Twelve hours. That was how long Konan had requested she be given before she told the human and Falks of her strategy to find and take down Orochimaru. Twelve hours for her to gather intelligence and supplies, twelve hours to iron out the details of her plans, twelve hours to come up with a way to save VUM, the humans in their company, and possibly the entire planet of Verden, if Domini was set to fall after Regi.

To Sasori, this translated to twelve hours of glorious sleep.

He'd gone straight to his new quarters after Konan had dismissed them, shut off the lights and flopped down on his bunk with an audible thud, shutting his eyes in bliss. When was the last time he'd gotten a good night's sleep? Probably back before the humans' ship had been blown up in space, now that he thought about it. Ever since, his life had been a constant stream of worry and uncertainty about what was to happen next to them, and the fear of death was ever-present. For the time being at least, the VUM was safe in a place that no one but no one knew anything about and had a plan in the works, giving him both peace of mind and something to look forward to. He knew this tranquility wouldn't last; calm moments in war never did, so he was going to take advantage of this now.

His head had barely hit the pillow, however, when Deidara came into their room and locked the door shut behind him. The blond Falk was clearly worried, judging by the look on his face and the jerky movements of his hands, which prompted Sasori to sit up. "Deidara, what's wrong?"

Deidara crossed the small room to sit on the edge of Sasori's bed and grabbed the redhead's hand to squeeze tight. "Regi's fallen," he whispered. "And not to human attacks, un. Falks did that, danna."

"I know," Sasori replied. "It's awful, Deidara."

"It's more than that, un!" Deidara sighed and clicked something under his breath. "We're in the middle of a war with your planet, and that's when these Sound Mind *hissss click* decide to attack?! Most of the people they killed were war refugees too, un!"

"Deidara, that's almost certainly why they chose to attack now," Sasori explained, trying not to trigger a bout of rage in the temperamental blond. Whoever wrote that crap in their soldiers' manuals about Falks being reserved and devoid of most emotions had clearly never studied Falks at all, or at least only observed a particularly calm (and possibly sedated) specimen. "If they'd attacked in peacetime, your army almost certainly would have beaten them pretty quickly, right?"

"Yeah, un," Deidara agreed with a nod.

"Then this was their only chance to stage a successful coup," Sasori reasoned. "That's all they cared about."

"But why did they have to kill all those innocent Falks, un?!" Deidara demanded, voice full of rage.

"I don't know, Deidara. But we'll make them pay, I promise." Deidara let out a series of soft chirps that Sasori could now recognize as crying, and he quietly pulled Deidara close to hug him. "Shh, Deidara…"

"Why can't this stupid war be over?" Deidara whimpered, burrowing into Sasori's chest as the redhead squeezed him tightly. "I lost my family, un. I lost my village. And now everyone's turning against each other, un. I'm so sick of this, un."

Sasori lowered them to the bed and rubbed Deidara's back, comforting the blond as he quietly sobbed on their shared bed. So much for a peaceful nap. "It'll be ok, Deidara," Sasori assured him. "We have a plan now, and we have a clear enemy. Whatever happens after we beat Orochimaru and the Sound Minds, we can worry about later."

"I hate this," Deidara whispered. "It was so easy to be happy after I escaped from Orochimaru, un. I was free. And now it feels like I'll never get away."

Deidara's comment made Sasori remember a conversation he'd had with Konan a long time ago about Deidara, and although the moment might not be perfect, he needed to ask a few questions. The Deidara he saw and the Deidara Konan saw were clearly two different creatures; which one was real? "Deidara, when I first picked you up from the crash site, what was your plan? I mean, there's no way you decided to fling yourself into deep space without considering what would happen next."

"…"

"Deidara?"

The Falk's arms wrapped themselves tightly around Sasori. "You're not allowed to hate me, un. Understand?"

The blond's words concerned Sasori, but he gently returned the embrace. "Just tell me the truth."

Deidara sighed. "I never intended to crash, un. Originally I wanted to get away from Verden and stay in one of the colonies in the asteroid fields until the war ended. But then I crashed, and I had to come up with a new plan, un. I sent out a distress call and waited for someone to answer. And that someone was you, un."

"Ok," Sasori said, encouraging the blond to go on.

"I had two plans before I crashed, depending on what my rescuer was like, un. When I woke up, you seemed kind and didn't look like you wanted to shoot me even with your hand on the gun; there was just a scared look in your eyes. Not to mention you'd bothered to carry me to your camp, so the…odds? of you suddenly choosing to kill me were fairly low. So I played on emotions to guilt you into saving me, un."

Sasori's stomach tightened a bit; Konan had suggested something like that to him, after all, so it wasn't new information to him. But it still hurt to have that confirmed. Wait…"So what was your other plan?"

"I had a knife in my pocket, un. If my rescuer seemed hostile when I woke up, I was going to play dead until the soldier came close enough for me to stab him."

Sasori's eyes widened as he looked down at Deidara in shocked horror. The blond said it so calmly, so matter-of-fact, so completely unlike the Deidara that Sasori knew. "What?"

Deidara glanced up at Sasori, a blank look on his face. "The situation would have been, um, I think you call it kill or be killed. I had to be ready for anything, un."

Sasori could see the blond's logic; but that still didn't change how cold Deidara seemed in that moment. No, he couldn't get bogged down in those feelings now, or he'd never hear all of Deidara's side of the story. Best to move on to the next phase. "So then we got onto the ship. What next?"

"The plan was still to get off and escape once we reached a colony, un. I played dumb and cute so you wouldn't change your mind and turn me in to your commander, un. Once we landed somewhere, I was going to sneak away."

Sasori's stomach knotted in on itself. "So, you agreeing to have me smuggle you back to Earth…"

"Was a lie, un," Deidara confirmed. "So was most of the kindness I showed you in the early days, un."

Sasori shut his eyes and took a deep breath. "But you seemed so happy when we were heading back to Verden-"

"Of course I seemed that way, un," Deidara snapped, "We were being held by a group of rebels with Verden in the name of their organization, un! If they suspected that I was going to just sneak off the first chance I got, they would've locked me up!"

"So basically, everything you said or did from the time I met you was just a pile of lies to keep yourself safe," Sasori concluded, letting slip a little more bitterness than was probably wise.

"My planet's a warzone, Sasori danna. Any Falk in my position with my intelligence would've done the same thing, un."

The redhead could see the logic in Deidara's actions; so why did it hurt so much to hear that?

"For what it's worth, I did start to like you, un," Deidara admitted softly. "You were kind to me when you had no reason to be. You even tried to defend me in front of Kisame. That's why I didn't run away when we first got to Verden, un. I really do care about you, Sasori danna. I want to stay with you now, un."

"Why?" Sasori whispered.

"Why what?"

Sasori pulled himself free from Deidara's arms and sat up. "Why can't you be honest with me! You lied to me when I landed to rescue you, you lied on the Akatsuki, you lied when the VUM took us in, and you lied about what touching my neck meant! Is there anything you've done that wasn't solely for your benefit?!"

"I did what I had to do to survive, un!" Deidara argued, sitting up as well.

"Bullshit!" Sasori snapped. "You didn't have to pretend to be so cheerful and ditzy, you could have asked Konan if you could be transferred to a refugee group; hell, you could have just come out and said you liked me!"

"Those plans all had a high risk of failure, un!" Deidara shot back in an exasperated tone. "The lies were safer for me at the time!"

"After everything we went through together?!"

"I'm telling you the truth now, un! Isn't that good enough?!"

Sasori sighed in exasperation and flopped down on the bed, turning his back to Deidara. "I can't deal with this right now."

"That's not fair, un!" Deidara cried out as he grabbed Sasori's shoulder and tried to turn him over. "You promised you wouldn't hate me, un!"

"I never promised that, I just told you to answer my question," Sasori snapped and jerked his shoulder free of Deidara. "And I don't hate you, I'm just incredibly mad at you."

"How is that different, un?!"

"It just is. I'm done talking to you." Sasori pulled up the blanket and burrowed as far down into his pillow as he could. The puppeteer fully expected Deidara to get up and move to his own bunk at that point. He, at least, had no intention of sleeping next to the blond tonight.

But Deidara didn't move. He sat there in silence for a while, and finally laid down next to Sasori. "I'm sorry, danna."

"…"

"Really, I'm sorry. I'll say it as many times as I have to until you believe me, danna." Quietly, the Falk draped his arm over Sasori and snuggled closer to the redhead. And although Sasori didn't reciprocate, he didn't pull away.

-n-

Ten hours. Ten hours until they had to leave their room and go to a meeting with Konan. Ten hours until Kakuzu was assigned new orders that would almost certainly put him in the line of danger again, just as new orders would be assigned to Hidan to keep the loudmouth near the VUM base. Ten hours left for Kakuzu to heal before he'd have to head back into battle, stitches and all. Needless to say, Hidan was more than a bit disgruntled.

"I'm just saying, there's dozens of guys here who haven't been shot to shit!" Hidan argued with Kakuzu for the hundreth time that day. "You can barely sit up without tearing open your side again, Jashin damnit!"

"Konan needs me," Kakuzu replied simply. "Someone betrayed us. She needs to have Falks she trusts nearby for now."

"Yeah, but…aren't there Falks that she can trust who don't have a fucking huge gaping hole in their side?"

"Not enough," Kakuzu answered simply.

Hidan sighed and shook his head; clearly this conversation was going to get them nowhere. Instead, he opted for a different line of questioning. They had a few hours and neither of them were tired, so they could at least make conversation about a more pleasant topic. "So dumbass, you've been with VUM for a while now, right?"

"Since my family died," Kakuzu replied.

"Oh." Well that got dark fast.

"It was a bombing raid early in the war. I found Konan and Pein a little bit after, when VUM didn't even have a name," Kakuzu explained, trying to be calm in the face of Hidan's discomfort. "They're all I have now."

"So that's why Konan trusts you? Because you've been around for fucking ever?"

Kakuzu nodded. "I'd do anything for her."

"Even watch an obnoxious Jashin-damned human?" Hidan asked with a smirk.

"Of course. I'd kill or die for her if I needed to. Which might happen if I'm stuck around you for much longer."

Hidan rolled his eyes with a smirk. "Jackass. But it's pretty cool that you're so devoted to her."

Kakuzu's hands formed a few meaningless signs, until at last he gave up and scribbled onto the notepad nearby. "She means as much as a sister to me." He paused for a minute, wiggling his fingers, before he resorted to painfully slowly spelling out, "I love her."

"That's this sign," Hidan explained, making the right sign for Kakuzu. Once the banker had it down, the zealot took a minute to think about what the Falk had just said. "Huh, so you love her like a sister. Wait, does that make Pein like a brother to you then?"

"No, just a comrade."

"Gotcha. Hmm…"

"What?"

"Ok, so you've been in VUM for freaking ever, so you probably fucking know everyone around here, right?"

"It's part of my job," Kakuzu confirmed. "I gather information for Konan and help her remember it."

"I can see that. So, out of all those Falks you studied…did you ever find a girlfriend?"

"Girl friend?" Kakuzu spelled out.

"One word, dumbass, like this," Hidan signed. "You know, someone you dated."

"Date?"

"Urgh, fucking hell. Romantic love! Dating is when you share romantic love with another person, Jashin damnit."

Kakuzu gave up signing and began writing in the notebook sitting on the nearby end table. "No. I was too young before the war, and after I became scarred it wasn't possible."

"Wait, seriously?"

"Yes. Why?"

Hidan gave the banker a surprised look. "Shit. I mean, you can't be the only Falk that got fucked up in the war, for Jashin's sake."

"There are many who weren't," Kakuzu explained. "At least physically."

"But still…" Hidan groped for the right words. "You're amazing! Fuck, if it weren't for you a ton of these fuckers would've died when Regi fell! How can they not see that after all the shit you do for them?"

"This coming from you?"

"Oh fuck off, even if you're an insufferable dumbass I can still respect your military skills. Especially given all the times you've saved my ass."

Kakuzu gave his friend a look somewhere between amusement and confusion. "Are you thanking me?"

"Don't push it, dumbass." Hidan's brows rose in surprise as Kakuzu let out a wheezy chuckle. "Holy hell, you can laugh too?"

"Just around you, so keep it quiet."

"Tch, fine with me." Hidan stretched and yawned before flopping backwards onto the foot of Kakuzu's bunk. "Fuck, I guess we should get some shuteye while we can, huh?"

"Shut eye?" Kakuzu wrote.

"Jashin damnit, shuteye means sleep. Also one word."

"Bandages?" Kakuzu signed, pointing to his side.

"Right, probably need to adjust those again, since some dumb fucker keeps ripping his stitches," Hidan remarked as he pushed himself off his bunk and walked over to Kakuzu's.

The Falk unraveled his bandages and set them in a pile on the floor, pleased to see less blood on them than the bandages that he'd been wearing after the stitches tore. The medical bay certainly wasn't happy with him after they found out about his ripping their hard work like that, but they nevertheless supplied him with clean bandages to take back to his own room after stitching his side back up. These bandages were still pretty bloody, but at least it was starting to clot; hopefully Kakuzu could soon forgo them entirely. The Falk started unwinding the next roll and held the end in place, keeping tension on them as Hidan wrapped the bandages around him.

Hidan kept his attention on the bandages, though his eyes kept drifting to the fresh wounds on Kakuzu's side. "You really scared me, dumbass," Hidan remarked. "I thought you were gonna fucking bleed out on me."

"…"

"You really were just going to fucking sit there and die on me if I didn't drag your sorry ass out of that tunnel, weren't you?"

"I was prepared to die," Kakuzu stated.

"Shit Kakuzu, just because you're comfortable dying for VUM doesn't mean you can just sit down and fucking give up!" Hidan snapped, tucking in the tail of the bandage with a bit more force than was necessary. "What about Konan and Pein, huh? Or those fucking newbies we picked up in Regi that couldn't shoot for shit? What about…"

"What?"

"What about me?" Hidan demanded. "Shit, you've been looking out for me this whole time; you're not allowed to just keel over and die on me, got that?"

There was a pause. Then Hidan suddenly felt hands on his shoulders jerking him into Kakuzu's lap, disrupting his efforts to bandage up Kakuzu. "What the-?! You're going to hurt yourself again, you fucking dumbass!"

"Shh," Kakuzu hushed, and then began scrawling on his pad again. "You'd be fine without me. The others would keep an eye on you, to make sure you don't get yourself killed for saying something stupid."

"Yeah, but…just because I could keep go without you doesn't mean I fucking wanna. Or fucking should have to, so don't go volunteering for any suicide missions, got it?"

Kakuzu made another sound like a weak laugh. "Yes, shii-shi."

"First thing I do when this war ends is gonna be finding a Jashin-damned dictionary and looking that fucking word up," Hidan grumbled as he began bandaging up Kakuzu again. If either of them cared that Hidan was still in Kakuzu's lap, they didn't say so.

-n-

Two soldiers waited in Kisame Hoshigaki's quarters before their mission, both nervous in their own way. Kisame paced nervously about the room, wringing his hands, whereas his companion sat quietly on the shark's bed, looking over a mission brief in his lap. "Calm down, Kisame."

"I'm exactly as calm as I need to be," Kisame grumpily retorted, although he did stop pacing. "If anything, you should be more nervous, Itachi!"

Itachi shook his head and decided to throw in an eye roll for good measure; he'd always enjoyed that particular human gesture. "Everything will be fine. We'll go in, drop off the supplies, and be back before you can realize how foolish your worrying is."

"I know, I just…it's a bad feeling, you know? Maybe it's because I can't go with you this time, but maybe it's something else. Get it?"

"No. Falks are fortunately immune to these 'feelings of doom' you humans are so prone to."

"Itachi…"

The Uchiha finally rose from his bed and crossed the room, wrapping his arms around the shark. It was almost cute, how worried the mighty commander would get before little missions like this. "I'll be fine. Besides, if anything happens to me, you'll be there to rescue me, right?"

"Tch, of course," Kisame promised, smiling as he bent down for a kiss-

BANG WHOP BANG

"Oh goddamn it!"

Kisame started awake, having been pulled from his dream by the sound of someone dropping what sounded like a small tank in the hall outside his door. Probably one of the clerks moving crates or documents while others tried to catch a bit of sleep; Konan's meeting was only six hours off now. But since there appeared to be no danger, the shark felt no need to get out of bed. In fact, he was probably better off trying to steal a few more hours of sleep. And so Kisame allowed the last few moments of his dream to replay briefly in his head, before rolling over in bed and shutting his eyes once again. "Damn it all to hell."

-n-

Two hours. Two hours to the meeting with Konan. Two hours left for plotting, strategizing, doing his part to help the VUM's leader plan how to come back from this catastrophe. And all Itachi could bring himself to do now was tear his room apart, trying to find something that he would swear on his life had made it out of Regi with him but then vanished.

The Falk had already inverted his bag, turned over his mattress and shaken out the covers, and was about to start prying the frame of the air duct off the wall when a voice suddenly spoke to him from the doorway. "Looking for this, un?"

Itachi jerked his head around to see Deidara standing in the doorway, dangling a small black necklace off of a single finger. "You're lucky, un. I remember you wearing this the first time we met, un. If someone else had seen this in the airship, they would have turned it in to the lost and found or just kept it for themselves."

"Give it back," Itachi requested calmly as he rose to his feet.

"Why, un? This is the necklace Kisame gave you, isn't it? I'm surprised you haven't burned it, un."

"Deidara, you'll give that back to me now or I will rip your eyes out and feed them to you."

"Fine, un. But that wouldn't stop me from telling a certain heartbroken human that you kept this little token of affection even after swearing you wanted him dead, now would it, un?"

Itachi stared coldly at the blond Falk. "What do you want, un?"

"Sasori's angry at me, un. You know humans better than me, un; you had to study them for your work. Tell me how to fix it."

"What exactly did you do?"

Deidara rolled his head, a gesture of exasperation Itachi knew quite well among the other Falkian troops. "I acted like a Falk when he expected me to be a human."

Itachi made a similar gesture. "There's not much you can do. Humans are small-minded creatures; they spent too long alone on their little rock of a planet, and now it comes as a shock when other creatures don't act like they do."

"They can't help it; we'd be the same if it weren't for the other planets so close to ours, un. Itachi, did you ever hear about their satellites, un?"

"The Voyager project," Itachi confirmed plainly. "How else do you think we found Earth? We certainly weren't looking for it."

"I know. But Sasori made it sound so sad, un. Like humans were these lonely little creatures trying to find someone, anyone else in space to communicate with them, un. You'd think they were screaming in the middle of an empty city, just hoping someone else was there and could hear them."

"We'd all be better off if they'd just stayed silent," Itachi snapped.

"Maybe. But still…they're wonderful in their own way, un. They just have a lot to learn, un. And I've never felt a pull towards a Falk like I feel towards them, un. We could help them be better, Itachi."

Itachi stepped forward and snatched the necklace away. "You're right about them needing to learn. Just so you know, there's nothing you can do about Sasori; either he'll calm down or stay angry. At best, you just need to keep acting nice; think human."

"All right, un. Itachi?"

"What?"

"I think you're too hard on them, un. Do you know Kisame never went after anyone else when you were captured, un? Not even for a kiss, un. It's like he spent the past few years in mourning for you, un."

"…"

"I bet he's not even angry about what you said to him, or that you hit him, un. All he cared about was seeing you again. If you talk to him-"

"Get out," Itachi hissed. "Get out, and if you say a single word to Kisame I will tear your tongue from your head with my bare hands and watch you bleed out."

Deidara scoffed at Itachi's harsh words and turned to leave the Albini's chambers. "Go ahead. But you know what, un? I'd still be better off than you, because at least if I get hurt I have Sasori to hold me and patch me up, no matter how mad he seems, un. You're so stubborn that you'll spend the rest of your life licking your own wounds and wishing Kisame was there, un." At that point, Deidara had to duck and run from the room when Itachi hurled a chair at his head.

Hissing and cursing the blond in the name of every human god he could remember (especially the more vengeful ones from the stories of smiting and hexing) Itachi slammed the door shut, and then hid the necklace under his pillow. He didn't need to wear the damn thing; he just couldn't work up the nerve to throw it away yet.