A/N: A short intermission while I try to write more angst and stuff for he conclusion. I suck at writing angst so drop a line if you have any suggestions, yeah?
Warning: Yaoi, Angst, some bad words...
Disclaimer: I don't own. But I would love to have it as a birthday present.
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Hurting Intermission
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"Deidara, have you seen Sasori or Kisame? They both seem to be missing…" questioned the Uchiha heir as he poked his head into the room of his blonde fellow teenager.
"Sasori-danna," began the nineteen-year-old, "Is not here, yeah. He recently decided to accept a solo mission to Tsukigakure even though he knew I had something to talk to him about before he accepted the mission. And of course, he only decides to inform me three hours after the fact, yeah." Deidara vented angrily, waving a piece of paper around.
"So, sorry Itachi-kun. I haven't seen either of them, yeah. But hey, you want some candy?" asked the rogue nin, holding out a piece of chewy candy to the murderer of the Uchiha clan.
Itachi accepted it and popped the blue candy into his mouth before pulling one of Deidara's manga out from a shelf and opening it, flopping onto the cushy rug in his fellow teenager's room.
Moments later Itachi was done and irritated to find that there were no new manga in Deidara's ever-growing collection.
"I'm bored," whined the Uchiha, acting like a child for once. The blonde looked at the black-haired teenager who was rolling around on his rug and promptly burst out laughing.
Itachi scowled up at Deidara who was playing with clay on the bed from his position on the floor and went to the bathroom the blonde shared with Sasori only to find that his entire mouth had been stained blue from his teeth to underneath his tongue. Realizing that the dye from the candy would take quite a while to disappear, he opted to just stay in his friend's room until it was gone.
Re-entering the room after rinsing his mouth Itachi turned a Sharingan-glare at the giggling blonde and seated himself in a large beanbag chair next to the giant stuffed owl Itachi recognized from Deidara's story about the fair, Sasori and the stupid woman who had thought that the blonde was the puppet master's girlfriend.
And thus, and idea sprung from the mention of the old, worn, and loved owl plushie.
"I think you owe me something," Itachi decided. "I want a story. One of those stories."
Deidara shot up from his bed where he had been orchestrating a symphony of explosions. "I don't owe you anything, yeah! I let you into my room, gave you information about our wayward partners and let you read my manga."
"You also vented at me, dyed my mouth blue, and laughed at me. My ego was deflated like a popped balloon and you were the needle." Itachi reminded him.
"Well then, because you're making me tell a story, I'm telling you about our first big fallout. It's not happy and if you even drop a hint of a mention of it to Sasori-danna, I'll make sure your tongue gets cut out by yours truly. 'Cause this story to Sasori-danna is the straw that broke the camel's back, yeah?" Deidara lazily leaned back, shutting his eye.
Itachi settled into his tie-dye beanbag chair and hugged the stuffed owl before looking at Deidara intently as he waited for the older male to begin his story.
Akasuna no Sasori burst into the house of Katsuhiko Deidara where he found his blonde friend sitting among boxes and packing away clothes.
"Deidara! I heard about your father-"
"Hey, danna." A dead voice emanated from the fragile frame of the blonde. "Haven't seen you in what, a month, un? Daddy's funeral was a week ago; you're a bit late."
The redheaded Suna-nin faltered for a moment at the bitter tone then strode to the quivering blonde, placing a hand on his shoulder, "Never again."
"Promise." Demanded the recently orphaned teenager.
"Promise."
Deidara smiled sadly at the older man, "All right, help me pack then, un. I'm moving to a new apartment. I don't need all this room now that Daddy's gone too."
Sasori watched his best friend shuffle around in funeral attire and remembered the look in that singular blue eye. If, at the age of fourteen, Sasori felt he had lived through a thousand years then Deidara, now also fourteen, had lived through millenniums. And the millenniums had not been kind because… there had been a dazed look in that eye, as though the owner wasn't quite… here.
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Sasori stood before the apartment complex, a few days after their reconciliation. For some reason, there was a feeling emanating from building that wasn't quite right. Pushing it away, he went to Deidara's apartment and opened the door.
"Deidara? Hey, are you here?" called the Suna-nin. He frowned when he heard no response. Frowning, he pulled open the door to the blonde's bedroom only to become more confused when he saw nothing there but a cup of tea. He collected the cup and pulled open the door to the bathroom and saw nobody there either. Proceeding to the guest bedroom, he was greeted with and odd sight.
The blonde stood in the middle of the room, laughing and chattering gleefully to apparently no one. The room was also plastered with papers. The ANBU captain recognized them as seals used to stabilize and maintain a genjutsu. Rust-colored eyes narrowed as they examined the remains of the tea, recognizing them as Atropa Belladonna, a hallucinogen that doubled as a poison and was better known to the world as Deadly Nightshade. That would explain Deidara's behavior.
Breaking the illusion, Sasori strode into the room, and tossed the blonde's thin frame over a shoulder, ignoring the insane responses to the hallucinations the Iwa-jounin was giving. They were soon out of the apartment and headed towards Iwa's rehabilitation center.
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Two weeks. Two weeks. Just two weeks! The redhead screamed in his mind. Only two weeks later and I find him doing the same things!
Sasori was furious. Mostly at the center for letting Deidara escape but also himself. What did I do wrong?
You weren't there when he needed you… Don't you know? People need people. Or they implode.
Implode…
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The next time he caught the blonde in a genjutsu, Akasuna no Sasori almost locked the blonde away in a puppet with the intent to keep him there for the rest of eternity.
"DAMMIT DEIDARA, YOU HAVE TO STOP RUNNING FROM REALITY! YOUR PARENTS ARE DEAD AND YOU DOING THIS WILL NOT BRING THEM BACK TO LIFE! IT'S NOT HELPING EITHER OF YOU OR MAKING YOU HAPPY!" he yelled at the shaking figure that sat in a chair.
Deidara looked up at Sasori, his bloodshot eye glaring fiercely back at the puppet master. His voice started trembling but it soon took on a cold, deadly tone. "Y-you know what? You- you're wrong! It is helping me because now I'm happier! And when people are happy, then their lives are stable and their minds are sane. Right now, my parents are alive and you are a fragment of my imagination!"
Continuing on he spoke quietly in an even and controlled tone, "Did you know? There's a voice in my head. People tell me it's because I'm insane but I don't really care. It's nice to me. When Mommy died, it put me back together so that Daddy could be the glue to hold me together. Then, when Daddy died, it made me happy. It told me how to be happy. It was there for me. But, Sasori-danna, where were you?"
Sasori flinched as though he had been slapped and found himself unable to move as the words sunk into him.
Deidara stood and looked at the ground, choking out a barely audible, "I hate you." Before running out.
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Sasori stood in the middle of the little kitchen, frozen numb by the words. It wasn't as though Deidara hadn't expressed distaste for him before; You're mean, danna! I don't want to play with you! I don't like you! But 'I hate you', this was new.
But really… where was I indeed? I… I was on a mission. One that I could have declined… I was on a mission during the funeral and I came as soon as I read the letter. Which… which was dated the same day I had accepted that mission. I think I… yes, that morning I got my mail but I didn't read Dei's letter. I didn't think it would be anything important…
Sasori dropped to the ground, his eyes wide with the horror of what he had done finally sinking in.
I-I… I took him for granted. Because… he's always there. The single constant in my ever-changing life as a shinobi. What have I done?!?!
And anguished scream shook the apartment.
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Three hours later
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Sasori ran through the rain into the old house of the Tsuchikage that was still unoccupied. Running through the long hallways and leaving wet footprints on the dusty wood, he flung open the door to the room of Deidara's mother. There, in the slightly opened closet, was the small frame of the teenager, curled up and shaking as it rocked back and forth, whispering, "This isn't real, this isn't real," creating a mantra of the words.
Sasori watched the broken creature sadly. He knew that Deidara had been a broken person since the death of his mother. Nobody's mind saw their own mother killed without getting a little cracked as a result. Unfortunately, the blonde's mental physique had always been fragile and the result was it breaking into dozens of pieces.
However, Deidara's father had taken the time to stop and fix some pieces into place so when he had met Sasori, he was at least half well. Then Sasori repaired the rest with only a few, healing wounds as the result.
Then Deidara's father died. And when Sasori hadn't been there, Deidara had begun to explode in on himself. His sanity had collapsed entirely. And it was all because nobody had been there to help bear the pressure.
Sasori knelt to the floor, and held the blonde.
"Deidara. My Dei. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry." The agonized whisper came from the puppet master who repeated the words over and over, knowing that he should have been there and wasn't. Tears streamed down the beautiful face, only to be wiped away by a pale hand.
"Danna is… crying? Don't cry, Sasori-danna, you're too strong for that," whispered a blank voice, hoarse from overuse. "How did Danna manage to find me? I'm hiding so well," a curious blue eye, with not even a glimmer of sanity, looked up towards the redhead.
"Baka, y-you always come here when you're upset." Sasori's voice was muffled by Deidara's shirt as a hand stroked the golden hair of a recently orphaned teen.
"I'm not a baka." Was the emotionless reply.
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"When my parents died, my biological ones, I mourned them even though I barely knew them. To never experience the unconditional love a mother has for her child or to never know the pride a father has for his first son made me sad and lonely. So when I first learned my puppet jutsu, I took pictures I had and used them to make puppets that had the likeness of my parents."
"With the puppets, I could pretend that they were there, that they were alive and that they could love me. But this happened when I was four and I could only live in this make believe world for all of two minutes. Then my chakra strings would break and I would be torn from my fantasy world."
"But now that I look back, I think I was probably better off accepting that they were dead. Because you see, Dei-chan, as happy as it makes you when the moment exists, when it's gone, you fall somewhere even lower than when you started. And I didn't want that for you."
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The insane light in Deidara's eye had begun to fade somewhat and the look of betrayal and hurt that had previously been directed toward the puppet master had now lessened considerably. The little blonde teenager took Sasori's face in delicate hands.
"I'm sorry, un. I didn't mean t hurt anyone. And I don't hate you, Sasori-danna. Not at all…" Deidara rested his head on Sasori's shoulder. "So don't hate me please."
"I won't ever hate you, Deidara. I love you, you're my special person." Whispered the older man.
"I love you too, Danna." Was the soft reply.
End note: Unbelievably terrible. But Itachi liked it and would like it even more if all of you reviewed.
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