Found
Q is for Quandary
O O O
A morning indeed, though good it most certainly was not.
Deidara awoke quite unceremoniously to the sound of vehement gagging sounds. And then retching, hacking, and gasping. When he realized that it was not, in fact, himself that was throwing up the fish from the other night, he managed to peek inside the only small bathroom in the room.
And there was Sakura, bent over the toilet, looking for all rights and purposes like…well…shit.
Oh, for God's sake. It was like a bad romance novel. Morning sickness this soon was preposterous.
"…You okay?" he asked, for lack of any better words of consolation.
She looked more pissed that he'd dared show his face than anything.
"Does it look like I'm okay?"
"No, not really."
"Alright, then." And with that she put a shaky hand to her forehead, breathing heavily.
He opened the bathroom door all the way and leaned against the frame, waiting for her to ask for assistance. He wasn't going to offer if she wasn't going to ask. Hell, he was walking on eggshells as it was, and he'd barely woken up.
She trudged to the sink—a whole half a step though it was—in order to thoroughly rinse her mouth, and then proceed to wash her face as well. She took a hair band from her pocket and tied up that bright pink mop of hers.
"What happened?" he asked, moving to allow her to pass by him.
She collapsed on the bed, successfully hogging every blanket and sheet available. Not that she hadn't done so last night, anyway.
"It was probably the pill," she mumbled into a pillow. "Side-effect."
"I can get you some ginger ale from the store or something," he offered, but she shook her head. So he sat down beside her, resting his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands.
And that was how they spent their morning.
O O O
Lunch.
It was perfect.
…Well, he thought it would be perfect, anyway.
See, there were quite a few things that Deidara and Sakura had to talk about, especially since the girl's eventual departure from him, his life, and everything in between was approaching them at an alarming rate. And it wasn't just the sex, either, though he had to admit that the dopamine inside him had danced and twirled and given him the most amazing rush he'd felt in a long time the other night. It was mostly the time they'd spent together, however short it had seemed, and how she had managed to attach herself to him like a particularly attractive, benign tumor.
And he realized that comparing Sakura to a tumor was slightly low-brow, but he doubted that it mattered at this point.
She fondled her biscuit in a mock-fondly manner, sighing.
"Something wrong?" he asked, and she shot him a glare. Probably wasn't the best thing to ask, in retrospect.
She straightened on a soft grunt and brought the glass of orange juice in front of her to her lips.
He watched her absently before she set it down and cleared her throat.
"So…"
"My sentiments exactly, yeah." Uncaring for social niceties at this moment in time, he propped his elbow on the table and his chin in his hand. "Are you still planning on going back to Konoha?"
There was a second in which he was certain she would say no, would sigh again and roll her eyes to look up at the ceiling, would admit that there really wasn't anything there for her anymore and that she really did want to just settle down somewhere with him. Or hell, even without him. It didn't matter, as long as she didn't go back to Konoha.
"I decided that…I will," she replied, biting the inside her cheek in an agitating manner. "I don't want to just abandon it. I won't just abandon it."
He took a microscopic amount of solace in her loyalty. So if he asked her to pursue a long-distance relationship, would she agree? Would she stay faithful?
Probably not. And he wouldn't ask her to.
So he accepted the fact that Konoha was currently his number one enemy, the biggest factor in determining whether or not Sakura would stay with him. It was a delicately laid trap, waiting to suck her in and never let her back out.
He shoved away his plate and leaned into his chair, folding his arms across his stomach. "Did you take that pill, yeah?"
"Of course."
He didn't feel like interpreting the small, disappointed twinge in his gut. "Good."
And she didn't have to tell him that she was ready to go for him to leave the bill unpaid and escape out the front door.
…And straight into the cornfields, running, almost laughing at the preposterousness of the situation, figuring that they should enjoy the time they had together while they could. Deidara's bird was still waiting patiently, and when Deidara came near it uncovered itself, shivering off the stray bits of grass that had fallen over it overnight.
They were on the bird and off into the sky in less than a minute, and Deidara took off in a southwesterly direction.
O O O
Flying on a bird for six hours straight, it seemed, was largely similar to sailing a small boat across a choppy, angry, cold ocean. When Sakura awoke from previously being sleeping less-than-soundly against Deidara's less-than-warm back, she was very highly aware that she was wet and freezing.
"What's going on?" she asked Deidara's armpit, because Deidara's face was currently unavailable.
"What do you mean, yeah?" he asked, and he sounded quite worse for the wear. Sakura would have suggested they switch places if she knew how to fly this monstrous clay bird of his.
"I mean why am I wet? Soaking wet?"
He scoffed condescendingly, and Sakura scowled. "We're flying through some low clouds, if you haven't noticed. Clouds are wet, Sakura."
She poked him hard in that condescending armpit of his. "Well then why don't we fly below these low clouds?"
"Because if we do, then we'll be spotted."
"And?"
"And we'll be shot down."
She was about to retort with a snooty, "What is this, a war?" but oh, wait. Yes, it was. Instead she held him around his waist all that much tighter. "Why? Is this restricted land or something?"
"No," he answered, skillfully maneuvering the bird as softly as possible—which wasn't very soft, mind you, and Sakura's grasp was damn near wrenched away from him—around a looming cliff. "But it's something similar to Konoha's red-light district. Except about ten times more dangerous."
"Do tell," she muttered, burying her face in between his shoulder blades.
He took a deep breath, as though preparing for a long, never-ending tale. "The place we're flying above now is the mid-south of the Land of Earth—"
"—you know, I've always found that name to be redundant—"
"—shut up, yeah—and it used to be a thriving trade route. They called it Brick Route."
"Why brick?"
"Because the rocks were naturally arranged in such a way that it looked like bricks. Now are you going to be quiet and let me finish, or am I going to have to give you a play-by-play of Earth Country's history and geography?" he snapped.
Sakura rolled her eyes.
"Anyway," he emphasized, and she supposed he would have been glaring at her if she was facing him. "The reason Brick Route regressed into a haven for bandits is because it was once so busy. It runs from Earth Country, arches through the border or Rain and Grass, and then makes a wide loop through Fire and Wind before coming back. So it was ideal for trading within those countries."
"Uh-huh." She was inwardly astounded at the extent of knowledge Deidara held within his head. She didn't see him as a history buff.
"But because it was alive and bustling, thieves and robbers were abundant. Eventually, you'd never even think to walk near the Brick Route without several escorts, yeah."
"Is it still used today?"
"Yes, but not as much. Usually only for large, commercial loads that are forced to travel inland, yeah. Mostly things like raw materials and cheap cloth. Nobody transports anything of value on that road anymore. Hell, nobody even walks on it anymore, yeah."
"How much longer will we be flying over it?"
"Almost the whole way, yeah. I can see bits and pieces of it from up here, so we'll follow it until it hits Grass and Rain's dividing line. From there, we can just follow the border to Fire, and then you're home free."
"So, hypothetically," Sakura drawled, "if we were to be forced to land or get close to land, what would our chance of survival—"
A flaming arrow sailing past her right ear abruptly cut her off.
"Hold on!" was the only warning Deidara gave her before the bird dipped downward at a horrifying ninety-degree angle, and wind and bits of rocks picked up by the wind assaulted whatever was exposed of Sakura's arms and legs. She wondered how Deidara's face was faring.
Just before she was sure the bird was going to hit the ground and splatter like cookie dough on a tile floor, Deidara jerked at something and they were suddenly going right through a thin gorge, knocking several bandits positioned with bows and arrows and the occasional crossbow. When Sakura happened to glance behind her, she caught an eyeful of several hundred bandits all following them closely on horseback, bullback, and even boarback. It was frightening in and of itself, but it didn't help that they were all just after them. The two of them were both out of practice and out of weapons. Deidara had used almost all of his makeshift clay reserves on the bird, and though he had a few kunai in his pockets, how long would that last? Sakura still had her chakra, but without a weapon to wield, the odds didn't look good…
"What are we going to do?" she asked frantically, and Deidara grunted as he plunged the bird down into the yawning opening of a cave.
"Keep your head down," he instructed sternly, and he sailed the bird, stiff and streamlined for faster flight, through stalactites and stalagmites, expertly flying through narrow passages and low-ceilinged rooms.
They'd been flying through that cave for a while, now, and as the roar of the hoard of bandits following them had ebbed, Deidara had slowed the bird.
"Is there even an end to this?" Sakura asked worriedly, pressing her cheek to his back and taking solace in the steady, firm heartbeat she could hear.
"To what, yeah? The cave or the attacks?"
"Well, both, but I was talking about the cave specifically."
He groaned almost unnoticeably. "I don't know. Let's hope so."
She felt like punching him in the back, then, but the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel alerted her to salvation.
"I guess there is one after all," he speculated in that amused, cocky tone of his, and he patted her thigh reassuringly. "Just do me a favor and keep quiet once we get out there. I don't think they know where the exit to this is, and hopefully they won't hear us, yeah."
"Okay."
Roughly thirty heads lined the exit, then, and it was far too late for Deidara to steer the bird away. It was simply going to fast, and the passage was simply too narrow. He did try his damndest, though, and he cursed and he yelled and he grunted and strained, tugging the bird as hard as he could sideways.
But the bird, quite confused on the what, exactly, the fuck it was that his master wanted him to do, decided at that moment to completely defy all logic and perform the most ridiculous barrel roll Sakura had ever had the privilege to be a part of. She felt her legs slipping and her hands were ripping Deidara's shirt, and in the end, she ended up falling.
She heard the distant curse of Deidara before she hit the floor, and the "thump" of his body hitting the floor beside her made cringe.
The bird ended up smashing against a nearby cave wall, alternately breaking into a thousand pieces and splattering unpleasantly. The moisture of the clouds had softened up the clay a bit, leaving both Deidara and Sakura utterly coated with the stuff.
Before Sakura had the presence of mind to get up and run, damn it, a kunai tied to a stick was pressed against her throat.
She swallowed.
Okay, so it was a spear. She liked kunai-tied-to-a-stick better.
"What are you, cavemen?" she scoffed, sneering up at the man towering over her.
The spear was shoved harder against her throat, drawing blood. She decided right then to shut her mouth.
"Don't move," one of the thieves ordered, his face almost completely covered with tattered black rags. Three other thieves flanked her, digging through her pockets, tearing her clothes, retrieving a small amount of money, a few stray shuriken, and the receipt for those horrid pills.
The thief handed it to the man with the spear, who read it over and glanced from Sakura to Deidara and back, apparently assessing the situation. Which wasn't good. Now that he knew who she and Deidara were to each other, he could very well use that against them. If she could have played it off like Deidara was kidnapping her, which he was, but that was besides the point, then they perhaps both could live through it.
She saw Deidara out of the corner of his eye, and when he caught her gaze, saw what was happening, his chakra pulsed furiously.
The black-clad thief with the kunai-on-a-stick pocketed the receipt and limited amount of change in her pockets. Meanwhile, other thieves were checking Deidara's pockets. Three men had him restrained while three more tore out scraps of paper, a small scroll that he assumedly used for stray notes, and more small change.
They took his hands and tied them up, but not before staring in wonder at the mouths there.
"What the hell kind of shit is this?" one of the thieves asked with a disgusted sneer on his face. "You fucking freak."
"It's a bloodline trait," another thief answered, looking equally repulsed. "A stupid one, at that."
Sakura glanced quickly at Deidara, turning her whole head toward him, and just as she caught the rage pouring over his face, someone else grabbed her by the cheeks and forced her head the other way.
Someone began to tie up her arms, shoving her wrists tightly together and making her wince as they rolled her onto her stomach.
"So what the fuck do you use these for?" she heard someone ask, referring to Deidara's hands. She knew how protective and proud he was of his clan's trait, and she waited for the shadow of a storm.
It came when she heard him spit out a sharp, "Fuck you."
And then she felt a hard kick to her side, and she gasped.
The thieves laughed. "I don't think your girlfriend likes your foul mouth, Pretty Boy."
If Sakura could've seen Deidara's face, she supposed it wouldn't have been contorted with confusion and frustration. But these weren't just run-of-the-mill bandits or rouge criminals. These were organized, smart, to an extent, and far more dangerous than she'd anticipated. It was like an entire government of convicts.
Not that she wasn't traveling with one of the most dangerous men on the planet, but that was beside the fucking point, damn it.
"He's pretty enough for you, eh, Jun?" one of the thieves remarked, earning a round of laughter from them all. "He's got a woman's face."
"An ugly woman's face."
"Wonder if he's got the tits of one?"
Thankfully, Deidara kept his mouth shut, and Sakura wondered if it was for her sake or if he was simply too angry to speak.
She heard a muffled sound and then the telltale gasp and groan of Deidara in pain. She heard him roll onto the floor and start hacking up nothing, cursing under his breath.
"He's got a cock; that's for sure. Jun, you still want him?"
"Hell no!"
"Leave him alone!" Sakura shouted against the floor, unable to do much else. Every time she tried to roll onto her back, someone kept her down.
Someone or something seized her by the back of the shirt, hauling her to stand. She scowled into the face of a rather unattractive bandit with a jagged, angry scar running from the left corner of his mouth to his temple.
He grimaced when she growled.
"You've a face only a mother could love," he said, pushing her back roughly. She stumbled over a rock and fell straight onto her back.
Luckily, she'd landed right beside Deidara, who was still recovering from the blow to his groin. When Sakura was rolled to her stomach again, he glanced at her surreptitiously.
"Deidara, are you—"
A foot was shoving the side of her face into the dirt before she could finish, and she winced. She could still see Deidara, who looked about ready to cry or explode. Whichever came first.
And then both of them were being dragged to their feet. Deidara's legs were still wobbly from the pain, but he was faring. And for the first time, Sakura noticed how red he was.
"You're bleeding," he said quietly, and Sakura realized that she was. The rocks had cut her cheek, and she could feel something wet and warm, but gradually cooling, running down her face and neck.
"Come on, then," the thieves shouted, and they shoved the two of them forward.
Even unexpected to Sakura, the area around them exploded in an uproar of clay pieces, smoke, and dirt.
"Run!" was all Deidara said to Sakura, and she heeded his words. Chakra infused in her feet, she ran up the left wall, onto the ceiling and smashed it in. Rocks and fragments of said cave ceiling fell, trapping whatever was left of the thieves in the downpour of earth.
She dearly, dearly hoped that Deidara had managed to escape it. As she made her leave out of the cave, she saw that he had, but a similarly disappointing sight met her.
About fifteen more men were struggling to detain Deidara, who was struggling for all he was worth. Ten men were on Sakura before she could blink.
She readied a foot to the nearest thief's face, but a syringe made its grand appearance stuck in her calf, the holder of said needle grunting as he injected whatever liquid into her.
Angry and feeling defeated, she managed to kick him away, but not before she realized what the drug was. Probably some form of opium laced with another drug, and her focus was quickly slipping. Things were becoming blurred and muddled at a fast rate, and though she wouldn't pass out, she felt like she was underwater.
Deidara was shouting first at her and then the thieves, and she briefly saw him kick some bandit ass with just his feet and the occasional head-butt before he was finally apprehended.
The rest was largely a vague haze to her, though she remembered being tossed into the back of a hay-lined cart with an unconscious Deidara and a few thieves wielding what looked like broadswords.
The cart started moving, and Sakura saw delightful little stars everywhere.
For some strange reason, she was incredibly happy with her life at that moment, and the dull buzz of opium raged joyously through her system. She couldn't focus her chakra if she wanted to, though she wondered why she even felt the need to at the moment.
She giggled.