Title: To Return To You – Chapter 2

A/N: Just a short explanation on the timeline used in this story. It's post-time skip, obviously. I'm not sure if I'll make any references to the later manga chapters, but just be careful of spoilers. In this story, Sakura had gotten over Sasuke, and Team Hebi is currently the common enemy of both ninja villages and Akatsuki alike. I won't mention much about any other characters, simply because I want this fic to be DeiSaku, and DeiSaku only.

On a side note, I don't know what will happen in Chapter 362… but whatever happens will not have any impact in this story. In my heart, Deidara rocks… and always will.

When Sakura opened her eyes slowly, she was noticed three things immediately.

One, she had a splitting headache that caused her sight slightly hazy. Two, she was lying on her side, her face resting against the soft, grassy ground in some forest. Three, the person who was lying next to her had blonde hair…

Sakura's heart skipped a little when the person whom she rested her sight upon groaned. She felt a small, tight squeeze in her heart the moment she heard that sexy, deep voice which this blonde emitted, and she briefly wondered whether it's due to nerves or… something else.

'He looks familiar… someone who is…' Before Sakura could complete her thought, the blonde opened his eyes and looked directly at her.

Silence ensued as they both tried to ignore their headaches and make out who each other was. Sakura blinked to clear away the haze as her eyes swept across his blonde hair, which was tied up in a pony tail, with a long fringe covering his left eye. Irrationally, she wondered if his hair will feel as soft against her fingers as it looked. Then, her eyes wandered down to his clothes. A black cloak with red clouds.

Black cloak with red clouds… Akatsuki.

Gasping and suddenly afraid for her life, Sakura sat upright in a flash. "You…!" That was all she managed to choke up when her world spun crazily. She clutched her head as she tried to scoot away further from the S-class criminal. Her breaths came in pants when her back hit a tree trunk.

"Deidara!"

Deidara raised his eyebrow at the kunoichi who literally spat his name out, as if it totally disgusted her to even speak of it. He pushed himself up slowly to a sitting position, waiting for his headache to clear. He definitely wasn't as stupid as the kunoichi who didn't seemed to realise that sudden movements would make headache worse.

His blue eyes rove over the girl who was leaning against a tree, panting heavily. His gaze rested upon her pink tresses and slowly wandered down to her emerald green eyes. Recognition flickered in his eyes. "You are the Fifth Hokage's apprentice, yeah? That annoying Kyuubi no Jinchuuriki's team mate?"

Sakura narrowed her eyes at how Deidara described Naruto. "I don't see why I should tell you who I am." Her hands clenched at her sides as she slowly stood up. As she willed her chakra to gather at her fist, her medical mind went through the choices where she could hit him.

Deidara smirked. It's not only the ninja villages who did their homework. Akatsuki had enough resources to know who's good and who's not. He noticed Sakura had gotten into her battle stance, and his hand went to his clay pouch almost automatically… until he realised that the mouth on his hand didn't go to work immediately. Frowning, he pulled his hand out from the pouch and looked at it for a couple of seconds before realisation dawned upon him.

He wasn't able to put forth any chakra.

Usually his bloodline ability utilised the mouths on his hands to gather up clay, infusing the clay with his chakra before they spat the glob out for him to mold the clay into his art pieces. Since he wasn't able to channel any chakra at this moment…

Apparently the revelation hit Sakura at the same time. Usually she was able to feel her chakra flowing when she was channeling it, but now she couldn't. 'Crap, I think I'm in deep shit.' She thought. Looking at the bewildered expression on Deidara's face, she could only guess that he reached the same conclusion as she did. All right, so she couldn't be as strong without her chakra, but that didn't mean she'll lose out on pure taijutsu. She didn't train for months with Lee for nothing. Besides, if she couldn't channel her chakra, she was sure that the S-class criminal standing opposite her couldn't either.

Sakura's mind went through all the moves that Lee taught her. Feeling slightly confident, she took a deep breath and prepared to charge, when Deidara turned his back towards her and walked away.

Sakura blinked, and she felt her blood boiling. 'Am I that weak? How dare he turn his back at me?' Angered at the fact that she was being underestimated, she was about to yell at him before she saw him reaching out his hand to the air and touched something –

- the air around them suddenly cackled with some source of energy -

- and the next thing Sakura knew, Deidara collided against her. The impact was far too great, even for a kunoichi, and she found her back slamming against the tree that was behind her.

"Ouch!" She grunted at the pain that shot through her back.

"Barrier."

Sakura snapped her head up at the blonde, who was picking himself up from the impact. 'That pompous ass… not even a sorry for slamming me into a tree.' She mentally grumbled. "Barrier?"

"Yeah. I knew there's has to be a reason why we couldn't use our chakra, yeah." He took a fallen branch from the ground, and walked to where he first came in contact with the barrier. Slowly, he pushed the branch forward.

"What are you do- "

The tip of the branch touched the barrier again. Deidara let go of the branch immediately, and the branch flew backwards upon impact. Both Sakura and Deidara took notice of the size of the barrier as energy cackled and glowed in a split second of the impact. Obviously they are trapped in a square barrier. Sighing, Deidara turned around to face Sakura. "This is the max distance we can go. I think we can assume that from where you are, till here, it's pretty much safe to move around, as long as you don't go past here." He sauntered over to pick up the branch again and marked a big cross on the ground. "And here." He walked to another corner to make another mark.

Grudgingly, Sakura admitted he was clear-headed and intelligent enough to carry out that kind of experiment. She, on the other hand, was just ready to battle it out with him. Perhaps spending too much time with Naruto wasn't a good idea. Sighing at the thought of the noisy Hokage-wannabe, she tried to bend her arm awkwardly so that she could rub her back which was still hurting from the impact.

"Are you hurt?"

Sakura could only managed an irritated glance towards Deidara for asking the obvious. He had sat himself on the ground some distance away from her.

"I'm sorry, yeah. Didn't realised the impact would be that great." Deidara mumbled and looked away.

Sakura blinked. Did she just hear an apology from one of the deadliest members from Akatsuki? Has hell frozen over?

"So… why are you trapped here?" She couldn't help but asked.

The blonde man gave a non-committal shrug. "Met some weird old man while returning from mission." Sakura wondered what kind of mission it was. "Would have blasted his teeth off if I wasn't laughing so hard at what he said, yeah."

Sakura could only guess. "Reincarnation?" She asked dryly.

Blue eyes stared at her. "How did you know?"

"I think we met the same old man," Sakura bit her lips. "He gave me this." She brought her wrist up to show him the weird bracelet which was glowing faintly, as usual. Deidara frowned and walked towards her. Sakura swallowed nervously. After all, she wasn't used to talking to S-class criminals so amicably. If that wasn't enough, this criminal was a self-proclaimed artist who loves blowing people up. Even though he couldn't use his chakra at the moment, he's still dangerous.

And with a voice as sexy as hell.

Sakura's brows furrowed. Now where did that last thought come from?

"Don't worry, yeah. I'm not going to eat you."

Sakura blushed furiously, looking at the blonde man who was lightly holding her wrist. He peered down at the bracelet, while his thumb rubbed against the steely material. His eyes were thoughtful when he spoke. "I have one too. I realised that just before…" He paused for a while, apparently unable to understand or explain why he had lost consciousness. "Just before I woke up here."

"What?"

Deidara held up his other wrist. A similar-looking bracelet was safely clasped there, giving off a faint green glow.