2: on rivers and reincarnation
The second time was about a year later. At this point Sasori had got used to the boy's severe mood-swings. Most of the time he was madly cheerful – madly being the operating adverb here. There was something manic in the boy, as though his emotions weren't purely driven by circumstance, but by some kind of energy he couldn't get rid of any other way. So, most of the time he was loud, he was brash, he would sometimes challenge Hidan to swearing contests for the hell of it. The other times…the other times he was strange. To use a clichéd metaphor, at times Deidara acted like a puppet with his strings cut.
This time he and Sasori had stopped over on the border of Fire country after completing a mission, Deidara eager to wash swamp muck out of his hair that had been stuck there for several days. The smell was even starting to penetrate Hiruko's shell, much to Sasori's disgust. When he mentioned it, Deidara grimaced and raced to the river they were stopping by for the night.
Quickly, the blond stripped down. Dipping one toe into the water he withdrew with a grunt, before gathering up courage and jumping in. The river was only about waist deep, with smooth stones at the bottom. For a moment Deidara screamed, rather girly, Sasori noted for later mention. When he'd finished he completely submerged himself to rinse his hair.
He didn't come back up.
It took Sasori a while to figure out that he should probably be worried; after twenty years in a body that didn't need to breathe, he sometimes forgot that flesh and blood vessels were as delicate as they were. He sighed and clambered out of Hiruko, where he'd been resting with the shell open, letting the sunshine he couldn't feel play across his skin.
Contrary to popular belief, Sasori wasn't actually made of wood. Like the rest of his hitokugutsu, his original skeleton had been reinforced with wood using a medical jutsu, but his skin was his own, taken from his flawed body and tanned, before being fixed over the enhanced muscles wrapped around the half-wood, half-bone framework. His skin, his brain and his core were the only unenhanced parts left of the original Sasori Akasuna. Even his hair he'd had to soak in a special formula before re-attaching it to his scalp one hair at a time. That had been perhaps the most bothersome part of the entire ritual.
But Deidara hadn't undergone the transformation, and Sasori noted that his body could easily drown. He was now close enough to the river to see Deidara floating, face-down, the currents dragging wet hair around his body like a half-folded fan.
"Brat?" He asked. If Deidara had gone and killed himself, he was going to be pissed.
For a moment it looked like the blond really was gone to the wind, but at the last second the body twitched, swinging it's feet below the surface of the river and standing up, wet yellow hair plastered to his face, rivulets of water running down his body. He looked down at his hands as if he'd never seen them before, the mouths panting as small droplets of water trailed out of their caverns. Simply being small indents in his hands instead of possessing throats, the water had collected and overflowed, rather than being swallowed or chocked on.
Sasori waited for some kind of explanation for that stunt. Nothing was forthcoming for a few seconds, before Deidara spoke, and Sasori immediately knew he was in one of his more morose moods.
"I was nearly there, danna. I was so close, un." He muttered, still staring at his hands, the water still making a small waterfall into the river he was standing in.
"Hn." Was the red-head's only response.
"All I had to do was open my mouth- maybe I'll be an ant next time, un. I think I'd like to be an ant. They live simple lives, un."
Sasori merely blinked.
"An ant?" He asked. Sasori would admit he was slightly confused at his partner's illogical change in topic.
"You don't think I'd be an ant, un? I'm flattered, but I don't think I've done enough in this life to warrant a higher existence in the next." Deidara smirked, the first expression other than blank contemplation he'd displayed during the conversation.
Ah, Sasori thought, reincarnation.
"Don't be an idiot, brat. There is no such thing as samsara." That made Deidara's head snap up, looking at Sasori in disbelief. Sasori stared at him.
"Don't turn into Hidan on me." He said warningly.
Sasori watched as Deiara shivered as the wind blew across his damp skin. Sighing, he retrieved his partner's cloak where it had been discarded beside the river and threw it at him.
"Get out of the water. I don't want to have to look after you if you get sick." He ordered. Deidara for once, followed the order without complaint, wrapping the cloak around himself and stepping out of the river, feet making squelching noises on the damp riverbank. He followed Sasori back to Hiruko, settling himself onto the grass as Sasori once more sat in his puppet's shell, trying to remove grit from Hiruko's joints.
Deidara couldn't keep quiet.
"So what do you think happens after we die, danna? What happens to our energy, un?" He asked, curious but also a bit petulant. Sasori paused in using a small brush in the crack between wood for a moment, as though gathering his thoughts (although Deidara knew his danna always knew him mind).
"When we die, our existence ends. Our brain ceased to work, our organs fail, we cannot live again. That is it."
"But what about our energy, the chakra that flows through us, un?"
"What about it?" Sasori wasn't really interested, but he could tell Deidara wasn't about to drop it, so the sooner they run through the conversation, the quicker it would be over.
"Well, my teacher at the Academy in Iwa said energy cannot be created or destroyed, un? So our chakra doesn't disappear when we die. Since out charka is like…like 'me' flavoured energy, like a soul, wouldn't it make sense it gets recycled into another body? Since it can't just disappear."
The puppet master barely resisted bashing his head into Hiruko's neck.
"That's idiotic. Chakra isn't 'me flavoured energy'. Chakra is simply natural energy that all living things utilise to some extent. When humans die, their bodies decompose, and the energy is given back to the earth in the form of nutrients, or thermal energy if cremated." He explained. When Deidara gave him a doubtful look, he knew what he'd just said had sailed right over his head.
"But…if chakra is the same for each of us, how come we have different affinities, and different amounts of charka. How come some of us have greater control over it, or some have kekkei genkai? It seems very person, very individual just to be generic natural energy, un." The blond said.
With an internal groan, Sasori went back to picking gravel out of his puppet's vertebrae.
"It's the same theory as to why some people have red hair and others don't, why some people are more susceptible to weakness, how some have talent for art, and some…don't." The last bit was said with a smirk shot in Deidara's direction.
"It's simply nature's way of utilising energy in different ways, suited for different bodies and environments. Hence why Kumo ninja mostly have lightning affinity, while the general affinity in Konohagakure is fire." Sasori felt as if he really needed a blackboard here. If he had emotions he might fear that his words were just going in one ear and out the other. Since he didn't, he accepted it as the truth.
Deidara was frowning.
"Is that really how you see the world, danna? All science and deduction? It must be so dull, un."
Whatever response he had expected, it wasn't that. For the first time in their partnership, Sasori was at a loss for words, and so the two criminals lapsed into silence, each reflecting on the differences of their worlds.