Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Artless ❯ Chapter Five ( Chapter 5 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters, etc., of Naruto. This story is for entertainment purposes only, and not for profit.

Artless

A/N: This was one of my favorite chapters to ever write. I really love the complicated dynamics between Deidara and Ino, and boy is it fun to delve into their psyches. =P

Chapter Five

Deidara had no clue what the hell to do. The girl was plastered all over him like sticky clay and was drenching his shirt with her tears. Her muffled litany against his throat made him frown in baffled incomprehension.

Sorry? For what? For pushing him into that damn fountain? For making him stay up all night washing his damn clothes at the coin laundry? For fetching him one in the abdomen when he’d abducted her? For taking him so completely by surprise with the Shintenshen no Jutsu? But she hadn’t the chakra to make it work---and his defenses, carefully built up since he’d been defeated by Itachi’s genjutsu, had been strong enough to keep her from taking over his body. It had been a silent battle of wills as he kept her from taking full control by flattening her beneath the weight of his own awareness. It was a simple trick, one only a few knew, but quite effective. And when the jutsu had finally released her, she’d curled into a fetal position and started sobbing like someone had just stepped on her puppy. And now the deranged girl was all but strangling him in some kind of weird hug even as she blubbered all over him.

Granted, he had been trying to get close to her, but this wasn’t exactly the way he’d had in mind. Deidara suddenly grinned at the irony of it, and was more amused than put out as he nudged her again, trying to get her attention. “Hey, yeah.”

She sniffled and looked up at him with watery blue eyes. She looked awful; her nose red, her cheeks flushed, her hair tangled all around her shoulders. One of the dark blue butterfly clips was missing, and a strand of her long, white-gold hair was stuck to her damp cheek. Her eyes were jewel-bright, like sapphires caught in the sun, and the depth of emotion in them made his breath catch.

She’d been so closed off before, he could not believe what he was now seeing. If eyes really were the windows to the soul, than hers had the shutters thrown wide to expose everything inside. He had never cared to glance inside anyone’s “windows”---what really, was it to him?---but he was looking now, and he really didn’t know how to take the mingle of sadness and compassion, pain and indecision that glowed in her jewel-bright eyes. If he’d been thinking right, he would have been annoyed by it, but it was like he was somehow caught in some new dojutsu, because he could not break that stare.

Break it he did, though, after a long, silent moment, his hand coming up to brush that dangling strand of hair back. His touch was gentle, for she seemed so fragile, like one of his finer, more delicate sculptures. She trembled slightly, and then, her eyes still locked on his, deliberately leaned into his open palm, her own fingers coming up to cover his.

She drew his hand down, holding it in both of hers. She looked at it, really looked at it, and he grew tense at her continued silence. But then her thumb lightly traced along the slit on his palm, and the slightly ticklish sensation caused the lips to part in a cheeky grin. He expected her to flinch back---the automatic reaction for so many---but she only smiled. She looked back up at him then, and her eyes were now as soft as early spring skies. The emotion was still overwhelmingly there, but now something soft and vulnerable and sweet, and she whispered, “They’re beautiful, you know.”

He frowned in confusion.

She laughed a little, though there was a catch in her throat, and tears brightened her eyes again. He didn’t know anyone could hold that much damn water. She could flood a rice paddy with her blubbering.

The tears didn’t fall, though, and she distracted him from the irritated thought by tracing both thumbs over the hand cupped lightly in hers. “Your hands,” she said, her eyes dropping down to them, “Your hands are beautiful, Deidara.”

He sneered, but it faded into stillness when she looked back up at him, her eyes glowing with truth. “You think they can only create beauty, terrible beauty---” she shuddered, recalling what kind of terrible beauty, and then went valiantly on, “but they are beautiful in themselves.”

He stared at her. Her eyes were resolute, even as her thumbs continued to trace soothing circles across his palm. He wondered if she was even conscious of the distracting gesture.

Her eyes turned sad, a wealth of fear and pain passing through her troubled expression. “I---I can’t pretend to completely condone the choices you have made, or the things that you do, but I can understand now, a little, what has driven you to them.”

His eyes narrowed in sudden anger as comprehension dawned. “The Shintenshen---you’re a telepath, yeah.”

She nodded slowly, her eyes dropping to her hands, which still loosely cupped his. Quick as a flash, he turned his hand over, the other coming up to grip both of her wrists in a bone-jarring hold that slowly tightened. “What did you see?”


She gasped as his hands deliberately tightened around her wrists, crushing the fine bones together. She struggled weakly, trying to break his iron hold, but she was exhausted from using the Shintenshen technique, and more drained of chakra than normal.

“What are you---!” she demanded, more than a little afraid of the almost crazed look in his blue eye.

“What did you see?” He broke through her protest with a snarl like a cornered animal.

She couldn’t lie to him, not now.

“Everything,” she whispered, miserably aware that that might be the last word she ever uttered, for the look in his wild eyes (or the one she could see) told her that much.

He stilled, his expression becoming no expression. He was too good at that. Rather like Sasuke. Ino hid a shiver, resolutely meeting his eyes and squaring her shoulders, expecting the worst. She was a kunoichi of Konoha, she wouldn’t ever flinch from death---just from doling it out, for the terror or surprise of a dying mind was strong enough to always win past any barrier she tried to use to block it out.

“Everything.” His voice was flat, as opaque as his gaze.

Coward that she was, she couldn’t watch him deal the death blow. Closing her eyes, she held her breath and waited for what seemed hours to her thudding heart.

“Damn it!” He dropped her wrists like they burned and whirled away. He moved so fast it seemed as if one moment he was kneeling in front her, her wrists caught in his hard grip, and the next he was standing, back to her, at the mouth of the cave, one fist smacking against the rough wall. Ino sat silently watching him, wondering what the hell was going on when he stopped and stared at his fist, slowly uncurling it and looking at his opened palm. He stood there for too long, and she sat there for too long, too weary to even do more than stare at him, her mind too numb to even wonder what he was thinking.

He finally turned back around, one hand idly rubbing the other palm. The red light of the scope covering his left eye looked almost demonic through the ruddy-gold curtain of his bangs, but the smoky blue eye she could see was almost regretful. “You are a Leaf-nin, and I am an Akatsuki, un.”

He said that like it would explain--and perhaps, excuse---what he must do.

“A missing nin,” she said, wearily agreeing with him. “A terrorist for hire.”

He raised a single brow.

“I don’t know what or who Akatsuki is,” she said, “but I…understand.” Maybe. The cool part of her did, the shinobi who understood that you never left anyone alive. The human part of her, though, wasn’t ready to reconcile with that hard rule. She didn’t want to die. She would, though, if she had to. For Konoha.

He frowned, his gaze sharpening. “You don’t know who Akatsuki is? But you said you saw everything, yeah.”

“I…saw the Uchiha. Itachi.” She hugged her knees, shivering at the indifferent look in the recollection of those black eyes. He really was a cold-blooded killer, to have eyes like that.

Eyes so much like Sasuke’s had become since his older brother had killed all of their family in one single night of horror, fleeing into the night like the base murderer he was, becoming an outlaw and disappearing to who knew where. This Akatsuki, or whatever it was, she guessed.

“What else, un?” he demanded.

She shrugged, helpless to know why it was so important, though a dawning hope took hold. She didn’t know how he would feel about how much she did know, or if not knowing what she didn’t would make any difference. “I saw him confront you, with two others. Someone blue? And a short, red-haired man. I felt your anger, that they…defeated…you.” His fists tightened, that anger still there. She shifted uncomfortably, not quite meeting his sharp gaze. “And then the jutsu ended, and I---woke up.”

Crossing his arms in front of him, he stared at her. Ino was really becoming irritated with that. She let her annoyance show, one last spurt of rebellion. “Well? Why are just standing there? If you’re going to kill me, than just do it!”

His lips quirked, as if he found her outburst amusing. Jerk. “You’re that ready to die, Ino-chan?”

The endearment was disgusting, especially with his slow drawl. “Don’t call me that,” she said angrily, adding waspishly, “Deidara-kun.”

She didn’t have the energy to keep up her anger. Gods, she had never felt so drained, both physically and emotionally. Her mind kept fogging over at odd moments, coming in waves like a headache she was too tired to truly feel. “You’ve already tried to do that, haven’t you? Kill me?”

His expression was inscrutable.

She couldn’t quite keep the tremble from her shoulders, though she clasped her hands tighter around her knees so that their shaking wouldn’t betray her further. “That day in the forest. With the butterflies. That was you, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.” He didn’t seem put out that she knew. He was so disconnected from everything, and everyone. Even knowing why he was so disconnected did nothing to help the sliver of chill that the knowledge brought. Others just couldn’t intrude on his singular, narcissistic awareness. She stared at her knees, miserable with that truth.

“Why?” she demanded, her voice breaking. She had relived that nightmare over and over in the dark of the night, waking screaming from the near-death she had barely escaped that afternoon. She could not stand to look at lilies, especially red ones, which had always been the most beautiful to her. She had never strayed from the village after that, even to cloud-gaze with Shikamaru, whose meadow retreat it had been before Deidara’s terrible clay bombs had destroyed it.

He shrugged, though his eyes took on a faraway gaze, as if he was calling the scene up before him. His voice was low, almost dreamy. “You were beautiful. Lying there, sleeping. So innocent and perfect, like a tennyo caught unawares…”

Ino stared at him. He smiled dreamily, and her knuckles whitened around her knees. She wanted to shake so bad from the fear that engulfed her with that dreamy smile. There was nothing sane about it.

“I wanted to preserve that image forever. But time changes everything, and I knew that eventually even that beautiful scene would fragment and disintegrate. I knew I had to keep it pure, keep it for me and only me by claiming it for all time with the beauty of my art.”

He suddenly looked at her, and smiled wistfully. “It was to be a masterpiece of epic fire.”


“You had no right.”

Her whisper was hoarse, the tears thick in her throat also brightening her eyes, which glowed like sun-caught sapphires. So beautiful she was, even now, when she was so completely unconscious of it.

He raised a mocking brow, honestly demanding, “Why the hell not, un?”

Her eyes widened in shock. How typical. He was almost disappointed with her predictable reaction, and smirked when she stuttered, “Because…well, because, it’s wrong.”

“How, yeah?” He enjoyed her baffled expression, and was more honest than he had ever been to anyone as he said carelessly, “I’ve never concerned myself with the customs and mores society puts on us, yeah, just for the fact that it’s tradition to bind ourselves with such outmoded ideas. Why should I restrict or limit the expression of my art just because someone can’t understand it or finds it distasteful, un? Who are they to judge me, and why should I care what they think, hmm?”

She only looked at him like he was demented. He shrugged, refusing to show that he cared. People had always looked at him like that, even before he fully embraced his art for the beautiful freedom it was.

“What they think.” Her hands were held so tight he could almost hear the knuckles popping. “What about me? What about what I think of it?”

He shrugged, hiding his unease at the lie. It unsettled him that it was a lie, when it never would have been before. “Why would that concern me, either, un?”

“Because I never asked to become a part of your art,” she spat that last word like an epithet, and his eyes narrowed dangerously. Was she deriding his creativity? His passion? The very reason for his existence?

Her tears had dried, and her eyes were hard and glittering, though still red-rimmed with fatigue. She shook with her anger, or perhaps her weariness, and she seemed so fragile, as if she would break with the fury in her strained voice, which started out as a hoarse whisper and steadily rose to a shrill cry. “How can I not be as important as you? How dare you think that I, or anyone else, could be less than you! That they, or I, don’t have our own thoughts and feelings and dreams and desires! How can you take that away from them, just on a whim? How can you kill them for art and not even care that you are doing it? How can you be that selfish?”

His mouth quirked up in a smile as he shrugged. “Everyone has to die sometime, and why not for something beautiful, un?”

She had no answer for that, perhaps too dumbfounded or shocked to think of one. She only stared at him, completely uncomprehending. It was his turn to demand, abruptly turning the tables on her, “Why should they matter to you, un? What have they ever done for you, yeah?”

Her shoulders fell, as if defeated by his sincere question. She rubbed her eyes wearily, and he thought he had her stumped, until she said softly, “It doesn’t matter what they have done, or not done, for me.”

He waited, determined to make her justify herself as she had made him. She sighed. “How can I even explain what I know you can never understand?” She looked lost, her eyes suddenly so sad and defeated. “I…I…understand you, and yet I don’t. I understand why you might not have formed any of those bonds with other people that most do. Your childhood was terrible.”

He stiffened. What had that to do with anything? He hated that she knew so much about him, but really, what difference did it make?

“But I…I’ve seen and heard worse, and that’s not enough excuse. You have free will.”

Of course he had free will, and what he choose to do with it was what he chose to do with it, end of story.

“What I can’t understand, and what I don’t think you can ever understand, is that other people are just as important as you are. To themselves, if not to you. And they are precious, each in themselves. Life…life is so precious---”

“You, a kunoichi, say that?” he scoffed, and she flinched. *Ha! Got you there, un!*

She stared at her hands, as if she could see the blood on them, and slowly curled them into fists. “I cannot deny that. I’m shinobi. I will take a life to protect my village or those I love.”

“How selfish of you, yeah,” he mocked, deliberately throwing her words back in her face.

She laid her tousled head on her bent knees, hiding her face, as if unable to argue further. He sneered, triumphant that he had won, though the victory seemed somehow hollow. She was quiet for so long, he wondered if she had fallen asleep, but her voice eventually broke the silence in a whisper almost too low for him to hear. “I can feel them. Feel them dying. I know when their mind, their thoughts, their dreams, stop, and…it’s…they’re…gone forever.”

She shuddered, a sob breaking through her hoarse admittance. “I can’t bear it.”

Deidara was silent, turning over her words, and not certain what he could say. She was a telepath, and if sensitive enough, would be able to sense others’ thoughts, even without deliberately engaging her ninjutsu. That aspect of it had never occurred to him. He didn’t know if he could have withstood knowing what other people were actually thinking. The idea was completely foreign to him, and one he would never want or desire. Such intimacy with other people…ugh.

“That sucks, yeah,” he said, and she suddenly laughed, a broken, almost hysterical sound. She was so fragile, so close to the edge of breaking, he couldn’t understand how she had survived for so long. The revelation struck him that she had to be strong---stronger, maybe, than even him---to have done so.

And maybe that was what led him to do the unnatural---at least, unnatural for him---and go over to kneel down beside her as he had before. But this time, when she threw herself into his arms, he found his closing around her and holding her close as she cried, this time for herself. And he let her, just because he somehow understood her need to do so, and perhaps, her tears were the ones he could not shed for himself.