Found
M is for Mars
O O O
And there they were, locked inside a broom closet on some dreadful ship, stumbling blindly over the tattered ends of mops and empty buckets, scrambling for a solid hold on anything readily available. They found their footing at opposite ends—not that it mattered, anyway, because there was only about four or five feet of room in the little closet, anyway—panting and gasping, trying desperately to catch their breath.
Sakura didn't know who'd moved first—she wasn't paying much attention, in all honesty—but suddenly there was a flurry of motion and one was pinned under the other, back pressed painfully into a shelf, hands gripping said shelf and knocking over a few cleaning supplies in the process.
And then his lips were on hers, eyes still unaccustomed to the dark and forcing him to feel his way around her body. Not that he probably minded, Sakura mused, rolling her eyes.
The kiss became something more: a bit more heated, a bit more desperate, a lot more frenzied. Soon hands were on hips, legs were wrapping around middles, and one of them was moaning, because the tension was apparently just killing the both of them. Sakura didn't think she'd ever seen anything so raunchy in her life. They were in a broom closet, for God's sake. Someone was bound to catch them, and then what would they do? Pretend she'd dropped a contact lens?
She almost snorted in amusement as they pressed tightly against each other, his hips rocking into the cradle of her thighs at the same time that she arched, barely able to hold back little sounds of pleasure.
He, however, had plans of his own. "I've been waiting for this for so damn long."
"Me too," she said on a breathless whine.
"Do you know how long I've had to just be content with fantasizing about you?"
Sakura blushed.
He leaned closer and breathed, "Do you know how many times I've touched myself to you? How many times I've just wanted to drag you off and fuck you stupid?"
Sakura didn't know whether to be offended or amused.
She moaned. Loudly. "Oh—!"
"Are you watching porn?"
A squeak slipped past before Sakura could attempt to conceal it, and she fumbled with the remote, shutting off the TV and ending the moans and cries of the Broom Closet Couple with a dull "zap." "Deidara!"
His lips twisted into a devious smirk. "You were watching porn."
She flushed several pretty shades of pink. "I was not! It was just on TV and I started drifting off…!"
He shook his head disdainfully. "Such a terrible liar, yeah."
She stuttered over her words and then finally settled for throwing the remote control at his head. He dodged it expertly, of course, and she sneered at this.
He nodded his head toward the door. "Okay. Time to go."
"Oh, how kind of you," she hissed, taking his hand roughly in hers. "Now that you've stalled us long enough for you to wash the toothpaste stains on your shirt."
He mocked her quietly under his breath in a high-pitched tone, apparently trying to mimic hers, and she bumped him with her hip.
"Okay, so explain to me the situation?" she asked as he led her out the door and down the hallway, heading toward the elevator at the end. They passed by several doors on their way, and all in all, the hall was rather…empty.
"The same," he said, apparently calm again. "Nothing's changed, yeah."
He pressed the up button on the elevator when they approached it and waited patiently, pulling his hand from hers to tuck it in front of him, rocking on the balls of his feet.
Sakura did about the same thing, though she folded her arms behind her back, staring up at floor indicator with a blank expression.
The doors opened with a shrill ding and they stepped inside, squeezing between people and ending up at opposite ends.
She tried to act normal—really, she did, but it was almost nerve-wracking. Deidara had suddenly flared his chakra, and while he didn't have near the amount that Naruto—she tried not to wince at his mention—and Kisame had, he still had a fair amount. She glanced at him out of corner of her eye, wondering if he was trying to catch her attention.
He looked…well, like Deidara. Maybe a little less homicidal, though he still had the appearance of some mentally unstable freak.
Some lonely corner of her mind argued that he wasn't really; Deidara and Kisame were among the two sanest members of the Akatsuki, from what she could gather. Sure, Deidara had his whole deal with blowing things up and Kisame held grudges like there was no tomorrow, but—
She tensed unconsciously. There it was again, worse than last time. His chakra felt indistinctly like a small burst of static electricity: stunning for a second, but when it ebbed away into just a dull buzz, she wanted to do it again just to see if what she was feeling was painful or exciting. Especially when it mounted like that, hung suspended on some wonderful edge, and then broke over her, washing over her shoulders and down her spine, and he had to be doing it on purpose, the bastard.
She glanced over at him again, but he wasn't looking at her. Rather, he was staring at the elevator doors intensely, biting his bottom lip ever-so-slightly and almost, almost smiling. He was fidgeting, too. Badly. And the others were starting to notice, because a few heads turned toward him.
She groaned inwardly. The people around them were just normal citizens, sure, but she was certain that even they could feel the spiking of his chakra. And if they found out that they were ninja, questions would arise, and then they'd be forced to run.
And really, how far could they go in the middle of the ocean?
So she tried to edge over to him, slipping behind people, accidentally rubbing herself against their backs on many an occasion—she swore she'd kill Deidara for this later—in order to just get to him.
She shoved a man accidentally, and he scoffed at her. "What exactly is it that you're trying to do?"
She blinked at him, still pressed quite tightly to the wall by him, and then scowled. "I'm trying to get to my husband. I apologize."
Her "husband's" gaze immediately snapped to her, and he watched the exchange with one careful eye.
The elevator door opened to let people out, and more than half of them filed out into the hall. It was the theater hall, Sakura realized, and that was probably why there were so many people crammed into the elevator. A show was being put on.
The man who she had aggravated did not leave, however, though he stepped away from her and into the bit of empty space that appeared in front of him. She shuffled quickly to Deidara, who instantly took her hand in his. He interlocked her fingers this time—he usually never did that—and squeezed it tightly, still staring at the man who was, unfortunately, staring right back.
The roiling of his chakra had stopped, evening out into a steady, thick sort of manner, plastering to the walls of the small space, suffocating everything within reach. It folded around Sakura and her own chakra, which lay unused and meek in comparison to his. His chakra wasn't as bountiful as Naruto's, sure, but it damn well was heavier. Not painful or uncomfortable, just…odd.
She wondered why she was being so hypersensitive to his chakra and then realized it was because she was actually studying it. She stopped immediately, flashing her attention instead to the man, and her acute awareness of his signature drifted away slowly.
The man, apparently having nothing to say to any of this, turned away.
They endured the elevator ride with him for a few more seconds until the next floor came, and the rest of the riders stepped out into what Sakura decided were the passages to the main atrium of the ship. She was curious to see what it looked like and considered asking Deidara to go and see it, but when she tugged forward slightly to go out, Deidara tugged right back.
The doors closed, and she glanced at him.
"Kisame's not in there," he said sulkily.
She shrugged and fell back to stand beside him. The grip he had on her hand was firmer than she could ever remember. "I thought we could take the scenic route."
"We've been stalling for too long already, yeah."
"And whose fault is that?" she snapped, but then furrowed her brow when he did nothing but huff and stare blankly at the ceiling tiles.
She elbowed him gently. "What's wrong with you? No snippy retort?"
He huffed.
More silence.
Okay, something was definitely wrong. "Deidara?"
The elevator dinged, opening those wide, metal doors. He pulled her out with him, out into a hallway slightly larger than the rest. End tables decorated every corner, flower vases of what she assumed were fake flowers atop them. He seemed to know where he was going, at least.
They reached some main hall eventually. People congregated about casually, leaning against pillars or sitting on benches. All in all, the air was very…cheerful.
She tugged hard on Deidara's hand when he apparently figured out which way to go.
He frowned down at her and stopped, where she abruptly pulled him underneath the shaded shelter of a gaudy spiral staircase. She wasn't sure where it led; all she knew was that no one was using it. It might just have been decoration.
She had the sudden urge to pin him against the support beam by the collar—quite cliché, if she did say so herself—but held back, instead ripping her hand out from his for her to ball her fists and rest them on her hips. "What is your problem?"
He scoffed nastily, sneering. "I don't have a problem, yeah. What the hell is yours?"
Well, that was a little more of the Deidara she knew, though she felt more like she was berating a child rather than an adult that was supposed to be her husband. "You! You've been in a mood ever since the elevator. And what was that all about, anyway? What were you getting all excited for?"
"What are you talking about, 'excited'?"
She set her jaw and flared her chakra experimentally, just like he had done, and watched him blink and then furrow his brow. "I wasn't doing that."
"Yes you were," she snapped in a low whisper. "And you were doing it with enough force that the other people in the elevator could feel it."
He opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off.
"And I highly doubt that they were ninja, Dei—Makoto."
He sighed and looked morosely up at the bottom of the staircase. "It's just a habit, then."
"Why? What were you doing that for?"
"I do it when…when I get inspiration for…something, yeah."
He was beating around the bush and it was seriously starting to annoy her. She threw her hands up in exasperation. "What inspiration? We were in a crowded elevator. How inspiring could that possibly be?"
"You didn't see it?" he asked on a gasp, looking at her with wide eyes, as if she must have been blind not to see what he had allegedly seen.
She shook her head and he grabbed her hands, bending his knees in such a way that he was eye-level with her.
"You didn't feel it? Those powerful doors, the small interior, the enclosed space…"
"I felt claustrophobic and a little nauseous, if that's what you mean," she answered cautiously, giving him a look that clearly asked if he was out of his damn mind.
The hands shifted so that he could interlock his fingers with hers again, and he sighed contentedly, practically purring in ecstasy. Whatever this feeling was had apparently been like catnip to Deidara, because he looked about ready to start rolling around on the ground or licking her fingertips. "It was amazing. I haven't felt it in so long, yeah."
She blinked at him. "So what was it?"
"A bang!" he whisper-yelled, pressing his forehead to hers, smiling widely. "It was so…so intoxicating."
"What the hell are you going on about?" she finally questioned, pulling her hands out of his.
He used his now free hands to push her hair back from her face, framing her utterly baffled visage with his thumbs. "It was the thrill of an explosion! Oh, if only I had more clay left." He pressed his lips to her left cheek quickly, making excited little noises as he did. "Can you imagine?"
"I can imagine that you're out of your fucking mind, Deidara, now—"
He pressed another kiss to someplace near her temple, this time, still making those noises. "It just came to me suddenly, and I couldn't stop thinking about it, yeah. What would an explosion look like from behind those doors? The walls repulsing outward, the muffled boom, the smoke filtering through those little cracks, the hissing and the sizzling of all the destruction contained inside that tiny, tiny room."
He was starting to scare her a bit. "Deidara—"
"And then it would erupt in flames, yeah." He rubbed against her, much like a cat would, Sakura realized with a bit of amusement, and lifted up her chin to breathe across her neck, whispering the rest of his description into her skin. "The fire would burn, burn, burn and turn everything to ashes from the inside out." His hands slipped from cupping her face to running down her neck, kneading into the tendons at the juncture of her neck and shoulders, and it felt really, really good. "Can you imagine?" he asked again—breathed against her—as she stuttered for a response. "Nothing but the doors and the skeleton of once was would remain."
She finally summed up enough presence of mind to push him away, shoving roughly at his chest.
He stepped back, steadying himself against the support beam of the staircase, and blinked.
"I thought it was because of the man," she whispered after a while, at a loss for words.
He shoulders slumped and he stared at the ground, his breathing still a bit heavy. "It…was. In a way?"
She kept quiet as a bid for him to continue.
"But I…wanted to explode the elevator before he snapped at you," he explained, shrinking down to his normal stature and keeping his eyes on the ground. When he had once seemed larger than Sakura and more powerful—she had even thought for a fleeting second that he could easily defeat her—he was now his old self again. Just Deidara. "When he talked to you, it brought me back into focus, I guess."
She bit her lip nervously. "Dei—"
A tap on her shoulder had her turning around, staring up—way up—into the face of what looked a bellhop. Or maybe a security guard. The epaulettes and various decorations on his uniform made his position on the ship too obscure.
"Miss?" he politely insisted, glancing once over at Deidara, who was staring at the man like he'd just threatened to run a stake through his heart. "Is everything alright?" he continued in a whisper.
Sakura, a bit surprised at the notion of a civilian thinking she needed to be rescued, exhibited quite the delayed reaction in which Deidara scoffed and the man began to push her behind him.
"N—no," she finally managed to bite out, shaking her head. "No, no, everything's fine. I'm sorry. My husband and I are just…having a little spat." She smoothed her hair back and smiled soothingly at him. "I'm sorry to bother you."
He straightened and waved a dismissive hand. "Alright, then." He bowed. "I apologize for the interruption."
He walked solemnly away, Deidara still staring a burning hole through his back. He watched the other man until he disappeared behind a door, and even then, he kept staring at where he had vanished to.
And then his face of stony concentration was broken with a wince and the telltale tightening of his jaw. "Ow."
Happy for the abrupt change in subject, Sakura motioned for him to bend down—she could probably reach him without having him bend, but it was easier this way—in order for her to inspect his newly healed jaw.
She cradled it in her hands, biting the inside of her cheek. "Swollen. You've been talking too much," she chided, trying her damnedest to forget what he'd just said—what he'd just done. Quite frankly, he'd acted like the ex-Akatsuki member that he was. She mentally berated herself for ever, ever thinking or expecting any different of him.
He rubbed the bottom of his jaw, head turned away from her. "Can't you heal it?"
"Not here," she said, removing her hands and shaking her head. "I don't want to draw any unnecessary attention."
He scoffed. "A little late now, yeah."
"And whose fault is that?"
"You've really got to up the ante on your retorts. You've used that on me already, yeah."
She was rendered quite at a loss for what to say for several reasons all at once, the prevailing one being at how damn quickly his attitude had changed from euphoric, excited, and even a little bit delirious to his normal, snippy, witty, delightful, in some odd ways, amusing, entertaining, infuriating…
Well, she definitely liked his old self better, in any case. Or perhaps it was his new self? How had Deidara acted all those years back? She remembered seeing him when they'd rescued Gaara, there with his partner, Sasori, him just lounging on the Kazekage's body and Sasori staring coldly ahead. But she'd never heard anything from Deidara that day; Naruto and Kakashi had been the one's to go chasing after him, and she had stayed behind with Grandma Chiyo to fight Sasori.
She did, however, remember Naruto talking about Deidara in the aftermath. "A crazy bastard," he'd said through clenched teeth. "He played with Gaara's body like he was some kind of rag doll." And right then she had decided that she hated Deidara and the Akatsuki more than anything in the world.
Oh, how brash and shallow she had been. She wondered if Tsunade or perhaps Kakashi even took the time to study the reason for Akatsuki's actions besides the hunger for greater things: something quite a few people could identify with, albeit on an admittedly less extreme level.
She took Deidara by the hand and led him to the nearest empty hallway. His fingers curled around hers and they were cold. Cold hands. Something Ino had told her a long time ago—back when they were little girls with big delusions about boys and the world in general—made her want to laugh. "Hands that are cold mean he wants sex, Sakura. Keep that in mind," her friend's voice chided in her head.
He didn't say a word as he trailed beside her, though she attributed this to the new pain in his jaw. When they were sufficiently deep enough in the hallway, she turned him around and instructed him to sit on the floor against the wall.
He did so without complaints, and she knelt down between his outstretched legs. "You're too tall for me to reach properly," she explained on a mumble, immediately taking his jaw in her hands. He placed his hands on her hips, though whether this was just reflex or a very conscious move, Sakura couldn't tell. Nor did she want to. She was content with just ignoring it.
She couldn't ignore it, however, when his fingers brushed under her shirt to circle the bare skin there. "Stop it," she said, and he did.
The look on his face told her he was asking why, and she answered with a small flood of chakra, healing whatever he had pulled and injured in his newly repaired jaw. She didn't notice—or maybe she just didn't want to—that Deidara had been slowly but surely pulling her into him, closer to his chest, until she damn near was flush against him. And when she pulled away, signifying she was done, he did pull her flush against him, arms tightening around her lower waist as he buried his face into her stomach.
"What?" she asked, and she recoiled when she realized how…well…callous she'd sounded.
It didn't seem to affect him at all, though, because he just pressed into her a little deeper, turning his head to the side. "This is so stupid, yeah."
She purposely softened her voice, though she didn't know why. What was she doing, giving sympathy to the enemy? Placating him? "What is?"
"Whatever it is we're dancing around," he muttered in a flat tone. "It wasn't supposed to end up like it has."
"What wasn't?"
"The capture plan," he said, sounding a bit agitated. "My kidnapping you and Kisame playing along. It's not like it was the most well-thought-out plan in the world, but I didn't think that this would happen, either."
"What is 'this'?" she asked, also agitated. Hell, he was talking in circles and he was holding her too tight and he was Deidara and Akatsuki and crazy. Something way, way, way back in the recesses of her mind asked what the difference between Sasuke's lust for vengeance and power and Deidara's hunger for appreciation and acceptance were.
There were lots of differences, she reasoned. Sasuke left with Orochimaru to become stronger to kill his brother, who had killed his entire clan. He wasn't being selfish. He wanted revenge, and it was absolutely justified. Deidara joined the Akatsuki because he wanted his art to be recognized.
…Right?
Right?
No.
No, he didn't.
She grimaced and pushed him away, climbing to her feet and dusting off her hands out of reflex. He watched her for a moment before doing the same, standing quietly beside her.
"We should—"
"—Find Kisame," he finished for her, nodding his head toward the end of the hallway. "Where was he when you left him?"
"Belladonna Buffet."
"…That's sickening."
"The name or the fact that he's probably not there anymore?"
Deidara sighed and folded his arms behind his head. "A little bit of both, yeah."
O O O
Delightfully according to plan, Kisame was found lounging—well, not really lounging; he looked more…"carefully relaxed" than anything—about at the Belladonna Buffet. His hands were in his lap, an ankle crossed over his knee, eyes half-lidded and glancing around the room.
People watching, then. Waiting for them? Calculating, maybe.
Or he could just have been thinking.
Sakura approached him first, ever excited to get away from being alone with Deidara, it seemed. She took a careful seat next to him, smiling and pushing some hair from her face. Ugly, ugly face that Deidara hated with every fiber of his being.
Especially when she put a hand on Kisame's knee and laughed something he couldn't understand.
Deidara shifted uncomfortably and crossed his arms, looking all parts the over-protective husband he was pretending to be. And if Kisame was the brother, why was he being so buddy-buddy with Sakura? Hell, their roles might as well have been reversed.
Kisame stood and offered Sakura an arm, which she took with a mock-bow.
Okay. Too far.
Deidara took Sakura's other arm. "What the hell do you think you're doing, Kenji?"
"Kenji" grinned charmingly. "Leading my sister to get something to eat, because her husband apparently couldn't handle this task on his own."
"We didn't have time to eat, yeah!" Deidara defended, huffing moodily. "We were too busy trying to get ready to leave the cabin!" And at this point, he tugged Kisame brusquely away from Sakura, pulling him away from earshot. Sakura, apparently taking the hint, wandered over to a counter and grabbed a plate, proceeding to pile it with various foodstuffs.
Kisame looked surprisingly like he was expecting such an outburst, and he folded his arms, too, leaning his head slightly to the left. He was agitated, but damn it, so was Deidara. He was tired of being on this confined boat and he was tired of dragging around a girl that was half a decade younger than him. He'd become a missing-nin to suit his own selfish needs—yes, he admitted it, joined the Akatsuki, survived the Akatsuki, seen countless people, friends and foe alike, die at the hands of both himself and others, and at twenty-nine and counting, he was ready to just sit down, smooth his hair out of his face, take off his scope, and live out the rest of his years in peace, punctuated with the occasional mass-scale explosion.
He flicked his head to get that thick strand of hair out of his face. When did his bangs start annoying him?
"Deidara," Kisame said, dropping the huffy stance. "Stop playing games."
"Games? What games?" he replied, staring up at the man. Six-foot-something, 200 pounds, and damn near forty years old. So Kisame had something on Deidara.
And then, of course, it hit Deidara. And he felt like an ass. Because really, how slow did he have to be to not realize it?
Kisame was old enough to be Sakura's father. Forty years old, and Sakura was…what? Twenty-four? Twenty-five at the most? And that wasn't saying that he couldn't or didn't have lewd or lascivious thoughts for his "wife," but hell, Kisame had years upon years of experience on the both of them.
And suddenly it became very clear to Deidara that if anybody deserved to kick up their feet and relax, it wasn't him, it was Kisame.
He pressed his fingers to his temples and sighed long and deep.
"I'm not here for the girl," Kisame continued, frowning a little bit. There was silence for a moment before he continued solemnly. "You know I'm not going with you two."
Deidara scuffed the floor with his shoes, scowling at nothing. "Yeah, I know."
More silence. "What are you going to do, then?"
"What, like I'm helpless without you or something?"
"What are you going to do with Sakura?" he clarified, and Deidara glanced at Sakura unconsciously. She was just finding a place to sit in the far corner of the room.
"I…don't know, yeah." And it was true. He didn't know what he wanted to do with her.
"And what were you going to do originally? Don't feed me that 'revive Akatsuki' sentiment, either, because you and I both know it's shit."
"What were you planning on doing with her, then?"
"I wasn't planning on doing anything," Kisame said, still calm and composed even though Deidara was near screaming. "I recognized you and just went along with whatever it was that you were doing. And from there I was going to stay with you until we could both figure out what it was we wanted to do with ourselves."
Deidara shook his head and motioned for the both of them to sit down at a nearby table. "What did you do in the time between the collapse of the Akatsuki and when you met back up with me, yeah?"
Kisame fiddled with a salt shaker. "I tried to find someone to fix Samehada, but I couldn't. And after that, I just kept searching for a place to live." He shrugged. "There's only so far you can go on being evil and underhanded. There has to be some point when you realize that you want to sit down and shut up."
Suddenly interested, Deidara glanced up at him, up into those odd grey eyes. "Did you find one?"
His impromptu partner and brother-in-law shrugged. "Yes and no. I contacted a friend of mine in some neutral territory just off the Land of Water. It's one of the larger islands, but it's nice." He shook his head. "Not like the villages and cities around here."
"Meaning?"
"It's caught up with the rest of the world. It just chooses to stay out of it. It's Kanagawa."
"Hmm…sounds nice." He deliberately averted his eyes from Kisame, looking instead where Sakura sat alone, eating her meal. She picked it to pieces with her delicate little fingers, and no matter how "delicate" said fingers seemed, Deidara knew the truth. He grimaced inwardly and instinctively pressed his legs together carefully.
Kisame, who had been watching him for a few seconds, cracked a wry smile.
Deidara looked back at him and frowned. "What?"
"You can't expect her to stay with you forever, can you?"
A thick cloud of dread settled over Deidara's insides, and his frown turned significantly darker. Sure, he knew that he wouldn't be able to keep her subdued forever, but that didn't mean that he wanted to think about it. Because when it came right down to it, he couldn't keep her around. She might last a couple years at the most, maybe five or six if he was lucky, but then she'd run. She'd go home, and she wouldn't come back. And then she'd tell her friends and her family—whatever was left of them, anyway—and they'd all run after him with pitchforks and torches in hand.
He sighed and lowered his head into the cradle of his arms. So it was either set her free as long as she kept her capture a secret or simply kill her.
His right hand twitched and then ached. It would be so, so easy, but Kisame—
"Don't kill her."
Deidara looked up. "What?"
"Don't kill her," Kisame repeated, this time staring at where Sakura sat. "It would be a waste."
Deidara scoffed and sat up straight, pouting. "Since when do you care, yeah?"
He turned slowly to stare at Deidara intently, mouth half open and those horridly sharp teeth just barely being hinted at behind his lips. "Don't kill her, Deidara. She doesn't deserve it."
"So you suddenly just decide that you're all righteous and good now that Akatsuki is gone?" Deidara half-shouted, attracting the attention of several restaurant-goers. "It doesn't work like that! You can't be a villain one second and a hero the next!"
He was still so calm, Deidara mused. He didn't used to be like that. He didn't used to like the girl. In fact, their roles had damn near been reversed. It was all Deidara could do to stop Kisame from killing the girl. But now…
"If you keep her with you, that's fine. Just know that she'll eventually find a way to escape or at least contact home, Deidara. You're not as strong a force as you think."
He'd apparently had an epiphany in the time that Sakura had been with them.
Deidara put his head in his hands, elbows so rudely on the table, and managed to look once more at Sakura through the corner of his eye.
So where was his epiphany? Where was his grand realization? Where was his drastic change of character? The only thing that had been certain through this little journey was his increasing annoyance with the world and everything in it.
He scoffed. What next? Was he going to slaughter his clan and leave his brother to wreak revenge on him? Well, it was certainly the path he was headed toward, and though Itachi was strong, that man was the last person Deidara would ever want to identify with. He was a mind-fuck inside a bastard inside a sociopath, and Deidara liked to believe that he was above that.
"What do you propose I do, then?" he finally asked, not bothering to look at Kisame.
Kisame audibly took a deep breath, though it was structured—calm—collected. Ever the stoic, Kisame. Congratulations. "I would let her go," he said, sounding sagely and wise. For fuck's sake, he may have been forty, but he was no all-knowing entity. If anything he was just going through his midlife crisis.
Well, that was what Deidara used to console himself, at least.
"String her along for another week or so," Kisame said, moving to stand, and Deidara followed. "And then break it to her slowly. Just tell her that you have nothing to do with her and would rather release her then murder her." They both started toward Sakura. "She's a smart girl. She'll understand, and she'll respect your wishes."
Deidara nodded. All in all, it…sounded like something he was just going to have to resign himself to. Kisame was intelligent, and the plan was likely to end in little or no misgivings or grievances. It was better than anything Deidara could come up with, in any case. "Okay."
"And on top of that all," Kisame continued, and the both of them were staring intently at Sakura's seated form by now, "when she's gone, you can't go back for her."
There was an almost unnoticeable pang in Deidara's chest, but he passed it off as hunger or anxiety. "What makes you think I'd want to, yeah?"
Sakura smiled at their approach. "Hey."
Deidara bit his lip and nodded a greeting of his own. "Sakura."
Top of Form
Bottom of Form