Chapter 23: The Weight of the Earth

"It doesn't work like that, yeah, you have to choose one or the other!"

He would have waved his arms around as if to emphasize his point, I think, if his hands weren't chained together with chakra-compressing wrist cuffs. He took in the slightly amused expression that was starting to play on my face and sighed, throwing his hands up in the air and slumping back against the wagon with a sigh.

I laughed.

"Oh come on, we've been over this six times through this long-ass carriage ride. Art is whatever moves me. Art is your explosions and Sasori's puppets, an a thousand other things besides. Now come on, tell me what Iwa was like back when you were a kid. I'm curious."

He made a face as if he'd rather keep arguing the point, but we had been over it no less than six times, and the journey was too long to spend it beating a dead horse.

"It was, I don't know. Dry."

I made a face.

"Dry? That's the best you can do? So basically, it's Suna."

He looked scandalized for a moment as he considered it.

"No! It's nothing like Suna! What the hell?"

I shrugged, leaning casually against the rough wood of the crude wagon we were riding in. I was cuffed too, with the same chakra-compressing cuffs they had used on Deidara. They dug in at my wrists and made me feel vaguely nauseous - I figured it was because I don't have chakra. Can't suck the chakra out of me if I don't have any. The fact that the cuffs were still trying was probably what was making me sick.

"It's warm. And dry, but not like Sand. It's…baked, yeah, if that makes sense. Everything's made of stone, and it's neat. It's not dusty like Suna, and it doesn't have wind like they have there. It's, uh, a bunch of holes carved into the mountain side, yeah. That's all."

He scoffed and tossed his hair in a disgruntled way, leaving it at that. I got a sort of feeling that said he was remembering things, so I didn't ask any more of him. I understood all too well wanting to leave the past where it was.

"Hey, Dei?" I asked as I vaguely wondered whether lying back was feasible in the limited space we had, and whether it would be any more comfortable than sitting the way I was…which was absolutely killing my back.

"What, yeah?"

I decided it was worth the effort and shuffled sideways until I had room to lie back, crossing my arms behind my head for support.

"What did you do before the Akatsuki?"

He raised an eyebrow.

"I thought you knew more about me than I do, hmm?" he answered dryly, though there was no malice in his tone, just a good-natured kind of griping.

It was after our first discourse on art that he brought it up. He knew enough of me to know that the whole prophetic dreams was a load of bullshit, and we'd met on a few occasions prior to the little misadventure we were embarking on, but we'd never really talked.

He knew already that I knew a lot about him, how much, I don't know. Surprisingly enough, what he knew he had heard from Kisame, who he had worked with guarding Itachi during his brief imprisonment, and Sasori who apparently tolerated me well enough for a civilian. I had never been sure of Kisame…We'd always gotten on rather well, but I knew his work ethic, and I knew that he would turn on me at the drop of a hat for the sake of his mission. I considered him a friend but liked to remind myself that there would likely be a day when he no longer would be.

To hear that Sasori had had anything complimentary to say about me was, quite frankly, surprising. I mean, I figured whatever supposedly approving thing he had told Deidara was probably something along the lines of 'not a complete and utter waste of the air she breathes,' but I digress.

We had talked, and he challenged what I knew about him, so I told him what went though his mind when he was defeated by Itachi, told him precisely what it was he saw in that man as he stood above him, the sky a blaze of color at his back, flanked by strange deities.

"No, I mean, I know the highlights of your life, you know? But…you stayed in Earth country for such a long time, I mean, you could have left. You could have shown the whole world your art. So why did you stick around?"

The way his horrified features contorted was equal parts disgusted and plain shocked.

"What the hell kind of question is that, yeah? I didn't stay, I kicked ass and then rode off into the sunset on the back of true art! Stay. There's nothing in that shitty place worth staying for, even less for a visionary like myself. As if I'd stay there, yeah!"

I laughed.

"But you didn't leave the Land of Earth until the Akatsuki dragged you away kicking and screaming! I'm pretty sure that counts as staying."

"Well I just wanted to make sure that every inch of this crappy country got a taste of my art before I left so that I'd never have to go back! That's all, yeah!"

There was so much more to it than that and I knew it because of the way he had started rambling rather aggressively. Oh, sure, he liked to come across as a bit of a one-track-minded moron or a blinkered intellectual most of the time…but there was so much more to him than that. As if he were aware of my analytical thoughts, he sat up to change the subject.

He never got the chance to, though, because just as soon as he had opened his mouth, a fist struck him in the back and had him doubling over with a cough. He sat up and turned sharply in his seat to face his attacker with a grin.

"You call that a punch, yeah? The princess over here's got a better left hook!"

When I caught a look at the anger that flickered briefly over the thick-necked guard, I wished that were true, because I was so dominantly right-handed I would have missed, my painfully glaring lack of strength besides. The guard pulled back his fist and hit Deidara so hard he tumbled backwards in to the wagon. I must have gasped or something, because as Deidara dragged himself up, the guard looked at me as if in warning. I drew further back nervously.

"If you're the best they could scrounge up to guard an S-rank criminal and a member of a ruling house, then Iwa's really gone to shit!" Deidara crowed even as the guard grabbed him by his foot and dragged him back towards him. He punched Deidara again and again and again, and Deidara just kept making smart ass comments and making him more and more angry.

"So, is the old wind bag still an irredeemably uncultured swine, yeah?" He teased as blood spilled from his mouth, "Or is it true you can teach an old dog new tricks?"

The rage on the guard's face was ugly and promising.

"You little -"

"Enough."

The guard with the thick neck shoved Deidara back into the wagon as if he were afraid of catching the plague. A man with long golden-blonde hair and slim, catty brown eyes looked down at us from his immense height.

He wore all black, shirt and pants slim and close-fitted, with gloves and black ninja sandals and had a narrow blade strapped in its sheath to his back. It was so thin, it looked like a rapier of sorts, but there was no real handle to speak of. His face was utterly and completely impassive, with particularly thin lips set in a perfect line. It was only once I had finished my precursory analysis that I realized it was horribly scarred.

And when I say horribly, I mean horribly scarred. Once I saw it, I couldn't stop looking. The scar tissue was vaguely tinted with a dark, earthy pink, and it was shinier than the rest of his skin. Faded burn marks in a wide, diagonal streak across his face, disappearing under the snug fit of his high collar. It gave him such a feral look, whatever small glimmer of recognition I had felt upon seeing him died where it had taken root.

"Asuka Tendo," he said in opening after a long, hard look at Deidara.

I did not flinch back when he turned completely to me, though even I could tell that he was a different class altogether from the guard that had been assigned to us.

"I prefer Izanagi-hime, if you don't mind."

My voice was glacial, and I caught Deidara giving me a smirk of approval out of the corner of my eye. It was warming, although I didn't do it for him. Well, maybe a little. But frigid manners and an insistence on formality were self-defense to me, a reminder to my enemy that despite whatever else I might be, I had power. Well, an illusion of it, at any rate. The scarred man paused for a moment, narrow eyes on mine.

"Izanagi-hime," he said, his voice carefully neutral, as if he were fighting between two warring emotions. "Are you too good, now, for the name you were given?"

"You presume too much," I said, I cringed at the muted grief that slipped through my intentionally haughty tone.

Deidara didn't catch it, because he wasn't looking for it, nor would have ever expected to find it in my voice, but this strange man did, and his gaze sharpened on mine, searching, until he turned away.

"We arrive at sundown," was all he said, and then he was gone.

And so it was that I was brought to the Village Hidden in the Rocks for the very first time not in the manner I once dreamt of, but as a prisoner. I was dragged out of the wagon by ill-mannered ninja, a man and a woman, the latter more stronger and fiercer than the first. Deidara was thrown out of the wagon, and compared to the rain of blows he suffered, I was treated like glass. We were thrown into the same prison; we were indeed, as we had earlier been told, to share the same fate.

Deidara was taken for a little while, to "speak" with the Tsuchikage. He came back in bad shape, but he was pure bravado and called his insults through the solid walls until the muffled footsteps of his tormentors were gone.

"They'll come for you next, yeah," he observed as we sat in silence, pointedly ignoring my tenuously phrased concern for his injuries.

The mouths on his hands turned bloody grins on me even as he pulled up a corner of his bruised, tender mouth in a painful smirk.

"Don't worry, they probably won't rough you up too bad because they'll want you, hmm, nice and pretty for when they drag us through the streets to our execution. Might smack you around a bit, yeah, but watching those idiots get mad is usually worth it."

"Is that what happened to you?" I asked, as I purposefully looked him up and down to emphasize the blood staining his torn, filthy clothes. He let out a choked laugh, cringing and moving an arm around his ribs.

"Something like that, princess. They don't take well to criticism, yeah."

I could only imagine, I thought, and then the door was being opened and he was being ordered back against the wall, and the Tsuchikage's cronies were dragging me up like some invalid, hands under my arms, stripping me of my dignity with their roughness and disdain.

"I can walk," I said haughtily, tearing my arms from their grips as if it was my strength that won me that freedom and not their indulgence.

Deidara's crowing laughter followed us out of the prison.

"That's going to be a hell of a bruise, yeah," Dei observed later from where he had sprawled himself across the floor of our cell as I was shoved back in and the door slammed shut behind me. I turned my head toward him proudly, showing off an intensely red patch of skin and the splotches of purple forming surely beneath it.

"The Tsuchikage doesn't like being reminded to call me by my title very well," I offered as explanation nonchalantly, "and his guards less so."

Deidara snorted, rolling carefully onto his back.

"He's an elitist ass, yeah, and the morons who work for him are even worse. But even if you're just from a little country like Rain, you're the equivalent of a feudal lord and you outrank him. Rub it in his face every chance you get, yeah? As a personal favor to me."

I laughed a little carelessly.

"Alright. I will."

I did not tell him what I spoke of with the Tsuchikage, or that the man with the scarred face had pulled me to the side, alone. We simply spoke to pass the time, because I was afraid in the way of a woman relying on the word of the man she trusts least and Deidara was too tense, like a bow pulled taut, planning his escape if the plan failed. We talked, not as Princess Izanagi of Rain Country and Deidara, S-Ranked Criminal from the Land of Earth, but as Ite and Dei, who had suffered the long journey to Iwa together and would share a sentence.

We talked and talked and talked, and we made a fanciful plan of where we would go if we could leave the Akatsuki, made a game of it and were merry. We did not discuss our future, though he assured me once, very quietly, with a near inaudible whisper near my ear that we would be fine, even if we had been abandoned…that he had a plan.

We had been there for a few days when he decided he had lowered my guard enough to find out what he must have been dying to know from the very beginning.

"You're a citizen of Earth then, hmm?" He started quite casually, leaning against the wall as if he weren't in full-blown interrogation mode, taking not of every subtle movement I made, analyzing me like he must have done to a thousand others way back when.

"Just ask, Dei. I think you've more than earned it."

He grinned, but I could tell his thoughts were elsewhere, because his eyes were too sharp on mine. He was thinking of precisely what he wanted to know, how to word his questions, how to maximize his efficiency in taking what he wanted from me. It's how shinobi work. I understood that at this point, so I let him have at it.

"There's only three ways to get citizenship in Iwa without presenting documentation and taking up residency for a few years. You weren't born here, yeah, and we both know it wasn't because you were a 'political refugee' or whatever they call turncoats that can be absolutely trusted nowadays…which only really leaves one option."

He was an indisputable genius. Even Tobi, Tobi, whoever he was, had not thought of it. Had not stopped to think that maybe, quite possibly, such a thing could be true.

"You're right," I stated quietly, gazing idly at the light that filtered in through the high windows of our cell. "I'd rather not…go into that. But you're right, Dei."

I left it up to him, to press me for more or to leave it, but I suppose he had been satisfied with whatever he had seen in my face because he leaned back against the wall, letting out a casual "hmm" that told me he wasn't done, but he wouldn't push. I didn't want to talk about it, and he let me be. I would remember that, I would remember that small kindness and I would repay it one day.

We were left nearly entirely to our own devices in the cell. I knew why, and so did Dei. We were prisoners of importance; if we were sentenced to death as most traitors like us are, it would be an incident of international consequence and would be enough to spark a war.

"Ite! Wake up, dammit."

I shot up, grabbing hold of Deidara's arm, my breathing hard. He held me up by the front of my robe, looking into my eyes until he was satisfied that I was well and properly awake. I tried to slow my breathing deliberately, sickening guilt crushing down on my shoulders with all the weight in the world.

"I'm sorry, I-"

"Had a nightmare, yeah," Deidara answered, looking a bit tired as he scooted back to his preferred section of wall. He was silent for a moment, then said in a casual tone that belied his burning interest, "You said his name."

I let my eyes close wearily.

"I dreamt of him. I suppose that's natural," I answered, hugging myself as best I could with still cuffed hands as I leaned against my side of the cell. I could feel his eyes burning into me in the pause between my words and his.

"How did he die?" He asked after what felt like an endlessly long time.

I sighed. It was what the scarred man had asked me, what he had pulled me aside as he escorted me to the Tsuchikage, cornered me, to ask. How did he die? I answered him. Too many people were asking me these questions, too many people were bringing him up again. I think that sometimes people forget that I'm human. I lied from the very beginning about the circumstances in which I came here. That was wrong, and it had consequences. Was it fair, though, to blame me for that? I was grieving. I was afraid. So I ran. I ran as far from the past as I could, and I dishonored him by pushing him to the back of my mind.

"For me. He died for me." I said quietly, wringing my hands in front of my face nervously.

Neither of us spoke another word, and I did not sleep. It started the first night in our cells, and every night the dreams grew worse and worse. Maybe not worse…they were bliss, at some parts, beauty and lightness and joy…but they all ended the same.

Nine days of imprisonment passed in the cell, which was thankfully clean, if empty, and lit with natural light during the day from the high, thin window near the ceiling. We were given three meals a day, and clean water to drink besides. It was nothing like where Kimimaro and I had been, and it kept me sane. Nine days passed, and on the eve of the tenth, Dei and I were strung tenser than a rubber band on the verge of snapping.

If Tobi kept his word, which I couldn't be sure of based on…based on the way he had reacted when I told him. If he kept his word, at any rate, we would be freed in three days.

The plan had been this: I would publicly announce my intent to face justice in Iwa, and as a show of good faith, I would bring Deidara with me. Iwa wanted me more than him, anyway, because I could be used as leverage against Rain. So, we were extradited. We were brought to Rain, and as Pein predicted, we were imprisoned without trial and no further action was taken. The Tsuchikage, thinking as all the world did, that I was the only leader Rain had, did in fact, as Pein had presumed, decide to wait for Rain to break. A nation without a leader was a nation in chaos. He was right about that, but Rain wasn't leaderless.

It was a risky plan, but it was necessary. If the war started before we were ready, it would likely come to Rain Country itself, and I would not bring war onto our soil. There would be war, but on our terms. By the time our imprisonment was over, Iwa would no longer be a threat, I would never have to hear the name Asuka Tendo again, and Rain would be established as a political power equal to that of one of the Five Great Nations.

I kept that thought at the forefront of my mind when I was suddenly taken from my cell by the man with the scarred face. He pulled me along behind him, away from the main doors where two guards stood as if unseeing, deeper into the prison, and disappeared quite suddenly into a little corner, taking me with him.

"Lord Onoki is being pressured by the council to have you killed," he started without preamble as he pushed me against a wall, hiding us both in the shadows. "The traitor too."

My heart pounded furiously in my chest, and I wondered if this was it, if it was the end.

"I asked you once before, and I'll ask you once again: how did he die?"

"His name was Akarashi Tendo," I bit out in answer, angry and afraid, "and he was a good man. He died to save my life. He died for me."

I was so sick of answering that question I could have screamed. But the scarred man in front of me simply looked at me for a moment with regret, then twisted the faded burn marks on his face into a grotesque approximation of a smile.

"I'm going to help you, Ikite Izanagi. The last time we spoke, you asked me who the hell I was, what gave me the right to ask you about him. I will tell you: nothing. I lost that right long ago."

I knew before he told me who he was, saw too late beneath the scars the resemblance.

"My name is Souken and I will help you escape because Akarashi Tendo was my brother and you were his wife. The council plans to kill you to prevent you from retaliating if you are returned to Rain. Ideally, we'll be long gone by then."

The Weight of the Earth/End.