A/N While I was struggling with chapter 6 of An Affair of the Heart, I unexpectedly came up with this... so I hope it will keep everyone going who's been waiting for an update...

Kakuzu looked at the flyer on his desk. It was printed on thick, high quality card and showed part of the face of a young man - semi-transparent, bright and transient looking as it faded or fragmented into a dark background of charcoal lines. Along the bottom edge ran the words 'Akatsuki Gallery' in modest sans serif capitals. Along the top, 'Exploding The Myth,' and the artist's name. Deidara. Kakuzu knew him fairly well by now. He'd first spotted his work at his degree show when he graduated from Chelsea, and had kept an eye on his shows while he was doing his MA at the Royal College. He owned several of his earlier works - from back when it was actually possible to stabilise them. Now Deidara, as he'd predicted, was really hitting the big time. He was being shown internationally, and his work featured in a lot of major collections. He'd won the Jerwood drawing Prize last year with a drawing made out of ash which had disintegrated entirely (and fortuitously) on the last day of the exhibition. Kakuzu personally thought that was luck, but Deidara had refused to make any but the most ambiguous comment.

It had been at his MA show that Kakuzu had been introduced to him - it turned out that Sasori no Akasuna, another artist whose works featured in Kakuzu's collection, knew him well. He'd been a visiting lecturer on Deidara's degree, and they'd got on very well and kept in touch, despite being absolute polar opposites in most people's opinions. Kakuzu and Sasori had gone round the MA shows together that year - he found Sasori's company restful and his eye discerning, and Deidara was one young artist that he'd insisted on introducing.

Akatsuki Gallery was just off Hoxton Square - it was a commercial gallery, but with a reputation for showing exciting new artists. Kakuzu knew Konan, the gallery's manager, quite well by now. He was a personal friend as well as a valued customer, inasmuch as he allowed himself to become truly personal with anyone these days. He'd never met the gallery's owner, Nagato Pein, in person, but this was not surprising - the man was famously reclusive, to the extent that all his business was conducted by a series of smooth blond secretaries and personal assistants. (Kakuzu did handle quite a few of his investments, though, through the medium of the go-between always introduced as 'Mr. Pein's financial secretary'). Kakuzu himself was also one of the gallery's shareholders.

But none of these things explained the excited buzz he felt about attending this particular opening, nor did they explain why the card had lain on his desk since it had arrived a week ago, despite the date having been in his diary for the last month. Kakuzu ran his thumb down the edge of the card, then flipped it over. Just the normal information - a tiny section of map, showing how to get from Old Street tube station to the gallery, the gallery's address. Akatsuki Gallery invites you to attend the opening of ... Kakuzu let his eyes skim over the text that he already had by heart, simply by virtue of looking at the card so many times. New work by internationally acclaimed artist... ground-breaking... burst explosively onto the scene... same old, same old. Kakuzu sighed.

He propped the card up at the back of his keyboard, resting it against his computer screen, and calmly regarded it, trying to logically work out what in that face had captivated him. Certainly, it was a handsome face, but Kakuzu had seen a lot of handsome faces. None of them had ever made him feel this degree of fascination. He couldn't ever recall an image making him want to see its subject quite this badly. Which was why when Konan had called him yesterday asking if he wanted to see the show privately that evening (along with herself and 'Mr. Pein's social secretary'), since she knew that the loud and vacuous atmosphere of a Private View wasn't really his thing - though God knows, he attended enough of them - he'd declined, citing a previous engagement. 'I'll brave the PV,' he'd said 'I'm sure it'll be worthwhile.'

And he was sure it would, even though he might have missed a chance to make some advantageous early purchases. A vast amount of art world contacts and alliances were formed at Private Views, after all. People were having fun, they were open and suggestible. A lot of Deidara's recent work had centred around this man - Hidan, Dei had said his name was, (Kakuzu hadn't been able to keep the syllables out of his head since he first heard them) - and he was bound to be at the opening night. Kakuzu had heard quite a bit about him, one way or another. Sasori had worked with him too and had provided a bit of toned-down gossip. (The 'People' column in the Times had also been quite informative...). It seemed that Hidan was in the process of becoming distinctly notorious and had recently gone from being a very sought after life model - sought after, apparently, because he'd do anything, and could hold the most bizarre positions for fantastic lengths of time - to being a definite personality in his own right, a muse for several eminent artists, and being courted by the world of couture. He still did life modelling, apparently he said it was more satisfying, but was said to have recently signed a very lucrative deal with Comme des Garçons. He was reputed to be a paparazzo's dream - an aggressive, foul-mouthed bad boy who also happened to be part of some crazy cult that fetishized self harm. He was invited everywhere, and you could count on him attending for the free booze. He was, in fact, publicity incarnate, which was why no-one minded that he nearly always caused some kind of scene.

Really, just the opposite of Kakuzu. He sighed, and looked at the time. It was already 6.15 and he had another client to see, who he'd had to reschedule after an earlier meeting over-ran. He wasn't going to be able to go home after all, as he'd planned, and he certainly wouldn't make the gallery by 6.30 - not, of course, that he would want to - most people probably wouldn't arrive until a little later. Still, he could shower and change here - he always kept a change of clothes in his office, just for circumstances like these.

Kakuzu was an investment banker, but he hadn't always been. Kakuzu in his youth had been passionate, creative and idealistic - it felt like a long time ago now. He'd trained in medicine, and wanted to become a surgeon. He'd been among the most brilliant students in his year, and destined for the top of his profession until, as an over-worked junior doctor, something had gone wrong with one of his patients. Kakuzu still wasn't sure if anything he'd done differently could have saved Shodai Hokage. But it was then that he'd seen a nastier, darker side of the NHS. The scapegoating, the colleagues he'd thought were friends as well turning their backs on him. The registrar who should've been there to back him up disclaiming all responsibility... Even now, years later, Kakuzu mouth tightened and his fists clenched at the bitter memories. He cursed himself for letting the poisoned thoughts flow out into the comfortable world he'd built for himself. He felt a echo of that feeling now - all the desire to make things better, to make ground-breaking advances in heart surgery, to help people, just flooding out of him. He'd wanted no part of it anymore. He'd abandoned the medical profession, done a law conversion, then got a job in the City.

The soulless City - Kakuzu smiled wryly - that was what people thought, that he'd sold out, lost his integrity, his heart. But strangely enough, the City - the beating heart of London's financial industry - had felt like a balm to his lacerated feelings. He was good at it - both the work and the world it created - and had risen quickly. In a few years he was an investment banker with an indecent bonus, and a reputation for his mystic calm and relaxed air on the trading floor. If he'd ever felt the need to explain himself to anyone, he might've said that after his senior postgraduate year in one of London's most overloaded hospitals, he wasn't going to lose his cool over the fluctuations of the stock market. But Kakuzu didn't explain himself. He didn't tend to let himself get very close to people now. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he didn't feel the urge to.

It had been at around that time that he'd started to invest in art, and gradually he'd taken over the directorship of his bank's art investment portfolio. It had begun as an interesting sideline which didn't really feel like work, but now he was probably the most influential Art Investment Fund Manager in the country. He'd built up his own collection alongside and liked to think his own was the more daring and varied of the two - after all, he was willing to buy things the bank viewed as a little too wild. His eyes flicked over the four tribal masks that hung on the wall opposite his desk. They'd been his first acquisitions, and kept an established place in his heart. Just now, the pinkish evening sunlight was bringing out their deep colours, emphasising their richness and the strange features of their grimacing faces.

Bringing himself back to the present with a little shake of his head, Kakuzu buzzed through to his secretary and told her to send in his client. He put the invitation face down on the desk - he didn't want that face breaking his concentration. As he did so he thought he saw an expression of sadness - or no, more specifically, woundedness - in the young man's curious reddish violet eyes, but perhaps it was just a trick of the light as the card flexed in his hand. He didn't turn it over again for a closer look. He had more self control than that.

Turning his mind back to the matter at hand as the door opened, he rose and walked around the desk to greet his client, projecting, as always, an air of absolute calm and confidence.