Chapter 8: Allies By Chance, Enemies By Fate
Perhaps it was a heat-of-the-moment thing—his bewildered reaction to Sasori's suggestion—because this was all he ever wanted. After all, suggesting participating in a local art contest was something very Deidara-esque, something he never expected to hear from his partner. As the thrills of the competition closed in, Deidara's will to help Sasori with his new project was soon defeated by his desire to win.
He could prove himself with this.
An unknowing smile crept across Deidara's face as he set up his stand. It was the first morning of the three-day preparation for the festival, but with this much workload at hand, half of the day would probably pass in tenacious nail hammering, transporting wood planks, and staring menacingly at Sasori's booth across from his.
Deidara had planned ahead. In fact, he had leapt out of bed as soon as the earliest glow of dawn brightened the horizon, run along the sleeping streets, raced with the sun that scrambled to its throne amid the changing sky. And what did he find the moment he stepped foot into the venue? Sasori hanging up the goddamned curtain of his goddamned fully constructed stand. Damn it.
"Now that I think about it, I shouldn't work when you sleep at night to make things fair." Sasori's voice echoed from inside his booth, which resembled a miniature theater box.
"No need." Deidara shifted in his sitting spot on the ground, the saw in his hand midway through splitting a wood board in half. "If you're trying to coerce me into admitting me being human is a disadvantage, I won't submit."
"Confident."
Deidara faked a sigh. "You thought you could beat me easily, right? With all your experience and 'time advantage,' 'no fatigue advantage.' To be honest, I'm a little hurt."
"Do you think I'm that petty?" Sasori asked with a scoff. "That I assume I'm superior just because of my experience, the state I'm in, or my status—Sasori the Puppet Master—in case you want to pull that card too?"
The monotonous cries of Deidara's saw stuttered before ebbing into silence. Sasori took a non-existent breath before continuing, "Do you think I'll stoop that low—initiating a competition I know I'll win—just to get what I want?"
Deidara grinned. "Of course not. You wouldn't challenge me if you think I'm not on par."
"And. I have other ways, easier ways to seek assistance for my plan," Sasori replied. He looked up, meeting Deidara's gaze for a moment so brief eternity passed between them. "I just wanted to choose you."
Why couldn't he think of a reply?
"Because you're convenient, Deidara."
"Wow, thank you so much."
The quietness of Sasori's laugh didn't make it any less startling, and beautiful nonetheless.
"What are you staring at? Get back to work."
Deidara turned away. "Okay, okay."
Soon the clangs of hammers against nails and the incessant scritch scritch of his pencil against sketch paper blocked out all distracting thoughts. The construction process wasn't supposed to trouble him this much—the event staff had provided everything needed to set up a basic functioning stall, but Deidara disdained 'basic.'
Anyone could arrange a basic stage and craft a great performance, so what? Treating the stage as mere stage bordered on mediocrity. Deidara was confident in his idea, even at the expense of his working pace. He breathed in, drew motivation from the sight of Sasori working so diligently on the other side, and held on.
Gradually time passed, and the sun strayed from the grasp of the rosy-colored horizon. When Deidara finished building the bare bones of his stall, the chatters of fellow participants and clatters of building tools had filled Rivers' central park. When he swiped the finishing swipe of paint on the front counter in his booth, the place was alive with not only artists but also stressfully pacing staff members, happily chatting youngsters, exercising elders, and hopping children. The scene ignited in him a strange sense of belonging.
Then they came.
"You—" the words were stuck in Deidara's throat.
He smeared the left-over paint on his hand over his smock and rushed in the two teenagers' direction, weaving through lines of ambling villagers. After a few minutes of tailing, he jumped out from behind and grabbed their arms.
"Got you, yeah!" Deidara cheered, his hands clasped around the boy's right arm and the girl's left one.
They turned around at once.
Deidara had expected some form of resistance, but this level of reaction and sheer force was strange coming from two civilians, let alone juveniles. The girl greeted him with wide eyes that changed from a youthful spring to steely determination, then clutched his wrist and tried to yank his arm away. The boy's fingers curled into a fist.
"Wait, you—" The boy stammered once he caught a glimpse of Deidara's face, his arm falling back by his side. "L-let me and Sakura go!"
"Naruto, don't tell me?" The will in the girl—Sakura's— voice faltered at the silence she received from her friend. Helplessness clear on her face, she muttered to Deidara, "Um, please, can we at least sit down and talk it out first?"
"Look at how quick your attitude changes, brats. Seconds ago you were trying to kill me," Deidara said. "I don't want to talk. I just want my money back."
Sakura was waving at the bystanders, offering them each a variant of an apologetic smile when Deidara nudged her. "Could we not discuss this in the middle of the street?" she whined and, with a gasp that indicated her remembering of something important, added, "please."
It planted a grin on Deidara's face. "We'll talk somewhere private if you want to, but are you sure you're not going to regret this?"
"Excuse me, but," Naruto asked as he stared at his and Sakura's joint wrists in disbelief. "What is this?"
"A safety measure, that is," Deidara said, with his back against the stand's back wall, facing his two targets. The area was small and dark with rows of trees lining up behind it, not private enough for him to murder two people without anyone noticing, but still.
"Put simply, they are full of explosives." Deidara shrugged as hope drained from Naruto and Sakura's faces. "Oh, they can also track your movements. Any of you try to damage or open the handcuffs, and BOOM! You'll end up with holes for hands."
A little lie can't hurt.
"I take your silence is your promise to behave, yeah?"
"We're sorry we've scammed you!" Naruto and Sakura shouted, then joined each other in a 90-degree bow. They screamed again in clumsy unison, "We shouldn't have done that. We promise to repay you, so please hear us out!"
It was not usual that Deidara mellowed at acts like this. He felt his irritation fade not because of their impeccable manners, but at the sight of Sakura's hand pressing firmly down Naruto's head, and her whispering to Naruto that it was not time to get back up yet, not before they received a reply. Deidara crossed his arms in front of his chest and waited in amusement for their resign.
Five minutes passed. The green canopies shooed away the sunlight that beat down the two's backs.
Deidara frowned. "How long are you planning to do this?"
Ten minutes. Naruto had blurted out three "Why the heck are we still bowing?" and Deidara swore he sensed something sinister almost slipping out under Sakura's well-behaved front.
"You don't have the money to pay me back, do you?"
"Finally." Naruto sprung up from his position. "We lost it."
"How?"
Sakura rubbed her hands together as she rose. "Well, there was this group of bandits who tried to rob us. While we were fighting for our lives—do you remember the girl acting as the receptionist?—she dropped the bag with the money." She sighed. "Trust me. When I found out Naruto was around town scamming people, I'd wanted to punch him in the face—return it to you, but we didn't find any way to get into contact. We had planned to turn it over to the police, then the thing happened."
"You're saying that the money you robbed was then robbed from you?"
Naruto responded with an awkward laugh. "Karma is real after all."
"We promise we'll give you back your money, but we can only do it if you give us some time," Sakura said.
"And let you wander off somewhere then vanish off the face of the earth?" Deidara asked, and slammed his hand against the back of the stall. "I want it now. Don't care how. Call your parents or someth—"
There was a creaking sound. The wall behind Deidara shook, followed by the screech of the other walls from the sides breaking free of their screws. Deidara bolted out of the place. The stall was about to collapse, its walls on the brink of nose-diving into his display counters and supplies, shattering three hours' worth of work in a matter of seconds.
He caught one of the sidewalls just in time, supporting its weight with both of his arms. But what he expected to hear—the result of his haste in order to catch up with Sasori, the soul-crushing sound of all that made the proud background of his art crashing together—didn't manifest. He glanced over his shoulder. Pink hair and bright green eyes, eyes so bright with returned courage. The flash of white on Naruto's smile. Not one Naruto, but multiple Naruto's scattered around his stall.
"Next to you."
Deidara followed the voice to his left, where one Naruto was standing, holding up the same wall. Only then did it occur to him: Sakura and a dozen of Naruto clones were holding his booth from crumbling. If they hadn't acted in time…
"Can someone pass me that screwdriver?" Sakura asked as she pushed the back wall to an upright position with one hand. How much strength does this girl have?
"Alright! I'll be there," said Naruto. "You can handle this, right?"
It took Deidara a few seconds to realize Naruto was asking him. He nodded. "Yeah."
After a few moments of initial confusion, the three of them—one kidnapper, two captives—set off to bring Deidara's stand back to its original state with added reinforcements. Deidara spoke little outside of giving instructions. Instead, he stared at his wrist where Sakura's grip had left a red mark and pondered. When he abandoned the stand to run after Naruto and Sakura, his actions might not have belonged to an enraged victim but an overworked man in need of distraction. The normal Deidara would never prioritize anything over his craft.
And he could use a helping hand right now.
"Ten thousand ryo, that amount of money is enough to hire a servant for a full month." Deidara smiled at his two victims and surprisingly, saviors of the day. "Heh, but I'm feeling kind today, so I'll allow you to repay your debts in three days. How about it?"
"Really?" Sakura stepped down from the ladder after checking the walls.
"What? You said if we helped him he would feel touched and let us go." Naruto, covered in sawdust from helping Deidara with extra wood pieces, sighed.
"Smartasses, you two." Deidara smacked the two of them in the head when they stepped closer to him. "I thought you'd know a shinobi's heart is harder to sway than that, yeah."
Naruto stepped back. "You—you knew we're shinobi?"
"Duh, what were those clones supposed to be? Your guiding angels?"
"Something like that." Naruto giggled. "Anyhow, I guess we can be your sidekicks for a few days. I'll let you know, Sakura-chan here makes an amazing sidekick! She can hit stuff, sew, cook, heal and she's really good with details."
"And what can you do, mister?"
"I can give very good encouragements!"
Deidara gave Naruto a smirk. "Don't try to fool me, brat. You know how to fight. I'll take you." He side-eyed Sakura. "You can go, Sakura. Your friend here is the one truly at fault, after all."
"Then do you mind if I take her?"
Deidara lit up when he saw Sasori enter the scene, lingering in front of the booth. "So you heard the commotion earlier, yeah?"
"I was wondering what the hell you were doing, making such a scene here." Sasori peeked into the stall and looked around with an unreadable expression. "But bullying children into slavery isn't that bad."
"Isn't too far up your alley, danna?"
"Not at all." Sasori's voice offered the tiniest hint of humour. Then he took another look at the dumbfounded Sakura. "Giving her to me may go against you later on, though."
"One helper is all I need to bring my work to perfection. Whether you have one doesn't matter."
Sasori glanced down, and his eyes landed on one of the layout plans for the stand Deidara left on the front counter. He noted thoughtfully, "I guess that's the mindset a true artist should have. Not to compete, but to excel."
"All this time arguing over whose art is better, and this is the conclusion you've come to?" The corners of Deidara's lips curled up. He reached out to touch Sasori's shoulder from inside the booth. "I'm glad." His eyes twinkled. "But I also don't plan to lose."
Deidara waved goodbye to Sasori, who was heading down the way to his booth and dragging a grumpy Sakura along. Although the girl was against the idea at first, Deidara's words and her, he imagined, sense of responsibility towards her friend's foolish actions coaxed her into cooperating.
Who would have thought getting tricked by a stupid scam would lead to him crossing paths with such an eccentric pair?
"To think that all of this started with a game." Deidara smiled to himself.
"Blue."
"Here you go!"
Following Naruto's enthusiastic reply rang the clunk of metal against the ground. Deidara dipped his brush into the can of paint delivered, knowing without looking that some of the liquid had splashed on his shirt under the impact.
A quiet click of the tongue was his form of complaint. There were no merits in disrupting the workflow with needless criticism or childish bickering, especially when the process was running like clockwork. Deidara trusted no one with painting, so he had Naruto running around attending to errands while he sat sprawling on the ground with multiple wood boards awaiting the strokes of his brush.
"Bakahatsu-saaan," Naruto said, having retreated inside the stall. "Am I really going to spend all day doing this?"
Deidara grunted. "The booth is not finished yet. You still need to find a way to move the walls, remember?"
"I'll just hook a rope into each one and have my clones pull them during the performance. Easy-peasy."
"That's… not a bad idea." Deidara lifted his gaze from the painting for a brief second to regard Naruto with a look that spoke silent praise. "Your clone jutsu is pretty damn useful for multi-tasking."
"It's actually forbidden."
"You think I don't know that, yeah?" Deidara snorted. "Why do you think I chose you? A brat like you stealing a forbidden jutsu… You must have serious balls."
"Thank you for the compliment! But anyway, I'm bored"
"I don't care about how you feel. I only care about how much I can exploit you for my own benefits."
"Classic villain phrases, huh?" Naruto rested his chin on the palm of his hand while leaning over the counter, watching Deidara. "Come on, we can take a little rest."
"We can't."
"It's just a small contest, right? Why is it so important to you?" Naruto asked then responded, "I know! Is it because you made a bet with the red-haired guy? Like if you lose, you have to confess to the one you like or something?"
Deidara stopped, curvaceous lines and bursts of color dying short on the tip of his brush.
Naruto clapped his hands together. "By the way, how did it go with your crush? Did you guys manage to reconcile thanks to my advice? Wait, wait, can I make a guess on who it is?"
"You said you were bored, right Naruto?" Deidara asked. "Do you have any better idea of what we should be doing?"
"If sensei taught me something, it is to always analyze your opponent's strength and weakness before the fight," Naruto said, thumping his chest in pride.
Deidara put aside his work and focused on the one before him. Now this is an interesting subject. "Well, his strengths and advantages are numerous. His weaknesses, I can hardly think of anything."
"Maybe instead of thinking about his weaknesses in this particular situation, you can think about his weaknesses in general? Anything he's bad at?"
Deidara thought for a few moments before answering, "If I have to say one, it's that he's bad with emotions."
Glances were exchanged between the two of them, initial glances of doubts, later glances of deep thought, and final wide-eyed looks of mutual joy. Deidara jumped up from his seat. "That's it!"
"He's bad with emotions!" Naruto cried and bounced on his feet. "I see it now! …Uh, what does that mean for us again?"
"Are you stupid?" Deidara shook his head. "It means he'll have a harder time making the audience feel things. I wouldn't be surprised if his performance turned out dry and boring."
"Then I know exactly what we should be doing!"
When Naruto grabbed ahold of his hand, Deidara knew his entire plan had turned to dust. He had transitioned from working independently to working with a brat, and his work was lying unattended on the grass, and said brat was dragging him through the streets for his so-called brilliant idea. In the meantime, the flaws in his construction had been patched before they had a chance to ruin his performance, and he had earned a pretty useful assistant, and all his anxiety had seemed to melt away.
"It's Deidara," he mumbled by way of introduction. "The world's best artist."
"Nice to meet you, Deidara," Naruto turned around with a broad smile. "I'm Uzumaki Naruto, the future Hokage of Konoha."
It was six in the morning, the second dawn of the preparation phase, and all the signs of an unproductive day had lined up, as effortless as a well-trained row of puppets eager to march into the mouth of war. Sasori rearranged his workspace: wiped some dust off the sidewall, repositioned a bottle of paint, draped a covering over a bamboo basket burdened with dozens of plain puppets. His hyperfocus had begun to crack, and soon his eyes had landed on a face that was not lifeless, timber, whose features only emerged under his carving hands.
Sakura tilted her head. "Um, I've got rid of Naruto?"
"Be quicker next time," Sasori said after a while of stalling in silence. "Those two get along too well." He stared down at the counter—he should have expected no less from Deidara; still, how the brat attracted people so easily never stopped feeling foreign. "Seriously—"
"It's like Deidara and Hidan all over again."
"It's like Naruto and Lee all over again."
He looked at Sakura in muted surprise as their words met, his grip easing on the small puppet nuzzled against his gloved hands. Sakura's grin hung in the air, awaiting never-coming reciprocation. Was she expecting him to be entertained by such a small coincidence?
And yet somewhere inside him, something shifted. In the face of his surface-level nonchalance, a small, negligible sense of curiosity started to grow when Sakura again mirrored his action, turning to the direction of the opposite stand. They peered through the front window of Sasori's booth to observe Deidara and Naruto, who were also huddling inside their 'base'. Deidara was offering his ear to Naruto, who leaned closer to whisper something to him.
"Uzumaki Naruto reporting to duty," Naruto whispered in a loud voice. "The enemies are at twelve o'clock, staring at us intently thinking we didn't noti—"
Sakura drew the window curtain close.
Sharing a brief nod of agreement, Sasori resumed the work on his new puppet collection while Sakura retreated further backstage, perching on a seat with needles and threads in her hands and fabrics on her lap. The stall didn't have a wall on the back, so Sakura sat working on the puppets' garments in sunlight. Within the booth, a single bulb smiled over Sasori's shoulders, spilling artificial warmth on his latest creation.
It was rather a dumb-downed version of his creation, Sasori must admit, with size reduced to fit in one's palm and simple, non-lethal functions. He couldn't say he enjoyed downplaying himself, but sometimes adjustments needed to be made to fit the audience, who, in this case, were a bunch of civilians ignorant to the art of puppetry in battles.
Nevertheless, their teamwork went well, far beyond his expectation of a collaboration between a veteran and a young unwilling assistant. Naruto was right—Sakura was excellent with details. Sasori knew of this when seeing her delicate chakra control glide across the wood, leaving trails of beauty in its wake. The carved patterns unfurling along the sides of the window said that much.
"Naruto is such an idiot," Sakura mumbled.
She had already wrapped up making the outfits and was now idling around, looking for things she could help with. Following Sasori's instructions, she stood next to him, picked up an empty name tag—a small piece of metal among others in a box—and began etching letters onto it.
"The one you're working on… Midori, right?" She asked.
"The one I've just finished working on," he corrected her and passed over the puppet in his hand.
"No need to boast." Sakura rolled her eyes—Sasori would have taken that as an insult but for the chuckle that followed right after.
She finished carving the name with swift dexterity before handling Midori from Sasori, who grabbed another plain puppet from his basket to start anew. It was not long before she started ranting again, "But really, I'm sorry that Naruto bothered you so much with his infiltrating attempts. He's always been like that. Always thinks he's the coolest, most powerful person in the world or something."
Sasori flicked off the dust on the new puppet. Right. He would name it Ena.
"It's not that I hate him, but I can't help but be annoyed sometimes, you know."
Sasori twirled Ena's slender frame around, thinking of what unique features he should give her. How about a puppet with wings?
"Aren't you annoyed? With Deidara-san, I mean. He and Naruto keep trying to mess with us, and I heard what he's planning to perform is quite… violent, too."
"Stop being so arrogant."
"I'm—sorry?"
"From what I've seen, your friend seems to hold back when he's with you. And Deidara is a solid competition. That brat has a lot of crazy ideas under his belt," said Sasori, mildly aware of the tension growing under the roof of the booth that sheltered them. "Excellent chakra control doesn't make you special or stronger than anyone. If anything, that only makes you incredibly mediocre."
Sasori kept his gaze glued to the curtain. He stepped backward, stretched his left arm, and let chakra strings sprout from his curling fingertips. The blue threads recoiled then blossomed, lapping like ocean waves, wiggling like ivy between the cracks of an old stone wall. He could tell Sakura was staring.
"Is your chakra control capable of this?" he asked. "When chakra is refined enough, it can be used to wield puppets, reconnect broken nerves. Better, to attack in hindsight."
A slip of the finger and Sakura would have been gone. While his left hand performed the act and her eyes shone with curiosity, Sasori lifted the hand he had been hiding under his sleeve, the one connected to a senbon with chakra strings. He swung the weapon at her.
Sakura gasped as the tip of the senbon dangled in front of her, promising contact. Sweat collected on her forehead.
"Do you think Naruto would've fallen for that?" Sasori stared straight at her—the first time throughout their temporary partnership. "You're a kunoichi, aren't you? The arrogance to assume superiority over others is a death sentence to any shinobi."
Sakura didn't reply.
Even when Sasori withdrew the senbon and picked Ena up from the counter again, she stood motionless. He waited for her to storm out of the scene, throw a tantrum, even cease their partnership altogether, but nothing. It was as though she had become a puppet on her own.
"Thank you. I needed that," she said after a long time of contemplation.
Sasori wasn't aware he was smiling.
"I have to admit you're amazing at making these, Sasori."
Sasori watched Sakura arrange and examine the mini-puppets on the shelf, feeling lighter and lighter with her each expression of awe. He had decided to have some puppets on a rack outside the booth for sale—souvenirs, you could say, but they were no way the main course. The puppets he was going to display on the main stage would amaze everyone. They were still inferior to his usual puppets in every way, but for once, he would gladly forget those trifles and accept these looks of admiration.
Perhaps the setting sun brought these sentiments—Sasori remembered reading somewhere that people associate certain times of day with emotions: dawn with unadulterated hope, sunset with romanticism, nightfall with inevitable gloom. He turned to look at Deidara a little, he told himself, a little, but his gaze remained overdue. Deidara caught him and smiled before returning to his work. The brat looked so excited with this whole ordeal despite his low chance of winning.
Then he turned back to Sakura, who grinned at him while pointing at Amami in her hand. "This one has a sword?" She pushed a button behind the puppet's back and a small blade sprung from the puppet's palm.
"Sakura."
"Er, did I accidentally break something?"
"Do you think of those things as art?"
"Art?" she asked. "Sure, I guess? I mean, look at these patterns, so intricate in a subtle way, and all these different names and functions you give each of them. I think you put a lot of thought into your creations."
"But they can't be used in battles."
"Is that how art and ninjaship collide?" She said in a bored voice. "Who cares about that? A form of art that can be used to kill my enemies, and a form of art that brings a smile to my face, I prefer the latter much more."
Her fingers crept across the button behind Amami's back again, but this time it was to launch the mini-sword towards him. Sasori caught the weapon between his fingers. If that was her idea of a sneak attack, she needed to train for a million years—
Sasori blinked in surprise at the sight of a flying senbon. It was coming for him, but how? With one hand full and mind hazy with the lingering smugness of having busted Sakura's previous attempt, he didn't have enough time to react. The weapon hit his chest, bounced off, then fell to the ground.
Sasori looked down to see it was no senbon. It was a toothpick. He panicked because of a toothpick.
"The best form of art to me is the one that can bring a smile to my face and kill my enemy at the same time," Sakura said. "How about that?"
"You attached a sen—toothpick into Amami's hand?," Sasori said as he realized she must have found the chance to mess with his puppet while they were working side by side. "Seems like you're not the way you look."
"Are you saying I look cute and innocent?"
"No, I was saying you look stupid."
"Hey, that's rude!"
Sasori dismissed the conversation by turning on his heel. He slinked back into the booth, ignoring the eager footsteps that followed him. Three puppets of generous size snuggled together in a corner of the stand, strips of dusky sunlight on their chest plates. Narukami, Kuraokami, and Okami.
"Are you just going to show them to the audience?" Sakura fell into step beside him.
"I'll have them battle each other."
"They'll look great on stage," Sakura commented. "A bit more flashy than I'd imagined, though."
"It's not my usual style."
The puppets' armors creaked as Sasori and Sakura carried them outside for testing. Sasori lifted Narukami's arm with chakra strings and the puppet's joints grumbled, but soon ebbed into a soothing rasp. The blades shaped like lightning bolts in its hand carved through the shuddering air. He tapped the tip of the crescent crest on Okami's helmet, lit the fiery halo behind Kuraokami's back before Sakura smothered the flames.
Sasori regretted having ever listened to Deidara's advice. All this decoration made it seem like he was seeking attention.
"Why don't you make a story using your puppets?" Sakura asked him on their way back to the booth. "Like a play, but instead of people it's puppets?"
"I am officially closed to recommendations," replied Sasori. "And what you suggested, it was not even an original idea. People in Wind Country used to do that."
"I've never heard of it."
"Because it was hundreds to a thousand years before you were born, before shinobi were even a thing." Sasori dropped into his chair. "When the hidden villages were founded, puppets gradually became weapons, and the art of using puppets in performances became obsolete."
"A shame. But hey, that means we're going to restore a dead art."
"I never said I'd agree to that."
"But there's a lot of good in that. You know what Naruto and Deidara have been up to?" Sakura asked while pacing around. "They've been snooping around, surveying the townpeople's interests. Seems like they've worked out a way to target the audience."
"And what does that have to with us?"
"So, why don't we target the audience this way—crafting a heartfelt story that will move them to tears?"
Sasori gave her a puzzled look. He had read about it, yes, but he never thought he would be the one to use puppets for show. Suna taught him puppets could only gain glory on the battlefield, claiming lives, drawing blood. All these years he had wholeheartedly believed so, even after splitting the village's symbol on his headband in half. But Suna also didn't show him how puppets could generate looks other than ones full of hatred and fear. He first experienced those looks with Deidara, and then Sakura.
"Manipulating people using emotions. You come up with some cunning tactics."
"Th-Thank you?" Sakura sounded strange for a moment. "I guess it is manipulation to a certain degree. Everyone knows a sad story sticks to you more than a happy one."
"I'm not used to writing sad stories, or any stories in that matter."
"Well, it's time you promote me, I'm tired of being a maid."
The -kami brothers sat forlorn, shadow drooping over their gold-clasped forms as Sasori and Sakura sat on the floor, hunching over their new story script. Time slipped from their grasp like sand. Had it not been for Sasori's reminders, Sakura would have written a full-blown romance novel. She was particularly grouchy when he told her to replace one kissing scene with an action one to demonstrate the puppets' functions. By the end, they wound up with a historical action romance inspired by a book they borrowed in the local library.
"I'm exhausted," Sakura yawned as she crawled into her sleeping bag.
Sasori shuffled the manuscript, a stack of ten-something sheets of papers, and put them aside on the counter. "Aren't you supposed to sleep in an inn or something?"
"I know I did yesterday, but now seeing all of you camping here like this, I can't bring myself to be the only one staying behind." Sakura, with her head and hands poking out of the half-closed sleeping bag, curled up against a corner.
Sasori glanced over his shoulder. "I'm going to stay up to finish the puppets. We need some new ones for the story after all."
"An all-nighter again?" Sakura asked. "Well, call me if you need something."
Silence fell the moment Sakura finished talking, and judging by the steady sounds of her breaths, she was fast asleep. Sasori had his back against her as he assembled pieces of a new marionette.
The past two days had been particularly noisy, so noisy that a quiet night felt unfamiliar. Sasori stifled a dry laugh upon the thought. The old him before joining the Akatsuki would have never imagined being anything but silence's best friend. Opening the door to silence, to the ghost of the sounds he once called home (Father flipping through his work papers with a sigh that vanished as soon as he stepped in, the hiss of fire under Mother's favorite iron pan, screeching for her to remove the burnt toasts) was a constant.
He would open the door again and again, hoping to hear even the squeaky floorboards under Granny Chiyo's steps, but she was never there. She returned when he was asleep and went before he woke.
Something welled up inside Sasori's chest—an emotion, perhaps—but he could only identify it as pain. His first instinct was to get out, but his feet were grounded in the corner where Sakura stayed. Somehow, a chisel he remembered having placed in the toolbox was lying on the floor, close to her sleeping figure.
She was in… quite an uncomfortable sleeping posture. Half of her back was meeting the wall, and her body seemed to be sliding down from an originally upright position. He had to hurry before she slid down completely.
Sasori crouched down and slid his hand through the tiny gap between her lower back and the wall to reach his chisel. Beats drummed in his chest. What is this? A stealth mission?
Suddenly, Sakura jolted.
Sasori jumped back, but before then her hand had left its imprint on his cheek. He touched his skin to feel it crack under the slap's impact.
"You pervert!"
Sasori covered the small crevice with his hand. "What?"
"I said you are a lowlife, scum bag pervert." she straightened up. "Do you always go around touching girls'" she coughed. "buttocks when they're not noticing?"
"I'm just trying to get the chisel."
"The chisel." Sakura shook her head. "Men and their excuses. Can't you think of anything better than that?"
"I wasn't making an excuse."
"And you're not even going to apologize."
Despite her aggressive display, Sakura was slowly calming down, her face twisting into something he was unable to read. Sasori's mind whirled.
"Let me see your jaw," she demanded.
"What?"
"A slap with that force from me must have snap something out of its place, so let me see it." She reached for his face and frowned when he didn't react. "What is this? Did I slap you into oblivion too?"
Thrust back into reality, Sasori swatted Sakura's hand away. "I'm fine."
"Fine, good luck working all night with your dislocated jaw then."
Sakura spoke again when Sasori was looking around for bandage to cover the crack, "Your skin is super dry though. It almost felt like hitting a rock." Her chuckle rang behind his back. "Do you want to borrow my lotion?"
Sasori walked over to his assistant, grabbed her by the shoulders and, despite all her flailing about, zipped the sleeping bag fully up.
A/N: Hi ya. I've gotten back my drive after three months of stagnancy, and I'm as happy and motivated as ever!
Fun fact: Ino was supposed to be paired up with Deidara, but I later changed my mind and replaced her with Naruto. That leads to her being demoted to receptionist haha. When I first wrote the outline for this fic, I actually didn't plan to include Naruto and Sakura altogether, but thinking back now, how boring it'd have been not having these two dorks around. Deidara's platonic harem continues to spiral out of my control, and it's only going to get worse.
