Found
V is for Vex
A/N: "Some people expect fics to play out like a movie. But life doesn't go that way. Some beginnings fade away and never really conclude, and some things are completely random. But that doesn't mean they don't have significance when held together in a bigger picture." A quote by Cynchick, in regards to Found.
Hopefully this answers some questions many of you have either already voiced or are still holding in. I can't find another way to more concretely describe it than what she's said.
O O O
Seagulls flew overhead, dotting the sky with white and grey, calling to each other, circling, diving down the water's crest and then flying straight back up, toward the sun. Sparse trees rustled in the wind, salty, thick with the accent of the ocean. The very rocks beneath them seemed to move, moist, cool, smooth patterns interrupted by arbitrary blades of grass.
He was talking, this man beneath her, lips moving slowly, languidly, a calm expression crossing his face. He was telling her things that she couldn't hear, wasn't listening to, because maybe she was too preoccupied with just watching him live.
She was talking too, words that seemed staged and fake, and she watched the flutter of emotions pass through him. She was kissing him, then, his arms were wrapping around her, cupping her face, and she was doing the same, and they weren't pretending; not pretending anymore, at least, and it would be the first breaking of walls, one of the earliest breeches of boundaries.
And if there was anything that was real in the world, anything that truly existed beyond even a shadow of a doubt, it was this, being here with the man who was everything and nothing and the black and the white and all the grey space in between. It was sitting on a knoll of rocks and grass, not hearing and barely seeing, barely aware of reality, barely breathing, no less, sharing something so vital, so necessary with him that it made her feel weak and dizzy.
But it was gone with the snap of fingers, the flick of a wrist, the sunlight suddenly boring into her room through a wide crack in the curtains and flooding her with terrible light. She opened her eyes quickly, every muscle in her body tense, and she wondered, frantically, where she was and why Deidara wasn't there with her.
Still disoriented, she rolled over, groped at the empty space beside her for him. She sat up and glanced around the small room, but all that she saw was a dark bathroom and her pack lying haphazardly in an armchair.
She relaxed instantly, shoulders drooping, and lay back down. She rolled onto her side and pulled the blankets over her, breathing into her pillow until it became too hot to do so anymore.
Reluctantly, Sakura pulled away from the suffocating pillow and stared instead up at the stucco ceiling. She tried making shapes of animals out of the patterns, but her mind was still too foggy and delirious from the previous confusion to function properly. All she could manage to see were swirls and dots of white, which, essentially, was exactly what was there.
It was strange not waking up to someone else's voice or touch. Deidara or Kisame had normally been the first ones up, making breakfast or scouting the area. And when it was just her and Deidara, in those final days, he'd nudge her awake with a toe or blow on her neck until she batted him away. It was annoying, sure, but it was so painfully Deidara.
Her toes curled into the warmth of the sheets when she sat up again, and she detached herself from her bed quickly. She'd stay in bed all day if she didn't, and Rock Lee had promised to be there in the morning. One glance at the clock on her nightstand told her that it was around eight o'clock, and so she started the hot water in the shower, disposing of her dirty clothes and stepping in.
After a brief session of almost falling asleep in the shower and then letting the water run over her face as a hydrotherapy of sorts, she pulled clean clothes out of her pack, mindful of the scope still hidden in its depths, and then rummaged around for a toothbrush.
It was the same toothbrush they'd had since the boat incident, the bristles frayed from overuse. She ran her thumb over them idly, drowning in the nostalgia, and when she glanced back to the bathroom, now illuminated by the bathroom light, she half expected Deidara to be in there shaving, banging his razor against the counter.
She went through the motions of brushing her teeth and her hair mechanically, robotically. Strands of loose hair fell on the countertop, and she brushed them into the wastebasket. She hadn't used the shampoo and conditioner Deidara had packed, she realized, nor had she used the soap, and it was almost enough incentive for her to grab those items and jump back in the shower.
But there was a knock at the door, then, and she knew it was Lee and thus time to go. She gathered her things and picked up the key, opening the door and greeting Lee with a smile.
Lee beamed right back. He seemed positively radiant in comparison to last night, white teeth mocking her inadequately white teeth lovingly, every bit of his hair perfectly in place. The bags under his eyes were gone, and they were wide and excited. He still wore the overcoat with his vest and green suit, and though he'd replaced the bright orange legwarmers with some tall brown boots, he was still the Rock Lee she'd known since childhood. He seemed more endearing, though, when he was disheveled, flustered, less than at his prime, like last night. She liked it when he seemed more human. Imperfect in all the right ways.
"Are you ready, Sakura?" he asked, stepping aside to allow her to exit.
Sakura smile and nodded, slinging her backpack over her shoulder. "Yes, I'm ready."
"Good! Hinata and her family are waiting downstairs. I informed them that you will be traveling with us."
"She doesn't mind, does she?"
Lee seemed shocked and hurt by this insinuation. "Of course not! Hinata was overjoyed, in fact."
Sakura laughed. "And what about Neji?"
"Neji was… Well. Neji was not upset, and that is all that matters!" He offered to take her bag, but she declined with a shake of her head.
As promised, Hinata, Neji, and a few other members of the Hyuuga clan stood in wait in the small lobby, belongings slung over arms and backs and sitting at their feet. As soon as Hinata saw Sakura, recognition dawned over those odd, beautiful eyes of hers, and she rushed to her.
Sakura accepted Hinata with a warm hug, though she figured that wasn't what the girl was going for. Still, she held her tightly, and probably a bit too long, because the lobby had grown suspiciously quiet when she released her.
"Sakura," Hinata began, "Rock Lee told me about what happened. Are you alright? You weren't hurt, were you?"
She shook her head, probably a bit too vehemently. "I wasn't hurt, Hinata. I was in good hands, for the most part." She didn't miss the questioning glance that Rock Lee gave her at this comment. "And what about you? Were you hurt?"
Hinata, likewise, shook her head. "Not in any significant manner." She smiled wryly. "We're relocating to one of the older Hyuuga compounds northeast of here. You're coming?"
"Definitely. If…you'll have me, that is."
"Yes! I would never think otherwise." Hinata took Sakura by the wrist and gently led her to the center of all of her relatives, anxious, some of them fidgety but most of them perfectly collected, and Sakura felt like she could live through another day.
She saw Neji from the corner of her eye, who was watching her reproachfully. When she turned to him, he blinked.
"Hi," she said, nodding. "How are you?"
"Fine," he lied, and he returned the nod curtly. And Sakura smiled at the fondness of all of these memories.
The group began to move as one concentrated mass, and though not quite as fast as shinobi normally would, they made good time. Rock Lee and Hinata walked beside Sakura, ran where necessary, which was whenever the group unanimously decided that they were up to the task, and they talked with her as they did. Sometimes the topics were light, like when they talked about all of their antics back at the academy, and sometimes they were heavy, like when all three of them lamented over the deaths of their comrades. Hinata seemed particularly shaken up over Naruto, and understandably so, though she skimped on the details pertaining to their relationship prior to his death.
Rock Lee eventually brought up the Akatsuki, when they were running again, hopping from branch to branch. He asked about Sasori, Itachi, all of them, asking Sakura if she'd seen them during her time as a hostage, by any chance, though the knowledge that they had all been killed had since then been widely accepted as fact. She'd answered no, and he'd gone on to talk about Deidara, about fighting the man missing two arms and using just a kunai in his teeth, about how fateful that battle had been, how he'd love to challenge Deidara to a rematch someday, man to man. There was no anger or hatred in his voice at all, just sheer determination and competitiveness. Sakura entertained this thought for a while, the image of Rock Lee and Deidara sparring, and for some reason, she couldn't think about it without giggling.
They reached the presumed Hyuuga compound around mid-afternoon, and maids rushed to and fro to show each person their appointed room. The compound itself was half the size of the one back in Konohagakure, but it fit them all just fine, and Sakura was delighted at the prospect of having her own room.
The exterior of the compound, so dubbed Hyuuga Castle by an astonished Sakura, much to the amusement of Hinata and much to the disdain of Neji—"This isn't a castle," he'd argued, "it's a retreat,"—appeared much smaller than it actually was. The interior was clean, spacious, and beautiful in its simplicity; not an elegant wall scroll or vase of cherry blossoms was out of place. And where they got cherry blossoms was a mystery to Sakura, because they were way out of season. She suspected they were probably fake, but she didn't want to be rude by touching them to find out.
The doors at the front of the "castle" were primarily sliding paper doors, immaculate, lavish, and delicate in a way that made Sakura very, very nervous. These doors separated the tea room from the kitchen, the living room from the hallway, and so on. Regular wooden doors lined the hallway, which were, surprisingly, nearly as delicate as the paper. Sakura's room lay at the very end of the hallway, way at the end, and when she walked in only her socks down the hardwood floor to that very room, feet padding softly, she felt like an undeserving princess.
She had a nice view of a bird's nest from her room's window, and her futon was absolutely heavenly. A small dresser accommodated her clothing quite nicely, and her collection of said clothing doubled in size when Hinata donated clothes to her. She'd tried to refuse at first, but Hinata had insisted, and so Sakura found herself wearing clothing that fit her perfectly everywhere except the bust. Always the bust.
Deidara's scope was kept wrapped up in a pair of clean white socks in the drawer, safely hidden and stored away from prying eyes. She took it out to look at it often, study the buttons and functions, and she'd eventually learned how to take pictures with it. She didn't know how to review the pictures yet, but she figured she'd learn.
Her ratty old toothbrush was replaced with a new one still in the package, though Sakura kept her old one for sentimental value. And she tried not to clean out her hairbrush too often, because blue hair was still faintly apparent, deeply entangled in the brush's recesses, and the blond hair commingled with the pink hair quite nicely.
So Sakura lived in what could have been considered the lap of luxury at Hyuuga Castle for five days. For those five days she busied herself and, subsequently, her constantly wandering mind by taking nature walks with Lee, who seemed to have gained a second wind when it came to his fervor in pursuing her, though she was fairly certain it was more to pull a laugh from her than anything, and spending allotted amounts of deeply missed "girl time" with Hinata. They all avoided subjects that reminded them of the war and the loss they suffered, for shinobi though they were, they were still human. It was a rule of thumb: Whoever wasn't present at the Hyuuga compound was either dead or missing, and no questions were asked. Sakura tried her very hardest not to think too hard on it.
On the seventh day, when Sakura was busily learning how to improve her sadly lacking cooking skills with one of the maids, Yamato visited. He was battle-weary, worn ragged, and when he took his boots off at the front door, his socks were caked with mud and grime. He hadn't stayed long, though. Not much longer than to greet Sakura cheerily, give her a long-armed hug in an attempt to shield her from his prominent male odor, courtesy of nature and being exposed to the elements for way too long, and to relay to the males in the bathhouse what he'd seen in his travels.
Konohagakure was still in disarray, he'd said, though they were working steadily to rebuild it. Tsunade had been working herself to the bone to try and fix all destroyed, but it was a difficult task. The village wouldn't be safely inhabitable for quite some time to come. All surviving civilians had been relocated to special housing units in some other outlying villages. Teams of Leaf-nin were working hard to both protect Konohagakure and rebuild it.
No, Rock Lee wasn't needed. No, Neji's assistance wasn't required. No, Hinata and Sakura didn't need to high-tail it over there. Rock Lee and Neji and Hinata and Sakura and every other able-bodied shinobi currently residing at Hyuuga Castle—Neji frowned at this joke—were required to stay where they were, where they were needed. If they were wanted elsewhere, then they had better believe that they would be summoned.
Yamato left with a clean pair of clothes, thanks to the maids, and a body smelling of soap rather than sweat and dirt and shrubbery. He gave Sakura a proper hug this time, which Sakura smiled into, and shook everyone else's hands. When he was gone, Sakura retired to her room, took out Deidara's scope, and cried. And she didn't really know why.
There were ten more days of nothing, of leisure, of living the good life, as they would say, and then the world was flipped upside-down once more.
She could sense something in the compound was stirring long before she stepped outside her room and damn near collided with someone hauling ass down the hallway. She stopped the next person with a polite, "Excuse me, what the fuck is going on?"
The man stopped, panting. "They've discovered a shinobi that tried to sneak into the compound."
"A shinobi?" Sakura asked, interest piqued. She followed the man, who continued to rush to the main room, throw open a shoji screen, and dart outside, socks and all. Sakura, however, had enough sense to slip on her boots.
The sky rumbled, full with rainwater waiting to be dropped to the earth, and Sakura rushed to where several of the compound's inhabitants were standing in a circle and murmuring amongst themselves.
"What's going on?" she asked to the outside of the circle, and she saw Hinata push her way through a throng of overexcited people. "Hinata, what happened?"
"A man tried to break in," she said, glancing over her shoulder and walking alongside Sakura as they attempted to infiltrate the tight circle. "Neji stopped him, though, and the man attempted to kill him." She spoke in a rush, and Sakura couldn't quite comprehend all of it.
"Wait, who tried to kill who? Why did the man want to break in?"
"Neji was forced to retaliate under fatal circumstances. We don't know why the man wanted to break in yet." The both of them stopped walking toward the center of the inner arc of curious onlookers, and Hinata touched Sakura's arm carefully. "If he's not an enemy, Sakura, can you heal him?"
Sakura looked first at Hinata and then down at the ground. "If he's dead, there's nothing I can do."
"I—I meant if he was still alive. I'm sorry. If he's still alive, can you heal him?" She fiddled with the sleeves of her coat, glancing to the inner circle anxiously. "I don't want anyone else to have to die for foolish reasons. And I'm not sure if any other medic-nin here will do it."
"Yes. I'll heal him."
Hinata nodded her thanks, looked as if she were about to hug her, and continued forward, Sakura at her heels. They shoved past groups of people, annoyed at the intrusions, and there lying on the ground, facedown, was a disturbingly familiar shinobi. Long blond hair pooled around his shoulders and haloed his head. Every limb was still, and his back did not expand with any breaths.
Sakura dropped to her knees beside him, hands hovering over his form. He wore a grey vest, black pants, black boots and a black long-sleeve shirt. His hands were gloved in black leather, and one arm lay by his side obediently while the other strayed outward.
Neji knelt on the other side of the fallen man, staring at Sakura hard. Sakura was doing her best to fight back tears, but she couldn't hold in her trembling and she put a hand carefully on his back. He didn't move.
"He's not breathing," she said, her voice broken. Neji looked back down to the man. And, after pressing two fingers to his neck and then to the exposed portion of his wrist, she announced: "He's dead."
The groups' muttering increased for a moment, and then several people wandered away, disinterested in the fate of a dead man. Sakura's hand clenched into the fabric at his back and she bit her bottom lip as her eyes welled with tears. "He's dead," she whispered. Neji stared intently at her once again, and Hinata approached her side carefully, one hand to her chest.
"This is not your Deidara."
Sakura looked up to Neji so quickly that she almost felt dizzy. "What?"
Neji shook his head and closed his eyes. "This is not Deidara." He rolled the man over, and there lay a much older man than previously assumed, roughly thirty to forty years of age, with a short, fuzzy beard that covered most of his lower face.
Sakura's tears stopped immediately, and she sniffled in a rather pathetic display. "Then who is—?"
"A drunk," Neji replied, and he stood, brow furrowed. "Just a drunken shinobi who was at the wrong place at the wrong time." Neji looked out over the small crowd that was still gathered, and he dispersed them with a wave of his hand. "All of you need to go back inside now." And they all did.
Hinata put a hand on Sakura's shoulder and whispered "Thank you anyway," before making her way inside.
Sakura was left alone with Neji, who closed the unknown man's eyes with two pale fingers. "You were expecting Deidara, weren't you?"
She knew this was coming. Neji had sent all of the people away because he'd wanted to talk to her about any suspicions that he may have had. And for some reason, she really didn't feel like lying or trying to cover it up. "Yes. I was."
"You've been with him the whole time, or at least most of the time you were missing."
"Not of my own volition," she said through gritted teeth, not liking the tone Neji had taken. She stood up so that he wasn't towering over her, and though he was still taller than her, she didn't feel quite so condescended this way. "Believe me, if I could have come back sooner, I would have."
"You misunderstand," Neji stated calmly, and his expression never faltered, his gaze never shifted, he barely even moved except to breathe or tilt his head slightly. "I wasn't insinuating anything of that sort."
"Then what are you trying to say?" She clenched her fists in frustration. "And how do you know about Deidara and me anyway?" There was no way he'd seen her with him. She wasn't the best of friends with Neji, granted, but he wouldn't just leave her in the hands of an S-class criminal. He would have found some way to make contact with her or free her completely if he'd been witness to her capture or any of the months her detainment.
He seemed amused at the phrase "Deidara and me," because he raised an eyebrow and then continued with his explanation. "That scope you have in your bedroom belongs to him. I recognized it from when I fought him."
"You've been going through my things?" She was so riled up at this point that logic didn't really apply anymore.
"No," he answered, sternly, but not angrily. "Calm yourself, Sakura. I've seen you working on it in your bedroom." He sensed that she was about to speak again, so he cut her off. "You leave your door open often. Am I to be persecuted for being able to see inside when walking down the hallway?"
She closed her mouth tight, glancing down at the dead man solemnly. "No," she answered. "No."
An uncomfortable, awkward silence transpired between them before Neji decided to speak once more. "It isn't any of my business," he said, finally looking away from her and down at the dead man also, "but if Deidara were to search for you, he wouldn't run into any problems finding you. Especially since you aren't exactly running and hiding from him."
Sakura scowled, but Neji paid no notice.
"I'm concerned about the threat he poses to the people here."
"Deidara doesn't—"
"You don't know that," he countered, turning only half away from her. "You said yourself you were only with him for a few months. You don't know his motives, his plans, or his capabilities." He didn't even glance at her, waiting stoically for her response.
Sakura kept her mouth shut, staring obstinately at the line of trees that decorated the edges of the compounds. Gnarled roots crept forwards, tearing grass and soil, digging into the land like greedy hands. Greedy fingers, greedy beings, knowing nothing, moving to move, moving to survive, skillful at surviving. She glanced at Neji once, saw that he was still turned away, waiting for her to reply, and a breeze rustled the tree leaves and his hair. His clothing, stark white, perfect against the deep green backdrop of the forest, pressed firmly against his body.
"You have no idea," she muttered, and Neji finally had the grace to look at her. "You don't know anything. You can't learn if you haven't experienced it."
"What are you trying to tell me?" he asked, and the wind wrapped his loose-fitting clothing around him once more. Thin, perfect, skillful, moving to survive. Nothing more. "You're in love with him?"
The trees began to recede, then, away from her consciousness and away from the compound. The shifting leaves stilled and the quivering grass lay still. And Neji watched her indifferently, expecting an alter in her demeanor or expecting her to back down and relent. He'd always been pretentious, full of himself, suffering from the god complex that was so prevalent among child prodigies.
But he wasn't a child anymore, and these traits had worsened in him, spread like cancer, a virus, digging into his veins and sprouting something greedy, pompous, and cold. Greedy fingers, greedy beings, knowing nothing, moving to move, moving to survive, skillful at surviving.
But Neji wasn't greedy because Neji deserved everything. Neji was everything, hiding behind a wall of faux concern. And maybe the concern was actually there, genuine on some intrinsic level, but it was too hollow for Sakura to sympathize with.
"It isn't any of your business," she said finally, and he kept his eyes firmly on hers, not flinching.
"I suppose it isn't," he conceded. "Love is transient; abstract; subjective. Do not mistake it."
He knew nothing of emotions. Greedy, moving to survive.
"If Deidara comes here," he said, and his eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly, "I will attack him. And I will kill him." He turned purposefully away and stalked across the wide expanse of grass, to the front door of the compound, and disappeared inside.
She was frightened suddenly of the changes she'd never seemed to notice before. The war had certainly taken everything she'd known and tossed it asunder, making bad things good and good things bad, but she'd never had the chance to stand back and look at the bigger picture before.
She sat down cross-legged in the grass, cool against her thighs, and looked up at the sky. Clouds roiled lazily, slowly, heavily.
It was the truth, and one she'd been trying not to think about since she'd first talked with Lee at the bar: There was nothing left for her. Konohagakure was gone; almost all of her friends were gone. What could she gain from staying here?
She glanced back at the compound, and through the windows, she could see silhouettes of people moving back and forth.
Nothing. She couldn't gain, but she could take, occupy unnecessary space in Hinata, Neji, and the Hyuuga family's lives, no matter how little she spoke to them, lend painful memories to those who looked at her and thought of the times when their village was still cheerful and bustling and alive.
Tsunade still thought her dead, she reasoned, and maybe that was all for the better.
She made up her mind at that moment, standing up abruptly and wiping the stray grass from her legs. She followed the path that Neji had taken into the compound, through the shoji screens, and then straight down the hallway and to her bedroom.
She tugged her backpack out from underneath the dresser, unzipping it and opening the mouth wide. She stuffed three changes of clothes into it, her brush, toothbrush, toiletries, weapons, and whatever else she had arrived with into it.
When she came to the scope in her dresser drawer, still wrapped in socks, she pulled it out. She'd damn near mastered the thing by now, and she smiled, snapped a picture of herself, took a couple photos of the room, and then set it carefully into the backpack.
She zipped it up roughly and swung it over her shoulder, smoothing down her hair and straightening her outfit. She realized with a prick of embarrassment that she'd forgotten to take off her boots, but she just marched out her door, down the hallway, and through the shoji screens once more.
She met Hinata in the day room and bowed deeply. Hinata watched her curiously.
"I can't tell you how grateful I am to you, Hinata, and all of your family. You have done so much for me already." She lifted from her bow, fixing the backpack on her pack tighter. "But I can't stay here any longer. I don't want to burden you. I know I don't belong."
"Sakura…" Hinata began softly, but Sakura just shook her head.
"I have places I have to go. I…I can't stay here. Not so close to Konoha."
Hinata stood up from the table she'd been sitting at, hands pressed together in front of her. "If that's what you choose, Sakura, I won't try and persuade you otherwise."
Sakura smiled sadly and stepped forward to embrace her friend. "Thank you, Hinata." She pressed her face into her hair and tightened her arms around her, biting back tears. It would probably be the last time she would see her again, any of them again.
She pulled away, and Hinata smiled feebly. "You can come back any time you'd like. You know that."
"I know. Thank you."
"Are you going somewhere, Sakura?"
Lee's voice was the last needle in her heart, and she brushed away a tear quickly.
"Are you alright?" He advanced upon her, hands hovering but not touching. Never touching.
"I'm alright, Lee. But I have to go."
He frowned, and when she pulled him, too, into a hug, the frown deepened. He returned it tentatively. "Why are you leaving? Where are you going?"
She pulled back from him. "It's…it's nothing, Lee. I just have things to take care of. I'll be back as soon as I can, though, I promise."
"Well, then I'll accompany y—"
"You can't," she said quickly. "You can't. I have to do this by myself."
Lee looked as if he was going to protest, but he swallowed it on an inward sigh.
"If Tsunade happens to ask…" Sakura started, turning around toward the front door, "tell her—"
"We never saw you," Hinata finished, still smiling. "We won't say anything, Sakura. Just…be careful. And please try to contact us soon."
Sakura nodded, but she didn't turn to face them again. Tears spilled down her face. "Okay. I will. You all stay safe too."
She was gone in less than a second, darting across the grass and into the forest. Even then, she could hear Lee and Hinata softly conversing at the back of her mind, wondering at her sudden decision to up and leave.
She didn't know whether Neji would tell them where she'd gone, whether Neji knew or not, but she found she didn't care either way. Here she was, stagnating, leeching off of her friends for over two weeks, three, maybe, stewing in her own thoughts and inactivity. She'd known from the start that there was nothing left for her; known, yes, but believed it, no. Denial was a strong breed of drug.
But it was the truth. There was nothing left for her but the carcass of her home and two friends that would do much better without her. They'd fared fine when she wasn't there and they'd fare fine now.
She didn't glance back, and the cold wind stung her skin as she began to sprint, chakra burning in her legs and feet. She silently hoped they'd just consider her dead, at least until she decided what she wanted to do with her life, half-empty as it stood.
O O O
Seven birds, hollow eyes, beaks curved into sharp points, sitting in a circle, staring wordlessly at the sky, the ground, the trees around them.
Seven birds, sleek backs, cold little feet digging gently into the earth, fidgeting as they stood, anxious.
Seven clay birds, sitting before Deidara, watching him carefully. Waiting for a command. Where do we go? What should we do? We're waiting on you.
Seven small clay birds, the size of his pinky finger, exploding into shrapnel in a single-file line with a delicate "pop."
He smiled sickly to himself, mustering up some of that old familiar glee, the kind that made his stomach roll with passionate emotion, when he destroyed and devastated and didn't care. It felt stale, though, that past glee, and he realized that the rolling of his stomach was just acting in direct correlation to the aching of his chest. He put a weak hand to his head, lips drawing down into a deep frown, and sat on a bench.
Two weeks, almost three, he'd been walking in circles, pacing, waiting for something to happen, anything. He stood and sometimes he sat and oftentimes he lay, watching the sky and listening for a chance at change. He felt like he was vegetating, but still he stayed, waiting for life to happen.
And life, as he realized, never came. Well, he'd never been a lucky guy anyway.
He went through the necessary stages of rejection—it was a rejection of necessity, he assured himself. First came the anger, and the anger had lasted for a long, long time. Angry at Sakura, of course; who did the bitch think she was? She had toyed with him, used him, manipulated him, steered him toward developing feelings so that he would let her free.
But he didn't believe that.
Angrer at others followed; why couldn't all of her friends have died? Then she wouldn't have anybody to go back for, to live for, and she could have stayed with him.
But he doubted even that would have changed her mind.
Anger toward himself, finally; what had he done wrong? He was such a fuck-up. It was no wonder she'd rejected him. He would have done the same thing in her position.
But he knew she felt the same about him. She didn't have to tell him, he just knew. He knew by the way she'd looked at him, by the way she'd cried, waited for him to say something, and kept his scope.
The old anger was back, then, pooling inside of him, filling him to his fingertips, and anger at what, he didn't know. But his fingers twitched to the bags at his hips, and he stood up, pulling out a handful of clay. He wanted to do something grand, something large-scale, something that would be so beautiful it would take his mind off the current. He'd decimated several portions of the forest on his first trek through it when he'd first left Sakura, and he'd taken a shine to blowing up entire mountainsides, collapsing cliffs, but none of that could be compared to the explosion of a town. The tinkling of shattered glass, far overwhelmed by the initial bang and the cracking of wooden beams, plaster falling into white dust, fire consuming whatever was left in the wake of destruction.
He hadn't felt this way for a long, long time. He'd blown up the tower in the city Sakura had escaped to once, but it hadn't quite been the same. He'd been preoccupied by his captive, slippery as an eel and finding a way to slither through his fingers, much too preoccupied to really revel in the explosion. He'd seen it erupt in black smoke and flames, sure, but from a distance, and it hadn't given him any feeling other than a smug satisfaction at capturing Sakura and giving her a display that clearly said, "Look what happens when you defy me, you little fuck."
And he'd wanted to plant some bombs in the elevator on the ship, too, but he hadn't been able to. He'd slipped into a delirious, intoxicating insanity, feasting off of it like the hungry, deranged madman he was, but his mistake had been telling Sakura. The confusion that painted her face and the cautious, anxious edge to her tone had quickly snapped him out of it, and then he didn't care.
But…she hadn't replaced his art. Nothing could replace his art. His art was not comparable to a human or any living being; art was a feeling, a lifestyle, though it had admittedly slipped to the backseat of his life and was now more of a hobby than anything. Sakura and art were two very different things, and he loved them both in two very different ways.
It was funny, though, just how much influence they had on each other.
The clay in his hand was warm, now, and very malleable, and the mouth on his palm slipped the tip of its tongue through its lips, impatient for the taste. He rolled it through his hand thoughtfully as he strolled through the town, kicking up dust behind him. Citizens milled around at fruit vendors, loitered in the streets, reclined on benches and shivered at the occasional cold breeze.
He was planning something sinister, and he wondered if they could see it. His left eye felt itchy and naked without the scope to shield it, and the feeling of his hair brushing over his eyelashes was very foreign. It did not, however, detract from his thoughts.
He looked up at a small schoolhouse, tall and pointed at the top, and he smiled to himself. How would it look to collapse from the inside? The point would groan and topple, shatter at the floor, tiles would clatter to the ground, fire would climb up the sides and lick the edges of the devastation.
Beside the schoolhouse he saw an apartment building, several stories high, thick and wide, standing higher than the power lines. There was probably an elevator in there, too. An inferno would rise up the shaft, swallow the elevator, spill into the different building levels and eventually coat the stairwells in smoke. He'd love to be there when the topmost floors gave way first, supports dying so that they crashed into the rooms below them, falling one at a time, until it was just rubble and dirt and ashes.
A delicate, muted crash somewhere to his right startled him, and he glanced over to the source of the noise quickly. A pregnant woman—very, very pregnant woman—had dropped a basket of groceries, and cans and various fruits rolled defiantly away from her. She mumbled a curse under her breath and tried to bend over to collect her dropped items. Her belly prevented her from doing this, though, and twice she almost fell over.
Deidara put the clay back in his pouch, and his hand-mouth shut its lips tightly, miffed. He approached the woman, who looked startled at either his appearance or the fact that he was staring intently at her swollen stomach. "Can I help?" he asked, bending down to pick up a can without her answer.
"Yes," she answered on a sigh, straightening and placing the hand not holding the basket on her back. "Thank you. I just can't seem to do anything anymore…"
He smiled benevolently and handed her the can, then began scooping up the other items, brushing the dirt off of them as best he could. "Just a consequence of being pregnant I guess, yeah."
She laughed and glanced up at the sky. "I suppose. But you'll never really know."
He wiped off an orange on leg, then wiped the dirt from his pants. "No?"
"Not unless you have a pregnant girlfriend or wife." She laughed at this, but Deidara's heart tumbled into his stomach, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't smile at the woman's comment. He handed her the orange and stood.
"Thank you very much. I really appreciate it." And then she waddled off, resting the basket on her belly and holding it in place.
He felt sour inside again, and the urge for demolition was gone as he watched her climb dutifully into the apartment building.
He took a second to look around, and the things he saw, the things he could have destroyed for selfish, unnecessary gain made him ill. Two little boys and a girl played in front of the schoolhouse, drawing things with sticks in the dirt and making cakes and cookies from mud. In front of a butcher shop down the road, a group of gangly, awkward teenage boys dallied, smoking cigarettes and coughing on them, laughing amongst themselves and having a general good time.
He turned to sit back down on the bench, but he saw that two old men had taken residence there, feeding pigeons from a bag of popcorn and complaining amusedly about their wives.
And Deidara had been about to take all of this away.
He felt sick, sick down to his bones, sick in a way that caused him physical pain, and he hurried back into the forest, out of sight. He traveled until he could no longer hear the languid voices of the townspeople, no grumbling old men, no laughing children, no raucous teenagers slapping their knees and taking careful, inexperienced drags from cigarettes.
He traveled until there was hardly any sound at all, and he passed by several blast sights, grass and trees singed black. Rocks crumbled at his feet, and still he moved on.
He walked for a good hour and a half, and finally he sat down upon a rock, head in his hands. What had happened to him? Where were all of these reservations coming from? Four months ago, he would have leveled that town without a second thought. Selfish, greedy thing, he'd been, but now he considered the others, and now he saw that he had no right to do anything of the sort.
But he'd never really thought of the people in the town… He'd never really fully acknowledged that sometimes, oftentimes, his art hurt people, killed people, and that effected those people's families and friends, and the ripple effect was in full swing here. He realized it now, though, and the bags of clay at his hips felt heavier than normal.
He stayed like that for a long time, figuring where he was. He was near the border of Grass and Waterfall. Resting his chin on his palm, he sighed insufferably. He had to move on. He had to go somewhere. He couldn't just sit and rot like he was. He'd suffered far worse setbacks than this, and he'd always crawled out of them fine. This was not the end of the world.
And yet…yes. Yes, it was, because what ever happened to that picket fence and the baby with the blond hair and green eyes with tiny little hand-mouths on its tiny little hands?
It was gone, that's where it was. And he'd never wanted a kid anyway, or a house with a picket fence, for that matter. He hated picket fences, in fact. They were cliché and useless.
He stood and turned to leave, to go back to the town that he'd been very ready to effectively raze not too long ago, but a spark of something on the very outskirts of his senses made him stop. Then the pinprick of sensation turned into something a little more evident, more apparent, and his muscles tightened instinctively. A shinobi approaching from the southeast, and he or she was moving fast. He didn't forget that he still was in the Bingo Book and thus still had a very hefty bounty on his head, so he masked his own chakra and took off, feeling very disinclined to fight an over-confident bounty-hunter.
He zigzagged through the trees and dropped down to the ground level occasionally, hoping to shove the shinobi following him off of his trail. They were very close, now, and he cursed silently, gritting his teeth. For all the years he'd been an active Akatsuki member and for all the times he'd had to evade attacking shinobi, this was the most persistent one yet. They should've dropped off a long time ago, about the time when he masked his chakra and started his erratic trajectory.
He feinted right and then darted left, and the shinobi didn't stray from him at all. They still moved at top-speed, even when Deidara ducked inside a shallow cave, strung with vines and moss and very, very moist. It didn't seem as if his follower noticed he'd changed course and stopped running, because they kept on, and eventually he could hear the crackle of branches as they approached.
He stopped trying to sense their chakra and held his breath, watching them from behind a curtain of bright green, creeping vines.
The shinobi burst from a flurry of branches and leaves, hopping deftly to the ground. They doubled over and panted, holding their stomach and brushing hair out of their face.
Pink hair.
"Fuck," they whispered, straightening, still gasping for breath, and glancing around their surrounding areas.
Green eyes.
"I know I felt him," she whispered to herself, pulling a canteen from her hip and taking a long drink.
Sakura.
He felt, for all rights and purposes, rooted to the spot. He could only watch her replace the canteen and tie her hair up, ready to dart off once again.
And then his adrenaline kicked in and his muscles decided to move again, because he let his chakra go unmasked and watched the flicker in her precise movements. She looked quickly in his direction, staring at the cave like she'd seen a ghost. She couldn't see him, but she could feel him. She'd always been sensitive to chakra.
She stepped carefully toward him, and he pressed himself against the back wall, three feet in. Was he scared? Like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar? No, he wasn't scared. He wanted to see why she'd come back, why she was looking for him. He wanted to see her reaction.
She stood in front of the entrance, now, and pushed aside some of the vines. The forest canopy with the addition of the cave's shade made only his outline visible.
She didn't come nearer, though. "Deidara?" she asked gently, and he thought he'd break down and grab her right then and there, because he didn't think he'd ever hear her voice again, especially not saying his name. He could stand up straight in the cave, it was more of a large burrow, actually, or an indentation in the rock, and so could she. She walked inside, one foot in, two feet, two and a half feet, and she was almost nose-to-nose with him.
With her eyes adjusted to the light she could probably see him now, dimly, and his eyebrows turned up, his mouth pulled down into a frown. He tried to talk, but he felt like someone had put cotton in his throat.
She touched her fingertips to his wrist, traced his thumb, and then moved both of her hands to linger above his chest. He watched only her eyes, which flicked up to meet his when she pulled her hands back. "I—" she started, then stopped, looking down at the cold, wet floor. "I don't have an excuse," she finished gently, quietly.
He didn't say anything and he didn't move, but he felt anxious and jittery. What if she moved at the last minute? Decided that she'd changed her mind and wanted to leave him again, dashed outside and out of his life again? He'd chase her this time if that happened. He'd chase her to the end of the earth and he'd take her back with him; to where, he didn't know. He wouldn't let her go this time. He couldn't. Second chances weren't an option.
He swallowed thickly, and it was loud in the silence. Sakura looked back up at him, and he suddenly felt a little self-conscious. He hadn't had a good night's sleep since they'd parted, and he hadn't showered for two days now. His hair was a mess and there was dirt on his neck and hands. But she didn't look too tip-top either, frizzy hair sticking out at all ends and dry, chapped lips. She'd probably been traveling for days, and for what? For him?
Realizing that he wasn't going to make the first move or respond to her explanation, she pulled off her backpack and dug something out of it. She pulled out the scope, wrapped in some white cloth, and handed it to him. He didn't move to take it.
"I thought…I should return this," she said, returning the scope to her own embrace and running her thumbs over the lens. "I'm not saying I don't want it, but…I figured you'd probably need it. You know?" She waited for a response, and when he didn't give one, she looked down at it, fiddling with it. "I took some pictures, but I don't know how to view them or delete them. I figured out how to use the night-vision and zooming capabilities, and I got to heat-vision once, but I couldn't get back again. It's definitely a nifty little thing."
She looked up at him, still watching his face, but he didn't relent. Her eyes roved over him, all of him, from his forehead to his toes, and she cocked her head to the side, taking a step backward.
"I kind of anticipated that you'd do something like this, and I can't say I blame you." She pulled open the pocket of his pants with a finger and then slipped the scope in carefully, and she patted it gently. "I understand that you don't want to talk to me. I guess I should… I should probably…" She took a deep, shaky breath, and laughed nervously. "I'll get out of your way. I'm sorry I scared you by following you, I just really wanted to catch up—"
And that was it. She was about to leave, and he wasn't going to have it. He grabbed her by the arms and tugged her forwards, folded his arms around her, pressed her to him and his back to the rock wall behind him. He clenched his fingers into the fabric of her shirt, buried his face in her hair, smelling of rocks and dirt and leaves.
She didn't return the sentiment at first, though she pressed her hands against the rock wall, not pushing off but not pressing into him, either. "I—"
"You're not leaving," he whispered harshly. "You're not fucking leaving me again." There was malice in his tone, but there was no threat behind it. There was only a stern sense of desperation, need, and he clenched his teeth tightly, closed his eyes tighter, so much so that they watered and stung. "You can't," he added, and his voice cracked.
She hugged him back finally, and she broke into a series of sobs and sniffles, faced buried into his chest. "I didn't come back to leave you again, Deidara," she whined. "I promise I didn't. I'm so sorry."
He slid to the floor, her still with him, and they sat on the cold, wet stone floor. "Then don't. Don't leave me ever again," he said, and his voice was stronger now that she'd showed weakness as well. "Stay with me this time."
She nodded into him, situated between his legs, her arms still tightly around him. She wept now, harder than he'd ever seen her cry, gasping and muttering apologies under her breath.
"Stay with me," he repeated, rocking them gently, talking into her hair. "Stay with me. Okay?"
"Okay. Okay."
Shadows clambered over the forest canopy, tiptoed along the ground, drowned the trees and the flowers and the grass and the shrubbery in a dark calm. The shadows didn't come into the cave. They passed over the top of it, slithered over the vines, but the cave was left unadulterated by their touch. And the nighttime-animals came, and five ants crawled over the rocks outside, and a moth fluttered inside the cave, settled on the ceiling, and then fretted back outside, in search of a source of light to rest upon. It flew around tree trunks and dipped under low-hanging vines, and the stars littered the sky in sated, gentle thousands, circling and complementing one another.
The moth hastened up into the night, toward the rounding moon.