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"Just So You Know, I Still Hate You (A Lot)" - Sasuke + Deidara (semi-AU) [3/5]
Title: “Just So You Know, I Still Hate You (A Lot).” [3/5]
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
alory_shannon
Genre: Gen.Some might say slight crack. Semi-AU, but *I* think it all makes sense, so not really I guess. :]
Rating: T.
Pairing: None. SUGGEST OTHERWISE AT YOUR OWN RISK. >|
Characters Featured: Sasuke, Deidara. :]
Summary: A few months after Akatsuki is defeated, Sasuke is captured by Cloud-nin and thrown into prison…and who happens to be in the next cell over comes as a pretty big surprise.
A/N: …Nothing to say, really, except I couldn’t resist using the pill thing, and it’s about time I posted some writing. Also, this is the midway point of this fic. :D Only two more parts left to go. I CAN DO THIS, THIS FINISHING-A-MULTICHAPTERED-STORY THING.
Part 1
Part 2
--
There’s a definite shift in their conversations after that. They’re less common for one thing, because Deidara often seems too preoccupied with thinking about something else to initiate things and of course Sasuke never starts them; and for another, while they sometimes still stray towards the old topics of art and their single confrontation and the Uchiha bloodline limit, more often they concern seemingly random things, and they’re usually questions now rather than statements or lectures. How old he’d been when he graduated from the Academy. Where he’d been ranked in his class. What subject he’d been best at academically. The first time he’d killed someone, when where why how. If he’d ever stolen something. If he’d ever cheated on a test. How the rest of his class, the rest of his Village, had treated him. How he’d spent his free time. If he had any hobbies. What he’d do when (not if) they got out of there.
Sasuke wants to ignore the questions, but whenever he does that unbearable smirk comes back and the tapping starts, or Deidara stares at him with unnerving intensity, or the question is simply repeated until he answers. Even if he thought it remotely possible that Deidara had been planted there by his captors to befriend him and then spy on him, they aren’t the kind of questions the Kumo-nin would care about anyway (aren’t the kind of things anyone would care about really), so more often than not he grudgingly gives up the trivial bits of information. After all, the blonde is hardly subtle enough to be a spy, but then again, he’s surprised Sasuke more than once, so perhaps the idea isn’t completely ridiculous.
He does get the feeling that Deidara is putting together a puzzle of some sort, but the questions are never very personal (nothing about his friends, his family, his feelings, his reasoning behind certain actions, never anything like that, always just small, inconsequential facts), so he doesn’t really mind. Most of the time Deidara answers the questions too, though Sasuke only listens because it’s easy to pretend that he isn’t, and also because there’s nothing else to do other than shiver and wait for mealtime or the showers and do whatever exercises he can in the confined space to keep himself fit.
It’s been pushups today, and he’s done so many he’s lost count and is currently content to sprawl prostrate on the ground, muscles burning, sweat freezing on his skin, pretending not to listen to Deidara going on about some exercise they’d had to do back at the Academy in Iwagakure.
There are certain parallels between them, the Uchiha thinks as he pushes himself up to lean back against one of the cold cell walls, though he’s loathe to admit it; he’s certain the blonde sees them too and is equally reluctant to acknowledge it. High expectations, popularity, an inner drive to find a way to make themselves the strongest no matter the cost. And selfishness, Sasuke has realised, a great deal of selfishness, though he doubts Deidara can see that even now; but then, that’s one of the many differences that lie between them as well. Even now, you can’t accept the possibility that you might have ever been in the wrong…
“...You know, there’s a trick to these cuffs, yeah.”
Those words do catch Sasuke’s attention, snapping him out of his private thoughts and back to the present, though he tries to make his interest appear only casual; the fact that he’s obvious about having any at all is more than enough to give his true feelings away to the sharp-eyed blonde. Deidara grins on having succeeded in arousing some curiosity from his fellow prisoner, his expression making it clear that he intends to savour this, to drag it out as long as possible. Sasuke just gives him a flat stare that is rife with annoyance, but he’ll put up with whatever frills and airs the other shinobi decides to put on. It isn’t like he has much choice, or anything better to do with his time.
“I bet you think they’re chakra-inhibiting cuffs, don’t you?” the blonde artist drawls. “The kind that clamp nice and tight around your wrists and ankles and disrupt the chakra flow through your keirakukei, allowing just enough chakra to circulate to keep you from dying, but making it impossible for you to really control it or do anything with it. Pretty standard issue gear for any Hidden Village prison.” Sasuke wonders idly just how Deidara knows that, not that he really cares or would ever bother asking, but then that rakehell grin flashes into place again, and just because they’ve had a few semi-civil conversations doesn’t mean that Sasuke hates that smirk any less, and for the moment that hate occludes everything else. “Or they would be, if that’s what they were, yeah.”
Sasuke stares at Deidara blankly, but the other shinobi seems determined to make him ask this time, or at least indicate that this is indeed news to him, that he doesn’t know something that the former Iwa nin clearly does. Sasuke knows full well just how irrationally stubborn the blonde artist can be, so after several long moments of expectant silence from both sides, he gives in and raises an eyebrow a fraction, earning himself yet another frustrating look at that toothy smirk.
“These,” Deidara says with a flourish, “are more like chakra-repression cuffs. They don’t keep your chakra from circulating, they just keep your chakra level from increasing--so whatever you had in your system when they put them on you is what you’ve got now.”
Sasuke blinks, his face set in a faint but clear that’s stupid, why the hell would they want to do that? expression, at which Deidara gives a gleeful chortle.
“Not very creative when it comes to this type of thing, are you, hmm? So I’ll save you the brain strain and just tell you. These cuffs are used when they want you to be able to put up a bit of a fight. It’s pretty sadistic, really, since you still don’t have enough leeway to take a good shot at them. They’re mostly just an excuse to kick the shit out of you every so often--easiest thing in the world for a guard to claim that a prisoner wearing this type of cuffs tried to turn on him. Probably isn’t even any paperwork to fill out, yeah.”
“How do you know all this?” Sasuke asks, the question just short of a demand for the information.
Deidara grins at him, though it’s more like a barring of teeth, all sinister self-satisfaction and glinting white malevolence. “You learn things, being a missing nin. At least I did.” Sasuke doesn’t respond to that jab, not that the blonde had expected him to, so he goes on. “Got some of it out of a guard in Kumogakure’s main penitentiary, yeah. He had a big mouth, no common sense, and even less respect for my art than you.”
Sasuke can’t help but notice how smug Deidara sounds, or how he’s speaking of the guard in the past tense, and while he might keep it from his expression, he can’t keep the disgust, and moreover the plain dislike, out of his eyes.
Deidara just smiles in reply, cold, cruel, and utterly unrepentant. “Don’t worry, he didn’t scream for very long--I’d guess it would be pretty hard to do that with your throat torn out, yeah--but apparently it was still bad for the guards’ morale.” He chuckles again, closing his eyes and stretching out on his back on the frigid stone floor, his tone thoroughly amused. “Don’t look so surprised. Why did you think I really got transferred up here to the middle of nowhere, hmm?”
--
Nearly a whole day has passed without Sasuke hearing a word from his fellow prisoner. He’s glad for the respite, especially after how unpleasant their last exchange had been, but instead of simply being a relief, the silence feels thick and uneasy, like the air before a storm or the atmosphere in a briefing room before a particularly difficult mission. Sasuke catches himself casting half-apprehensive glances Deidara’s way far too often, no less than a few times each hour, but either the blonde hasn’t noticed or is choosing to ignore it; his eyes are distant, an intense frown etching twin lines between his eyes and on either side of the bridge of his nose as he considers something. The Uchiha gets the distinct feeling that the blonde artist is having some sort of internal conflict, but while he has little else to focus on and curiosity certainly is a bitch, he still doesn’t care enough to break the blessed silence with any sort of inquiry.
Sleep, he decides, is the best way to stop himself from going crazy by watching Deidara go crazy.
But even weeks of imprisonment can’t dull his firmly-ingrained shinobi instincts enough to change him from a light sleeper to a heavy sleeper; the low, grim chuckle from the next cell over is more than enough to snap him back to almost full awareness, and he’s more than awake enough to catch Deidara’s quiet murmur:
“…I have a plan…”
--
Sasuke still isn’t really convinced that this mysterious plan has a fraction of a shadow of a chance of working, but now that Deidara has gotten the idea in his head, he’s already running with it, his mouth going a mile a minute and still not even half managing to keep up with how fast his brain is working:
“No no, this could definitely work. After all, I’m a genius, and you’re clearly the luckiest bastard to ever walk this earth, so together—”
“Not. Interested.” Sasuke’s words are clipped and final-sounding, but they’re also a lie, one that his steady, continued gaze gives away, and Deidara calls him on it.
“But you’re interested in hearing it, at least, hmm?”
Sasuke’s eyes narrow marginally, but he doesn’t look away, which is as much of an admission as Deidara is going to get, and yet the blonde couldn’t have looked more smug if he’d tried.
“It’s pretty simple, really, but that’s the beauty of it. All you need to do is use that lightning jutsu you like so much on one of my wrist cuffs, and I’ll take care of the rest, yeah.”
The Uchiha gives a low snort--was this really what Deidara had been thinking about this whole time?--and does nothing to hide his scorn as he says, “You think I haven’t tried that already? Whatever kind of cuffs they are, they still inhibit my chakra too much for my Chidori to have any effect on them.”
The artist’s expression darkens at the overt contempt in Sasuke’s tone, but he forces a tight-lipped smile nonetheless, though the gleam in his eyes is far from friendly. “That won’t be a problem. I’ll handle it, yeah.” Somehow he makes it sound very much like a threat, the way that strained smile is edging towards out-and-out vicious no doubt assisting in that; then without another word he curls up on his side, pointedly turning his back to Sasuke, and pretends to sleep.
He doesn’t move until several hours later. The guards have long since made their nightly rounds when the blonde suddenly sits bolt upright, listens for a moment, then is at the bars between their cells in an instant. He beckons impatiently for Sasuke to move closer, which the younger man does only grudgingly, eyeing Deidara with an ill-concealed distrust that soon proves to be entirely justified.
“You’re left-handed, yeah?” Before Sasuke can even answer the question, the blonde artist has reached through the bars separating them, grasping the Uchiha’s wrist tightly (and with surprising strength, though he is a sculptor, and a shinobi besides, so perhaps not quite so surprising after all), pulling his arm through the bars.
And then, carelessly, casually, as if he’s done it countless times before, he presses his thumbs down just so and calmly breaks two of the metacarpals in Sasuke’s right hand.
Sasuke gives a pained hiss of surprise and tries to jerk his hand back; Deidara grimly holds on and breaks another bone, the one in his thumb, before allowing the Uchiha to pull away with a genuine snarl and some heartfelt swearing.
For once Deidara ignores the insults entirely, or perhaps not quite entirely since he answers with a matching level of heat: “Stop wasting time and get that cuff off, yeah, or do I have to do that for you, too?”
When Sasuke simply continues to glower at him and cradle his broken hand, the blonde huffs a sigh and explains, “If one of the cuffs malfunctions--or is taken off--the rest take up the slack, but not quite as tightly as before, and while the control levels are fluctuating, you can—”
“So why didn’t you just break your own hand and escape by yourself months ago?”
“Because of the mouths, genius,” Deidara snaps, shoving his palms (which briefly gnash their teeth at the dark-haired shinobi) through the bars into Sasuke’s face, his usual temper flaring slightly at Sasuke’s scathing tone. “I could break every bone in my hand twice and slather the cuffs in spit; there’s still no way they could ever fit through--and don’t think I haven’t tried it anyway.”
“Why should I bother to follow this plan.” The Uchiha’s voice is tight with anger, eyes slitted to mere chips of jet; defensive as he’s feeling at the moment, he doesn’t dare waste any chakra on the Sharingan. “You’re just going to leave me here and blast your own way out, so why should I waste my chakra on you?”
Deidara goes silent, jaw clenching visibly, lips pressing into a thin line, and Sasuke catches a final, fleeting glimpse of that puzzling internal conflict he’d noted earlier flickering across the older shinobi's face; then he’s locked in his decision and looks away and answers the question, albeit grudgingly.
“…Heh, you’re smarter than you look after all. Normally, I would leave you behind without a second thought, yeah. But one against seventy, eighty or so well-armed jounin? Those are some pretty shitty odds for someone who’s still halfway hampered by these handcuffs, completely unarmed, and who’s been in prison for over a year, even if that someone is an S-class ninja genius.” He gives Sasuke a cool sideways stare. “I might be crazy, but I’m not stupid, yeah, and I’m not proud enough to want to die over this.” One corner of his mouth pulls upwards with a quirk of a smile. “Besides, it’ll be a lot easier to kill you if you’re out there and free like me instead of locked away and protected by this frozen shithole of a prison.”
Sasuke meets that stare for a long moment, carefully noting the annoyance, the impatience, and most of all the hint of desperate sincerity in Deidara’s face, his own expression unreadable; and just when Deidara is sure that he’s not going to go for it, there’s a low grunt of effort from the other side of the bars and quick blur of motion between them, then the brilliant chirping crackle of electricity and the raw smell of burning ozone and a dazzling, dancing flash of blue. Then there is only silence and what seems like a much deeper darkness than before following in the wake of that luminosity…and then the clatter of handcuffs—two of them—hitting the stone floor.
--
Sasuke watches as Deidara feverishly sets to work on the sculptures that will (hopefully) get them out of their cells. He’d wondered what base material Deidara would use to mold his creatures since he obviously wouldn't have access to any clay, and the stone floor is probably granite and is sanded smooth besides; still, he blinks in slight surprise as he watches Deidara dump a small pile of little white tablets--Sasuke recognises them as the antipsychotic he was given with each meal--out of a tear in the lining of his blanket. He feeds them into the mouths in his palms, his lip twisting a bit, likely at the bitter taste of the pills, but he resolutely chews them into a malleable paste, adding saliva and chakra, letting the cold air stiffen the mixture before setting to work molding it into the three separate figurines.
Sasuke sincerely hopes that Deidara plans on making these bombs subtle--he’s seen what the blonde is capable of, and knows that he could if he wanted to--but if it’s really been over a year since the other shinobi was imprisoned, the younger man doubts there’s any chance of this breakout being anything less than loud and flashy enough to wake the entire garrison.
He’s surprised how unsettling it is to watch the other man at work. It makes him a little giddy to be staring that eerie madness full in the face, mostly because he knows (whether he wants to admit it or not, and he doesn’t) that he and the twisted creature in the cell beside him are really not all that different; and the simple horror and revulsion are so tightly intertwined with narrowly repressed rage at anything and everything and especially at that traitorous feeling of glee burning at the back of his mind, a dark sort of excitement, that deeply buried but undeniable part of him that enjoys the memories of hot, sticky blood on his hands and smoke in his eyes and the scent of fire and destruction and the feeling of total control and complete power.
Focused as he is, the blonde seems hyperaware of his surroundings at the moment, and he can’t help but look up at Sasuke’s protracted stare; he gives a faint, self-satisfied smirk at finding that he does indeed have an audience, though something he sees on the Uchiha’s face makes his ever-moving hands pause just briefly. I know, Deidara’s expression tells him, and while he’s still smiling that smug little smirk, there’s no judgment in his eyes, no disgust, no hatred for once--just understanding, and more than a spark of that same uncanny glee. I know that same terrible, beautiful joy, and I embraced it rather than let it break me.
Then that moment of discordant harmony passes as once again his eyes and his hands and his attention are dedicated solely to his creations, and Sasuke is left feeling off-balance and more haunted and tainted than ever.
Thankfully he doesn’t have long to dwell on any of that (though it’s only a small comfort, since he knows he’ll have to deal with those thoughts and feelings sooner or later): Deidara has straightened and is quickly turning the three small figures he’s made over in his hands.
All three are vaguely avian in form, though the shape of one’s wings make it look more like a bat, and none display any hint of the pseudo-life that Sasuke had previously associated with all of Deidara’s works. The pills must have been an even more difficult substance to work with than he’d thought, he muses inwardly as he watches the other man place the miniature sculptures, fastening them to certain weak points in the stone or iron that he must’ve picked out days, weeks, months earlier, each tiny figure stuck firmly in place with a mixture of pill powder and saliva.
A short, more than slightly mad laugh is Sasuke’s only warning to get down before Deidara skips backwards away from the bars, hands already forming the necessary seal, a grin that shows more of his teeth than should really be possible plastered across his face in the instant before he utters that single, simple word that sets everything into motion and makes art of the mundane:
“KATSU!”
Sasuke had ducked down at the rear of his cell, closing his eyes and turning his head away from the explosion, ignoring the grinding twinge of pain in his right hand as he clamped his hands over his ears; regardless of these precautions, the sudden radiant burst of light nearly blinds him, the shockwave throws him hard against the wall, and both leave him with spots dancing before his eyes, gasping as a wave of superheated air washes over him, a level of heat he’d never thought he’d feel again and that he welcomes even as it burns his throat and nostrils as he gulps it in. And then, before he can take a second breath, it’s all over, and all he’s breathing in is smoke and ash. He chokes halfway through, comes to his feet coughing into his sleeve and wiping at his eyes, moving towards the bars—or rather, the gaping hole where there had once been bars. The entire front end of their cells is gone, nothing left of the thick iron doors and steel bars but glowing, jagged-edged metal and more ash; the hole extends to the floor and ceiling, and Sasuke can see a large part of the cells directly above and below theirs--but the hallway is practically untouched, both ways devoid of rubble. He turns a look towards his former fellow prisoner and temporary new partner, his closed expression not betraying a hint of the almost-approval he feels towards the blonde artist for his obvious skill in the area of demolitions.
Deidara had faced the explosion full-on--the noticeably cinder-darkened front of his prison uniform and the black smudges and red patches on his face and arms and the ragged shrapnel-cuts on his cheek and one shoulder testify to that--and his face is alight with passion, almost transfigured by the ardent emotion set on his face: a bone-shaking, blood-burning, chillingly all-encompassing joy. He pauses for a fraction of a moment in the jagged hole his sculptures tore in the rock and iron, spreading his arms, breathing in deeply, stretching as if from a long, tiring sleep.
Then he turns to Sasuke, flashes him a fiercely jubilant grin that is all teeth and eagerness with a hint of I told you so and come on, let’s go, nodding towards the hallway stretching out before them; and in that instant the Uchiha wonders what kind of monster he’s let loose, and if his own freedom was worth what it might very well cost countless others someday.
Author:
alory_shannonGenre: Gen.
Rating: T.
Pairing: None. SUGGEST OTHERWISE AT YOUR OWN RISK. >|
Characters Featured: Sasuke, Deidara. :]
Summary: A few months after Akatsuki is defeated, Sasuke is captured by Cloud-nin and thrown into prison…and who happens to be in the next cell over comes as a pretty big surprise.
A/N: …Nothing to say, really, except I couldn’t resist using the pill thing, and it’s about time I posted some writing. Also, this is the midway point of this fic. :D Only two more parts left to go. I CAN DO THIS, THIS FINISHING-A-MULTICHAPTERED-STORY THING.
Part 1
Part 2
--
There’s a definite shift in their conversations after that. They’re less common for one thing, because Deidara often seems too preoccupied with thinking about something else to initiate things and of course Sasuke never starts them; and for another, while they sometimes still stray towards the old topics of art and their single confrontation and the Uchiha bloodline limit, more often they concern seemingly random things, and they’re usually questions now rather than statements or lectures. How old he’d been when he graduated from the Academy. Where he’d been ranked in his class. What subject he’d been best at academically. The first time he’d killed someone, when where why how. If he’d ever stolen something. If he’d ever cheated on a test. How the rest of his class, the rest of his Village, had treated him. How he’d spent his free time. If he had any hobbies. What he’d do when (not if) they got out of there.
Sasuke wants to ignore the questions, but whenever he does that unbearable smirk comes back and the tapping starts, or Deidara stares at him with unnerving intensity, or the question is simply repeated until he answers. Even if he thought it remotely possible that Deidara had been planted there by his captors to befriend him and then spy on him, they aren’t the kind of questions the Kumo-nin would care about anyway (aren’t the kind of things anyone would care about really), so more often than not he grudgingly gives up the trivial bits of information. After all, the blonde is hardly subtle enough to be a spy, but then again, he’s surprised Sasuke more than once, so perhaps the idea isn’t completely ridiculous.
He does get the feeling that Deidara is putting together a puzzle of some sort, but the questions are never very personal (nothing about his friends, his family, his feelings, his reasoning behind certain actions, never anything like that, always just small, inconsequential facts), so he doesn’t really mind. Most of the time Deidara answers the questions too, though Sasuke only listens because it’s easy to pretend that he isn’t, and also because there’s nothing else to do other than shiver and wait for mealtime or the showers and do whatever exercises he can in the confined space to keep himself fit.
It’s been pushups today, and he’s done so many he’s lost count and is currently content to sprawl prostrate on the ground, muscles burning, sweat freezing on his skin, pretending not to listen to Deidara going on about some exercise they’d had to do back at the Academy in Iwagakure.
There are certain parallels between them, the Uchiha thinks as he pushes himself up to lean back against one of the cold cell walls, though he’s loathe to admit it; he’s certain the blonde sees them too and is equally reluctant to acknowledge it. High expectations, popularity, an inner drive to find a way to make themselves the strongest no matter the cost. And selfishness, Sasuke has realised, a great deal of selfishness, though he doubts Deidara can see that even now; but then, that’s one of the many differences that lie between them as well. Even now, you can’t accept the possibility that you might have ever been in the wrong…
“...You know, there’s a trick to these cuffs, yeah.”
Those words do catch Sasuke’s attention, snapping him out of his private thoughts and back to the present, though he tries to make his interest appear only casual; the fact that he’s obvious about having any at all is more than enough to give his true feelings away to the sharp-eyed blonde. Deidara grins on having succeeded in arousing some curiosity from his fellow prisoner, his expression making it clear that he intends to savour this, to drag it out as long as possible. Sasuke just gives him a flat stare that is rife with annoyance, but he’ll put up with whatever frills and airs the other shinobi decides to put on. It isn’t like he has much choice, or anything better to do with his time.
“I bet you think they’re chakra-inhibiting cuffs, don’t you?” the blonde artist drawls. “The kind that clamp nice and tight around your wrists and ankles and disrupt the chakra flow through your keirakukei, allowing just enough chakra to circulate to keep you from dying, but making it impossible for you to really control it or do anything with it. Pretty standard issue gear for any Hidden Village prison.” Sasuke wonders idly just how Deidara knows that, not that he really cares or would ever bother asking, but then that rakehell grin flashes into place again, and just because they’ve had a few semi-civil conversations doesn’t mean that Sasuke hates that smirk any less, and for the moment that hate occludes everything else. “Or they would be, if that’s what they were, yeah.”
Sasuke stares at Deidara blankly, but the other shinobi seems determined to make him ask this time, or at least indicate that this is indeed news to him, that he doesn’t know something that the former Iwa nin clearly does. Sasuke knows full well just how irrationally stubborn the blonde artist can be, so after several long moments of expectant silence from both sides, he gives in and raises an eyebrow a fraction, earning himself yet another frustrating look at that toothy smirk.
“These,” Deidara says with a flourish, “are more like chakra-repression cuffs. They don’t keep your chakra from circulating, they just keep your chakra level from increasing--so whatever you had in your system when they put them on you is what you’ve got now.”
Sasuke blinks, his face set in a faint but clear that’s stupid, why the hell would they want to do that? expression, at which Deidara gives a gleeful chortle.
“Not very creative when it comes to this type of thing, are you, hmm? So I’ll save you the brain strain and just tell you. These cuffs are used when they want you to be able to put up a bit of a fight. It’s pretty sadistic, really, since you still don’t have enough leeway to take a good shot at them. They’re mostly just an excuse to kick the shit out of you every so often--easiest thing in the world for a guard to claim that a prisoner wearing this type of cuffs tried to turn on him. Probably isn’t even any paperwork to fill out, yeah.”
“How do you know all this?” Sasuke asks, the question just short of a demand for the information.
Deidara grins at him, though it’s more like a barring of teeth, all sinister self-satisfaction and glinting white malevolence. “You learn things, being a missing nin. At least I did.” Sasuke doesn’t respond to that jab, not that the blonde had expected him to, so he goes on. “Got some of it out of a guard in Kumogakure’s main penitentiary, yeah. He had a big mouth, no common sense, and even less respect for my art than you.”
Sasuke can’t help but notice how smug Deidara sounds, or how he’s speaking of the guard in the past tense, and while he might keep it from his expression, he can’t keep the disgust, and moreover the plain dislike, out of his eyes.
Deidara just smiles in reply, cold, cruel, and utterly unrepentant. “Don’t worry, he didn’t scream for very long--I’d guess it would be pretty hard to do that with your throat torn out, yeah--but apparently it was still bad for the guards’ morale.” He chuckles again, closing his eyes and stretching out on his back on the frigid stone floor, his tone thoroughly amused. “Don’t look so surprised. Why did you think I really got transferred up here to the middle of nowhere, hmm?”
--
Nearly a whole day has passed without Sasuke hearing a word from his fellow prisoner. He’s glad for the respite, especially after how unpleasant their last exchange had been, but instead of simply being a relief, the silence feels thick and uneasy, like the air before a storm or the atmosphere in a briefing room before a particularly difficult mission. Sasuke catches himself casting half-apprehensive glances Deidara’s way far too often, no less than a few times each hour, but either the blonde hasn’t noticed or is choosing to ignore it; his eyes are distant, an intense frown etching twin lines between his eyes and on either side of the bridge of his nose as he considers something. The Uchiha gets the distinct feeling that the blonde artist is having some sort of internal conflict, but while he has little else to focus on and curiosity certainly is a bitch, he still doesn’t care enough to break the blessed silence with any sort of inquiry.
Sleep, he decides, is the best way to stop himself from going crazy by watching Deidara go crazy.
But even weeks of imprisonment can’t dull his firmly-ingrained shinobi instincts enough to change him from a light sleeper to a heavy sleeper; the low, grim chuckle from the next cell over is more than enough to snap him back to almost full awareness, and he’s more than awake enough to catch Deidara’s quiet murmur:
“…I have a plan…”
--
Sasuke still isn’t really convinced that this mysterious plan has a fraction of a shadow of a chance of working, but now that Deidara has gotten the idea in his head, he’s already running with it, his mouth going a mile a minute and still not even half managing to keep up with how fast his brain is working:
“No no, this could definitely work. After all, I’m a genius, and you’re clearly the luckiest bastard to ever walk this earth, so together—”
“Not. Interested.” Sasuke’s words are clipped and final-sounding, but they’re also a lie, one that his steady, continued gaze gives away, and Deidara calls him on it.
“But you’re interested in hearing it, at least, hmm?”
Sasuke’s eyes narrow marginally, but he doesn’t look away, which is as much of an admission as Deidara is going to get, and yet the blonde couldn’t have looked more smug if he’d tried.
“It’s pretty simple, really, but that’s the beauty of it. All you need to do is use that lightning jutsu you like so much on one of my wrist cuffs, and I’ll take care of the rest, yeah.”
The Uchiha gives a low snort--was this really what Deidara had been thinking about this whole time?--and does nothing to hide his scorn as he says, “You think I haven’t tried that already? Whatever kind of cuffs they are, they still inhibit my chakra too much for my Chidori to have any effect on them.”
The artist’s expression darkens at the overt contempt in Sasuke’s tone, but he forces a tight-lipped smile nonetheless, though the gleam in his eyes is far from friendly. “That won’t be a problem. I’ll handle it, yeah.” Somehow he makes it sound very much like a threat, the way that strained smile is edging towards out-and-out vicious no doubt assisting in that; then without another word he curls up on his side, pointedly turning his back to Sasuke, and pretends to sleep.
He doesn’t move until several hours later. The guards have long since made their nightly rounds when the blonde suddenly sits bolt upright, listens for a moment, then is at the bars between their cells in an instant. He beckons impatiently for Sasuke to move closer, which the younger man does only grudgingly, eyeing Deidara with an ill-concealed distrust that soon proves to be entirely justified.
“You’re left-handed, yeah?” Before Sasuke can even answer the question, the blonde artist has reached through the bars separating them, grasping the Uchiha’s wrist tightly (and with surprising strength, though he is a sculptor, and a shinobi besides, so perhaps not quite so surprising after all), pulling his arm through the bars.
And then, carelessly, casually, as if he’s done it countless times before, he presses his thumbs down just so and calmly breaks two of the metacarpals in Sasuke’s right hand.
Sasuke gives a pained hiss of surprise and tries to jerk his hand back; Deidara grimly holds on and breaks another bone, the one in his thumb, before allowing the Uchiha to pull away with a genuine snarl and some heartfelt swearing.
For once Deidara ignores the insults entirely, or perhaps not quite entirely since he answers with a matching level of heat: “Stop wasting time and get that cuff off, yeah, or do I have to do that for you, too?”
When Sasuke simply continues to glower at him and cradle his broken hand, the blonde huffs a sigh and explains, “If one of the cuffs malfunctions--or is taken off--the rest take up the slack, but not quite as tightly as before, and while the control levels are fluctuating, you can—”
“So why didn’t you just break your own hand and escape by yourself months ago?”
“Because of the mouths, genius,” Deidara snaps, shoving his palms (which briefly gnash their teeth at the dark-haired shinobi) through the bars into Sasuke’s face, his usual temper flaring slightly at Sasuke’s scathing tone. “I could break every bone in my hand twice and slather the cuffs in spit; there’s still no way they could ever fit through--and don’t think I haven’t tried it anyway.”
“Why should I bother to follow this plan.” The Uchiha’s voice is tight with anger, eyes slitted to mere chips of jet; defensive as he’s feeling at the moment, he doesn’t dare waste any chakra on the Sharingan. “You’re just going to leave me here and blast your own way out, so why should I waste my chakra on you?”
Deidara goes silent, jaw clenching visibly, lips pressing into a thin line, and Sasuke catches a final, fleeting glimpse of that puzzling internal conflict he’d noted earlier flickering across the older shinobi's face; then he’s locked in his decision and looks away and answers the question, albeit grudgingly.
“…Heh, you’re smarter than you look after all. Normally, I would leave you behind without a second thought, yeah. But one against seventy, eighty or so well-armed jounin? Those are some pretty shitty odds for someone who’s still halfway hampered by these handcuffs, completely unarmed, and who’s been in prison for over a year, even if that someone is an S-class ninja genius.” He gives Sasuke a cool sideways stare. “I might be crazy, but I’m not stupid, yeah, and I’m not proud enough to want to die over this.” One corner of his mouth pulls upwards with a quirk of a smile. “Besides, it’ll be a lot easier to kill you if you’re out there and free like me instead of locked away and protected by this frozen shithole of a prison.”
Sasuke meets that stare for a long moment, carefully noting the annoyance, the impatience, and most of all the hint of desperate sincerity in Deidara’s face, his own expression unreadable; and just when Deidara is sure that he’s not going to go for it, there’s a low grunt of effort from the other side of the bars and quick blur of motion between them, then the brilliant chirping crackle of electricity and the raw smell of burning ozone and a dazzling, dancing flash of blue. Then there is only silence and what seems like a much deeper darkness than before following in the wake of that luminosity…and then the clatter of handcuffs—two of them—hitting the stone floor.
--
Sasuke watches as Deidara feverishly sets to work on the sculptures that will (hopefully) get them out of their cells. He’d wondered what base material Deidara would use to mold his creatures since he obviously wouldn't have access to any clay, and the stone floor is probably granite and is sanded smooth besides; still, he blinks in slight surprise as he watches Deidara dump a small pile of little white tablets--Sasuke recognises them as the antipsychotic he was given with each meal--out of a tear in the lining of his blanket. He feeds them into the mouths in his palms, his lip twisting a bit, likely at the bitter taste of the pills, but he resolutely chews them into a malleable paste, adding saliva and chakra, letting the cold air stiffen the mixture before setting to work molding it into the three separate figurines.
Sasuke sincerely hopes that Deidara plans on making these bombs subtle--he’s seen what the blonde is capable of, and knows that he could if he wanted to--but if it’s really been over a year since the other shinobi was imprisoned, the younger man doubts there’s any chance of this breakout being anything less than loud and flashy enough to wake the entire garrison.
He’s surprised how unsettling it is to watch the other man at work. It makes him a little giddy to be staring that eerie madness full in the face, mostly because he knows (whether he wants to admit it or not, and he doesn’t) that he and the twisted creature in the cell beside him are really not all that different; and the simple horror and revulsion are so tightly intertwined with narrowly repressed rage at anything and everything and especially at that traitorous feeling of glee burning at the back of his mind, a dark sort of excitement, that deeply buried but undeniable part of him that enjoys the memories of hot, sticky blood on his hands and smoke in his eyes and the scent of fire and destruction and the feeling of total control and complete power.
Focused as he is, the blonde seems hyperaware of his surroundings at the moment, and he can’t help but look up at Sasuke’s protracted stare; he gives a faint, self-satisfied smirk at finding that he does indeed have an audience, though something he sees on the Uchiha’s face makes his ever-moving hands pause just briefly. I know, Deidara’s expression tells him, and while he’s still smiling that smug little smirk, there’s no judgment in his eyes, no disgust, no hatred for once--just understanding, and more than a spark of that same uncanny glee. I know that same terrible, beautiful joy, and I embraced it rather than let it break me.
Then that moment of discordant harmony passes as once again his eyes and his hands and his attention are dedicated solely to his creations, and Sasuke is left feeling off-balance and more haunted and tainted than ever.
Thankfully he doesn’t have long to dwell on any of that (though it’s only a small comfort, since he knows he’ll have to deal with those thoughts and feelings sooner or later): Deidara has straightened and is quickly turning the three small figures he’s made over in his hands.
All three are vaguely avian in form, though the shape of one’s wings make it look more like a bat, and none display any hint of the pseudo-life that Sasuke had previously associated with all of Deidara’s works. The pills must have been an even more difficult substance to work with than he’d thought, he muses inwardly as he watches the other man place the miniature sculptures, fastening them to certain weak points in the stone or iron that he must’ve picked out days, weeks, months earlier, each tiny figure stuck firmly in place with a mixture of pill powder and saliva.
A short, more than slightly mad laugh is Sasuke’s only warning to get down before Deidara skips backwards away from the bars, hands already forming the necessary seal, a grin that shows more of his teeth than should really be possible plastered across his face in the instant before he utters that single, simple word that sets everything into motion and makes art of the mundane:
“KATSU!”
Sasuke had ducked down at the rear of his cell, closing his eyes and turning his head away from the explosion, ignoring the grinding twinge of pain in his right hand as he clamped his hands over his ears; regardless of these precautions, the sudden radiant burst of light nearly blinds him, the shockwave throws him hard against the wall, and both leave him with spots dancing before his eyes, gasping as a wave of superheated air washes over him, a level of heat he’d never thought he’d feel again and that he welcomes even as it burns his throat and nostrils as he gulps it in. And then, before he can take a second breath, it’s all over, and all he’s breathing in is smoke and ash. He chokes halfway through, comes to his feet coughing into his sleeve and wiping at his eyes, moving towards the bars—or rather, the gaping hole where there had once been bars. The entire front end of their cells is gone, nothing left of the thick iron doors and steel bars but glowing, jagged-edged metal and more ash; the hole extends to the floor and ceiling, and Sasuke can see a large part of the cells directly above and below theirs--but the hallway is practically untouched, both ways devoid of rubble. He turns a look towards his former fellow prisoner and temporary new partner, his closed expression not betraying a hint of the almost-approval he feels towards the blonde artist for his obvious skill in the area of demolitions.
Deidara had faced the explosion full-on--the noticeably cinder-darkened front of his prison uniform and the black smudges and red patches on his face and arms and the ragged shrapnel-cuts on his cheek and one shoulder testify to that--and his face is alight with passion, almost transfigured by the ardent emotion set on his face: a bone-shaking, blood-burning, chillingly all-encompassing joy. He pauses for a fraction of a moment in the jagged hole his sculptures tore in the rock and iron, spreading his arms, breathing in deeply, stretching as if from a long, tiring sleep.
Then he turns to Sasuke, flashes him a fiercely jubilant grin that is all teeth and eagerness with a hint of I told you so and come on, let’s go, nodding towards the hallway stretching out before them; and in that instant the Uchiha wonders what kind of monster he’s let loose, and if his own freedom was worth what it might very well cost countless others someday.