He grabbed the blond bundle of hair that clung to his scalp and ripped the hair tie out, tossing it to the ground. As each strand got accustomed to gravity and fell beside his face, he could feel some stick to the wet surface of his cheeks.

A giant clay bird appeared beside him, craning its neck around to assess its surroundings. They were far enough from the Akatsuki lair that he could use jutsu.

As he stepped up on his creation, ready to take flight, one foot lay dormant on the earth.

"It's alright, hm." He stared back at the hair tie, petting his bird. It seemed more of a reassurance to himself than anything else. "I entered this organization with my hair down, I'll leave as I came."

And as he positioned himself on the clay, he felt more tears sprout from his eyes. But that was ok. It was better to get it over with now.

Get it over with and take flight.

***

Panting. Sweat. Desperation.

Why hadn't he done something sooner? Why hadn't he figured it out?

It was all his fault. Everything.

He remembered screaming, the door being slammed in his face, things being thrown around. It was all a show. It was a cry for him to realize the hurt he had caused.

The pain.

But he hadn't understood. He hadn't recognized. And now…

Deidara was gone.

There was weight, pressure that bore down on him. It made it almost impossible to run. Trees past by, green blurs, and he could hear his own voice. Calling.

Desperately calling.

It felt as though his legs were numb and bounced as he took each step. Yet at the same time he felt heavy, almost slow, and there seemed to be nothing he could do to put himself back in reality.

"This feeling… This motion, this voice, this heart… I feel so human. I wanted to change myself so I wouldn't have to be held down by human capacity, by human…"

An image of Deidara flashed in his mind and he winced.

"…Hurt. But really I was just running away. Why did it take so long to pull me out? To make me understand that this-" His hand grabbed at his chest and he gulped in more oxygen. "-Heart would never let me run away. But now Deidara's run away. I have to find him. I have to show him… Pull him out of the dark like he did me. I have to-"

***

"Chakra loss." He said to himself, dismissing his clay jutsu. It disappeared in a puff of smoke that quickly scattered as he heedlessly admired the area that surrounded the rocky edge he was on.

Looking down, it was quite a fall.

"I just didn't eat enough. Not too much stamina, that's all. I have to wait a bit, and then fly again… Just a bit."

It was a sough that brought on a wave of grief that could only be actualized by the intimidation of loss. He slumped down and curled his legs up, hugging his knees to his chest and resting his head on them. The breeze blew about the ledge he was perched. But he gave it no mind and slowly unzipped his Akatsuki cloak, letting it be taken behind him to the stretch of the cliff by the wind. It was useless to him now.

The thought of going back crossed his mind. Stop running away and turn back to his organization. But what was there for him?

"Sasori."

A stab of pain shot through him. But what was he to do?

"I better start getting used to that name soon. I'm probably gonna be thinking about it a lot now so…"

There was no way to stop it; the tears began to pour once again.

"Am I weak? For putting my trust in someone, am I weak…? And to think I actually thought… That he thought he… Might've…"

He sniffed, biting his lip but then letting out a sob that could not of been contained.

"Loved me."

And as wretched cries tore through his throat a voice called inside.

"So what now? You have nothing, what are you going to do, hm?"

He sniveled and wiped an eye with the back of his wrist. "I don't know… I'll just go back home, back to Iwa…"

It surprised him a bit that he spoke out loud to himself but startled him even more that something actually answered him back.

"Back to Iwagakure? Bah! You know there's nothing for you there! No one has a use for you any more, Deidara. You have no where to go and no one to run to."

"Then what am I supposed to do?!" He shouted back at himself, this was stupid. But it was some sort of outlet that he could work with. A kind of backdoor.

It's hostile voice dripped with ice as it answered. "Disappear."

"What…" He almost choked. "What do you mean…?"

"Do you want to keep going on in this world in this disgusting form? Look at yourself! Useless piece of shit under anyone's boot. Running away won't help. That's a pointless existence. Disappear. If you really want to, do it right now. Show them what this world is like without our art."

Deidara stood up unsteadily and peered down at himself, revealed under the fishnet shirt.

"Disgusting."

The stitches on his chest twitched.

"Abomination."

He slammed a hand to the stitches and felt them under his fingers.

"Disappear."

"Shut up…" He gasped, as if at a loss for oxygen. There was a sense inside him that he couldn't breath. "Just… Shut up!"

"And if you really want to…"

"I said, SHUT UP!!" He screamed at himself, raising both hands up to clutch his skull. It really felt like he was suffocating now.

"Show them what this world is like without our art…"

"SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!!!" He was shaking his head back and forward, staring down the cliff, terrified.

"Show them…"

"No!"

"Show them."

"No!!"

"Show them!!!"

"NO!!!"

Quivering hands went to his heart, tearing the fishnet.

"I-I-I'm bad."

"That's right."

"I-I'm disgusting?"

"That's right."

"So I have to… End myself… With a blast. So I won't end s-so… Uselessly."

There was no reply, but he knew what it would say. His oscillating fingers suddenly became firm and gripped the string at the end of his shut-in 'mouth'. A sadistic grin grew across his face until it almost reached ear to ear.

"I'll… Show them… Show…"

And for the briefest moment, which seemed like an eternity, a flash of his wooden counterpart broke into his mind and his face crumpled as he still held the string, ready to pull and set free his last piece of art.

"I'll show-" His face set. "-You!!"

His hand swooped and he grimaced, ready to feel the pain of the stitches getting ripped apart from his flesh.

But there was no pain, only a sense of self as he opened his eyes to see a hand gripping his wrist, not allowing it to move.

"Sorry, you haven't gotten away yet."

Thudding in his ears as he heard the voice. The voice that he'd been longing for set quietly as the breeze around the two blew and shaped them together, frozen.

Slowly, he let go of the string and turned, greeted with two emerald eyes as he averted his own.

"What are you doing here…" He drifted off as Sasori wiped a tear off of Deidara's cheek he hadn't known was there.

"I'm stopping you from making the biggest mistake of my life." He stated as though it were a fact. But still gently, ever so gently.

"It doesn't matter, hm." Deidara could hear his voice crack under the pressure of restraining his ever-imminent tears. "I'm only an experience, and now that you've experienced me just throw me out with all your broken puppets, ok? I have no more use to you."

There was silence before Deidara hesitantly focused his eyes back to Sasori's. Of all the times, he suddenly realized that he was taller than the redhead and for some reason found a problem with this.

Sasori's right eyebrow raised. "Do you really think I'd be standing on a two hundred and eighty foot tall ridge, coming to apologize once again to you if all you were to me was a broken puppet?"

"But you said-"

And suddenly Sasori had Deidara up against him, embracing as though if he let go Deidara would float away.

"What I said was just the pitiful attempt of a man trying to run away from humanity. It was repulsive and lowly. Please, forgive me."

"Oh.." Deidara sniveled, than buried his face in Sasori's shoulder. "Oh danna..!" But he couldn't say anymore, his sobs echoing over the cliff side.

There was a slight lapsing of time until Deidara pulled himself together enough to speak and both he and Sasori dropped to their knees at the same instant.

Deidara cocked his head at the Band-Aid on Sasori's cheek and ran his finger across it, feeling the indent. "I did that, huh?"

Sasori shrugged. "Yeah, but," He touched along the scratch he had left on Deidara's cheek a few days before then. "I did that."

Deidara smiled and Sasori brought up a clenched hand out of one of his pockets. "I found this…"

He dropped the hair tie into Deidara's hand and just as he realized what it was, a fierce blush rose in his cheeks.

"M-my hair's down, hm…"

Sasori smirked. "Yeah." He pushed Deidara down, back first on the ground and stayed his position on top of him. "Isn't it nice?"

A worried expression came across Deidara's face. "You want to… Again? Aren't you…"

Sasori pressed his lips firmly onto his and then released, but stayed perched on his bottom lip. "You might as well be quiet now if you're going to get into the idea of me feeling around your perfect body, because I've already decided that I will."

"Perfect?" Deidara questioned, almost astounded. "What do you mean perfect? I'm far from it, hm."

There was no reply until Sasori had one hand gliding over Deidara's nipples the other down his pants. His mouth bit the blonde's neck, feeling as he panted and then let go. Deidara could feel the smile grow on his lips and looked down at him wondering if he what made him so happy.

Sasori glanced to him too and actually grinned.

"You're perfect to me."

***

~So? How'd you like it? It took some serious effort to write this thing, as does any story of its kind. I sure hope you all liked reading it as much as I liked writing it. And let's be truthful, by the end even I was getting giddy wondering what would happen next. (=^-^=) But this is about all I can say at the moment, I should be getting to bed now. Please review, tell me how you took the ending, I defiantly loved writing Deidara's little schizophrenic moment there. XD I have decided to write another Akatsuki pairing yaoi, which is a prelude to this one. Who shall it be I wonder? Well you're just gonna have to find out! Anyway, please review, tell me what you thought, and have a marvelous day~

~This story is dedicated to someone I loved, love, and will always love. My life will never be the same because a piece of me is with you. I feel empty without it. But I would rather you take it away from me than me never have given it to you in the first place.

You will always be in my heart~