(A/N: Tada! A new chapter! I'm getting better at this whole keeping-on-schedule thing. This time, I am keeping ahead of the game and giving myself enough time to type up the chapters in between. Since it's finally Christmas break and I'll have more free time, I'll post the next chapter in two weeks instead of three. [So I'll have it out on the first of the new year!] I'm so excited for this story cause I actually know where it's going, unlike the other chapter stories I've come up with. This one is all planned out. Thanks to MyFinalFantasy, the outline of the story is already there and I even know how it's gonna end [for the most part].
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.)
Mysterious Cpativation: Chapter 2
Deidara opened the door to the meeting room and waited for her to pass through it; he followed behind her and shut the door. Pein spoke the moment it clicked against the door frame and the bell around her ankle stood silent. "What is your shinobi rank?" He demanded of the meek girl before him. She opened her mouth to speak, but he interrupted. "Your real one. I know you are not the gennin you say you are. Do not lie to me." He growled.
She sighed and bent her head to look at her feet. "Chunnin, Leader-sama." She whispered.
Deidara could barely hear the words that left her mouth, but he knew them to be truth by the resigned way she held her body.
"How proficient are you with the Hyuuga style?" His question shocked Deidara. The blonde knew that all Hyuuga used the same style fighting techniques, but all the main branch members were supposed to have mastered them by the time they ranked chunnin. What had prompted that inquiry?
He watched the girl's face turn crimson as she spluttered out an answer in a petrified voice. "Not very."
Pein's eyes widened as he moved to glare fiercely at Deidara. "You did not tell me you kidnapped their heiress."
Said man's eyes widened as he moved to look at the girl he had kidnapped. "I was not aware of it, either." He left the sentence at that, knowing the ever observant Pein would catch the question in it.
"The only main branch member of the Hyuuga not to have mastered their fighting style is their heiress. She has a… different style of combat."
Deidara thought back to the art of her dancing on the water the night before. Suddenly, what she was doing made sense, and matched up with her claim to be training. "A very artistic style," he claimed absentmindedly.
Pein smirked as though he knew what had prompted the ex-Iwa nin to kidnap her. "You will be the one battling her to test her skills. Let's hope that she is as powerful as you seem to think she is.
"You are not to kill her, nor fatally wound her. Do nothing to her eyes, and do not destroy any more of my walls or Kakuzu will have a fit. You know he doesn't like having to come all the way down here just to spend money. And I don't like having to deal with him when he's angry." His emotionless sentence included a refrence to the Akatsuki's stingy money manager.
Continuing, he spoke to Hinata. "If you kill Deidara in this fight, we will take you back home and leave your family alone for the rest of your life. Only for this match will we allow this. If you kill him or anyone of us at any other time, we will throw you in a cell and keep you there for the rest of your miserable life."
Hinata visibly trembled as Pein led the way out the door to an inner courtyard. "If you try to flee, you will be captured and imprisoned." He warned impassively as he walked in front of the Hyuuga and Deidara.
Hinata stood nervously in the court. It was clear to those who were present that she had never before faced off against an Akatsuki member. Pein called a starting shout and sat back to observe her movements.
Neither ninja moved at first, but as Deidara realized she was waiting to go on the defense, he spoke. "While it's true that you should always wait for the opponent to make the first move, if your adversary is stronger than you and you are aware of it, then you should strike first."
Hinata seemed surprised that he was offering her advice. He was her enemy after all. So why did I just give her tips on how to fight me? A voice at the back of his mind questioned. Deidara pushed the thought away. It was a simple tip to keep her alive for the betterment of Akatsuki, that was all.
At first, she simply nodded, but her eyes widened as she seemed to hold her breath. Soon, she was wracked with a hacking cough, forcing her to shut her eyes. She seemed fearful that Deidara would attack while she was incapable of defending herself, but she needn't have worried. He wasn't that cruel of a person, especially not in training.
When he didn't attack, Hinata seemed to gain a new determination. She disappeared from sight with a tinkle of the bell and a slight pant as she activated her Byakugan and masked her chakra signature. Deidara remained calm, closed his eyes, and relied on his hearing to sense her because he couldn't see her.
She wasn't moving, so he couldn't hear her, but she had to move to approach him. He stayed in the open only because Pein was testing her strength. If he hid, then how would she be able to hit him? Plus, she has the Byakugan, so hiding wouldn't help me anyway.
His head whiped to the side as he heard an inhuman noise. Finding himself surrounded by tiny bullets of water, he looked for the source.
The Hyuuga girl, with her Byakugan flaring, stood off to the side of the clearing with her hands raised. She glared at him with pupil-less eyes and trembled slightly. He figured it was the first time she had ever glowered down an enemy.
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She glared at the blonde man across the courtyard from her. She knew she was no match for him, and neither were her water bullets, but she could still give her all in the battle. She wondered why he hadn't attacked at her moment of weakness as she tried to keep her breathing under control.
She didn't want the Akatsuki to know her as the one who gave up, the coward, like so many of her friends back in Konoha did. Hinata took a half step forward on the leg without the bell, lowered her arms, and sent a cascade of bullets raining down on the body of the ex-Iwa nin.
He disappeared in a puff of smoke as a wooden board took his place. She leapt backward as he appeared before her in a flash of yellow.
He was close enough that she could see the blue flecks in his grey eyes. She coughed again, accidently bringing her water weapon forward and hitting her captor in the shoulder. Her surprise made her already precarious balance shift so that she fell backward.
Her pearl-like eyes followed the blonde man as he moved a hand to grasp his shoulder wound. The water had cut raggedly through his skin and left a hole underneath his hand. She gasped when he pulled his hand away and shuddered, his face distorted into a disgusted grimace.
He's going to kill me now. I just know it. Look at his face! He's furious and disgusted with me. Her thoughts would have continued had Pein not laughed darkly and called time.
"Good job, Hyuuga girl. You've injured him." The girl's eyes opened wide as she sat slightly straighter, gaining a slight confidence at being praised by one of the most powerful ninja in the world. He continued, "But you are far from the skilled ninja you should be. It is pitiful to be so surprised by the fact that you hit Deidara that you fell backward, thus risking your life. Such an amateur mistake."
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Deidara watched her as she seemed to fold in on herself. She had seemed to be confident as Pein had praised her, but when he called her actions pitiful, her mistake that of a beginner, she seemed to wilt.
His shoulder seriously hurt, though. As his hands had tasted the blood, he grimaced. He hated the metallic taste. Looking down upon the wound, he saw that there was a deep hole that his hand had previously been covering.
His eyes rose sharply upon hearing the words that the leader uttered next. "Hyuuga, do know medical ninjutsu?"
"H-hai, I do." She stuttered. She must have been uncomfortable around the red haired man; she had laughed at Deidara earlier that morning, but now there was no hint of the previous friendliness she had shown him.
"You are to heal Deidara's shoulder, then. Remember what I said earlier: if you kill him, or injure your captor in any way, you will be jailed for the rest of your life." That said, the mysterious leader swirled away without another sound.
He watched as the Hyuuga girl's face fell into a look of mortal terror. She turned back to him. "I apologize for injuring you, Deidara-san," she whispered. She must have felt as though injuring him had changed their already precarious relationship as captor and captive.
She was apologizing? She had put up a good fight; he was her enemy; she should have been trying to do more than just injure him. "No worries, yeah." He attempted a smile, but it ended up as more of a contorted grimace.
At his pained look, she hesitantly approached. Reaching out her hand to place it on his shoulder, she spoke softly. "Byuakugan."
The veins in her eyes lifted as her sight range increased. She scanned the internal damage her water bullet had done. Finding that the wound was deep, but not deadly, she spoke again. "I can bring the skin back together so it will stop bleeding, but I cannot heal the internal damage that has been done. It is beyond my medical capabilities."
She seemed so willing to do what was ordered of her. Was she not a loyal leaf ninja? Or could she just be frightened by her Akatsuki captors? Deidara was willing to bet that it was his second guess that would have hit the mark. She didn't look like she was capable of betraying her home village.
Then again, neither had Itachi.
Think of the devil, and he shall appear. Deidara mentally groaned as the man opened the door and stepped into the courtyard.
The other man's red eyes roamed about the clearing before they rested upon Deidara and the Hyuuga girl.
"What is the Hyuuga heiress doing in Akatsuki territory?" He spoke, drawing said girl's attention.
In return, she squeaked and turned a dark red. "I took her, un." Deidara spoke, taking pity on her, keeping her from having to answer. She seemed especially uncomfortable around the ex-Konoha ninja. Maybe even more so than around Leader-sama
"Why?" Itachi's voice was empty of emotion, yet it seemed to the blonde as if his curiosity had been piqued.
"Because we need her to strengthen Akatsuki. Her skills will be handy for espianoge, yeah. She is yet still young and her loyalty to Konoha can change in time. She is impressionable. And by fright, we can keep her here without any worry of her escape, un." Deidara responded with a face that clearly wondered why Itachi was even talking to him. The answer to the raven haired man's question was obvious, and the blonde made sure his voice coveyed it.
"So you kidnapped the weakest Hyuuga to make us stronger? The shyest one who never argues? The terrified one who can't even complete a mission properly?" Itachi's own voice gave hint to nothing but disdain for the explosion specialist and – possibly – the girl in question, but Deidara wasn't sure. It could have just been him.
"Of course, yeah. She is the one whom we can best train, yeah. True, she is not the youngest, but she is the most impressionable, as I said before, un. We can work the fear out of her. We can train her to be stronger. And shyness is not an issue. It'll go away eventually." Deidara defended her simply because he wanted Itachi to see a reason, if not the reason, that he kidnapped the Hyuuga.
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All the while they argued, Hinata stood on the sidelines, silently healing Deidara's shoulder as best she could.
She listened as a man from her own village basically proclaimed her useless. Despite the fact that he was a criminal, his accusations stung.
He's right. I am useless. She thought dismally, letting her hand fall to her side after closing the blonde man's wound. I can't even heal a wound properly. She allowed her shoulders to hunch as her pride at helping someone fled away.
When he began to support her, however, she tensed. What was he getting at? Was he trying to help her or make things worse? Surely he wasn't helping her situation by trying to make her out to be stronger than she was. She would just prove him wrong after many training sessions where she would not grow stronger or more outgoing.
She would fail this ex-Iwa missing nin as she had failed everyone else in her life.
"And if she doesn't get stronger? If she stays weak for the rest of her life?" The Uchiha questioned as though reading her thoughts.
She almost held her breath waiting for the blonde's answer. "Then we can offer a ransom for her. I'm sure Kakuzu would love that, and we'd have more funds. It would force Konoha to deal with criminals, thereby inciting other villages to anger."
Hinata thought on this. Maybe she could fake her way into being sent home? She quickly pushed the thought from her mind. They would see right through her if she did. She would just have to accept the fact that they would train her and try to force her to become one of the members.
Though there was no way she would fully join the organization, she would act as though she would. That way she could gather information. Information could be used against them. She would finally be useful!
She smiled invisibly. That would be her self-given mission. If she could get to know the blonde man –Deidara – then maybe she could gain his trust. If she could gain his trust, then she could get information on Akatsuki that she could report to Konoha if – when, she assured herself – she returned home.
However, she wondered why he was standing up for her. She made a note in her mind to ask him after she gained his trust.
She looked up into the sky, waiting for the conversation between the two S-ranked ninja to end.
An arm appeared in her vision after a few moments. The shadow it cast made her flinch backward and blink in curiosity for a moment before she realized it was stretched out to her. To help her up? She tilted her head in confusion.
Deidara stood at the other end of the arm. "You kind of spaced out, yeah. Itachi left a little while ago. He said I had a lot of work to do. I just told him that I at least was doing something productive."
Hinata blinked up at him. "Ano, arigatou?" She grasped his forearm and allowed him to pull her to her feet.
Silence fell between them. Both ninja were unsure of where to go from there, and the silence was beginning to grow awkward. "Come on, let's get back inside. yeah." He said finally, gesturing toward the door nearby. This time, he didn't offer her his hand.
She wondered if he didn't offer his hands because he was self-conscious about them in the same way she was about her entire persona. She shook her head. S-class ninja weren't self-conscious. They couldn't afford to be. Besides, what could be weird about hands?
The Hyuuga girl stood and followed the blonde man silently inside. She cast about for some way to end the awkward silence, knowing he was probably too powerful to care. "Is your shoulder okay?" She eventually blurted out in her unsure, whisper of a voice.
"It will be. It's nice not to have blood trickling down my arm. Blood tastes disgusting." He shuddered, and suddenly the look on his face when he placed his palm on his wound made sense to her. She wanted to know why he had mouths on his palms, but didn't have the mettle to ask him.
"I'm glad." She sincerely stated. It hadn't been her choice to become a ninja. It was just something that her clan did, and she also was expected to do. She hated to injure people. Her real skill had lain in healing, but her family hadn't allowed her to pursue that career.
Of course, she was the healer of team eight, but she only knew the basics, like how to stop a wound from bleeding. "I'm sorry that I don't know more." She couldn't deny that it was a relief that he was not angry with her. She truly was glad that her healing had been of some use.
"Nah, that's fine. I can make due with an injured arm. I know you didn't mean it." He made the S-ranked missing nin version of puppy dog eyes at her, as though trying to lighten the sting of Pein's earlier words.
She nodded, smiling slightly at him. He was so similar to Naruto… She caught herself at that thought, though. The man before her was a criminal, part of one of the most powerful organizations in the ninja world, and he was the bad guy. He couldn't be like Naruto.
Naruto represented all her hopes. Deidara represented the end of them.
The Kyuubi container was bright, fun, playful. Deidara was dark and frightening, yet he also seemed to possess a playful side. Was it possible that, had he not defected from his village, Deidara could have been a 'Naruto' to a girl from Iwa?
The thought came to her mind from nowhere and stopped her in her tracks, along with the jingling of her bell. It made her take a good look at the back of the man who was confidently walking down the dimly lit corridors of a hideout of a bunch of criminals.
Personalities barred, the two men were extremely similar. The same self-assured gait. The same floppy blonde hair. The same need to cheer up those around them. The same muscular build…
She cut off her thoughts and forced herself to continue walking. She was getting left behind, and that was the last thing she wanted to happen to her while she was in the midst of an organization of powerful shinobi.
She was within two arms lengths of her escort when she bumped into someone else. Half a second later, she was thrown backward into a wall with a shriek of protest from her bell. She slid down to the ground, the breath knocked out of her, and panted for air with a cough in the settling dust.
Immediately, Deidara turned around and slamed whomever had attacked her into the nearest wall. He turned to move closer, as though to pin the person down, but paused upon the sight of a man bigger than he.
"What do you think you're doing, pipsqueak?" A muscular, blue skinned, shark-like man growled in a gravelly voice. His darker blue hair and – gills? – caught Hinata off guard for a moment.
"The girl is mine, Hoshigaki, yeah." Deidara growled fiercely back at him, backing away slightly to allow the man room to stand once more while effectively placing himself between the blue man and the Hyuuga girl.
He acted as though he owned Hinata, which both of them knew not to be true. Why did he phrase his statement that way?
The yellow eyed man – Hoshigaki Kisame, she remembered from the Bingo Books – laughed deeply. "Finally got you a girl who won't mock you for–"
Kisame was interrupted as Deidara spat, "She's a new recruit for the organization, un. She's a Hyuuga from the main branch with full control over her Byakugan, mm. She's mine to train." His emphasis was placed on the final two words he spoke. It was as though he knew how Kisame would finish his sentence. "I would have figured that Tobi would have told everyone about her already, yeah." Hinata looked at Deidara curiously, wondering what he didn't want Kisame to say.
"Leader-sama gave him a mission early this morning. He figured that since you were coming back today, it was best to get rid of him for a while." Kisame snorted. "I don't see why. You almost blew another hole in the wall anyway. All the little freak wanted was to say goodbye to his partner." He mocked the both the blonde and the orange-masked man at the same time. "How did you get back in here last night anyway? I thought Leader-sama told you to take a hike?"
"Well, he must have changed his mind, cause I got back in, mm." The blonde glared at the older man before him. At least, Hinata thought Kisame was older.
The blue-skinned man opened his mouth to speak, but was cut off when Deidara reached down to grab Hinata's wrist and pull her up. He caught himself just before touching her and let her make the first move. She lightly grasped only his fingers and allowed him to help her. "We've got to go, sharkman." The blonde smirked and pushed past him.
Hinata weakly waved over her shoulder, wanting to make a good impression so she wouldn't have as many enemies in Akatsuki. She didn't really even want one of them.
"Don't mess with him. He's just trying to make trouble because he's Itachi's partner. I hate the Uchiha, and the feeling is mutual. So, Kisame hates my guts too, mm. Not that any of us are close to begin with." Deidara explained off-handedly. He grew serious as he continued, though. "Now that he knows you're associating with me, he'll probably hate you, too, yeah. Be careful from now on, and stick close to me." The blonde warned her.
Hinata trembled slightly and nodded as she moved closer to the mass murder, her only protection from the other Akatsukis. It was a frightening thought.
A sudden wave of homesickness hit her. She missed the security that her home, the village, her friends, the Hokage, and her family gave her. She had never feared for her life for longer than a few hours.
Now she was living in fear. Although he seemed genuinely worried for her, he could turn on her. She could sense an undercurrent of something in this man who seemed so caring. His ability to mask his evil nature was disconcerting. This man to whom she was trusting her life could turn on her just as easily as he turned on his village. She could be killed by a single word of the leader, a single hit by any of these men.
The thought almost made her pause, except for the recollection of what had just happened when she kept more than an arm length away. Fear made her stay close, but also pushed her away.
She would have to get over her fear if she was planning to gain his trust. She had a long, tough road ahead of her.
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His shoulder hurt. It was painful to open a wound that had been healed just minutes before. He hoped his charge wouldn't notice that all her previous work had been for nothing and that she wouldn't take advantage of his handicap. It wasn't like it was a huge problem, but he hoped she wouldn't attempt to figure that out the hard way.
Just because he was a hardened criminal didn't mean that he didn't feel pain. He did; unlike amateur ninja, he knew how to hide his pain.
He could feel the blood trickling slowly down his arm even as he attempted to drive his thoughts in a different direction.
He concentrated on wondering what the Hyuuga girl was thinking about. She was quiet, but she always seemed that way. At least, for the days he had known her.
Now, though, she seemed to be lost in her thoughts. He knew she didn't trust him – honestly, he didn't blame her: she shouldn't – but he wanted to ask her what she was thinking about. She probably wouldn't tell him.
She was most likely scared out of her mind, and it was all his fault… Stupid conscience.
"So how did you sleep last night, un?" He questioned, trying to gauge her reaction.
She blinked at him with an empty expression, as though she hadn't heard him. She hesitated for a moment, as though debating with herself, then opened her mouth. "I'm sorry. Can you repeat that? I didn't hear you."
He smiled at her. It seemed she wasn't completely terrified of him, at least. Probably scared, but not so much so that she wouldn't talk to him. His smile faded when he saw that she had caught sight of the blood.
"You've hurt yourself again," she stated. He wondered if she suspected how, but his wonder ceased at her next statement. "It was when you hit Hoshigaki-san, wasn't it?"
He looked to the ground, almost surprised that she wasn't angry. But then, he couldn't picture the little mouse before him irate. "Hai, it was. But it's nothing to worry about, mm."
"Be still for a moment; I'll heal it again. I'm sorry that I didn't heal it sufficiently before." Her apology shocked him for a moment. He had no idea how low her self confidence was. She thought it was her fault that he was bleeding again.
He stopped walking and turned to face her. "It's not your fault. You did fine; I just went and screwed it up, yeah." He smiled as she looked into his eyes, taken aback, without tilting her head upward. The grin faded as he realized he was only two or three inches taller than her. He wasn't very muscular like Kisame, or tall like Kakuzu. He didn't have much of an intimidation factor, other than his reputation.
She merely raised her hand to his shoulder and concentrated her healing chakra in the place where her bullet had hit him, ignorant of his thoughts.
A tickling sensation ran up his arm as his skin spread over the crimson blood and muscle below it. He shivered and slid his gaze to a nearby door. It had been where they were headed.
The lounge. He had wanted to find a way to distract her so that he could make sure that there was no one in there before they entered. If there was someone, they would head to the kitchen for lunch. If not, he could sculpt and she could… do something else.
He surreptitiously looked inside and smirked when he saw that there was no one there.
"I'm finished." Her quiet voice broke through his thoughts as the tickling sensation left his shoulder.
He smiled at her in return for healing his shoulder. "Come on, this room on the left is the lounge. We're gonna hang out here for a while." Hinata looked slightly surprised that she was being allowed free time. "I've got work to do, so you can do…" He paused, searching for a word. "…whatever you do in your free time, yeah." He finished lamely.
Hinata's face twisted in confusion. "What would you like me to do?"
"Whatever. Draw, read, paint, I don't care, mm. Just don't bother me while I work." He said. Harsh, he knew, but necessary. He needed to keep her out of his way so he could sculpt.
Her eyes seemed to light up, however, despite his harsh ending. "D-did you say paint?" She questioned quietly, shyly.
He could see that he had found something she liked. "Yes, mm. There's an easel in the corner with supplies on it. Do what you want with it, yeah." He was rewarded with a wary grin as he led the way into the room.
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The chocolate haired ninja knocked on the door of the room, waiting for an answer. When he received none, he merely slid the door open and walked into the room. "You can't stay moping around in bed forever, Hinata-sama," he sighed. "I know you're not sick anymore, because you ate all your dinner last night."
Upon getting no reply, the chocolate haired Hyuuga rolled his pupil-less eyes and left to find the clan leader.
Telling the man what he knew, he allowed Hiashi to chastise the cocoon of covers that was Hinata. The Hyuuga clan leader gave a long winded speech on laziness, then paused. He heard no whimpering, no tears, not even any breathing.
He looked at his nephew for a moment before walking stiffly over to the covers to untangle them.
They were empty.
A look of pure fear crossed both of the stoic men's faces before the nodded to one another and made their way quickly to the Hokage's office.
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Hinata headed straight for the corner where the easel was located. She turned it so that it was facing away from the room, with her back to the corner so that she could see anyone approach her. She was a smart girl, though he would be the only one to come near her as long as he had a say in the situation.
After he had finished his sculpting, his work to prepare himself for future battles, he led her to the kitchen for dinner, then they both turned in early.
Days began to pick up a pattern after that. In the mornings, he would take her to the courtyard and train, sometimes pushing her harshly, but never going too far past her limit. Some days, they would quit early because of her persisting cough and lack of medicine; other days, they would train for hours.
He could tell she was still frightened of him. Heck, he would think there was something wrong if she wasn't. But he could also tell that she was becoming more comfortable in the atmosphere of Akatsuki.
After training, he took her back to his room so they could both shower. She had been given an extra pair of his clothes because he was the smallest member of Akatsuki, the one closest to her in height.
While she was in the shower, he sculpted to pass the time. When both were clean, they headed to the kitchen for lunch. Then, they spent the remainder of the day in the lounge, her painting, and him sculpting.
Dinner was not always the same. Sometimes, Itachi and Kisame would show up, other times there would be no one but Hinata and himself. Only a few times had they been graced with the presence of the female member of Akatsuki, and Pein never came down at all.
The first night she had dinner with Akatsuki, she had probably been scared out of her mind. Deidara had just finished cooking for them when Itachi and the blue haired maiden walked into the room.
He had watched Hinata shrink into the seat, but brighten ever so slightly at the fact that she was not the only female in the Akatsuki.
The blue haired woman had sat at the table across from her. Itachi had merely taken some food from Deidara and left, frowning.
The blonde man had frowned in return, mumbling under his breath. He then walked to the table and sat beside Hinata, not missing how she moved to make more room between them. "This is Konan-san, Leader-sama's partner." He had introduced the blue haired woman.
"I-It's a pleasure to m-meet you, Konan-san." She had managed to stutter out.
The steely glare that had locked onto his charge was enough to shut her up and frighten her for the rest of the night.
Never had Deidara heard a ninja toss as much in their sleep in his entire life as the night that Konan had frightened Hinata.
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Two weeks after she had been kidnapped, Hinata looked down upon the easel in the lounge and found the paints and brushes located where they normally were. Still, she warily sat before the canvas she had lately been working on as she allowed her mind to wander to her own problems.
That day, training had been particularly hard, but she was getting better. Slowly but surely, her skills were improving. She marvled at that fact for a moment, relishing the fact that she could feel Deidara letting her into his life more and more as time passed.
She was gaining his trust, bit by miniscule bit. Although that wasn't saying much, she still treasured the feeling of achievement, especially knowing her suffering would help her village.
She picked up her paintbrush, mindlessly moving it against the canvas. Her brush continued to shape lines, colors, bits of a picture she had started a week before. It was beginning to come together, but she wasn't sure what it was yet.
The reprieve from her life was good enough not to care too much about what exactly she was painting. She could finally allow her mind to wander while the picture formed itself.
Her thoughts were scrambled, and she needed a way to order them. Making a list usually helped her when she was confused, so she allowed her thoughts to organize into one.
This man who kidnapped her was frightening.
He was kind and protected her, but he was affiliated with the Akatsuki.
There was something sinister lurking beneath his upbeat persona.
He was an S-class criminal, possessing power beyond her imagination.
He wanted her to become a part of their organization because they were losing power.
She was trapped in the organization of the most powerful ninja in the world.
She had no hope of escape.
Rescue was unlikely, because her family didn't know she'd been kidnapped.
She almost broke down and cried at her last realization. Instead, she decided to stop thinking and focus on her painting, as she had done for the past few weeks. Looking to the canvas before her, a few tears managed to slip down her cheeks as she closed her eyes.
She had forest full of animals. A deer with chocolate brown, half lidded eyes stared back at her, beside a butterfly and a pig with ice blue eyes. A small puppy stood near a chibi beetle at the center of the picture. Off to the left, a brown-furred wolf with pearly eyes stood with a pink and brown dragon and a green turtle. The grass in front of the puppy and beetle had an orange fox with bright blue eyes and a pink kitten with jade green eyes. Each animal resembled one of her friends back in Konoha. She hadn't thought while she painted, and each one's resemblance of her friends was unconscious.
She wanted to lay down in her bed at home and cry herself to sleep over the thought of them. Especially the fox. Naruto. She winced as the thought passed her mind that she might never see him again, and she hadn't even told him of her feelings! That thought destroyed her resolve, and sobs wracked her body, along with coughs, as she broke down and cried.
Someone walked over to her as she fell from her chair, unable to hold herself up. She turned away from them in shame, but was lifted into a pair of arms. Carefully, she was carried from the room.
She was exhausted, and soon after her tears, she fell into the deep, empty abyss of sleep.
(A/N: So… How did you like it? Leave a review and let me know so I can change something if I need to and keep what you like. ^^ Hope you enjoyed the second installment of Mysterious Captivation!)