Chapter 6: Half-hearted Monstrosity

Deidara remembered the merciless fingers of the sea.

Every shinobi born and raised in the village sheltered by rocks, mountains away from the azure caresses of the ocean would have shared the sentiment. When Deidara was four, he thought the ocean was just a bigger pool. On the annual class trip in his second year in the Academy, first time feeling the ripples eddy around his sand-clad feet, Deidara learned the ocean had a beating heart. It was not until his chunin exams days that he understood the ocean for all its wrath, scalding fire under watery depths, white frothy waves outstripping amiable blue.

In the year Deidara turned eight, the second stage of the exams was held on water. He remembered his panicky yelps when his baby explosions purred meekly against the ferocious brine. The ocean had teeth. Deidara found himself strangled by Akatsuchi's meaty arms, being dragged ashore. The lifeless body of his other teammate bobbed on the waves. Two-thirds of the participants died after the second round, the rest orphans of the storm.

After all, even the hardest stones eroded against water.

The memories reemerged anew when the surface closed over Deidara's head. He swam his way out of the frantic swings of the other man's sword, but his attempts to out-speed his opponent fell in vain.

It was not long until his oxygen would run out and his limbs would sacrifice their nimbleness to the waves. A snow-white centipede sprung out of his open palm. It was the latest addition to Deidara's collection, with rounded bombs for its body segments, explosives its venom.

From the creature's mouth, a chain of connected white globes stormed forward. Deidara needed only to detonate the first piece, and the others followed, each blast setting off the one before it and granting momentum to the final blow. The last link of the chain hurled itself at the other man, the water around whirling to follow its speed.

Another bite of clay, and a swarm of jellyfish shimmered into existence around Deidara, soon squashed by his weight when he made them his stairs. The steps exploded under the stomps of his sandals, propelling him out of the water prison's clutches.

The air had never tasted that fresh.

When Deidara obtained Iwagakure's kinjutsu, he was no longer fearful of the ocean. The steady currents carried the shock waves from his explosions far and far away. The callous stream filled the gaps to which his victims might escape. Deidara had long known that the ocean was no rival to his art, that his creations would one day part the sea, revealing the deeply-shrouded floor.

"You know, Deidara-san, even the hardest stones eroded against wat—"

"I don't have time for your shark facts, Kisame," Deidara said as a forceful hand circled around his ankle. "And don't associate me with that village."

"Oh?" breathed Kisame, his smile glinting in the murky light.

The air slapped Deidara's skin as he writhed against Kisame's grip, as hopeless as a fish trapped between sharp claws. The sky was a somber grey, teary with a hint of upcoming drizzle.

Deidara always watched the sky as he fell. Falling was a part of flying, and if he fell to death, he at least wanted to see the blazing sun swelling in his vision before it turned black.

But, of course, that wouldn't happen.

Kisame was chanting incomprehensible phrases. Punctuating his broken hymn was the roar of a spring tide erupting from his throat. Deidara ripped through the air, grabbed by Kisame, cradled by a tsunami-height wave, and landed bloodlessly on his back. The remaining moisture on his body seeped into the grass.

"I'm disappointed. You didn't even bother to let me finish before talking." Kisame stood above Deidara, his chakra-sucking blade against Deidara's bare shoulder. "It wasn't even a shark fact."

"You fancy some art facts, yeah?" Deidara tried. "Art can be seen in the most unexpected places."

Kisame turned sideways; a clay spider was sinking its legs into his throat. An explosion of that strength, in that distance, would have snapped any neck, but Kisame was no human; he was the fuse of human and the villain of the sea, a tailed beast without a tail, the heart of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist. Kisame winced, but only a little. Though it did provide distraction long enough for Deidara to find an opening.

Deidara's style was all about risk. He risked bone fracture, major abrasion, and further chakra drainage when he slammed his upper arm against Samehada in the hope of shoving the ravenous sword away. It worked. The sword pulled away from him with a coquettish grin that resembled that of its wielder too well. A lock with one leg and a kick in the crotch with the other rendered Kisame on one knee. Deidara had no time for giggles.

He placed his palm on the ground to lay his final trap before fleeing. Luck seemed to be in his favor today; the soil in the Land of Waves was muddy enough to be mixed with his explosive clay.

Then Kisame was nowhere to be found.

"Fuck," Deidara said. "A clone."

With his opponent in hiding, the best route was to step back and observe. Not everyone harbored the bravado to name nature their camouflage, but Deidara did, and the trees bowed beneath his feet, the forest extending a large sprawling branch as his refuge. On this particular retreat, Deidara strived to ignore the elephant in the room—his shoulder, dislocated with a patch of skin scraped off completely.

"Your petty tricks won't work on me." Kisame's voice rumbled throughout the arena.

Deidara swallowed his breaths.

"Do you know? Sharkskin is not made of normal fish scales but miniature teeth that interlock," Kisame said, the swish-swash of his sword ringing through the foliage.

"Sharks are armoured with their teeth." Kisame sliced his way through Deidara's defence.

"So they bite with their skin," Deidara shouted and released another centipede, which fell apart at the mercy of Samehada's sway.

"You're pretty good." Kisame smiled, rows of razor-sharp teeth flashing.

Deidara considered the use of an adverb as weak as "pretty" in a remark about his ability condescending. "I've been practicing."

They leaped down from the tree and resumed battle on feet.

There was no time for breath-catching, humouring side thoughts, even blinking in a skirmish against Kisame. Yet it took Deidara every ounce of his self-control not to revere the artistry escorting his opponent's steps. There was something about the way he danced—not as elegant as Sasori, but lacking in lunacy to be compared to Hidan's frenzied moves. A smile curved Deidara's lips. It wouldn't fade until his hunger was satisfied.

Kisame darted around Deidara in spirals, a deluge sparking at his heels. Deidara summoned his impenetrable shield with hundreds of wobbly clay minions. The thrills were high, insufferable, screeching through his tendons.

"Hey, Kisame."

"Yes?" Kisame was a blue blur.

"What do you think about love?"

Incredible how a simple question could quell such an ever-moving threat. It was a conversation Deidara planned to reserve for a heart-to-heart, something he would have never imagined saying in the heat of a fight, but it came out at perfect timing. Kisame stopped, stared, then laughed.

In an unspoken compromise, the two of them rekindled the conversation with their fists. They charged at each other, fatigue forgotten, weapons abandoned.

"To think that I'd live until the day I hear you talk about anything other than art." Kisame struck first with a skull-shattering punch. "Well, I figure you're at that age."

"I started masturbating when I was four, Kisame." Deidara scowled. His timely dodge reduced Kisame's advance into a glancing blow that grazed his jaw. "I'm not a fucking teenager."

"Can't help it with those hands, huh?"

"Shut up!"

They broke away for a moment just to cackle.

"Height—" Deidara evaded a flurry of punches by ducking under Kisame's arm. "—is not always an advantage, yeah?"

Kisame twisted. "Why are you even asking about something like… love?"

"I'm just curious, yeah."

Hands gripping Kisame's biceps, Deidara tried to perform a magnificent swing, but the other surprised him with raw strength when he flexed his arm and pulled Deidara down on the ground with a sharp jerk.

"Curiosity may cost you," said Kisame, holding Deidara by the neck. "But who am I to tell you about costs? A small cost for one may be a sacrifice to another. I'm not sure what the cost for betrayal would be, though."

Deidara panted. "I'm not… planning to do any… thing like that."

"Relax. I was messing with you."

Kisame let go. The battle concluded in his resounding triumph.

"How was it?" Deidara asked while touching his shoulder. Each movement induced a new type of pain.

"Excuse me, how was what?"

"My chakra."

"Right. I almost forgot why you're here in the first place." Kisame glided behind Deidara and rested his hands on Deidara's shoulders. "I was a little side-tracked."

Before Deidara could protest, the knuckles of Kisame's fingers had sunk into his joints. Calloused blue skin pressed against bare dermis.

"You give terrible massages," Deidara said.

"Wait for it."

Something inside Deidara snapped, and he tried to squirm only to realize his dislocated shoulder had magically rolled back into its place. A heavy, satisfied sigh escaped his lips.

"Something I learned from the medics," Kisame said. "Works like a charm."

There was a palpable eerieness to the contrast between Kisame's polite mannerisms and his status as an Akatsuki member, a village exile, a comrade murderer. Deidara, whose main source of interpersonal interactions came from either loud-mouths or brooders, wasn't sure how to reply.

"You're being too nice," Deidara said after a pause long enough for it to be awkward.

Even more absurd courtesy was Kisame's answer. He withdrew a bandage roll from his pocket, but along with it a surprising number of pill packs slipped out. The astonishing speed at which he retrieved the items roused Deidara's wonder. Deidara entertained himself with the thought of Kisame being a drug dealer in his free time, but the suspicion died fast.

"It'd be fair to say that you have large chakra reserves, pretty unique chakra at that. Fierce and passionate—delicious." Kisame patted Samehada in refusal to address the incident.

"Mine is only a portion compared to yours." Deidra took the roll from Kisame and started patching up his wound. "Is it difficult to control such a large amount of chakra?"

"If it were easy, the majority of Jinchuuriki wouldn't struggle with chakra control."

Deidara absent-mindedly rubbed the gauze on his shoulder, now blotted with blood. "I guess, yeah."

"But size is not the only problem. Like your art, your chakra is used to being released in short, spontaneous bursts," Kisame shared his wisdom, and Deidara was eating up every word. "That makes your style unique, but it's also a weakness. You have generous chakra but lack the control to keep it in one place."

Deidara pointed at his chest-mouth in protest. "But I don't have any problem with focusing chakra in any other body parts. Arms, feet, head, you tell me. Even the head down there too, if I really try."

Kisame offered a smile whose mirth didn't quite reach his eyes. "That's different. Normally, you accumulate a certain amount of chakra in a body part to enhance movements. For your new jutsu, though, you transfer all your chakra to one place."

"That's why my whole body turns transparent." Deidara left the other side-effect to speak for itself: that's why he wouldn't survive after the blow.

"So, if you transfer all your chakra to your head—"

"I'll be just a floating penis."

"Technically, that's not possible unless your 'core' is all the way down there. Interesting image nonetheless," Kisame said as he stood up. "In other words, moving all your chakra to one place is an ability granted by your kinjutsu. It's not achievable by normal humans, and I, too, don't have experience in that." Enthusiasm lit up his face. "But it doesn't hurt to try."

Deidara slid into his shirt; he had retired to a simple tunic and pants in his free time. When away from missions, it was best to blend in with the civilians. The few golden rays that peeked through the clouds and the richness in Kisame's laugh brought him odd comfort.

"Okay, Kisame-sensei, what do you suggest?"

Kisame seemed amused by the honorific. "I suggest we start small. 10% for next time, and we'll go from there."

"There's next time?"

"I can't say I'm not in for a sparring partner," Kisame said while plaguing Deidara with his intense look—it made one shrink like a prey under the watchful eyes of its predator. "You don't want to?"

Deidara couldn't say he didn't like that look, for Kisame was present, at the moment, mountains apart from the wandering attention of Sasori and the red eyes of people who called themselves God. He pumped his fist into the air. "I'd love to, yeah!"


The next hour of their hang-out transpired on the Land of Waves' busy streets, with them checking out various stores and stopping at their final destination, a food stall. Deidara stared at himself in the thick veil in the bowl packed with ramen, pork, seaweed, and goodness; thinking he had done it. He had asked the embarrassing question, had received a somewhat relevant answer, and now the only task left was to dip and run.

He chowed down his mid-day meal with much thought, one of which was how the hell Kisame is already on his third bowl? Besides, the Land of Waves hadn't been this bustling since the last time he paid a visit. Something enormous must have happened, bestowing the riverine nation with a sprout of markets and shops and a boost in the spirit of its dwellers. Seeing smiles after smiles on nondescript faces was almost annoying.

Deidara waited for Kisame after he had finished. Asking for input from Akatsuki members—it was a ludicrous idea no matter which way he looked at it, but this wasn't half as awkward as he imagined. Opening up to the other members opened the door to the realization that they were, in the end, human. Not mere illusions. Not mere entities of artistic values.

It was the exact moment when Deidara was about to wave goodbye that Kisame blew his attempt to pieces.

"Love, huh?" Kisame stepped out of the shop into the street, his large sword-bound back shading the sun.

But it wasn't about the chakra-eating sword, or his abnormal blue skin, or his razor-sharp teeth. Kisame was in Henge, but at that moment he had managed to look so out of place, a tyrant amid a town of martyrs.

"I think I know someone who can help," he said.


Deidara didn't know why he expected an Akatsuki's friend to be anything less than dead.

The "someone" in Kisame's words was, in reality, two. Two bodies six feet under the misty grass blanketing a meadow adjacent to the Land of Waves' impenetrable mangroves. Two sparsely decorated graves, befitting of those regarded as shinobi. Two mementos: a brown ribbon draped lazily around one grave, and a deadly weapon thrust into the soil next to the other.

A glance at the sword was all Deidara needed.

"Is that—"

"Zabuza's," replied Kisame. Then he drifted towards the cross-shaped wooden sculptures which were supposed to represent his old acquaintances' graves. "And that's Haku's sash."

To say the name rang a bell would be an understatement. Zabuza Momochi was a household name, etched into the yellowed pages of Deidara's Bingo Book and burned into the memories of over a hundred Academy students who writhed under his bloodstained hands. The Demon of the Hidden Mist. How the death of such a notorious missing-nin could sadden someone to the point they honored him with a memorial, even left food offerings—it was beyond Deidara's understanding.

"These are fresh." There was a slight shiver in Kisame's gaze —murkiness casting over the black of his eyes—when he examined the two bunches of flowers in front of the graves. "They were put here recently. 2 days at best."

Seeing white flowers triggered some sort of feeling. Deidara thought he could see, feel the hot blood of Kiyoi's neck damping fallen petals.

"But who?" His voice came out like a choke.

"I don't know." The edge of Kisame's Henge swayed, then blurred, then evaporated. "Every time I visited, there were new offerings, but I was never lucky enough to arrive at the right time to catch them," Kisame said, and fragments of a fragile civilian man thinned and melted around him, revealing the true monster beneath. "Outstanding, isn't it? I don't think I'll get to be buried after death, not to say being given a grave."

"The last thing I want is to end up in Zetsu's stomach."

"I'm sure that won't happen," Kisame reassured. "To you, and to me."

"But don't you think the most terrifying death is a silent one?" Deidara's steps to the tiny gravesite were in accordance with his voice: wary and quiet. "Imagine being a civilian, dying of a heart attack or something, and being left rotten inside your house until the smell is so foul people are forced to notice." He stopped when faced with Haku. "Being a shinobi, an Akatsuki, and dying a lame death like that…"

"So you use your explosions to make up for the noise?"

"The cry of people and animals will be my mournings, the explosions my prayers." Deidara grappled against the upcoming waves, but his heart was already over-brimmed with homespun excitement. The drumming beats were close to bursting out of his tightening chest. "There will be no other sound in my ultimate art's wake, Kisame, because art! Is! An! Explosion!"

Such words had, in some way, loosened the strain on Kisame's expression. He dropped to the ground with a breathless laugh, and an art-blinded Deidara didn't see clear enough to regard that action as anything but pure admiration of his philosophy.

"It seems that you've finally begun to understand the beauty of art, yeah." Deidara smiled to himself.

Kisame sighed.

"Did you know Zabuza?"

"I ran into him a few times," said Kisame. "I guess we're both the type of guy who loves to make trips back to his old village."

Deidara's eyes moved between the graves and the offerings grazed by sunlight. "I assume they had a special relationship?"

"Special as in a master and his weapon, that's what they'd tell you."

"But you knew it wasn't that simple, yeah?"

What separated Deidara from them wasn't visible to him until now, when he was stringing together the pieces, putting his two Akatsuki allies on a broken scale. The dark cloud over Sasori's face as he recited his first kills. The connotation of tenderness in the way Kisame dragged his hand across the rugged surface of a gravestone whose owner should have been irrelevant. They relived old memories in the tales spilled from their lips, and for Kisame, that tale was not his.

Deidara clenched his teeth.

The more he thought about it, the more Kanyu's words earned their legitimacy. He indeed lacked experience, exposure to failure to be precise. His young eyes failed to rival the superiority in those life-wise, battle-wise men's reminiscent gaze.

He opened his mouth, and said nothing.

"He was an orphan, got taken along by Zabuza to serve as his right-hand man since a young age," Kisame said. "Haku was raised in bloodshed. The kid was doomed to kill."

"Let me guess, their relationship started out as strictly that: a master and his tool, then it grew into something else?"

"No." Kisame shook his head. "The moment he offered his hand to an abandoned child on the road on that snowy night, Zabuza knew something in him had broken."

Deidara gulped. After all, the whole scenario between him and Sasori had started with a simple game.

"It starts… with small things?"

"And chances are you're not even aware until knee-deep." Kisame peered into the distance, where the Land of Waves' sparkling stream crossed by a new-looking bridge loomed. "In the end, this might be what he wanted."

"It must be hard."

"What?"

"Being the only person with that knowledge."

With no evidence to back up, his statement was but an educated guess, and yet it was met with Kisame's agreement. "Yes."

The sun had finally come out, tiptoeing around the golden-lined horizon—a sight to behold in the land normally populated with fine rain and dampened bliss. Deidara held a hand over his face, but what a futile attempt that was, stopping the unstoppable luminescence of nature and realization from filtering through.

"Zabuza was always on about how the villages raised us to become emotionless tools."

Deidara shrugged. "I can't disagree with that."

"It's justifiable."

"What part of it is justifiable?"

"People are tools of love as much as we shinobi are tools of the system, aren't they? Crops are tools for farmers to make food as much as farmers are tools for crops to flourish. Parents are tools for their children. Puppeteers are tools of their puppets. Swordsmen are tools of their blades." Kisame turned to look at Deidara. "Art is a tool of self-expression for you and you are a tool for your art to be expressed."

Deidara's fingers were knotted in his collar; he was in sudden need of fresh air. "I do feel controlled by art sometimes."

"You've been engrossed in art for so long, it's inescapable." Kisame's held out his hand, which was curled into a fist. "…Hey, look."

Deidara wondered why he could have been that naïve. As he approached and stared at Kisame's hand, the fist unfurled, and with half a splash Deidara was under the waves, squinting at the sun-speckled surface above.

The tide's departure was as hasty as its arrival.

When Deidara breathed again, a delicate piece of accessory had made its way into his drenched palm. He found laced between his fingers what was normally laced between the locks of a woman's updo, shimmering despite the wetness.

Deidara clutched the hairpiece. "What is this?"

"There was this woman I used to work with in Kiri's Cypher Division," Kisame said with no expression. "Her grave must be somewhere in the village's cemetery for fallen shinobi. Yokohama—what it's called, north of Tama district."

This meeting was, in essence, an exchange of secrets. Deidara with his stupid crush, and Kisame with his final link to the past, the final threads binding him to his identity as a Kiri-born shinobi. Zabuza and Haku's story was perhaps only a device for Kisame to shed his weight. Still, the responsibility of holding one's last fragment of humanity was something with which Deidara wasn't sure he should be entrusted.

"Kisame, you—"

"It's a piece of worthless trash."

When Deidara thought about it, Kisame was like the ocean itself. Soft-spoken and benevolent on the surface, a rumbling force to be reckoned with underneath. The ocean kissed the sun good night in her kind mood, yet when angered, she swallowed every breath of dawn. The waves rolled and rolled and rolled, stretching as far as the eye can see, luring you into their embrace. In the face of daylight, the ocean laughed. In the dearth of men's notice, the ocean killed.

But if there was one thing Deidara learned today, it was the ocean knew of love.

When Kisame vanished, it was only the ocean's whisper that remained.

"Suzuki Naomi, her name."


A/N:

Shower thought: When you think about it, Deidara is like the Sakura of the Akatsuki. He's normal enough (by Akatsuki standards) to get on with everyone, and he can be shipped with a lot of the members. Not only that, I think he can mesh well with non-Akatsuki characters as well. That's why he has taken on the role of the FRIEND COLLECTOR in this fic.

I know I've been super slow, but I'll make sure to post the next chapter next week. Promise!