Chapter 4 – Punishment
They arrived at a small village several hours later, and when they finally got up the stairs and settled in the room at the decent inn they were staying at for the night. Deidara was relieved to finally sit down because Hitori was right, they did run...hard. He'd never admit it to her, but he may have been a little worn out. He was also pretty surprised that she didn't seem too affected by it, or she was just an amazing actor. He is – was? – a member of the Akatsuki, he should have no problem keeping up since he was pretty used to being chased by various ninja from various countries at various times of the day or night. Maybe it was just because he usually never had to run for such a long time since usually all he had to do was run until he could find a decent place to make a stand and take out the pursuing shinobi.
When he caught his breath, he did a quick summoning jutsu, and his own pack appeared on the bed in front of him and he opened it, and looked over at Hitori. He watched as she looked through her pack before bringing out various things and reorganising them, now that they weren't in a hurry to leave. He noticed that she seemed to do things very lazily, but it didn't seem to be from exhausted from running so hard for so long, it just seemed like she was just like that normally, so much so that for a moment he forgot that she was a shinobi.
That was until a scroll she had set down on the table began to start rolling and moving ever closer to the edge of the table, and without even glancing or showing any signs of taking notice of it, she effortlessly reached out just as it fell off the table, and gracefully caught it before setting it back on the table again in a position that wouldn't allow it to start rolling again.
Hitori nearly rolled her eyes as she constantly felt Deidara's eyes on her for the past ten minutes. She didn't really know what else to do in the situation, so she opted for the 'reorganise-pack-since-I-couldn't-pack-it-properly-before' option, which she thought was a pretty good idea to prolong the inevitable confrontation between them. She resisted the urge to sigh and shake her head at the ridiculousness of the situation that 'fate' had ever-so-kindly bestowed upon the two of them.
She was honestly very glad to see him alive and well, even though the situation was less than fortunate. They wouldn't just be hunted now, like every other missing nin, but they'd have to keep under the radar even more so than normal, in case the Akatsuki somehow discovered Deidara's survival. Speaking of which...
"Deidara, why did you join the Akatsuki?" she spoke out of the blue, still not looking at him, instead kept to 'reorganising her pack'.
She had no idea what his answer would be, but she doubted that he would, with his free spirited personality would willingly let himself be tied down to any organisation, no matter it's purpose or goals. It was either that he joined voluntarily or was forced into it. Either way, she was still going to beat the shit out of him for it. Literally. If he was stupid enough to put himself in a situation where he was forced into it, he was still going to pay for it.
When they were kids, they would always solve their disagreements with a sparring match in an almost trial-by-combat set up. It was good to do to help hone their skills, but it was also the easiest way for one of them to grudgingly agree with the winner, depending on what the subject matter was. It could be about what food they were going to eat that night, what town they would go to, or who would get first shower.
Not knowing how she would react, he replied hesitantly after being silent for a few short moments, just watching her, observing her body language for any signs of what was going through her mind.
"...I was forced into it."
"Hmm...Please elaborate on the circumstances."
He noticed that she wasn't using her speech quirk, which usually always meant that she was angry. He doubted that aspect of her had changed at all.
"Three members approached me and basically told me that I was joining, yeah. One of them, Uchiha Itachi, had the Sharingan, and the bastard challenged me, saying that if I beat him, that I would be left alone, but if he won I'd have to join, which he clearly did. I didn't even know that the Sharingan existed back then, so when I looked into his eyes to try and anticipate his movements, as most ninja do, he instantly caught me in a genjutsu. I ended up nearly blowing myself up." he recalled the event as if he was reliving the memories in his mind.
He could just imagine the thought that was going through her mind right now. Probably something along the lines of, 'And because of your arrogance, you humiliated yourself and had to join the Akatsuki as a result. Idiot.'
She didn't reply for a few minutes, and just stood with her back to him, ceasing her 'bag packing' with both hands on the table that she had her pack sitting on and her head turned slightly downward, as if she was deep in thought. His estimation of what she was thinking was basically correct. She was so angry at him that her fingers almost left dents in the wood from the force that she was gripping the table with.
It was so typical of him to get arrogant and think that he would always win. It was normal for him to do that when they were kids and it had gotten them in trouble so many times. Even back then, she had punched or kicked him frequently when he would get smug or act recklessly. She was the one who would always have to patch him up when he would get in a fight with another boy for laughing at Hitori's speech quirk, or something along those lines.
When they got separated, she had worried about him so much because she knew that he was eventually going to get himself in a bad situation because of his arrogance, and she wouldn't be there to talk him down, or to sock him one when he would back off. Her anger was bubbling inside her and she was so upset with his attitude get the better of him. They both had short tempers, Deidara always being quicker to anger, but Hitori's anger was cold and terrifying when she was annoyed enough to reach the end of her fuse.
Now that they had found each other again, they would always be on the run because Akatsuki would probably be hunting them down forever.
"I see. In any case, come with me. Now." she said dangerously, the irritation in her voice becoming increasingly obvious to him.
If he ever had much of a sense of self-preservation, he probably would be fearing for his life or his own uninjured body at the very least right now after hearing the low tone she was using, which definitely sounded threatening, and without a doubt promising shit to hit the fan. He watched her turn towards the door, so that he couldn't see her face, and almost hesitated in following after her.
They walked out the front entrance to the inn, Deidara following a few steps behind Hitori, and she heard him make an amused sound in the back of his throat as he noticed the man working at the front desk asleep with his head in the middle of a magazine, that from a distance looked to have morally questionable content.
They walked out until they were a fair distance into the forest that Deidara assumed they would be travelling through tomorrow, if they were to continue in the same direction. Hitori figured that no one from the tiny village back in the other direction would be able to hear them out here. She stopped walking, annnd slowly turned to Deidara, who had also stopped walking, with an expression a lot less blank than she usually seemed to have nowadays.
In fact, from what Deidara could tell in the minimal light from a half-moon that was mostly shrouded and blocked by the trees, she looked...pissed off. And before he could even notice her movement, she'd dropped to one knee and smashed a fist, full of chakra straight into the ground that was in front of her. He quickly jumped back out of the way of the force of the ground moving around with sheer instinct, and when he landed a few feet back from his original spot, he realised just how much she must have been holding back the first time they 'fought'. The ground just got a few cracks in it last time, but this time it was completely different. It was almost like a small earth tremor.
"You arrogant fool!" she said uncharacteristically loud while coming straight at him with fists prepared to break bones. He knew that he couldn't catch her punches, or block her kicks, because with the effect of the chakra, that would no doubt shatter whatever part of him he used to stop the humongous force that the less-than-average sized kunoichi could muster quite easily. Deidara realised at that point that he must look ridiculous, doing everything he could to avoid the attacks short of flat out running away from her, which would bruise his ego permanently.
He dodged nearly everything she threw at him, not that she was really trying to kill him, but she couldn't help but get even more pissed off when she noticed the slightly confused and shocked look in his blue eye. She started channelling a lot less chakra to her extremities, and started moving much faster. He nearly ran into a tree behind him at one point while trying to dodge a left leg kick aimed straight for his side, and she took the opportunity to hit the heel of her palm into his stomach, just below his sternum. She was careful to put even less chakra again into the hit so she didn't actually kill him, just probably crack 2 or 3 ribs. He flew back several feet in mid-air and hit a tree before he could even blink. His head went flying back on impact and smashed into the tree and with that, he was unconscious.
#
He woke up on a decently comfortable bed after what felt like an eternity of sleep, which, in reality, had actually only been roughly an hour and a half, and tried to roll over before wincing and groaning when a huge amount of pain in his chest, stomach and head hit him all of a sudden. He noticed that breathing was a fair bit more painful than normal, and then the memories came back to him.
Vaguely, he recalled her coming at him fists clenched and undoubtedly full of chakra, and it wouldn't surprise him if she could have and would have punched a hole right through him if he didn't dodge it.
The blue-eyed man had no idea why she was so pissed off, and wondered what it was that got her to drop the cold, jaded attitude and just wail on him. He knew that she wouldn't just do it for the fun of it, and when he sat up just enough to look around, he noticed that she wasn't in the room that he recognised as the room they had rented for the night.
As if sensing his thoughts, she came out of the bathroom towel drying her wet hair, not sparing a glance towards him, wearing a plain, baggy dark grey shirt and, wait...was she actually wearing pants with that? His eyes widened considerably and he began to stare the exposed parts of her rather pale skinned, toned legs. Again, she seemed to know what he was thinking because she turned away from him slightly and lent over forward a bit to get better access to the underneath parts of her hair so she could dry them as well, revealing a small pair of black satin boxers. If he wasn't mistaken, they were probably men's clothes that she'd most likely purchased especially for the reason for sleeping in them. Actually, now that he looked at them they started to look more and more familiar...
"Are you wearing my clothes?" he asked, without even realised that he spoke out loud.
"If you don't remember correctly, I didn't exactly have time to pack anything but complete necessities for myself when we were leaving, yeah. And you have another set in your pack." she stood upright and let her almost waist length black hair fall over her shoulders before brushing some of it out of her face while turning around to face him with a slight sardonic smirk.
He chuckled a little before realising how much it fucking hurt to do so. He tried to move a little to get in a more comfortable position, which failed terribly, and just made the pain worse. He didn't want to ask her to heal it because that would be an even bigger bruise to his ego. She threw her towel over the chair on the right side of the room and walked over to the bed, and it was only then did he realise that she must have only got them one shared bed. He didn't notice this before because he was looking at one of the paintings on the wall of the lobby when she was getting their rooms, and when they both entered the same room, he didn't think anything of it because he was trying to catch his breath, and then got too distracted by the conversation to notice.
When she sat down, the mattress shifted to accommodate for her weight, he winced, and put his hands on his chest and stomach. She started moving again, but towards him this time and he looked a little hesitant when she sat cross legged and lifted her hands from the bed and reached towards him.
"Don't...don't look at me like that. I'm going to heal you, yeah. I, uh..." she trailed off barely mumbling something sounding vaguely like an apology for not healing him earlier, before finally losing her patience with herself and gently moving his hands off himself and replacing them with her own and sending a few preliminary pulses of chakra into him to assess the damage.
"I'm going to need you to remove your shirt so there's no interference, are you going to need help doing it?" he nodded in assent and she helped him to sit up just enough so she could gently and quickly pull the shirt over his head, before helping him lay back down again, with a pillow underneath him so he could sit up a little.
She looked down at his torso, where various bruises were already flaring up angrily and bit back a growl that she wasn't able to reign in her temper enough and therefore mustn't have channelled enough chakra away from her hand so that she didn't do this much damage. Her usual nonchalance had completely disappeared before, and it was always like that with her, but she rarely ever had anything to lose her temper over.
Her hands glowed light green and she moved them carefully over his stomach and his chest, fixing his broken ribs, and getting rid of the bruises she left in a matter of minutes. After she finished, she looked at his face and noticed his eyes were closed. He didn't look like he was barely holding back groans of pain any more. He opened his eyes to see her looking down at him, with an oddly piercing look in her eyes with the corners of her mouth turned downward in a partial frown.
"How does it feel now?" she asked quietly, and gave him a barely there, almost apologetic smile.
"It's perfectly fine now. Thanks...I guess. Not for beating me up, but for at least healing me after beating me up." he said with a small ironic chuckle.
"I'm not sorry for beating you up Deidara. You deserved that. I'm only sorry that I allowed the possibility for the damage to increase by not healing you straight after, which would then create even more work for me, yeah." she retorted a-matter-of-factly.
"I figured that. I'm sure you wouldn't go to all the effort of taking me out to the forest to do that for no reason, yeah. Actually, now that I think about it, how did we get back here?" he said the former half like it was obvious as him having blond hair, whilst the latter half took a more curious tone to it.
"I carried you. It would have looked really quite amusing from an outside perspective. A very backwards scene indeed. Don't worry, we came through the window though, so no one saw." she said with a small smirk on her face and huffed slightly in amusement.
He laughed a little at the mental image that her words invoked, before he looked down as his gaze turned inward and his expression went from ironically amused to puzzled. She knew it was coming before he even looked back at her and inhaled before he spoke.
"So, why exactly did you call me an arrogant fool, if I remember correctly, then kick my ass?" he asked, holding her gaze firmly, and waiting for her explanation.
"Because it was your punishment for your own arrogance, lack of knowledge and underestimation of your opponent that eventually caused you to become an unwilling member of the most well-known criminal organisation and unquestionably become an enemy to basically every shinobi village that exists. And I know that you would dislike the idea of being oppressed in any way, but as I said, it was your arrogance and lack of knowledge that got you into the situation." she said all that without taking a breath.
He looked at her as if he was going to take advantage of her current honesty and ask her a million other things. But she got in before him, noticing the glint in his eyes.
"Anyway, it's rather late, so we should get some sleep if we're going to have the stamina to get to our destination before dark tomorrow." she moved away from him and got off the bed before moving toward the front of the room and turning the light then coming back and getting under the covers and muttering a good night and he did the same before he got under the covers and attempted to sleep...which failed.
Miserably.
He couldn't help but think about her deliberately cutting him off before he even started to try and ask her the same question he had asked when they were both standing out the front of her place getting ready to leave earlier that day. The memory flashed before his eyes.
"Hitori...what happened after we were separated?" He asked hesitantly, and looked up at her with curious and piercing blue eyes, and she looked right back with pale grey eyes that spoke volumes of what happened.
As he tried his hardest not to sigh, he realised he should probably have a shower since he hadn't had one since about an hour before he was reunited with Hitori, which was...ages ago. Suddenly realising how bad that was and he mentally scolded himself for his lack of personal hygiene as he got up as carefully as he could, even though he figured Hitori probably wasn't asleep yet, or even close to it, knowing her and her insomnia and headed off into the bathroom and shut the door behind him.
When he was actually in the shower, he tried to forget about Hitori completely stopping him from asking her what happened after...that day. He tried to do that by thinking about what has changed about her, and what hadn't. He could tell how much shorter her temper has gotten over the years. It's just as short, if not more so than his. That's what happened when you have people coming after the bounty that's on your head and the even more so the glory of killing you, which usually barely ever happens for shinobi of their calibre unless there's nothing short of a four strong cell of jounin, and even then, the power gap between an everyday jounin and an S-class shinobi is fairly large. Especially a missing-nin, who's also a member of the Akatsuki. You get used to fighting people off, and escaping with usually only minor injuries.
He started to wonder where she learnt medical jutsu, and the katon jutsu she used was worthy of praise from an Uchiha. Did she go to a hidden village? But if she did, why didn't she stay there? She couldn't have possibly taught herself all that. I mean, shit. She's a real fast learner and really smart, always was, but it's not like she could teach herself medical jutsu.
As far as he knew, that shit takes ages to learn. If he asked her about it, which would still technically be bringing up the past that she seemed to so desperately want to avoid discussing. He just wanted to know what she had been through. He assumed that it was obviously quite painful, and hard to talk about which is why he kept ignoring him, or changing the subject, but soon enough he was going to get annoyed with her constant deflection. She wouldn't even tell him why she didn't want to talk about it.
He flinched and snapped his head towards the door when he heard a faint knocking on the bathroom door. She spoke loud enough that he would hear it from behind the closed door, and the sound of the cascading water.
"Deidara, is everything okay? Don't tell me you somehow managed to pass out and split your head open in the shower."
"Nah, I'm fine. Just got a little caught up in, my..uh, thoughts."
"Good, because I was seriously considering leaving you there 'til morning if you did actually pass out and split your head open, yeah." she replied, the sound of her voice dripping with sarcasm yet a bit of seriousness as well, sounding slightly muffled through the door.
"Ha ha. Very funny. Go back to bed, yeah. I'll be out in a minute." he retorted sarcastically, while shaking his head in silent laughter.
"Alright then. Night."
"Night Hitori."
Deidara turned off the water, and sighed before getting out of the shower and started to dry himself off.
I guess we'll just have to wait and see...
#
Deidara woke up the next morning and when he was awake enough, he became a little confused at the feeling of warmth on his left. He drowsily turned his head and slowly opened his eyes, and blinking them a few times to adjust them to being open. He noticed that the source of warmth was actually Hitori, who was curled rather close to him. He smiled a little, guessing that she had moved in her sleep.
Well, that's at least what he was thinking before rolling over a little, so as to not wake her, and realising that the other side of the bed looked almost completely unused. The side of the bed he was supposed to be sleeping on.
Mentally, he cursed at his being soft. Ex-Akatsuki member, mad bomber, and S-class shinobi, Deidara, who was cuddled up to his childhood friend, who he had always cared deeply for. He knew her temper in the morning was shorter and more terrifying than usual, so he hoped that she was still asleep or he envisioned his head being lopped off by her katana.
Said girl began to stir as Deidara stealthily tried to move away so that she wouldn't know that he had moved closer to her in his sleep. Although, he doubted that he could move so little as turning his head without her waking up.
Damn light sleeper. He thought to himself as he slowly and carefully got out of the bed and moved over to the table over the other side of the room, quickly grabbing his clothes and heading for the bathroom, even though he probably only showered about a maximum of 8 hours ago. It was more of an excuse to get the hell out of there before she fully woke up and kicked him through the closest wall for sleeping so close to her.
Only when Hitori heard the sound of the bathroom door shutting, did she open her eyes. She woke up as soon as he started shifting, and even in her still-dead-to-the-world state she could figure out that Deidara was a lot closer than he was when they both eventually fallen asleep. She doubted that she moved because she was still on the same side of the bed as she was before, and he couldn't have physically moved her without waking her up the moment he laid a finger on her. Then she might have accidentally broken his neck out of sheer instinct.
She could also feel the residual warmth from where he was lying next to her before. She didn't know whether to find it endearing that he moved closer to her in his sleep, and it took her to shake her head to dispel the thought from her mind before it led to unfamiliar territory. She also bit back a laugh when she realised that he probably went to the bathroom to shower for the sole reason of getting away from her, therefore meaning that he was embarrassed. She came extremely close to cracking up laughing at the thought
Hitori mused over the incident and presumed that he knew how bad an idea it was to make her angry now. It was starting to feel like the old days again, he would do something stupid or reckless, and she would give him a dead arm, or a huge bruise on his leg. Only difference now was that she would break bones with a flick or rip out his throat with her bare hands if she really wanted to. How predictable they were...
Hitori then realised how long she'd been just lying there thinking when she heard the sudden cessation of the shower in the background. She decided to quickly get up and throw her clothes on, hopefully before he came out, leaving the shirt and boxers she borrowed from him splayed on the ground next to her. Unfortunately she wasn't quick enough, and was just pulling her shirt over her head as Deidara opened the bathroom door and stepped out, most likely expecting her to still be asleep, or at least in bed. She had to bite her lip rather hard so that she wouldn't laugh as she heard his breath hitch a little when he must have noticed her over the other side of the room half her chest still visible, though it was covered by her bra.
He vaguely murmured his apology, without even being able to hide the embarrassment clearly visible in his voice. She finished dressing and put the clothes on the table next to his pack then turned around and sat on the bed and watched him while Deidara walked over to his pack and getting his things together and picking up the clothes Hitori borrowed off the table and inwardly telling himself over and over again like a mantra to not touch them too much to feel her warmth still on them.Nothing perverted. Nothing perverted at all. She'd break both his legs and maybe his arms too without a second thought and probably call him a pervert or something as well. He did the simple hand seals in quick succession and his pack disappeared.
He went over to the other pack that had food packed in it and got out two apples for them both to eat before they checked out and started travelling again. She murmured her thanks to him when he handed the apple to her, before eating it quickly while putting the things back in her pack that she didn't put back in last night and when they were ready, they both set off out of the room and down the stairs before dropping off the key, which Hitori slid across the table, partially concealing the small, but compensating amount of money for the discretion that they were never there, as well as an intimidating cold glare, which made the man at the reception pale. Even though any decent shinobi, medical nin in particular, could get answers from him, it usually always helped. When they arrived at the edge of the village, they quickly glanced at each other, before moving along into the forest...again.
He was getting frustrated as they leapt through the trees about the lack of conversation. He wasn't sure what to talk about, but he wanted things to be open and be able to talk to her, about anything in particular, just to pass the time. He wanted to be able to joke and laugh with her like they used to. Some part of him knew that until they discussed the elephant in the room, that they wouldn't go back to any semblance of how things were. He wondered briefly if they would still be as close as they were when they were kids. He had noticed quite a few more things than he did about her now that they were older. Physical things that men notice about women.
"Oi, pay attention to what's going on. Idiot! I could have thrown a kunai at your head and you probably wouldn't have noticed! There's a village up ahead and we're stopping there to get some supplies, yeah." Hitori said irritably and smacked Deidara upside the head before pointing to the village.
"Ouch! Did you have to hit me, bitch?!" Deidara exclaimed while rubbing the side of his head where Hitori hit him, and he stopped his soothing motions when he glanced over at her and could swear he saw a vein in her head pop, before she swiftly reached out in the middle of leaping to the next branch and shoved him roughly straight into a tree about a yard or two away. She snorted in amusement as he went shoulder first into the tree.
"What the fuck Hitori?! You're lucky I don't kill you for that right here, right now, yeah!" Deidara yelled at her as he recovered from the unexpected attack, and she continued on her merry little way, as if nothing happened, before stopping all of a sudden and looking back at him with a blank expression.
"I wonder if you could..." she turned her back to him, and leapt to the next branch casually.
His brow furrowed at her nonchalant tone, and he followed after her. He was confused at the lack of arrogance in her voice. She didn't seem to be saying it like a brag, or a taunt, but just a simple stating of facts. He was very interested to see what she was really capable of in battle.
Deidara was broken out of his thoughts again when he realised that they were just about to come out of the trees and enter the village. When they were there, they went to a few various shops, picking up food to last them about a week or so, before getting an early dinner of shrimp tempura at the cleanest looking stall. Deidara still had no idea where they were, and he figured that asking Hitori wasn't necessary since she said last night that if they made good time they would most likely reach their destination very soon.
Hitori made her way over to Deidara who was looking at a small stall with various random knick-knacks and when she got his attention, she tilted her head to the side as if to say that they were leaving. They walked through the rest of the village that was slightly larger than the one they were in yesterday and continued into the trees before picking up the pace.
About an hour and a bit later, they slowed their pace and arrived in a fairly large clearing that was mostly hidden by several abnormally large trees on one side and a few very large rocks on the adjacent side. Deidara figured that it was the kind of place that most people would go right past, since it was quite naturally hidden.
Hitori jumped down from the tree branch she was perched on, and stood still as she looked around cautiously, making sure that there was no one else there. When she couldn't sense any other presences, she motioned for Deidara to join her in the clearing, and watched silently as he also leapt down from the tree branch. She walked to the other side of the clearing, and Deidara watched slightly confused as she stepped on various the ground, some places a little harder than others and inspected the area rather closely. She then took off her pack, and unhooked the large scroll from it before carelessly flinging her pack in his direction and he caught it with a thud and a grunt of pain as something hard and slightly pointy inside it impacted with his stomach.
She set the scroll down and unrolled it and bit down on her thumb hard enough to draw blood and smeared it across the scroll and doing several hand seals before placing her hands on the ground and the familiar seal that appeared on the ground that was on the door when she used the other half of the jutsu and house perfect for one nomadic person appeared. Hitori turned to Deidara, and with a mischievous look on her face opened the door, gesturing for him to enter.
"Ladies first." she teased, trying to hold back a laugh.
"Then off you go, woman." Deidara countered, also doing his very best to try to hold back the laugh that was threatening to escape his throat.
They both playfully glared at each other, smirks growing wider and wider by the second and quickly turning into barely restrained laughter and then they both cracked, laughing for the next minute or so before they pulled themselves together and chuckled a little more as Hitori entered first.
Deidara stopped just inside the door and shut it behind him as he realised that Hitori actually laughed in front of him. It wasn't one of those slight huffs of amusement, or a tiny, barely showing smirk. Full on laughter. His grin went from playful to happy, and his eyes softened as Hitori slumped herself over the small couch in the makeshift kitchen/dining room/living room.
He followed her over and tilted his head to the side to indicate for her to move over. She reluctantly shifted over to make room for him with a disgruntled groan. He plopped himself down on the surprisingly comfortable couch. They sat in silence for at least 10 minutes, shifting to a more comfortable position occasionally.
Deidara's blue eyes watched her as she shut her eyes for a few minutes. It was the first time he really got to absorb her presence since they'd found each other. He was so happy to see her alive and well, but being back with her was making him feel a bit strange and out of character.
Normally, he just did what he wanted and flipped off any one who told him to do otherwise, unless it was Pain, because he was fucking scary. Being back with her made him feel like a normal man. He didn't feel like a Ex-Akatsuki member who was supposedly dead, but he felt like a person again. His mad bomber tendencies had died down as well.
Hitori always knew how to calm him down, and he had always been quite an open, and affectionate person when he was younger, but only with her. When he became a ninja, he had lost that side of himself and made sure that he always put himself first, even more so when he defected. Only Hitori could make him forget all the terrible things he had done over the years and ease the pain that he had felt since losing her.
Now that he was back together with her, he wasn't quite sure what was going to happen. They were the best of friends as kids, but as adults things could be quite different. He certainly didn't look at her the same way that he did as a young boy, but he knew that even when he was younger he had always had some sort of feelings toward her. Whether it was just childhood admiration and companionship, or something more, he wasn't sure.
He just felt like holding onto her and never letting go, which was very strange for him. He gotten so used to being a violent terrorist that feeling such...tenderness was throwing him off. He felt like he was whole again. When she had been torn from him, he had screamed, cried and swore at his captors until he had destroyed his vocal cords and had to get it healed when he had arrived in the hidden village. Even when he couldn't make a sound he still tried to fight them off.
The blond man decided to take a risk and turned to the side and put his feet up over the armrest and laid down and gently put his head in Hitori's lap. She showed no obvious signs of discomfort or making any attempt to push him off, so he snuggled himself in, almost like a cat, careful to avoid the kunai that were fastened in her leg holster, and carefully putting his arm over the other side of her legs and the other around in between her and the back of the couch. He was happy he could do this with her again.
He sighed quietly in contentment, and had to hold back what could have been a moan and unconsciously tightened his grip on her, when her hand started to gently rake through his long blond hair. It was then that it started to sink in what had happened since he saw her standing in the tree since what felt like hours ago.
The young man realised how quickly he faked his own death to get out of the Akatsuki and ran away with her without a second thought. It's not that he regretted it, quite the opposite in fact. He hated being stuck in the Akatsuki. It was just as Hitori said, he was not the type of person to take too kindly to being oppressed in any way. If he defected, he would have only gotten hunted down and killed, and he wasn't too interested in that happening. Hunter nins and bounty hunters were one thing, but having the Akatsuki trying to hunt you down would be a whole new story entirely.
Meanwhile, Hitori's thoughts were running along similar tracks. She was quite surprised that Deidara up and left the Akatsuki without a word of protest. She knew that he would love being out of it, but also hating the possibility that his survival could be discovered, which would mean hell for the both of them. The prospect of fighting off however many members of the Akatsuki were left now was not a pretty one, and would undoubtedly cease with endless amounts of bloodshed.
She was happy to have her childhood friend back, even though he was much more cruel and sadistic than before, but she knew that being a missing nin as well as being a member of the most infamous criminal organisation would do that to you. She also had the feeling that he would ask her about the past again soon. Even though it would be rather unpleasant to relive it all, she knew that she wouldn't be able to keep hiding it, or he'd just find some way of discovering it himself.
Their thoughts slowly drowned away as they both fell into a comfortable and contented slumber on the lounge.