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"Just So You Know, I Still Hate You (A Lot)" - Sasuke + Deidara (semi-AU) [4/5]
Title: “Just So You Know, I Still Hate You (A Lot).” [4/5]
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. Maybe M for violence this time.
Pairing: None. AUTHORIAL INTENT > READER’S INTERPRETATION. THE END. :| THAT IS HOW I ROLL, AND IF YOU DISAGREE, TOUGH COOKIES.
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: A wild OC appears! But she has a purpose and we’ll never see her again, so I don’t think it’s a big deal.
Just one more chapter after this! I CAN DO IT. *DETERMINED*
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
--
It was systematic, and yet somehow almost artistic in a mechanical, methodical sort of way, Deidara thought, how they moved through the hallways together, checking each door they came to, ignoring the pleas and insults and surprised exclamations of other prisoners, and especially--especially--how they worked together to take down the prison guards they ran into. He had never been one for working in groups, something his genin team and the unfortunate jounin leading them had learned the hard way, and being partnered with Sasori and Tobi had been intriguing and irritating respectively, but this was different. This was someone he hated, someone whose methods he had no respect for, someone who had humiliated and looked down on him ever since they’d met; and yet now, watching him fight (and struggle) without the use of his Sharingan, now Deidara was learning something new, seeing another side of the Uchiha brat, which wasn’t something he bothered to do all that often. Once he’d made up his mind about someone, he tended to stick with that decision.
But watching Uchiha Sasuke now, there could be no doubt that there was more to him than just those eyes. He was hell on wheels, tearing through each wave of guards that came at them, every motion graceful and brutal as it flowed, smooth and effortless, into the next, and Deidara found it impossible not to watch him out of the corner of his eye, because this was something kinetic, a series of brief but always purposeful, always precise movements; it would happen, an explosion of action, and then an instant later it would all be over, nothing left but ruined bodies and blood sprayed on the walls and leaking over the floor and splattered across the front of the Uchiha’s prison uniform, marring that sickly-pale skin and almost dripping into those flat, bottomless-pit-black eyes, and it was art.
Still, he doesn’t like the sudden approval he feels towards the younger man--not one bit--and he can’t resist sniping at him a little the first chance he gets:
“I thought you Leaf-nin didn’t kill if you could help it,” Deidara says with a smirk as they both pause briefly to catch their breath, backs pressed against the wall beside another of the winding, unpredictably twisting corridors favoured by the designer of that facility (if there even was one). It’s exhausting, fighting with so little chakra, and even though they’re armed now, they’re still pretty heavily outnumbered.
Sasuke gives him a long, steady look, then turns away, leaning out just slightly to scan the next hallway. “We can’t take that sort of risk here,” he says, his tone cool and matter-of-fact, then abruptly glances back, eyes hard, expression daring the former Iwa-nin to disagree. “And I’m not a Leaf-nin anymore.”
There’s something inexpressibly savage in his face--maybe it has to do with all the blood on it, or maybe it’s the fact that he hasn’t even attempted to wipe it away, the way he simply accepts it and leaves it there to dry, because he knows he’s in his element--and for an instant, Deidara feels a flicker of uncertainty, of fear, and he’s always hated whatever scared him, whatever he couldn’t understand, and Sasuke is both.
Glowering, he pushes himself to his feet, and after glancing down the hallway for himself, practically hurls himself down it, taking point and forcing Sasuke to follow and play rearguard.
The blonde grins when he hears the clatter of approaching footsteps, and readies the katars he took from one of the guards; now it’s his turn to show off a little.
--
Deidara, Sasuke has decided, is precisely the type of fighter that he has always disliked. The other shinobi is unpredictable, flinging himself through each movement with a half-wild enthusiasm and barely-there control, relying on instinct and reflex rather than precision or planning. Yet that isn’t entirely true either--despite his seeming carelessness, the former Iwa-nin is always maneuvering his opponents into the positions he wants. He’s alarmingly skillful at this, Sasuke knows that first-hand, and he can’t help but wonder if perhaps the roughness and intentionally flashy moves are meant to make enemies underestimate him. Regardless of the impulsiveness and lack of polish, he’s still chillingly effective: a worthy ally, at least as far as his capabilities are concerned.
Sasuke watches as Deidara finishes the last guard, noting that his smirk doesn’t falter nor does he hesitate in the least even when the man begs for his life; Deidara toys with him, actually snickering as he watches the man choke on his own blood before finishing him off.
Absently rubbing a speckle of that blood from his cheek, the blonde flashes Sasuke a grin (which is of course not returned) before stepping over the still-twitching corpse and moving on down the hall.
Sasuke looks after him a moment before following, his expression closed and cold.
A worthy ally, at least as far as his capabilities are concerned.
--
The next area they enter happens to be the infirmary. It’s deserted, all the staff either hiding elsewhere or regrouping in preparation for an attack, but there are still a lot of rooms, all of which needed to be checked: medic-nin were far too dangerous and versatile to allow the chance to sneak up behind you.
“I’ll take the rooms on the right,” Sasuke says, more an order than an offer. Deidara looks at him sharply, but the artist has already taken a step left and isn’t about to change his mind due to anything Sasuke’s said.
“Who died and made you boss of the world, hmm?” Deidara snorts, continuing on his way, blood-smeared katars held ready at his sides. Sasuke is glad for an excuse to part with the blonde, albeit only for a few moments, and decides to take a chance. He briefly allows his Sharingan to snap on, glancing at the rooms, searching for bright splashes of colour--the quickest way to find any remaining medic-nin, and if he finds one, he’ll need all the time he can get.
He notices an odd flicker in the second to last room and approaches carefully, senses alert, an appropriated wakizashi at the ready, every muscle tense as a coiled spring. But when he enters the room, he finds it empty, bed carefully made up, machinery standing neatly in the corner, a flimsy plywood cabinet at one end of the room, both doors closed.
The cabinet is the obvious hiding place, the only hiding place, so after scanning the room, he steps silently towards it, pausing with one hand on the knob, listening. Inside he hears muffled breathing and a frantically racing heart, either from fear or from excitement at a trap about to be sprung: a single opponent. Sasuke shifts his grip on the wakizashi, readying the short sword, then jerks open the cabinet door--and finds himself staring down the blade into a pair of huge, pale green eyes.
She’s hardly more than a child, no older than he had been when he’d first left Konoha, probably younger, and he briefly wonders what she’s doing at a facility like this out here in the middle of nowhere. She must have parents stationed here, or perhaps she’s a prodigy in her own right, or maybe Kumo-nin are just raised differently; regardless of which is the truth, it doesn’t alter his purpose here, or lessen the need for haste and secrecy.
“Heal my hand,” he says without lowering his blade. Despite her age and the way she’s huddled in the corner of the cabinet, it could still be a trap, and Sasuke isn’t taking that chance: his tone and the sword in his hand leave no room for argument, and his eyes melt into black-flecked red again, spinning and transfixing. Dazed, the girl stares into them for a long moment, then nods numbly; her trembling is visible as she slowly reaches out towards his hand, and she jerks backwards as if burned when he adds, “And if you try anything, I’ll kill you.” Swallowing hard, she nods again, placing her small, icy-cold hands on his bloody, broken one and doing as she’s told.
She’s not as good as Sakura. Her control is less perfect, her methods foreign, her chakra’s touch rougher, grating on his keirakukei like a musical instrument just slightly out of tune, but she gets the job done quickly and effectively nonetheless. There’s a dull sort of hopelessness in the expression she turns up to him as she finishes, and as he notes that she’s used up a great deal more chakra than she really needed to, he realises that she’s done her best on his hand because she thinks it’s the last thing she’ll ever do.
She doesn’t beg, she doesn’t look away from him as the glow of her chakra around his hand fades, she just sits silently and waits for him to kill her, eyes clear and expression calm. Sasuke’s hand tightens on the hilt of the wakizashi, but somehow there’s too much of Sakura in this girl’s face for him to easily bring it to bear, and he knows that this is one of those deciding moments, when a single, seemingly incidental choice can define you, can change everything that you see yourself as. He hears the muted sounds of violence from the rooms opposite, loud crashes and screams that cut off before they should, and it would be so easy, so simple to take that path, to let himself go and give into the dark rage he’s had building inside him since he was a child and just not care about his actions or the consequences, to live solely by impulse and emotion.
But looking down into those steady, almost-familiar green eyes, he knows he can’t, knows that he doesn’t really want to.
Because he does care, even if he pretends not to. Because that’s who he is.
“…Thank you.”
The girl’s eyes widen and she sucks in a small, startled breath at those words, but although she’s the one who’s hearing them, they’re not really meant for her, though she can’t know that, and after another brief upwards glance into the Sharingan, she doesn’t know anything at all except blackness. Sasuke doesn’t catch her as she crumples to the floor, but he is almost uncharacteristically gentle as he gathers up her limp form and tucks her back into the cabinet, shifting some boxes around a bit as he does so (just so the doors will actually close, not to hide her better, or so he tells himself). Flexing his newly-healed hand, he readjusts the bandages to hide the fact that it’s no longer broken, then goes to find Deidara, his thoughts not on the girl whose life he’s just spared, but on someone else hundreds of miles south, in a place where he doesn’t belong anymore and to which he can never return but that is an undeniable part of him regardless.
He is no longer a Leaf-nin, but he is still human, capable of control and compassion. And he is still himself, only showing that he cares when the one he cares for has no way of ever knowing about it.
--
Though it takes longer than either of them would like, they do eventually find the main storage room, full of standard-issue shinobi weaponry, extra uniforms, and some basic first-aid and supply kits. Sasuke is secretly pleased to find most of his own gear shoved into a dark corner--he’s missed the smooth, worn hilt, the well-known balance and just-right length of his own sword more than he'd expected, and much prefers his own clothing to the oddly-cut Kumo-nin uniform Deidara has already pulled on.
The blonde artist pauses in buckling a shuriken holster to his leg, staring and then bursting out with a sudden explosion of laughter as, after changing out of the prison uniform, Sasuke snatches up and puts on what’s left of his ragged Akatsuki cloak. The organisation is gone, the Uchiha knows that, had known that, but he’d kept the cloak; he hadn’t been focused on anything enough to care about picking up a new one before he’d been captured, and this far north a cloak had been a necessity.
Trying not to look as if he’s huddling to regain some of his lost warmth, Sasuke turns a flat stare on the blonde, his expression too annoyed to be inquisitive.
Still smirking, Deidara pulls two thick, standard-issue fur-lined Kumo-nin cloaks out of a locker in a dark corner and tosses one in Sasuke’s general direction. It’s intentionally thrown a few feet short, meant to force the Uchiha to either step forward quickly while shifting the armload of personal effects he’s holding to free a hand to catch it, or pick it up off the floor. (He does the latter, still giving the other shinobi that cool, flat glare, which is now met with a superior smirk.) “We’ll blend in better if we use these. Besides, Akatsuki cloaks aren’t really all that warm, yeah.”
Deidara then proceeds to waste nearly ten minutes at the small, grungy sink in the corner of the room, splashing water everywhere while making the plaster he’d taken from the infirmary into a semi-solid paste, another substitute for clay; his own equipment, his clay and its hip pouches included, is well over a hundred miles away in some storage locker in Kumogakure itself, if it hasn’t been burned or discarded, which after so much time is highly unlikely.
By the time he’s done half-flooding the room, Sasuke is chafing with impatience; true, there can’t be many more guards around to get in their way, and they are smack dab in the middle of nowhere so there’s no danger of them calling for backup, but every minute spent here gives them more time to regroup or come up with a trap of some sort.
“Relax,” Deidara chuckles, smearing a little wet plaster-paste on the remaining chakra-repression cuffs, then almost carelessly making a one-handed seal and blowing them up in a surprisingly quiet and musical puff of metal dust. “They can try all they want, yeah, but there’s nothing they can do to stop us now.”
--
Deidara has asked this very question several times already, and he’s always just gotten noncommittal half-answers in return, but that certainly doesn’t stop the blonde from asking again as they both pause beside the heavy iron door that leads to the outside, to freedom, to put on and lace up the heavy boots they'd taken from the storage room.
“So where are you gonna go now, hmm?”
Sasuke doesn’t deign to answer; he simply kicks the lever that opens the door and strides into the shallow tunnel, towards the perpetual snowstorm raging over the howling, empty tundra outside. On reaching the mouth of the cave, he starts off in a random direction, because right now, any direction is fine so long as it’s away from the blonde shinobi. They’ve beaten the odds and escaped from that icy hellhole, but Sasuke holds no more affection for the former Iwa-nin now than he ever has, and he has no desire to prolong their partnership; their temporary alliance is at an end as far as he’s concerned.
But Deidara isn’t so easily put off. He scowls and takes a few steps after Sasuke, raising his voice to be heard over the wind: “I’m planning on heading southwest, back to Earth Country. It’s a big place with lots of decent-sized cities, and I look pretty different these days so I doubt I’ll be recognised, yeah, thanks for asking!”
Predictably, Sasuke ignores him, and soon the blowing snow has swallowed him up, leaving the blonde standing at the mouth of the cave, alone.
With an annoyed huff, Deidara forms one of his standard clay birds, leaping aboard moments later, banking it sharply and heading off in the opposite direction.
Author:
alory_shannonGenre: Gen.
Rating: T. Maybe M for violence this time.
Pairing: None. AUTHORIAL INTENT > READER’S INTERPRETATION. THE END. :| THAT IS HOW I ROLL, AND IF YOU DISAGREE, TOUGH COOKIES.
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: A wild OC appears! But she has a purpose and we’ll never see her again, so I don’t think it’s a big deal.
Just one more chapter after this! I CAN DO IT. *DETERMINED*
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
--
It was systematic, and yet somehow almost artistic in a mechanical, methodical sort of way, Deidara thought, how they moved through the hallways together, checking each door they came to, ignoring the pleas and insults and surprised exclamations of other prisoners, and especially--especially--how they worked together to take down the prison guards they ran into. He had never been one for working in groups, something his genin team and the unfortunate jounin leading them had learned the hard way, and being partnered with Sasori and Tobi had been intriguing and irritating respectively, but this was different. This was someone he hated, someone whose methods he had no respect for, someone who had humiliated and looked down on him ever since they’d met; and yet now, watching him fight (and struggle) without the use of his Sharingan, now Deidara was learning something new, seeing another side of the Uchiha brat, which wasn’t something he bothered to do all that often. Once he’d made up his mind about someone, he tended to stick with that decision.
But watching Uchiha Sasuke now, there could be no doubt that there was more to him than just those eyes. He was hell on wheels, tearing through each wave of guards that came at them, every motion graceful and brutal as it flowed, smooth and effortless, into the next, and Deidara found it impossible not to watch him out of the corner of his eye, because this was something kinetic, a series of brief but always purposeful, always precise movements; it would happen, an explosion of action, and then an instant later it would all be over, nothing left but ruined bodies and blood sprayed on the walls and leaking over the floor and splattered across the front of the Uchiha’s prison uniform, marring that sickly-pale skin and almost dripping into those flat, bottomless-pit-black eyes, and it was art.
Still, he doesn’t like the sudden approval he feels towards the younger man--not one bit--and he can’t resist sniping at him a little the first chance he gets:
“I thought you Leaf-nin didn’t kill if you could help it,” Deidara says with a smirk as they both pause briefly to catch their breath, backs pressed against the wall beside another of the winding, unpredictably twisting corridors favoured by the designer of that facility (if there even was one). It’s exhausting, fighting with so little chakra, and even though they’re armed now, they’re still pretty heavily outnumbered.
Sasuke gives him a long, steady look, then turns away, leaning out just slightly to scan the next hallway. “We can’t take that sort of risk here,” he says, his tone cool and matter-of-fact, then abruptly glances back, eyes hard, expression daring the former Iwa-nin to disagree. “And I’m not a Leaf-nin anymore.”
There’s something inexpressibly savage in his face--maybe it has to do with all the blood on it, or maybe it’s the fact that he hasn’t even attempted to wipe it away, the way he simply accepts it and leaves it there to dry, because he knows he’s in his element--and for an instant, Deidara feels a flicker of uncertainty, of fear, and he’s always hated whatever scared him, whatever he couldn’t understand, and Sasuke is both.
Glowering, he pushes himself to his feet, and after glancing down the hallway for himself, practically hurls himself down it, taking point and forcing Sasuke to follow and play rearguard.
The blonde grins when he hears the clatter of approaching footsteps, and readies the katars he took from one of the guards; now it’s his turn to show off a little.
--
Deidara, Sasuke has decided, is precisely the type of fighter that he has always disliked. The other shinobi is unpredictable, flinging himself through each movement with a half-wild enthusiasm and barely-there control, relying on instinct and reflex rather than precision or planning. Yet that isn’t entirely true either--despite his seeming carelessness, the former Iwa-nin is always maneuvering his opponents into the positions he wants. He’s alarmingly skillful at this, Sasuke knows that first-hand, and he can’t help but wonder if perhaps the roughness and intentionally flashy moves are meant to make enemies underestimate him. Regardless of the impulsiveness and lack of polish, he’s still chillingly effective: a worthy ally, at least as far as his capabilities are concerned.
Sasuke watches as Deidara finishes the last guard, noting that his smirk doesn’t falter nor does he hesitate in the least even when the man begs for his life; Deidara toys with him, actually snickering as he watches the man choke on his own blood before finishing him off.
Absently rubbing a speckle of that blood from his cheek, the blonde flashes Sasuke a grin (which is of course not returned) before stepping over the still-twitching corpse and moving on down the hall.
Sasuke looks after him a moment before following, his expression closed and cold.
A worthy ally, at least as far as his capabilities are concerned.
--
The next area they enter happens to be the infirmary. It’s deserted, all the staff either hiding elsewhere or regrouping in preparation for an attack, but there are still a lot of rooms, all of which needed to be checked: medic-nin were far too dangerous and versatile to allow the chance to sneak up behind you.
“I’ll take the rooms on the right,” Sasuke says, more an order than an offer. Deidara looks at him sharply, but the artist has already taken a step left and isn’t about to change his mind due to anything Sasuke’s said.
“Who died and made you boss of the world, hmm?” Deidara snorts, continuing on his way, blood-smeared katars held ready at his sides. Sasuke is glad for an excuse to part with the blonde, albeit only for a few moments, and decides to take a chance. He briefly allows his Sharingan to snap on, glancing at the rooms, searching for bright splashes of colour--the quickest way to find any remaining medic-nin, and if he finds one, he’ll need all the time he can get.
He notices an odd flicker in the second to last room and approaches carefully, senses alert, an appropriated wakizashi at the ready, every muscle tense as a coiled spring. But when he enters the room, he finds it empty, bed carefully made up, machinery standing neatly in the corner, a flimsy plywood cabinet at one end of the room, both doors closed.
The cabinet is the obvious hiding place, the only hiding place, so after scanning the room, he steps silently towards it, pausing with one hand on the knob, listening. Inside he hears muffled breathing and a frantically racing heart, either from fear or from excitement at a trap about to be sprung: a single opponent. Sasuke shifts his grip on the wakizashi, readying the short sword, then jerks open the cabinet door--and finds himself staring down the blade into a pair of huge, pale green eyes.
She’s hardly more than a child, no older than he had been when he’d first left Konoha, probably younger, and he briefly wonders what she’s doing at a facility like this out here in the middle of nowhere. She must have parents stationed here, or perhaps she’s a prodigy in her own right, or maybe Kumo-nin are just raised differently; regardless of which is the truth, it doesn’t alter his purpose here, or lessen the need for haste and secrecy.
“Heal my hand,” he says without lowering his blade. Despite her age and the way she’s huddled in the corner of the cabinet, it could still be a trap, and Sasuke isn’t taking that chance: his tone and the sword in his hand leave no room for argument, and his eyes melt into black-flecked red again, spinning and transfixing. Dazed, the girl stares into them for a long moment, then nods numbly; her trembling is visible as she slowly reaches out towards his hand, and she jerks backwards as if burned when he adds, “And if you try anything, I’ll kill you.” Swallowing hard, she nods again, placing her small, icy-cold hands on his bloody, broken one and doing as she’s told.
She’s not as good as Sakura. Her control is less perfect, her methods foreign, her chakra’s touch rougher, grating on his keirakukei like a musical instrument just slightly out of tune, but she gets the job done quickly and effectively nonetheless. There’s a dull sort of hopelessness in the expression she turns up to him as she finishes, and as he notes that she’s used up a great deal more chakra than she really needed to, he realises that she’s done her best on his hand because she thinks it’s the last thing she’ll ever do.
She doesn’t beg, she doesn’t look away from him as the glow of her chakra around his hand fades, she just sits silently and waits for him to kill her, eyes clear and expression calm. Sasuke’s hand tightens on the hilt of the wakizashi, but somehow there’s too much of Sakura in this girl’s face for him to easily bring it to bear, and he knows that this is one of those deciding moments, when a single, seemingly incidental choice can define you, can change everything that you see yourself as. He hears the muted sounds of violence from the rooms opposite, loud crashes and screams that cut off before they should, and it would be so easy, so simple to take that path, to let himself go and give into the dark rage he’s had building inside him since he was a child and just not care about his actions or the consequences, to live solely by impulse and emotion.
But looking down into those steady, almost-familiar green eyes, he knows he can’t, knows that he doesn’t really want to.
Because he does care, even if he pretends not to. Because that’s who he is.
“…Thank you.”
The girl’s eyes widen and she sucks in a small, startled breath at those words, but although she’s the one who’s hearing them, they’re not really meant for her, though she can’t know that, and after another brief upwards glance into the Sharingan, she doesn’t know anything at all except blackness. Sasuke doesn’t catch her as she crumples to the floor, but he is almost uncharacteristically gentle as he gathers up her limp form and tucks her back into the cabinet, shifting some boxes around a bit as he does so (just so the doors will actually close, not to hide her better, or so he tells himself). Flexing his newly-healed hand, he readjusts the bandages to hide the fact that it’s no longer broken, then goes to find Deidara, his thoughts not on the girl whose life he’s just spared, but on someone else hundreds of miles south, in a place where he doesn’t belong anymore and to which he can never return but that is an undeniable part of him regardless.
He is no longer a Leaf-nin, but he is still human, capable of control and compassion. And he is still himself, only showing that he cares when the one he cares for has no way of ever knowing about it.
--
Though it takes longer than either of them would like, they do eventually find the main storage room, full of standard-issue shinobi weaponry, extra uniforms, and some basic first-aid and supply kits. Sasuke is secretly pleased to find most of his own gear shoved into a dark corner--he’s missed the smooth, worn hilt, the well-known balance and just-right length of his own sword more than he'd expected, and much prefers his own clothing to the oddly-cut Kumo-nin uniform Deidara has already pulled on.
The blonde artist pauses in buckling a shuriken holster to his leg, staring and then bursting out with a sudden explosion of laughter as, after changing out of the prison uniform, Sasuke snatches up and puts on what’s left of his ragged Akatsuki cloak. The organisation is gone, the Uchiha knows that, had known that, but he’d kept the cloak; he hadn’t been focused on anything enough to care about picking up a new one before he’d been captured, and this far north a cloak had been a necessity.
Trying not to look as if he’s huddling to regain some of his lost warmth, Sasuke turns a flat stare on the blonde, his expression too annoyed to be inquisitive.
Still smirking, Deidara pulls two thick, standard-issue fur-lined Kumo-nin cloaks out of a locker in a dark corner and tosses one in Sasuke’s general direction. It’s intentionally thrown a few feet short, meant to force the Uchiha to either step forward quickly while shifting the armload of personal effects he’s holding to free a hand to catch it, or pick it up off the floor. (He does the latter, still giving the other shinobi that cool, flat glare, which is now met with a superior smirk.) “We’ll blend in better if we use these. Besides, Akatsuki cloaks aren’t really all that warm, yeah.”
Deidara then proceeds to waste nearly ten minutes at the small, grungy sink in the corner of the room, splashing water everywhere while making the plaster he’d taken from the infirmary into a semi-solid paste, another substitute for clay; his own equipment, his clay and its hip pouches included, is well over a hundred miles away in some storage locker in Kumogakure itself, if it hasn’t been burned or discarded, which after so much time is highly unlikely.
By the time he’s done half-flooding the room, Sasuke is chafing with impatience; true, there can’t be many more guards around to get in their way, and they are smack dab in the middle of nowhere so there’s no danger of them calling for backup, but every minute spent here gives them more time to regroup or come up with a trap of some sort.
“Relax,” Deidara chuckles, smearing a little wet plaster-paste on the remaining chakra-repression cuffs, then almost carelessly making a one-handed seal and blowing them up in a surprisingly quiet and musical puff of metal dust. “They can try all they want, yeah, but there’s nothing they can do to stop us now.”
--
Deidara has asked this very question several times already, and he’s always just gotten noncommittal half-answers in return, but that certainly doesn’t stop the blonde from asking again as they both pause beside the heavy iron door that leads to the outside, to freedom, to put on and lace up the heavy boots they'd taken from the storage room.
“So where are you gonna go now, hmm?”
Sasuke doesn’t deign to answer; he simply kicks the lever that opens the door and strides into the shallow tunnel, towards the perpetual snowstorm raging over the howling, empty tundra outside. On reaching the mouth of the cave, he starts off in a random direction, because right now, any direction is fine so long as it’s away from the blonde shinobi. They’ve beaten the odds and escaped from that icy hellhole, but Sasuke holds no more affection for the former Iwa-nin now than he ever has, and he has no desire to prolong their partnership; their temporary alliance is at an end as far as he’s concerned.
But Deidara isn’t so easily put off. He scowls and takes a few steps after Sasuke, raising his voice to be heard over the wind: “I’m planning on heading southwest, back to Earth Country. It’s a big place with lots of decent-sized cities, and I look pretty different these days so I doubt I’ll be recognised, yeah, thanks for asking!”
Predictably, Sasuke ignores him, and soon the blowing snow has swallowed him up, leaving the blonde standing at the mouth of the cave, alone.
With an annoyed huff, Deidara forms one of his standard clay birds, leaping aboard moments later, banking it sharply and heading off in the opposite direction.