Chapter Text
Deidara wakes with a start, because there are people in his room. There’s almost always a person in Deidara’s room nowadays, but these particular people-noises aren’t the soft sounds of Sasori tinkering with his puppets or Tobi’s loud snores.
Deidara is groggier than he should be, like he’d been drinking the night before. It takes him a moment to remember Sasori is dead and gone, and then several minutes more to remember what he’d been up to the night before.
(Itachi– the bastard– wrapping a hand around his wrist and telling him he needed him. Flying the both of them through a storm and across an ocean to a place Itachi absolutely had to be. Mad, uncontrolled chakra and smoke and red eyes.)
Deidara cracks an eye open. The room is washed in the dim, bluish light of dawn coming in through a narrow window. There’s another bed barely a meter from Deidara’s, and a child is breathing softly in it.
What the fuck? Deidara thinks, because he remembers this place, and he remembers blowing it to tiny pieces and watching its ashes rain down on the village surrounding it. He sits up very carefully and looks around.
His dorm room in the Iwagakure District Four Shared Home for Orphaned Youth is exactly as he remembers it. There are two bunk beds in a room that would be small for even a single bed, a threadbare rug on the floor between them. There are drawers under the beds for personal belongings (mostly empty) and lockers toward the door for shinobi equipment (overflowing).
The blinds are only half-closed, because the boy in the bunk above Deidara likes to watch the stars while he falls asleep. Deidara does not remember his name. He hasn’t even thought about him in years.
The air is chilly. The heaters never worked very well in the Shared Home. Deidara has a pair of faux-fur lined slippers under the window, kicked off right as he was climbing into bed.
The slippers are tiny. Was Deidara really ever that small?
He goes to slip out of bed to explore and figure out what the fuck is happening, but discovers he’s currently that tiny.
Oh shit, Deidara thinks, staring down at his too-short legs.
He steps into his slippers and runs as silently as he can down the hall to the bathroom all the boys on that floor share. In the mirror, he confirms his fears: he’s ten again.
Shit, he thinks. Fuck.
His first thought is that Itachi has pulled some extra bastardly cards and genjutsu’d him, even after Deidara had been so helpful as to fly the asshole across two countries to an island in the fucking Nowhere Sea because he needed to get to a… chakra nexus or some shit before it dissipated.
“Haha,” Deidara says sarcastically to his reflection. “Very funny, asshole. Now let me out, yeah.”
Nothing happens, of course, because Itachi is the Actual Worst, and Deidara flares his chakra a few times to break the illusion. Nothing happens.
Deidara tries reminding Itachi that the bastard won’t be able to get back home without Deidara flying him. Then he calls Itachi names and insults his family and flares his chakra some more. When none of that works, Deidara bites himself hard enough to draw blood.
He’s still in his stupid Shared Home bathroom.
Maybe this is… not a genjutsu.
He bites himself again, just to be sure. Still nothing.
Deidara is forced to conclude that something even more fucked up than Itachi’s genjutsu is going on.
xXx
When he goes down to the ground floor, there are two genin he doesn’t remember at all in the kitchen, and one genin he does remember in the living room.
Her name is something -tsumi. Natsumi? He thinks it’s Natsumi. Deidara remembers her because he took over her single-occupancy room when she moved out. Will move out?
Whatever. He remembers her, so she’s the one he goes to for information.
She’s on the comfiest of the three couches crammed into the big room, with a piece of toast in her mouth and a large book in her lap. She’s glaring at it furiously, and Deidara recalls that she was interested in a non-combat gig, like cryptography or internal investigations or something.
He drops casually onto the other side of the couch and says, “Hey, Natsumi.”
“Ha- tsumi,” she corrects like she’s had to tell him ten times before, scowling intensely at her book but not looking up.
“What’s the date again?” Deidara asks.
She grunts out an answer. It’s the November after Deidara’s graduation from the Academy. He’s ten, with no money or family, using what he’s earned from shitty D-ranks to pay rent and scrape together groceries. There’s no hope for saving up for non-subsidized housing, but by the end of the month Deidara will get promoted to Genin Paygrade II, and then he’ll put himself on the waiting list for a single occupancy room in the Shared Home.
It will be Deidara’s first time ever having a room to himself, and he’ll be so happy he won’t even care that Hatsumi’s pet ferret stank up the whole room.
“Did I mention my mission schedule for the week at all?” Deidara asks, trying to decide if he wants to see his genin team again or not.
“What?” Hatsumi answers, finally lifting her glare to Deidara’s face. “No, we’re not friends. I don’t know or care what you do.”
Deidara abruptly remembers that everyone in Iwa is mean and rude to him, and that includes his genin team.
He goes back upstairs, where his dormmates are waking up. He dresses quickly, then packs up like he’s going on a mission. He slaps on more weapons than normal and packs away more personal items than necessary, but none of his dormmates seem to notice. He then heads to the roof.
It’s almost impossible to afford rent in Iwa on a beginning genin salary, so nearly all genin without familial support start off their careers staying in Shared Homes. They’re universally overcrowded, and most are ancient pieces of property where you’re lucky to have hot water and no cockroaches. Deidara picked this particular shithole Shared Home over some other shitholes because it’s at the top of a hill, and the rooftop terrace offers a fantastic view of Iwagakure.
Deidara hasn’t been in Iwa since he went missing-nin at fourteen. He spends a few moments eyeing old haunts: the ice cream shop Kurotsuchi used to drag him to, the multiple training grounds he was banned from for “unnecessary destructive force,” the Demolition Corps warehouse he used to steal clay from, and his first and only apartment where he rented a room from a retired jounin who had screaming night terrors.
Honestly, his whole time here was 95% shit. Deidara shoves a hand into the bag of clay he has at his back, because at ten years old he was an idiot and hadn’t realized it’d be easier to reach at his side.
“Good riddance,” Deidara mutters to his village, and then tosses out a small clay bird. A moment later, it’s as big as a horse, and Deidara hops onto its back. When he’s high enough over Iwa, he drops the biggest bomb he can manage with his ten-year-old’s chakra reserves.
It should be noted: Deidara was a monster even when he was a baby genin. The resulting explosion throws up enough heat that Deidara can ride the resulting gust of air out of the village at top speed.
xXx
This may not be a genjutsu, but it’s still Itachi’s fault, Deidara decides.
Once he’s blown up four separate Iwa hunter-nin teams, then screwed around in Rice Country for a couple months re-stocking his clay supplies and running boring mercenary jobs, he decides he could probably take on a baby Itachi. Itachi would be what, twelve? Thirteen? Itachi was a child prodigy, but so was Deidara, and now Deidara also has the full experience of an adult ninja.
He’s pretty sure he can take him.
Contrary to popular belief, Deidara can be sneaky when he wants to, and he’s also a ten year old kid. He gets into Konoha by wandering up to the gate and telling them he’s meant to sell clay figurines in the market for his mama.
He holds up a clay cicada to demonstrate. He has a whole bag of them.
“Oh, that’s pretty neat,” Gate Chuunin #1 says, blinking down at it.
Deidara beams at him. It is not an entirely disingenuous smile.
“Aren’t you a little young to be travelling by yourself?” Gate Chuunin #2 asks.
“Usually my big sister comes,” Deidara says, “but she and Mama both have flu.”
“Ah,” Gate Chuunin #2 says, flipping through the paperwork Deidara handed over. It was genuine license-to-sell papers Deidara had stolen from a merchant just the day before. “Poor thing. Well, you’re clear to go.”
Deidara goes.
His plan is this: locate Itachi, lure him into an isolated area, then blow him up and run like mad. It’s a good, simple plan no one in Konoha would see coming. They’d let him just walk in with stolen papers and a bag full of explosives, after all.
Konoha is a lot flatter than Iwa, with more wood and more open spaces. The central district is all cramped business and apartment buildings on top of each other, but the residential areas have more room to sprawl and many of the homes there would count as mansions in Iwa.
The Uchiha complex is its own residential area, with sturdy walls around it (presumably to keep out commoner filth), and of course Itachi grew up a rich bastard. It’s practically its own little village inside, with shops and grocers, and there’s only just enough non-Uchiha milling around for Deidara to not stand out.
Itachi probably had his own fucking room, Deidara gripes to himself.
Deidara buys himself a snack and asks the woman running the shop if she knows where Itachi is.
“Eh?” the woman says, blinking down at him. “A fan of Itachi-kun, are you?”
The only thing that holds Deidara back from screaming and blowing up the shop right then and there, is the sweet, sweet promise that once this lady tells him where Itachi is, Deidara gets to kill him.
“The biggest fan, yeah,” Deidara says through gritted teeth. “He’s so cool.”
Mentally, he cranks up his fantasy of the exact look on Itachi’s face when he realizes his chest cavity is filled with C4.
The Uchiha woman tries to tell Deidara it’s rude to bother Itachi when he’s in his home, but Deidara hits her with his best sad face. Deidara was a very cute ten year old. The woman melts quickly.
He easily finds where the woman says Itachi usually goes after work: a specific clearing behind the goddamn mansion the main family lives in. Deidara makes camp in one of the trees, and it’s dusk by the time Itachi shows up. He’s alone.
Exactly how Deidara wants him.
Deidara had planned to observe for a while to get a feel for this young Itachi, but as soon as he sees him, he can’t control himself. He stands on his branch and screams:
“ITACHI!”
The ground erupts with the clay insects Deidara had brought him, hundreds of cicadas emerging from their sleep. They claw over Itachi’s body, covering him in seconds.
Itachi just blinks up at Deidara, his face placid.
“You’re late,” he says.
“What?” Deidara asks. Why isn’t he terrified? Where was that sexy, sexy look of sudden realization of his own demise?!
“You're late,” Itachi repeats, but now he’s on the branch directly besides Deidara. Deidara is so shocked he nearly falls off. “You were supposed to come for me immediately.”
“Wha–” Deidara starts, flinging himself back against the trunk of the tree. There’s no more Itachi on the ground, where Deidara’s insects are writhing and crawling over each other uselessly.
Fucking genjutsu.
“It’s fine,” Itachi says, eyeing Deidara with apparent apathy. His eyes are red and glowing in the twilight. “I accounted for you being delayed when I picked the date to return to.”
Deidara screams and takes a swipe at Itachi, who dodges by flipping himself over to the next tree. Deidara follows, chucking clay spiders at him.
“Although I will admit,” Itachi continues, body-flickering away from the explosions, “I expected your delay to be from being detained by Iwa.”
“Wait,” Deidara says, pausing. He’s panting not from exertion but from the sheer, blinding rage of seeing Itachi. “You’re you.”
Itachi raises his eyebrows. “Who else would I be?”
“I mean,” Deidara growls, and flicks a hummingbird at him just for fun. Itachi dodges easily. “You’re you from the future.”
“Of course I am,” Itachi says, like Deidara is a bit slow.
“And I’m me from the future,” Deidara continues, feeling a bit hysterical.
Whatever the fuck Itachi did with the chakra nexus on the forbidden island, it ended with both of them traveling through time.
“What the FUCK,” Deidara yells, and then tries to punch Itachi in the face again.
xXx
Itachi, true to his nature, doesn’t explain shit. He says some things, sure, but nothing to explain the how or why of time travel. Instead he just sort of shuffles Deidara into his disgustingly huge house and introduces him to his mother.
“He’s a new friend,” Itachi says blandly.
His mother’s stupid pretty face is a mix of incredulous and delighted to have Deidara in front of her. Since Deidara knows Itachi much better than he’d like to admit, he’s confident Itachi doesn’t have friends, because no normal person would be able to stand being in his presence for more than thirty seconds. It must be a marvously novel event for her.
Deidara considers blowing a hole in the roofing and flying away. He can always try to kill Itachi again another day. Then again, the food on the stove smells really good, and Deidara hasn’t eaten all day.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Uchiha-san,” he grits out. He’s not used to being polite to people and the words feel unnatural in his mouth.
“Oh, call me Mikoto,” she insists. “I am so happy to have you, Deidara-kun.”
No one has ever been happy to see Deidara, except maybe his favorite clay supplier. He doesn’t know what to do. He settles on sitting, feeling stiff and awkward and stupid.
Maybe instead of coming back another time for just Itachi, he will also take a detour to blow off Mikoto’s head too for making him feel this way. Yes. That sounds good to Deidara.
He sits with Itachi in weird, awkward silence for a bit more, and Deidara spends his time glaring at Itachi. While Deidara still has some babyfat on his face, Itachi at twelve or thirteen or whatever doesn’t look all that different from the seventeen-year-old Itachi of Deidara’s first meeting. He’s mostly through his growth spurt already and tall for his age (and he doesn’t even have the humility to look gangly and awkward like a normal teen), with his hair in the same stupid ponytail. The bags under his eyes aren’t as severe, though, and his jaw isn’t as firm as it will be.
All the better to break it, Deidara thinks.
When Mikoto starts to place things on the table, Itachi gets up to help. Deidara sits alone in weird, awkward silence until a little kid runs in.
Intellectually, Deidara knows Itachi has a younger brother. Everyone knows the infamous Uchiha Itachi killed his whole family except his little brother, and on top of that, Itachi caused some drama by getting into a fight with his brother and Jiraiya the Toad Sage back when Deidara first joined Akatsuki.
Still. Deidara had never quite put it together in his brain that there was once a little screaming child who followed Itachi around calling him ‘big brother.’
“Nii-san!” the kid shrieks in his awful little kid voice. His voice is accusatory, which is how one should speak to Uchiha Itachi. “You said you’d help me with my homework when you got back!”
“I’m sorry, Sasuke,” Itachi says, and Deidara nearly falls out of his seat. Itachi? Apologize? What?
Itachi continues, “I ran into my friend and got distracted.”
Ah, twisting true events with lies to make himself seem better. Yes, this is more like the Itachi Deidara knows and hates.
Sasuke gives Deidara a critical one-over.
“Can’t be too friendly,” Sasuke says snootily. “I’ve never seen him before.”
“Brat,” Deidara hisses, even though Sasuke is completely correct. Deidara and Itachi are not friends. But he didn’t have to say it like that!
“Sasuke, this is Deidara,” Itachi says before Deidara can tell him off. “He’s staying for dinner.”
“Nice to meet you,” Sasuke mumbles, climbing into a chair. “Is Father eating with us tonight?”
“He’s working, dear,” Mikoto says, finally taking her own seat at the table.
“He’s been working all week,” Sasuke complains.
“You can take his plate to him,” Mikoto says diplomatically.
Deidara tries the food. It’s delicious. Fuck Itachi for growing up in a big house with his own room and people who worship him and a parent who makes good food.
They make it through about five minutes of silent eating before Mikoto asks Deidara how he met Itachi.
“Eh, mission,” Deidara says vaguely, and then shoves a bunch of rice into his mouth to avoid speaking further.
“A mission…?” Mikoto says, her eyebrows furrowing slightly.
“I led some survival training with Academy students a few months ago,” Itachi says smoothly, and Deidara nearly chokes on his rice. It’s a better lie than ‘mission,’ since Mikoto would have probably heard of a child genius graduating at nine, but still! Deidara is far from an Academy student!
This time Sasuke frowns. “I didn’t know you did stuff like that,” he says. “Why didn’t you come to my class?”
Itachi smiles softly at the kid which is, like, disgusting.
“Hokage-sama wanted me to spend time with shinobi my age,” he lies smoothly, and Deidara notes Mikoto perks up at those words. “I went with some of the older students.”
The rest of Mikoto’s scrutiny of Deidara is easier to lie through, mostly because he barely has to lie at all. His favorite lessons in the Academy are any that involve explosive tags. His goals as a shinobi are to combine his art with jutsu and make everyone recognize it as true art. No, he doesn’t like painting, he likes ephemeral pieces–
Itachi interrupts Deidara’s offer to give a demonstration with, “Maybe another time,” and Deidara kicks him. Sasuke looks downright offended.
The dinner ends with Mikoto talking about a local artist well enough that Deidara is interested in checking them out, even though they’re a photographer. He hates Mikoto so, so much for this.
When Deidara is full and Sasuke is excitedly filling a plate to bring to their father, Itachi leads Deidara back outside and Deidara can finally ask:
“What the fuck was that?”
“I need you to trust me,” Itachi says, leaning directly into Deidara’s personal space. His eyes are black but Deidara feels like he’s studying him just as intently as if he were using his stupid sharingan.
“Trust you?” Deidara sneers back. “After you threw me back in time against my will?”
“I–” Itachi starts. He pauses, takes a breath. “I can’t do this without you. I need you, Deidara.”
(“I need you,” Itachi stresses, his voice heady and firm and desperate, and Deidara thinks: fuck it, let’s go on this crazy mission.)
“Shit,” Deidara swears, and takes a step back. Itachi has brought him to the front of the house, and Deidara is sure nosy neighbors are spying on the clan heir and his weird new friend.
“I need you,” Itachi repeats, but now there’s that emphasis on the necessity of Deidara, and it’s almost like Itachi is admitting that yes, Deidara is just as good, if not better–
“Fine,” Deidara spits out, and Mikoto’s delicious dinner rolls and churns in his stomach. “What are we doing?”
“I can get you accepted into Konoha,” Itachi says, and then leads Deidara out of the Uchiha compound.
Deidara figures this can go one of two ways. The first option, which Deidara would prefer, is for Deidara to continue pretending to be an anonymous civilian kid until whatever Itachi needs help with is accomplished, and then Deidara can drop his cover, kill Itachi, and then be on his way. The second, which seems more likely as Itachi leads Deidara towards the tower in the heart of the village, is that Itachi tries to convince the Hokage to grant Deidara permission to stay legally. Deidara does not like this option, because he’ll almost definitely have to go through a probation period and, depending on the cover story Itachi gives, might have to submit to interrogations and chakra-dampeners.
Deidara is considering making a clay bird and fleeing when Itachi abruptly turns down an alley and opens a side-door to a ratty apartment complex. The door leads not into the building, but to a flight of stairs downward.
“Huh,” Deidara says.
“Don’t say anything,” Itachi says. “Let me do all the talking.”
Normally Deidara would argue, but the stairs lead down four stories into an entire secret village. Itachi has to use a special knock to get in. It is so weird and creepy that Deidara defers to Itachi’s (very annoying) lead.
Well, it’s not quite a village, so much as a bunch of dreary tunnels with somber looking shinobi shuffling around. They pass doors labelled things like WEAPON MAINTENANCE and KITCHEN and CLASSROOM E. Finally they get to a series of administrative offices, and Itachi has to use a series of passwords and special knocks to get someone to call for a “Danzo-sama.”
Danzo is an old man who greets them by complaining that Itachi came in late. Itachi takes this criticism with an entirely blank face and then apologizes, bowing deeply.
Under usual circumstances, Deidara would like anyone who could cow Itachi. Instead, he finds this Danzo person very suspicious. He doesn’t like anything that’s going on here.
They end up in an office with more privacy seals than Deidara has seen in his entire life.
“This is Deidara,” Itachi starts, and Deidara gives the man a two-fingered wave. “I found him outside the village.”
“Deidara, huh,” Danzo says, eyeing Deidara up and down critically. Deidara twitches. “And why have you brought him to me?”
“I assume you’ve heard of him,” Itachi says.
There’s a very long pause while Danzo switches his scrutiny to Itachi. His gaze is careful and measured, but Itachi is as unflappable and emotionless as a rock.
“I have,” Danzo says finally.
Deidara does not know what intel Konoha has about him, but he knows Iwa has been purposefully keeping him out of the bingo books of other nations. Missing-nin rarely take out as much of a village as Deidara did to Iwa, both in terms of structural damage and body count. He’s done enough damage that Iwa is trying to cover it up to avoid seeming weakened, and so of course this incredibly shady man all the way down in Konoha knows about him.
The thought makes Deidara smirk.
“What have you brought him to me for?” Danzo asks. “Why not Hokage-sama?”
“I thought you could use him more… effectively,” Itachi says slowly.
“Ah,” says Danzo, and the smallest smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. “How thoughtful of you.”
A few minutes later, four ANBU arrive and Itachi pulls Deidara’s clay pouches from his waist. Itachi whispers Trust me into Deidara’s ear as he does so, and Deidara swears and screams at him, even as the ANBU move to restrain him. Deidara definitely should have flown off while he could.
He does end up with chakra suppressing seals painted all over his body, although Danzo assures him it’s only until he’s been “re-educated” to Konoha’s standards. When they’re satisfied Deidara is no longer capable of blowing them all to tiny pieces, the ANBU march him to a dark, damp dorm that’s even worse than the one in the orphanage he grew up in.
Itachi, you fucking traitor, Deidara thinks as he’s shoved into a cot and told to stay there until morning.
“Hello,” the boy in the next cot whispers when the ANBU are gone. “My name is Shin. Welcome to ROOT.”
xXx
Deidara didn’t think he could hate anywhere more than the Iwagakure orphanage. Even the Share House and his apartment he shared with a jumpy, screaming jounin were better. Even the Akatsuki was better, even when Sasori was at his absolute bitchiest and Tobi was at his most annoying.
He hates ROOT more than all of those places, with a passion that burns so strong it makes his vision blurry if he focuses on it too much.
ROOT trainees are taught to squash all emotion, and Deidara is denied both breakfast and lunch on his first day for swearing at a commanding officer and then laughing at a kid losing a fight in a particularly embarrassing way.
Every morning they– that is, Deidara and a bunch of creepy, blank-faced children– sit through a few hours of “lectures,” which are mostly about how they are destined to give their bodies entirely to Konoha and feelings are the enemy of progress or whatever. Deidara mostly sleeps through them. The afternoons and evenings are all training: too grueling for most kids, but Deidara almost manages to have fun.
Almost, because down here fun is illegal. Deidara would rather be able to go outside and blow things up, thank you very much.
“Are you even allowed to have hobbies?” Deidara wonders out loud at some point.
“Not really,” says Shin, who is the poor idiot Deidara steals most of his food from. “My little brother likes drawing, though.”
“Drawing is a stupid hobby, yeah,” Deidara mutters, snagging the apple from Shin’s lunch tray. Deidara’s punishment is to watch other people eat, and there are older, fully “educated” ROOT agents to police them, but they’re not used to policing kids with mouths in their hands.
“Maybe if you stopped trying to escape,” Shin says in the level, emotionless tone they’re all required to use, “you’d be allowed more meals.”
“Whatever,” Deidara mumbles, and takes a bite out of the apple with his hand-mouth under the table. His hand-mouths don’t connect to anything, but he can hide food in there for later.
(Like a hamster! Tobi had exclaimed the one time he’d witnessed Deidara use this trick.)
They try physical punishments on Deidara too, when starving doesn’t seem to work. More than one senior ROOT operative manages to look confused when Deidara just laughs at them, because he’s a goddamn nineteen-year-old missing-nin with an S-class bounty in multiple nations and not some stupid kid, and he’s going to make all the assholes in this murky hellhole pay, chakra or no chakra .
All in all, it takes roughly two weeks for Deidara to figure a way out. Predictably, it involves fire and explosions.
When Deidara crawls out of the fiery hole he’s blown in the ground, Itachi is there.
“What–” Itachi starts.
“YOU FUCKING TRAITOR,” Deidara screams, and then tackles him. They roll through across the ground, wrestling as embers and flames lick at them.
“You’re not even getting burnt!” Deidara shrieks in outrage when he finally manages to pin Itachi by his shoulders directly into some smoldering pavement.
“Uchiha are largely fire-resistant,” Itachi says, and then reaches up and pats out a flame burning on Deidara’s shirt. “What happened?”
“I escaped after you fucking left me there–” Deidara hisses, leaning forward into Itachi’s stupid blank face. The pavement below him is red-hot and halos his stupid head.
“I meant for you to spy,” Itachi says mildly. His sharingan is active, a smoldering orange in the heat of the fire raging behind them. “I would have gotten you out in a few months. Your involvement in ROOT would have expedited you being naturalized in Konoha.”
“Great fucking plan, yeah,” Deidara answers sarcastically. His face is close enough to Itachi’s that he can feel the heat from the pavement and see his own reflection in Itachi’s eyes. He looks furious and crazy, with chunks of his hair burnt off.
Fuck, he thinks, I hate when that happens.
“Is Danzo–” Itachi starts.
“He’s dead, asshole,” Deidara cuts him off, bearing his teeth. “I made sure it went off right in his office, yeah. They’ll be lucky if they can find any solid piece of him–”
“Did you confirm?” Itachi asks, balling his fists in what’s left of Deidara’s shirt. “Did you confirm he’s dead?”
“I watched his head leave his body, yeah,” Deidara snarls. “I watched the look on his face right when he realized he’d trapped his whole little stupid army in an underground deathtrap just waiting for someone to set it off–”
“Oh,” says Itachi, looking relieved, and then he relaxes, letting his hands fall to Deidara’s sides.
Deidara rants some more about how he’d used the shoddy electrical system and the gas lines to blow the whole place to smithereens, and it takes him a while to realize Itachi is smiling back up at him.
“What?” Deidara asks, suddenly feeling awkward. He realizes she’s just been… straddling Itachi in the middle of some fire and not even beating the snot out of him.
“It’s nothing,” Itachi says as Deidara scrambles off of him. Itachi stands, brushing soot off himself. “This isn’t what I planned, but… it’s fine. Better, maybe.”
Deidara stands himself and assesses the damage he’s done to himself. A lot of minor burns, as to be expected, and one pretty nasty one across his back. He’s got some cuts in various degrees of nastiness from shrapnel. His shirt and pant legs are in tatters, and he’s going to have to cut his hair short.
Itachi is still standing there, watching him with an odd look of indulgence in his red eyes. The heat from the fire causes his bangs to float around his face, and he is backlit by the burning building behind him. Vaguely, Deidara is aware of people running around and screaming.
“I’m quitting your stupid plan,” Deidara says, eyes narrowed. “Since you betrayed me immediately.”
“I didn’t,” Itachi answers, taking a step towards him. “I just didn’t explain it very well.”
“You haven’t explained anything, yeah.”
“I do need you,” Itachi says, taking another step forward. Deidara stiffens. The hot air is hard to breath. “I can sweeten the deal,” Itachi says. “Help me, and I’ll help you. Whatever you want.”
His sharingan spins slowly. Deidara feels dizzy.
Deidara doesn’t want anything from Itachi, except maybe for him to gravel in front of him and beg for mercy.
“Genjutsu is a very useful tool,” Itachi reminds him.
That’s a good point, though. What Deidara really wants is to set up an art studio where no one will bother him, and then fund himself through his art. As a missing-nin, setting up a peaceful life would be so much easier if a genjutsu master occasionally came through and wiped everyone's memories of him being a missing-nin.
“Fine,” Deidara finally agrees, crossing his arms. “But you have to actually tell me things, yeah!”
“Of course,” Itachi agrees. The tiniest smile is on his face.
Deidara spends some time watching the huge pit of fire with immense satisfaction. It covers multiple city blocks, and surrounding buildings have also gone up in flames. Itachi stands with him, not trying to convince him it would be more pragmatic to move to safety and seek medical attention, like he usually would. Deidara rips his gaze away from the fire for exactly one second to discover Itachi, somehow, looks just as satisfied with the destruction as Deidara feels.