been because I knew we'd stick together for as long as we could. If he could forgive me for not listening to him yesterday.

Zetsu and I hadn't lived anywhere near each other when we were little. We lived in different neighborhoods and didn't even know the other one existed. But when we went into preschool and were told to tell the class who we were, we noticed each other. I hadn't laughed while the other kids did when he stood up and both his sides had introduced themselves. I hadn't thought it was cool like some of the other guys did. I didn't think it was sad like some of the girls who talked about him during snack time. I thought he was perfectly normal. So, when no one else had dared to go sit by him during all the activities, I'd stood up and went over to him.

He thought that I was crazy. I could tell by the look on his face. He also let it be known when his Black side had thought that I was mocking him and he'd shifted. Instead of saying, "How'd you do that?" like the other kids had, I asked, "Why am I crazy?" Zetsu stared at me and then asked if I thought he was a freak. Being in preschool, you'd think that the first thing I would have said would be something along the lines of "Yeah, but I want to be your friend anyway." But Zetsu and I were a bit brighter than the other kids. So I said, "Nope. You look pretty normal to me."

He'd smiled. I felt glad that I'd made him happy.

To insure that he knew I wanted to be his friend, I made it a habit to sit by him during all the activities until we hit first grade. Then, we had assigned seats and we were placed on opposite sides of the room. It didn't bother us though. We had a link of "acquaintances" that we'd made in a specific order around the classroom so that we had a line of kids that passed notes from me to Zetsu and vise versa. We continued doing this through every year that we had the same class.

I never quite understood how we went from being just friends to best friends in the second grade. It just happened. It was his birthday and I wrote him a card and signed it "your best friend". We didn't really think we were anything but friends up until I did that and we decided that it fit. So we were officially best friends.

It was odd, but we'd never considered dating each other until sixth grade when a few girls sitting at the table behind us at lunch started spreading rumors about us. At first, we'd scoffed at the rumors, waving them away as though they held no significance whatsoever. But then, they began to get to us and we started wondering what it would be like to date each other. We didn't do anything about it until I was invited into the Akatsuki (and I joined, just so you know). Zetsu screwed up in some way that I am still contemplating over, Leader got mad and I was assigned the task of setting my friend straight. I didn't think it was going to be fun. But, you know what? It was this assignment that got me and Zetsu dating.

We dated up until the middle of seventh grade. I guess I saw it coming: Leader was getting mad at me (I swear, the only reason he hasn't kicked me out yet is because he likes Zetsu and if I go, so will he. Then, I can't come up with a reason for why he kept me in), I decided that I only liked Zetsu as a friend, and the SAT tests were coming up – all of it made me really stressed. I took it all out on Zetsu. I didn't really think about it, I just did it. He had stared at me for awhile and then smiled. He applauded me! I was shocked to say the least.

Leader had been proud that I'd managed to hurt Zetsu; Zetsu hadn't been mad at me; and I'd aced the SAT tests. I enjoyed that summer. Zetsu joined the gang and the Akatsuki went into only one gang war that year and we'd won. Zetsu and I had gotten lucky and only had a few scars on our arms and stomachs. Kakuzu hadn't been as lucky. He had gotten shot twice in his right arm and his face had been scarred – the reasons of the scars have been kept from everyone but Hidan. Overall, I thought that we had done reasonably well considering we had been outnumbered by several hundred people.

Now thinking back on all of that, I decided that my life had been way better without the confusion that Deidara had brought with him. When did he gain the right to make me feel so empty without him? When did he gain the right to take my power that I had had before he'd so cruelly dumped me? I couldn't imagine what I'd said or done to make him think that he could do either of these things. But as I walked down the hall toward my locker, he was following me, making the few remaining kids silence themselves as he passed. It was so frustrating.

"Master Sasori?" he finally piped up, his voice quiet and hauntingly empty. "Can I talk to you for a sec, yeah?"

I spun around, furious. "I thought you would have decided that you've said everything that you thought needed to be said already! What more could you possibly say to me to make me feel worse? I thought that I wasn't worth your time anyway! And who said you could continue calling me by that stupid nickname?!"

Deidara stared at me blankly, somehow making his face seem something like a liar's innocence. "I guess I have said everything I could to make you feel bad, yeah. But I don't want to do it again."

"So what do you want to say? Want to try and apologize? Save your breath, because I'm not going to listen," I told him. I didn't want to hear what he had to say; didn't want to hear him try to come up with stupid excuses for why he had said what he had; I barely wanted to see him at the moment. "You've made me waste enough time listening to your voice awhile ago. And while the information you had might help us, I don't want to listen to you any more."

He continued to stare with that blank innocence. "While I think it's wrong to jump to conclusions like that, I guess I can't bother you anymore than I already have, yeah. You're right about what I was going to say. So now, I won't say it, yeah."

I almost felt sorry for him. But I didn't. I couldn't really find it in me at that moment to forgive him or feel sorry for him. So I just walked away from him.

I wish it was for the last time, but I'll be doing a lot of walking away now.

A/N: Ah…the pitiful words of angst. I love it.

I must point something out; it's a heroic event for me, I'll have you know! This happens to be the longest Sasori chapter I have written in the history of this story so told by my pathetic memory! Like I said, a historical event in this story. (Actually, I said heroic the first time, but who keeps track of these things?) Yep, yep. AND I have added two pluses to this chapter: 1) I finally got Sasori's past in; and 2) this story marks the fact that this story will make it past chapter 17.

Well, now that I have marked this chapter and date, I would like to kindly remind you to please review. Much appreciated. Keeps the story going, you know.