Found
O is for Opiate
O O O
He didn't have any bags to pack. He didn't have any belongings to gather. All he had were his weapons, a few seals, and the loose change in his pockets.
Hoshigaki Kisame, a man that had made Haruno Sakura feel the complete range of emotions—the pain, the fear, the hatred, the reverence, and most recently, the clench in her chest and the fuzziness in her stomach that she could very vaguely refer to a sort of platonic or friendly love—stood before her, smiling at his place in the harbor.
People rushed around, anxious to get to wherever it was they were going, but Sakura refused to notice. Because it was almost like there was this void, this empty, calm, quiet spot where she, Kisame, and Deidara all just stood looking at each other.
And then Kisame smiled. It was something rare because it was genuine, because it wasn't backed by malicious intent or an underlying mischievousness, because it was the last one she'd see in a long, long time, if not the last she'd see ever again.
Just like that, the butterflies in her stomach disappeared and were replaced with a sick, morbid sense of dread. She clutched the fabric of her pants at her thighs obstinately, biting her lip and bending stiffly at the waist in a rigid bow.
She kept her head down and her eyes shut tight for a long time after that, and when she felt a large hand on the back of her head, she shook.
"Sakura," Kisame said, removing his hand. "You don't have to bow to me."
When she straightened, he was bowing, one hand folded across his stomach and the other placed neatly behind his back. And she realized how much he'd changed from the brash, unyielding shinobi that had aided in her kidnapping to the collected, playful shinobi that stood before her today, offering her his last valediction in a formal bow that had her throwing her arms around his torso as soon as he stood once more to his full height.
He was leaving her, and there was nothing she could do about it.
He returned the embrace, first with a bit of caution and then with warm, strong arms, completely enveloping her in his much larger frame.
And then Deidara completely surprised the two of them by sighing almost unnoticeably and wrapping one arm around Kisame and one around Sakura.
And there the three of them stood, heads against shoulders and collarbones and chests, arms tight around each other, the last of the great, the breaking apart of what very well could have been the family they pretended to be.
And in that instant, it was suddenly clear to Sakura and probably Deidara and definitely Kisame that they had needed this. They'd needed this reassurance of existence, of necessity, of rightness. They'd needed to know that they were wanted and loved and that someone was thinking of them, that someone was caring about them, that someone was yearning for their presence.
And that was what they had received in the Akatsuki. Someplace for them to thrive and congregate and group off, creating their own morbid clique, making plans for a future that didn't involve loneliness.
And maybe—just maybe, because it was such a monumental possibility—that was why they fought. The presence of another human being and the physical contact, whether it was malicious or defensive or a combination of both, was so reassuring, was so precious, that they'd go to ultimate lengths to achieve that.
So Sakura couldn't help but wonder, fingers digging into Kisame's shoulder blades as Deidara's respectively dug into her shoulder, how broken their lives must have been prior to the Akatsuki.
Everyone wanted to belong.
Everyone wanted to be a requirement.
And…and she supposed everyone just wanted to be a part of something greater.
Kisame was the first to break their little group hug.
Then came the tears for Sakura, and she collapsed to her knees, unable to bear the weight. Why did she have to even meet these two? Why did she have to befriend them after all the wrong they'd done to her?
And now why did they have to leave?
"We could have been great," she whispered into her hands, and she felt Deidara kneel in front of her. She leaned forward and touched her forehead to his chest, holding it in to the best of her abilities. She'd never been particularly good at letting her tears fester inside her.
He didn't touch her; rather, he allowed her to lean on him, nuzzling into the fabric of his shirt, face contorted from tears. And when he finally did allow himself to touch her, he placed one consoling hand on her spine.
"We were great," he whispered right back.
When Sakura recovered herself from Deidara, Kisame was gone.
O O O
It was windy in Earth Country, as Deidara remembered it, and he wasn't proved wrong. The wind was so strong that it picked up small rocks and pieces of clumped sediment, depositing them on the heads and in the eyes of himself and Sakura.
And Sakura, he decided, being generous and pitying for the first time in a long time, simply didn't deserve all of this.
So they'd happened upon a cave that had proved to be delightfully deserted. Deidara had volunteered to go out and find food, being more accustomed to the foreign territory than Sakura, but not after ensuring that she was comfortable. They didn't have much longer together, after all, and even though the thought of her up and leaving him so easily—so seamlessly—made the dull ache in his chest flare, he reminded himself that it was for the better. They'd both do nothing but benefit from of their separation. He was a missing-nin and he just wanted to live the rest of his life in peace. And she…well, he was fairly certain she merely wished to go home and fall back into her original Konoha-nin dynamic.
He found their dinner without much of a fuss, having simply uprooted a few hiding field mice with small-scale explosions and snatching a few fish from a nearby fisherman's net.
He returned to the cave, food bundled in one hand some kindling under his free arm. He spotted Sakura immediately, though she seemed to be asleep, lying curled on her side and against a cave wall.
Their designated "sleeping spot" wasn't too deep within, so the temperature was a humid medium between freezing cold and blistering hot. He was tempted to travel a bit deeper into the recesses of said cave, but he hadn't wandered that far back, and he was anxious that he'd find something he…well, that he didn't necessarily want to find. He'd seen his fair share of snakes in Earth Country, and he didn't particularly enjoy their company. Especially when they were thirty-something feet long.
He sat down with a sigh, igniting the wood bits in less than a second. He set up a makeshift spit soon enough, as well, and set to work cooking the fish.
Sakura woke up before they were completely cooked. If they were still hungry afterward, he'd cook the field mice, but he wanted to avoid doing so if at all possible.
He looked over at her to see her looking at him, and he simply nodded. He hadn't been gone for more than an hour, so he was certain her rest had been neither pleasant nor long.
She rubbed her arms over the cloth of the long-sleeve shirt she wore. "So how's your jaw?"
If she wanted small talk, then he'd give her small talk. He rubbed said jaw with the hand that wasn't occupied rotating the crank-handle of the spit. "It feels okay, yeah. There's just a pop on the right side when I chew."
"Sometimes or every time?"
Medic-mode. He recognized this for precisely what it was. And he was slightly grateful that she'd reverted into her strictly business attitude. "Just sometimes."
She moved closer to him, looking just as ragged as she must have felt. One hand came to his jaw while the other steadied herself on the floor of the cave, and that wonderful healing process began. In with the cool and out with the minute pain, and he felt the hinge of his jaw crack for just a second before it just seemed to…well…fit. She pulled back not five minutes later, and he stretched said jaw by inducing a yawn.
He nodded when he recovered from the yawn. "Works fine now. Thanks."
She folded her legs under her and shrugged. "I'm the one who messed it up in the first place. It's the least I can do."
He didn't argue with this, mainly because it was true. She had damaged it. What was he supposed to say to that? "No, it's okay; you don't have to heal it"?
Snapping himself from his brief little reverie, he quickly pulled the fish off of the fire with his bare hands. He hissed when it burned his fingers and dropped the stick o' fish in his lap.
"Where did you find those?" she asked, leaning over and sniffing them.
"Fisherman. He wasn't paying close enough attention to his net, yeah."
She didn't object to the stolen meal as he thought she would, but instead shrugged and began to pick apart the fish with her fingers.
Desperate for conversation—anything to break the silence that was fitting over them too comfortably for his tastes, Deidara began to speak. "So…what are you going to do when you get home?"
She shrugged and swallowed a mouthful of meat. "Probably take a nice, long, warm bath."
"Ah."
She stared at him quizzically. "Well, I mean… You can have one too, if you want."
His fingers twitched around his own fish. "At your house? In Konoha?"
"Yes."
He snorted. "Don't think so."
"Why?" she asked, that faux-but-not-really tone overtaking her voice. She set the fish against her thigh. "I'm sure they wouldn't think twice about you, Deidara. It's been years, and you look way different anyway."
He held up one of his palms, and the mouth there abruptly stuck out its tongue at Sakura. "If you haven't noticed—"
"Pockets. Handy little things, aren't they?"
Exasperated, Deidara took another bite of fish and spoke around each chew. "Look, I'm eventually going to have to shake someone's hand or something, yeah. And it's not like I don't want to take a nice, long, warm bath at your house—or anyone's house, for that matter—it's just that it's…too much of a risk."
He swallowed just as she frowned.
"Still," she argued, switching her gaze instead to the fish lying on her thigh. "I mean…it doesn't seem…fair."
"What?"
"How long has it been?"
"Since what?"
She picked at a scale. "Since you kidnapped me."
"A few months, give or take a few days, yeah. Why?"
"Some people are already engaged by that time," she muttered, and Deidara pretended not to hear.
He finished off his fish and leaned back, hands behind his head and staring up at the ceiling of the cave. He listened to the sounds of Sakura finishing her meal for a while, the soft ripping, the grinding of her teeth, and even her steady breathing. But then his mind began to slip, first to Sakura, of course, and then to Kisame. He would have been disturbed by this revelation under any normal circumstances, but…well…the circumstances were anything but normal.
Regrettably, Kisame was gone. Granted, he wasn't gone forever; Deidara would probably see him again, maybe in a few years or so. But that left him utterly alone with Sakura, and, if he was going to be quite honest with himself, he wanted to pursue something greater with her. She was annoying and a little bit boisterous and rather violent when she really felt the need, but all in all—
She lay down beside him, mimicking his pose.
—she was someone he wouldn't mind keeping around a little longer.
A week, Kisame had said, was as long as Deidara needed to keep stringing her along. Any longer and rather detrimental things would happen to whatever relationship they'd managed to forge from the ashes of an already dysfunctional little "team." Hell, it was pretty hard to believe that they'd gone from kidnappers to partners to comrades to friends. And it was even harder to believe that they even had a chance to become romantically involved.
"Thank you," someone said after a while, and Deidara realized that it had been Sakura who spoke.
He rolled his head to the side to get a good look at her face. Her eyes were closed, long, pretty lashes fluttering. "For what?" Déjà vu.
"For everything."
Major déjà vu.
"What's 'everything,' yeah?" he asked, propping himself up on his side.
Her eyes opened and she rolled over to face him, also on her side. She didn't seem to mind the rock floor that they lay on. "The experience, I guess. I don't know what would have happened if you hadn't…you know."
"Kidnapped you?"
"Yeah. That."
Efficiently diffusing any notions that the scene was turning in any way, shape, or form mushy and romantic, Deidara scoffed and turned his back to her. "I didn't kidnap you. I…forcefully invited you to join me."
"Mm-hmm," she drawled, placing one hand on his shoulder. He tensed against his own will. "Use all the fancy words you like, but a cigar's a cigar."
"Well… You said yourself that you were grateful!" Deidara defended, only faintly aware that his cheeks were dusting an interesting shade of pink-orange. "If you're happy and I'm happy, then what's the problem, yeah?"
"The problem is that you're not happy," she retaliated, shoving him so that he lay on his back on the ground, and when he tried to roll back over obstinately, she forced herself on top of him, straddling his hips and holding him firmly in place. "You know you're not happy with this."
He scoffed again and tried to wriggle free, but he couldn't do so without injuring her. And he didn't want to do that. "Well, what the hell do you want me to do about it? I've got no fucking choice in the matter!"
"Why not?" She set her jaw.
"Because we're too. Fucking. Different!"
"Meaning?"
"Look at you!" he yelled, damn near snarling. "You're a Leaf-nin! You're the Hokage's apprentice—the student of one of the legendary sannin! You killed my master and you can break fucking mountains with your fist!"
"And you're a missing-nin from Earth Country," Sakura retorted just as stubbornly. "You're an ex-member of the Akatsuki—one of only two or three surviving members. You attempted to kidnap the Kazekage and you did kidnap the apprentice to the Hokage. You can make clay bombs in your hand."
"Do you see my fucking point?" Deidara hissed through clenched teeth, very uncomfortable with the arrangements. He could feel his masculinity slipping through the fingers restrained at his sides. "It would never work. Even if we wanted it to, yeah."
"But—"
"What the hell am I going to do? Waltz right the fuck inside Konoha and propose to you in the market square?"
"I didn't—"
"Just move in with you? Live at your house in secrecy? Hide in the closet every time your friends come over?"
"Deidara, you—"
"I don't deal with confinement well, Sakura," he said, and he was dead serious, his one visible eye trained steadily on hers. "A closet or a prison cell, it's all the same to me."
"Just—"
"And another thing! I—"
With a swift hand, she covered Deidara's mouth. His voice broke against her palm in muffled, indignant shouts, but she just scowled deeper at him. "Your turn to listen to me," she instructed, hand still in place. "I'm not saying any of that. I don't even want you to live in Konoha. All I'm saying is come with me for one night, maybe two. The Hokage won't notice you. I doubt she's even there, and if she's not, I can easily slip you past the guards at the gate."
When she released his mouth, he immediately followed up with a question. "Why?"
"Because," she argued, apparently unable to form any other forms of intelligent debate. "Because I…I don't want you to leave so quickly."
His whole frame relaxed a bit.
She rested her hands against his chest. "It sounds corny and cliché, but everyone's been leaving me. Everyone. I don't have any family left, most of my friends are dead because of this war…and now even Kisame left."
"Kisame left because he wanted to," Deidara tried in a less manic voice. It did its job, and he continued in a smoother tone. "He left of his own accord, yeah. He wasn't ripped from you or jerked out of the living world. He went off to start a new life."
She slipped off of him, retreating instead to his side, and Deidara sat up, putting his hands on her thighs when he realized she was on the brink of tears. She seemed to be doing that a lot lately. "And maybe…" he began, moving so that he was eye level with her, "that's what you should do, too."
And then she collapsed upon him, one sobbing, trembling mess of a woman formerly known as Haruno Sakura. Her arms went around his neck, her face pressed into his hair, and she just…cried.
It took Deidara a second to register, but then he relented and put his arms around her waist, holding her tight, telling himself that he wouldn't let go. That maybe they could work things out. That maybe something would pop up and stall them at least a little bit longer.
Quite a while passed before she managed to calm down enough to cease her hiccups, and then the crying into his hair suddenly turned to kisses at his neck, and he was utterly, depravedly confused.
"Eh?" was about all he could manage.
"Deidara," she said, voice slightly cracked from tears. "Answer me."
"…What?"
"Why do I love you?"
And he didn't really have anything to say at this.
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