Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Artless ❯ Chapter Six ( Chapter 6 )

[ 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: I promised Pookey518 I would have a chapter up by the end of September. This is about a week late, but I’m already working on the next. Oh, and I just raised this story’s rating to “M” thanks to a certain artist’s lascivious thoughts. =)

Chapter Five

The shadows grew long as the light eventually dimmed into true night. Her broken sobs slowly turned to muffled tears and then silence as she finally quieted in the embrace of his arms. Ino was reluctant to break that silence, and so tired she could have fallen asleep against his warmth. But she had already been enough of a baby, blubbering all over him. He was probably disgusted by her weakness, and only being nice to her.

It humbled her that he would, and it embarrassed her that he had seen her crack like that. She had never told anybody just how horrible her telepathic sensitivity could be. Never explained her reluctance to actually deal the death blow except when the passion of outrage suffused her so much that all other thoughts---including theirs---could be pushed aside. She knew it was wrong to embrace the rage of battle that way; her father would kill her if he knew. She almost giggled at the stupid thought---yet another symptom of just how stupid-tired she was. She tended to get a little absurd when her brain was so fogged by fatigue that she couldn’t even think straight.

Which probably explained why she finally broke the silence with, “Huh. You smell nice.” She rubbed her nose against the rough nap of his black trench coat, taking another sniff. “Like matches.”

That should have disturbed her, really it should. Especially with the way he liked to blow people up using his beautiful clay sculptures. But it didn’t, and she was too stupid-tired to care why.

“Matches, un?” He sounded more amused than offended, like she half-expected.

“Um-hmm,” Ino agreed on a sigh, closing her eyes despite her former resolution not to. Just a few minutes, that was all she really needed…

“You sure cry a lot, yeah.”

Ino blinked. She was too tired to do more than stiffen. She tilted her head back, her hair rustling along the rough fabric of his coat and tickling her cheek as she looked up at him. The evil red light of his scope provided a dim, bloody light. It was too dark to see the expression in his eyes, but the curve of his lips lifted a little at she raised her gaze to his. She felt his arms tighten around her, drawing her up even as his head bent. He suddenly captured her lips with his, and she was melting against him, going all boneless in surprise. A strange lethargy stole over her as his mouth worked lightly across hers.

His lips were soft, nibbling, and strangely coaxing. Her breath hitched, for it was everything she had ever envisioned a first kiss could be, even if the circumstances weren’t just as she’d pictured. For one, this wasn’t Sasuke, and for another, Deidara wasn’t exactly the kind of guy she could ever bring home to Daddy.

But damn, he was a good kisser. He had to be, to be causing a hundred birds to suddenly take wing inside her stomach and have her toes curling inside her funky black sandals just as she’d dreamily told Sakura would be the hallmark of a man who knew his business. Closing her eyes, Ino gave herself up to it, her mouth softening beneath his as he took his sweet time with slow, deliberate motions. His tongue tickled along her bottom lip, and she sighed in bemused delight when he deepened the kiss. His tongue swept inside, and her breath was suddenly coming short as she gripped his coat in her hands, a strange hunger adding to the intensity of it all.

Heady with the sensations, she felt even more drunk than before when Deidara finally pulled his mouth away. Her eyes slowly opened, and she smiled softly even as he grinned and abruptly kissed the top of her head like a child. She frowned in confusion, but he whispered huskily, “Sleep, un. You’re exhausted.”

She might have said something, maybe not. She didn’t know, for her eyes were closing, and she nestled even closer to him, snug in his warmth and the sudden knowledge that she could trust him, even just to know her boundaries. She treasured that knowledge, even as the darkness took her, and she slept, a smile on her swollen lips.


Not fucking her then and there was one of the hardest things he had ever done in his entire life.

Deidara frowned in chagrin even as he shrugged Ino’s limp body into a better position against him. She didn’t weigh much---she really was a tiny thing. She looked like a child, sleeping so trustingly against his shoulder. Her body, on the other hand, was definitely not that of a child’s. And gods, he had never been so tempted to just forget all this new-found nobility bullshit when that thin little strap on her blue tank top slithered down her shoulder. She wore nothing beneath it, as he was fully aware, and his treacherous gaze followed the creamy line of her skin, delving into the shadowy holloe between her curving breasts. He felt himself hardening, and shifted uncomfortably. She sighed softly in her sleep, and his eyes went heavenward at the sound.

This sucked. More than sucked---damn it, his treacherous brain had just conjured an image of those sweet, kiss-swollen lips around a certain throbbing part of him. His black nails tangled up in her white-blond hair as he looked down his toned body through lowered lids to meet the sultry look in hers. Oh, gods…

This was going to be one long fucking night.


When she awoke, she was alone. Deidara had left her his trench coat as a blanket, so she wasn’t sure if he was just outside the cave, intending to return, or if he had left it to her as a gift. Feeling self-conscious and strangely bereft, Ino stood up. Hugging the thick coat to her, she distractedly brushed that stupid tangle that kept falling over her cheek back behind her ear and thought longingly of a shower. She felt gritty, and probably looked worse. Sleeping on the floor of a cave wasn’t conducive to looking one’s best in the morning. The idea wasn’t half so romantic as it was in reality.

Not that she ever looked her best first thing in the morning. But what woman did, rumpled from sleep with a bad case of bed-head? Ino sighed, wishing she had a comb to tame the wild mane tangling down her back. She made a face. “Roughing it” with no supplies sure sucked.

“Morning, un.”

She looked up, surprised that she hadn’t heard him return. A blush stole up her cheeks, and she suddenly felt shy. Uncertain what to say, she could only stare at him.

Deidara certainly didn’t look like he’d spent all night in a cave. In fact, he looked too damn good for this damn early. Acknowledging that sat both sour in her stomach and caused little tingles to run all over her skin, recalling just how strong those arms had felt around her, or how firm that muscled chest. Or how warm those smirking lips…

She stirred, uncomfortably aware of just how long they’d simply been staring at each other, and finally offered awkwardly, “Hi.”

And then mentally kicked herself for sounding like an idiot. *Nice, Ino. Real suave, there.*

But what else could she say? Thank you? Blow up anything lately? Like breakfast? Say, you got a comb? Or better yet, a bathroom? Or how about: thanks for not taking advantage of me last night, that was really cool. So was letting me bawl all over you yesterday---which would just be too wretched an admittance of her own weakness. Or equally stellar: thanks for not killing me, that would have put a real damper on our relationship.

Ha. What relationship, exactly, did they have to one another? For there, really, lay the root of the problem. So she got a peek inside his head. Which wasn’t that comforting, actually, when all was said and done. It didn’t change who he was. In fact, he just cemented the knowledge that he was rather incapable of change. And he…well, he had gotten more than a dose of her own inadequacies, which was just too uncomfortable to even think about. And while Deidara was hot, he was also a missing-nin who saw nothing wrong in blowing people up for the sake of his “art.”

And Ino couldn’t just ignore that fact. She couldn’t get past it, either, not really. For he was just such a narcissist, while she…she was a Konoha kunoichi who hated killing, felt too strongly what others felt and wasn’t even half the ninja he was. The admittance sat sour in her stomach, too, and she frowned pensively. *For jeez, while it’s been great and all…*

So…what now?


He could read her thoughts so easily. She wore them on her face for anyone who cared to look. It was as endearing as it was annoying, for she couldn’t hide anything from him. But the doubt and trepidation he saw in her beautiful blue eyes secretly ate at him.

She was so angelic. That face---the artless purity of it, the wide-eyed innocence that saw too simply a world so completely undeserving of her faith in it, so truly unworthy of her concern and care. He couldn’t understand that, had no way to, and didn’t really care for that encumbrance anyway.

But he cared about her. Her innocence and her purity. She was so untouched, and so untouchable. A true tennyo he could only admire from afar. And oh, how he longed to keep that ideal arrested in this single moment.Keep it completely to himself---for it was still there, that wild desire to claim her as she was, as his for all time. But to do so would be to utterly destroy it, for she was more now than just the superficial beauty she wore so easily.

She was just…more. That spirit, that passion and fire that made her who she was, yes, even that silly concern for others that opened her to such pain. She felt so keenly, and couldn’t even admit the strength it took to bear the terrible contradiction between her heightened empathy and her chosen calling. Would that sweet innocence fade in time, destroyed by the harsh truth of the world they lived in?

He couldn’t bear the thought, but he couldn’t contain it, either, even to keep it---her---pure. Who was he to imprison another, when the restrictions put on him by his own people had always ate so much at him? Yes, not even to keep her safe. Because he knew, like the flowers she loved, she would eventually wilt and die under such a prison, and thenhe would have destroyed that which he only sought to preserve…

He reached out, he couldn’t help himself, and lightly cupped her upturned cheek against his calloused palm. Her skin was soft and pale beneath the healthy tan of his. She stared up at him, her questioning so sweet he could only smile before bending down to gently kiss her. One last time, to savor that innocence and fire that came so readily in response to his lightest urging. He sought to capture it in his memory, keep it pure and frozen, as the passion blossomed into fiery heat inside of him, like the fierce explosion of his art, setting his very blood on fire with its heady release. He bathed himself in the urgency of that passion, reveled in an emotion that was like the swept-away euphoria he normally only experienced through creation, and then pulled away.

She stood there, blue eyes wide in astonishment, mouth kiss-swollen and slightly open in her surprise. He could only stare down at her, savoring that final image, and then gently take his coat from her lax fingers. He smiled, somewhat wistfully, and flipped her two fingers in a final salute before turning his back and striding resolutely away.


He…left. Just left. As if that was supposed to be it, as if that was enough.

Why, that insufferable jerk!

Ino cursed loud and long, all the way back to Kotanashi. Which was quite a hike on an empty stomach and funky black sandals not made for such rough terrain. She glared at every stupid tree and every stupid bird and every stupid bush she had to scramble through, up and around as she oriented herself by the sun as the day waned. Limping, sweaty, and out of sorts, she was not pleased to be greeted by the sour face of her teammate, Shikamaru, upon her return.

“Where have you been?” he demanded, angry at the worry she’d caused all of them when they’d shown up to rendezvous with the blonde kunoichi and found her distinctly absent.

A worry which cleared as Chouji and Asuma both greeted their missing teammate with laconic relief. While feeling bad about giving her team such anxiety, Ino was fairly put out as Sakura’s smug appraisal took in her rather bedraggled appearance with a raised brow.

That was just the cherry on top of what had been one exceptionally bad day.


She didn’t know why she felt so reluctant to tell the others the real reason she wasn’t where she was supposed to be when Team 10 and Sakura had come to rendezvous with her in Kotonashi. She couldn’t lie, not exactly, but she did varnish over the truth, giving only a sketchy story of being attacked and dumped in a cave, coming to and taking all day to make it back to the village. They were so relieved she was all right, Ino felt kind of bad about it. But since her story made the Hokage later reconsider elevating the mission to jonin rank, and send others to investigate what was, in the end, a real problem, that soothed her guilty conscience a little.

Not that her pride wasn’t already smarting at having failed her first solo mission. And she knew Shikamaru, at least, suspected she wasn’t telling them everything. She probably hadn’t fooled Asuma-sensei either, since she’d overheard him wondering about the guy she’d been seen flirting with the night before by some of the villagers he’d questioned. Asuma chalked her reluctance up to being young and foolish and having been distracted from her mission by a handsome face. That stung, that her sensei would think she’d be so silly and flighty as to do something dumb like that. But it was so close to the truth that that stung even worse.

And there were surprising repercussions to her failed mission. For one, there was a distance between her and Shikamaru that had never existed before, and a certain lack of faith in her abilities and trust in her steadiness by the other members of her team. And of course, in the way ridiculous speculations shouldn’t, all the stupid conjectures about why she’d failed her mission got out, and rumors sprang up about her reliability as a ninja. Granted, she’d always been a bit boy-crazy, especially in regards to Uchiha Sasuke, but come on! By the way rumors were flying around now,that was all she ever thought about. Boys, and clothes, and all the other silly things teenage girls were supposed to have stuffed inside their dumb heads.

She’d never felt the disadvantages of being a cute blonde more than now. Maybe she’d been a little too skilled at evading getting too close to others by playing the thoughtless twit,because now even her father was buying into it. He’d lightened up on insisting she study the clan jutsu, which was a relief, but started dropping broad hints that maybe being a shinobi wasn’t for her. The Hokage even cut back on her medical training, “freeing” her to help out more in the family flower shop.

Which was just annoying as hell. Because what Ino hated more than being so psychically sensitive to others was being thought weak or ineffectual. And it was there, in the sudden way Sakura ceased gloating over how much more she’d learned about ninjutsu, or how her other friends carefully avoided talking about all the missions they’d been sent on while she’d been left to stew in the shop. And their thoughts, which she couldn’t avoid, and pity hurt so much she just ended up avoiding them more, which they took to mean she really was reconsidering becoming a ninja.

Which just left her feeling all the more lonely and isolated. Their misunderstanding---when her friends, at least, should know her better---just left her feeling like they’d never known her at all. And maybe they hadn’t, because she had become so skilled at keeping her true self hidden and separated it had become habit. And since everyone thought she was the blonde bimbo she’d always pretended to be, why, she might as well just keep playing it.

Even though that mask now made her sick. But she had a sinking awareness that really, that was everyone expected of her, and she was cursed to lie in the bed she had made for herself.

Maybe that was why, in retrospect, that that single night she had spent with Deidara became all the more significant. Because he, crazy as he was, had seen the truth, had seen her for who she really was. And he---understood. Somewhat. Though that part was a little hazy as the weeks, and then months, passed, and maybe she was giving it more significance than she really should.

But…well, maybe she was a soft fool, but she couldn’t help but compare the pain and isolation he had suffered that was really still so much worse than she was even now going through. And she replayed those childhood memories---his memories---that were as much a part of her now as her own. And her admiration grew that Deidara had managed to overcome those who had doubted him, to grow so strong and confident in himself despite them. And in a way that she was starting to doubt she ever could…


She did go on missions, though hardly the number she’d gone on before that stupid Kotanashi. And it was humiliating enough that she was only ever sent out with Team 10, who were so much stronger than her, and always went out of their way to protect her, claiming it was because she was a medic-nin. Ha! That spurious excuse was just Shikamaru’s way of soothing her injured pride, that she, and her skills, were counted so little by those who should have known her the best.

That hurt more than she could admit. But since her hurt could only hurt her team, distracting them, she kept it to herself, and pretended to be okay with the way they shielded her from any true danger. Because they did care about her. Too much so. But in all the wrong ways, and for all the wrong reasons. But her resentment made her feel so guilty, and it twisted inside her, making her feel even more wrong for it. A part of her started to believe that maybe they were right, that there was something inherently wrong with her, though she stubbornly tried to deny it.

But by the time Naruto finally returned from studying with the Toad Sage a few months later, the bubbly act had become almost fact, so good had she become at hiding her true feelings, even from herself. And when she learned the truth about Akatsuki, and the danger Deidara posed, she felt such guilt about her earlier reticence that she couldn’t possibly say a word now. And so lies built on more lies just led to more guilt, which just led to more avoidance of her friends and more acting the boy-crazy, vapid idiot everyone thought her.

But she was silently crying inside, even as she smiled brightly and chattered inanely about just how cute that new boy Sai was, or cheerfully dismissed how Sakura got sent to Suna and not her. Or how the knowledge that Deidara had killed the Kazekage, injuring a lot of people in the process, just plain hurt. For while she knew what the man was capable of, had known all along, in her heart of hearts, she had wished…that it was different, that he was different. That maybe, just maybe, their little whatever-it-was back in the cave that night had…she didn’t know, made a difference, caused a change, somehow, in his singular narcissism.

But that stupid, childish hope just went the way of all the others, crushed by the bleak reality she now found herself in. And stuck in her own self-pity and melancholy, when the bottom of her world really did fall out from under her, and she knelt beside Asuma-sensei’s body, knowing it was her inherent weakness that had brought about his inevitable death, the tears that spilled down her cheeks were for what she had become, a weak fool.

Death was horrible, for it called forth all the most terrible emotions. And she felt the knife of her own weakness twist deeper inside her heart each time she shared the horrible grief inside Shikamaru, which he hid behind a grim mask, knew the bleak pain in Kurenai’s lowered eyes, felt the quiet hurting of Chouji’s gentle spirit.

For a time, anger helped. The anger of vengeance, of finding Asuma’s killers and the bitter justice of exacting their revenge. That rage, so twisted and savage and ugly, kept the haunting sense of loss at bay, kept the horrible guilt she had at not saving her sensei from gnawing inside her heart with the weakness of her own cowardice. It sustained her, right there up until the end, when she had felt the agony of that disgusting Kakuzu’s final surrender into the embrace of death.

She had shared his mortal terror of that inevitable finality. When the last surge of his thoughts---for his mind had been especially powerful, a complex quilt woven of rich experiences built up over more than a hundred years of actual living---and then the awful stillness after as those thoughts, his thoughts, abruptly vanished, her traitorous mind screamed at the very silence she had sought. The agony folded back on her that even so brutal a beast as Kakuzu was still so very precious in his incredible individuality, and her very identity warred with itself. There was so much death, too much damn death, and the grim satisfaction the others felt left her feeling all the more lost and guilty for feeling…sad…at the end of it.

And that…that was ever so much worse. For Kakuzu’s death didn’t cleanse the stain of Asuma’s, and the horror of the experience haunted her more than she could ever tell anyone…

There was just so much death. And it was horrible. And perhaps that was why, when she heard Deidara was to confront Sasuke, she couldn’t just sit idly by and let two people she had known more than truly anyone else just go and kill each other. And maybe that was why she eventually did the unthinkable, and betrayed her village.