YAYYYYY! I finally updated!

Neonn is going to be mad at me for working on fanfiction! Instead of my novel for nanowrimo! Even though I'm behind my word count by like 10K!

But I suddenly got a whole bunch of reviews and felt inspired to finish my chapter-in-waiting at the soonest possible convenience.

So enjoy!

Sakura stooped to sit on a rock to rest. She looked up at the sun. It was around midday. And ridiculously hot.

Well, this is ‘Fire’ country for a reason.

Buck up, Sakura Haruno! Don’t let a little heat get to you!

Last time I checked, it was 104 degrees.

Oh who am I kidding…THIS HEAT IS UNNATURAL!

“I thought you said three days, Deidara! This IS the third day and we aren’t anywhere near Kumo.” She was angry but her voice lacked the power to express it. ‘Kumo’ ended on a sigh as she reached for some water from her pack.

“Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry. I don’t know how long it takes as a civilian, yeah. I just told you the ninja numbers.” He was as tired as her. Thank god he didn’t have to wear his cloak in this heat since he was pretending to be a civilian. Deidara flopped on his back next to where Sakura sat. There weren’t any trees around for miles; the forest had ended on their first day. No shade. No shelter. Just dirt and sun. Searing, sweltering, sun. Deidara felt like he was in the center of one his explosions.

But at least there was grass. Short and stubby it may be, it was still green and soft. He moved his arms up and down against the grass like a child making a snow-angel for a minute. Staring up at the blank sky, he sighed. Feeling another bead of sweat roll down his face, he fought the urge to wipe it off because in touching his face, he would irritate the sunburn. Instead, he reached for Sakura’s ankle and tugged on it.

She looked down at him, raising an eyebrow.

He’s been acting strange these last three days.

It’s the heat! I’m telling you, it’s the heat!

No…I think it’s something else.

What else could it possibly be?! We’re both suffering from dehydration!

No…we’re not dehydrated yet, we’ve had just barely enough water.

She handed him her canteen. He took it without a word and poured its contents into his mouth. She watched quietly as the last drop of their water vanished.

“That’s the last of the water, Deidara.”

You idiot! Why’d you let him finish it all?!

Because we’re in this stupid thing together. He has to survive.

It’s wayyy tooo hot to be stuck in the middle of nowhere with no water and barely any food left. We have to get out of here soon.

You’re right.

“Really, un?” Deidara sat up slowly. “Then what are we going to do?…Kumo is probably another 3 days away on foot and I didn’t see any rivers or streams running nearby.” Deidara stopped talking and tore up a fistful of grass and then let the blades rain down in front of him. “Our only chance of making it through is if it rains today, yeah.”

Okay…he’s definitely not acting himself.

He’s just tired, like you.

No, as far as I know, even if he’s tired…he doesn’t resort to …Tobi-like behavior.

His one cheek is sunburned again, better fix it.

Sakura knelt down next to him and stared up at the sky.

“There isn’t a single cloud in the sky. The chance of rain is far too low to even think about. Your face is burned again.”

Deidara sighed in dismay and dropped back down from his upright position so that Sakura could bend over him and heal his face for the third time that day. Even though getting sunburned was painful and annoying, he didn’t mind it too much since there was something that he liked about it very much. The fact that Sakura got so impossibly close to him that it was nearly unbearable to not …there she was. He stared up at her as she held a cooling green hand his cheek. Her face was smudged with sweat and dirt. He viridian eyes focused, intensely concentrating on the task at hand. And her lips were slightly parted and even though it was hot, the small, steady warm breaths seemed cool to Deidara. He was barely breathing, not wanting to shift and cause her to lose her concentration. If she did, then she’d look at him and all the serenity of calm of the moment would be lost and Deidara did not want that at all. If anything, he wanted it to last, maybe long enough so that he could recreate it. No. What was he thinking? He must really be going delusional. He couldn’t create something so perfect. No artist could. The only thing he could do was to just enjoy it while it lasted. Maybe embrace it.

Yeah, embrace it. Hold it close.

“Deidara! What are you doing?” Sakura’s muffled voice came from where her face was squashed into Deidara’s collarbone.

“Mmmp” Good things only lasted forever in dreams. Especially if they were those day dreams of delirium. Deidara loosened his one-armed embrace just enough that Sakura was able to wriggle into a more breathable position, but not enough to allow her to get up.

“Let go of me right now! And you get up too!” Deidara lifted his head to come face to face with an angrily blushing Sakura. Yes! He thought. Grinning, he let his head fall back.

“No.” He figured that if they were just going to die in the heat in the middle of nowhere, it might as well be like this. Especially since Sakura was blushing again. Perfect ending in his opinion.

Sakura struggled unsuccessfully for a few more minutes to get out of his hold before collapsing on him and breathing hard from her efforts. She could have used chakra to escape, but not without hurting him in the process.

“You sound tired, yeah. Here, take a break.” Deidara patted her back consolingly. Sakura lifted her head again and glared at him.

“You idiot! It’s because of you!” Deidara cracked an eye open and stared at her lazily.

“Hmm? What is, un? Are you out of chakra?”

“NO! It’s because you…you….chakra?” Sakura gasped mid-sentence as something dawned on her.

“Deidara!”

“Hm?”

“You still have your chakra, don’t you? In fact, you’re still full to the brim. You haven’t used any in …what? Since we left that last town as civilians?”

“If I die as civilian traveler, I’d never be able to forgive myself, un. But since I’m going to die together with you, it’s ok, yeah.” Deidara looked at her with a dazed look in his eyes and redness to his cheeks that could be attributed to sunburn or delirium.

“…what? Deidara, you baka, pay attention! You’re going crazy from suppressing your chakra this long! Let go of me and go do something!” She tried to push herself up again but he brought his other arm over her this time and wove one hand through her hair, pulling her face closer to his so that his lips were hovering very, very alarmingly close to hers.

“No, un. I don’t want to.”

“But Deidaraammmn!” Sakura’s anger got cut off when his lips locked onto her own in an abruptly soft yet yearning sort of way. It was as if all logic had just dissolved from her mind. Naturally, Sakura and her tomato-colored face responded in kind, it’s not like she could move away…. but it’s not like she wanted to move away either. This was her first real kiss she should enjoy it while it lasted.

SCORE!!!!

This is…this is…

OMG…is that…his…tongue…

And hence, inner Sakura commenced to melt into a puddle of goo while Sakura herself was at a loss for words. Relying on instinct, she did whatever her body told her. Her hands moved towards his face and his began to slowly slide down.

Things began to move quickly, but as soon as Sakura felt Deidara’s hand slide under her shirt and rest on her waist, she panicked.

OmgOmgOmgwhatdoIdo?!

What’s going on?! I’m not ready for this! Stop!

And then Sakura did the only thing she could. She bit down. Hard.

Deidara’s eyes jerked wide open as he gasped into Sakura’s mouth and jumped up into a sitting position, their hands still tangled onto one another. Sakura pulled away from him shocked, angry, and a little flustered.

This time both of their faces looked like tomatoes or cherries or whatever other red fruits there are. Before Deidara could make eye-contact with her, Sakura looked away and wiped the blood from her lip.

“Y-You…You need to use your chakra right away.” She moved off of him.

“What are you talking about, hm?” He asked, examining his own bleeding lip as shifted around to a more alert position on his knees.

“This!” Sakura grabbed his hand and pointed at the mouth in its palm.

“This! Use your chakra now or you’ll go crazy from the buildup! Make one of those birds again!” The hand-mouth that she was pointing to wagged a tongue out so she dropped it immediately.

“Again, what are you talking about Sakura? You said I can’t or we’ll get caught and-“

“It doesn’t matter anymore! Just DO IT! WE NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE!” Sakura shrieked loud enough to make Deidara jump back a few inches in fright.

All of a sudden Deidara’s chakra-laden stupor vanished and he was wide awake and alert. Honestly, it was more of an adrenaline rush from the ‘Flight’ response to Sakura’s temper, but hey, it did the trick. He quickly began work on a clay bird and in no time at all, another craft was built.

-----------

“How long will it take now?” Sakura stared down at the unchanging, dull green landscape. Deidara adjusted himself around her to better see the horizon. Squinting into the distance with his scope over one eye, he spotted a dark blur.

“About 2 hours, un.”

Sighing an ‘okay’, she leaned back into Deidara and relaxed.

In fact, she relaxed so much that in the next few minutes, she fell asleep. While she was awake and fretting over Deidara’s delirium, she didn’t realize how exhausted she had become at the end of the burning day.

Her mind shut down and began to wander. She dreamt of the things that had happened to her recently. She dreamt of the people she knew. She dreamt of Deidara just a little. And of course, she dreamt of those happy, hypothetical scenarios that can only happen in dreams which can make people unconsciously mumble nothings or shift around in their beds into another position.

It was when Sakura tried to do just that and nearly fell off the bird until Deidara realized what she was doing and held the sleeping Sakura in place. Of course, he yelled at her worriedly and asked her what she was trying do, but when she moaned and curved her body into his chest, he finally saw that she was sleeping.

That was a shock and a relief at the same time. He hadn’t expected her to be asleep, but the sight made him think of one word: Cute. And despite himself, he blushed. He blushed for thinking that way in the first place and he blushed for the position he was in since he had never imagined to have a sleeping girl on him. What a relief that she was asleep and couldn’t see anything. At first, he had though that she was trying to jump off to get away from him or something equally heinous because she no longer wanted to be with him. Thank goodness he was proven wrong.

Sakura was still asleep by the time they arrived at the edge of the city of Kumo, and even though they were still miles away from the ocean, they could still smell the brininess of the sea.

He landed the craft softly and had a repeat of their last flying escapade with a few key differences. The first being that Sakura was still asleep. Two, during that sleep, she had shifted into a rather scandalous position while clutching him. Three, she was drooling or at least letting a thin stream of spittle leak out of the corner of her mouth and onto his neck. Of course he would never ever tell her about this third difference, but it wasn’t so much for her sake as it was for his since that spittle was doing strange things to him and he’d die before he told her what exactly those strange things were.

It was time to get off. Deidara looked around to see if anybody else was watching.

Good. No one’s here.

He then looked down at Sakura. She was still asleep. He sighed.

Now what?

He didn’t exactly want to wake her. He wasn’t sure how she’d react to seeing him first thing upon awakening.

Deidara took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. Then grasping the girl securely, he slipped off the bird. Then he stood there, holding the her bridal style and looking around lost. He had absolutely no idea what to do. He couldn’t exactly walk into town, especially a town as dirty as Kumo, with a sleeping girl in his arms.

He bit his lower lip thinking about the hypothetical situation. If he walked into town like that, he would likely be surrounded by a bunch of perverted, scumbags. They’d swarm around him asking about her and saying rude, unforgivable things. Then he’d of course get mad and kill them all, but then more would show up to replace them. People like that were like cockroaches! He’d run out of chakra after trying to kill them all and then they’d crawl all over him and get her and Deidara would be forced to watch all this and it’d be all his fault that Sakura would be touched by creatures like that and she’d forever remember him as the guy who couldn’t do anything. Then he’d see her getting taken away and he’d go berserk and use his last jutsu and blow the entire city apart. Which in the end wouldn’t help anyone. Not even him.

By now, Deidara had gotten so worked up over what could happen that he’d started sweating and was breathing rather heavily for just standing there holding the light frame of the real, not-hypothetical, sleeping Sakura.. He had even ended up clutching his head in hypothetical dismay as the hypothetical cockroach-people of Kumo took the hypothetical-sleeping-Sakura away. Hypothetically speaking of course.

Luckily, Sakura came to right at that moment.

She slowly opened her eyes and groggily looked up to see Deidara looking all worked up about something.

“Deidara?” her voice was still too soft after just waking up so he didn’t hear. She cleared her throat.

He still did not notice that she was awake. But he had a strange look on his face so she was worried. She looked to where he was looking straight ahead but there was nothing there.

“Deidara!” She said louder and lightly slapped the side of his face.

“Gah! Huh?....Oh, you’re awake?” He looked down at her in relief. Sakura had no idea why he looked so happy to see her.

“Uh…yeah. Are you okay? You look terrible.”

“Huh, oh it’s nothing, un.”

“Ok…you seem fine. So….” She looked at him. He stared back blankly.

“So what, yeah?”

“Are you going to put me down anytime soon? Or were you planning to carry me into Kumo?” At that, Deidara shuddered and quickly let her down.

“Sorry about that, un. Let’s go.”

“Ok, but what about your bird?” She asked as she patted her clothes back into place. She was still wearing those initially-hideous pants. She had worn them throughout the high heat of the day and they’d kept her pale skin from getting burned. Now, knowing what kind of place she was going into, she was secretly thankful that she had them.

“Never mind the bird. Nobody will notice it around here, un.” Deidara walked away from the thing, dismissing it with a wave of his hand before calling back out to her to follow. Sakura didn’t.

“But isn’t it one of your signature jutsus? Any ninja well-versed in the bingo books would recognize it. Not to mention that we’re pretty close to Konoha.”

“….fine…” Deidara looked at the bird. Sighed. Then walked all the way back to it before touching it with the palm of one of his hands to dismiss the chakra. Immediately the bird turned into a pile of dirt of the same color.

“There, happy?”

“Yup.” Sakura said in an unusually chipper tone before bounding to the road.

Deidara looked at her wearily before running after her.

“Had a nice nap, yeah?”

“Yes. Thanks to you ‘Sempai’, now hurry up.” She grinned back at him.

Deidara ground his teeth and frowned. Now why did she have to call him that?

It took the two about twenty minutes before arriving into the city of lights. Nothing was closed even though it was dark. There were no tall buildings, but every single place had some sort of neon light piece. Some blinked ‘OPEN’ for small restaurants whose aromas filled the streets, while others advertised names of stores, sales or products. Many of the shops advertised adult things from which Sakura looked away disgusted, dragging Deidara quickly away as well. There was even a bookstore specializing in the ‘Icha Icha Paradise’ series.

Deidara and Sakura walked closely down a crowded street. She didn’t realize it but she had her hand poised by his elbow the entire way and every time someone brushed past her, she gripped the fabric of his sleeve. Looking around at some of the scantily clad women who hung around certain stores or around strange men’s arms, she was once again thankful that Deidara had foreseen the need for her to cover her skin. Her normal clothes would definitely not have sufficed in a place like this because the men here were like animals. She saw men begin talking to a woman as she bought some vegetables from a stall. She yelled something angrily, slapped the man, and then made her way through the crowd. And she was wearing a plain, modest shirt and a skirt that came to her knees.

“Hey Sakura, un, let’s go get something to eat in there. I’m starving.” Deidara nudged her toward one of the small restaurants. Its windows were clean of posters and its door was wide open as it let out the mouthwatering smell of fried food. If she tried hard enough, Sakura could even here something delicious sizzling in the pan. The top of the shop was crowned with a billboard showing a steaming bowl full of seafood ramen of monstrous proportions.

“Ok, smells good.”

“It should, it’s the best place to get something hot and quick. Tastes amazing, too yeah.” Deidara puffed out his chest proudly. Sakura laughed and pulled him into the store.

Deidara and Sakura walked in there looking like a regular civilian couple. Deidara hadn’t yet put on his cloak and Sakura’s headband had been tucked away into one of the various pockets of her pants. In a place like Kumo, Sakura’s pink hair didn’t stand out one bit. The pair was invisible.

They went over to the bar and placed an order for the house special with the fry cook. He looked like a stern, solid man. He wore a grim look on his face as he nodded.

Sakura wondered if he suspected them for anything. Then she watched as a young man about her age, maybe younger walked in grinning and ordered.

“Old man, gimme one Great Sea of Ramen. I’m starving! I just got off work from the docks.” He patted his bulging pocket proudly. Said old man looked at even this happy child grimly and didn’t even bother answering in words to show that he had heard the order. He simply nodded. The boy’s grin didn’t falter as he plopped down right at one of the bar stools.

“I guess he’s like that to everyone.” Sakura said to Deidara as they sat down at a table in the back.

“Hm? Oh, the old man?” Deidara looked around to where she was indicating.

“Yeah. He seemed kind of scary. Actually, he still does.” She frowned. Deidara laughed.

“You’ve got it wrong, Sakura. It’s the nice people you have to look out for in a place like this. He’s probably the least scariest anyway, un. At least he’s honest. I bet he used to smile when he was younger, but for a good person to live in Kumo….it does things to you. Hardens your heart. Until you’re permanently frowning, yeah. Like this.” He used both of his hands on either side of his face to make his eyebrows, cheeks, and mouth tilt downward until he looked like he was melting or something. Sakura laughed.

“I guess so.” She looked back at the bar. The old man was setting a pair of bowls down in their direction. “Oh, I think he has our food done.”

Deidara pulled a couple notes out of his pocket as he got up from the table. He handed the man the bills, then without waiting for his change he grabbed both bowls and maneuvered his way back. The old man looked after him, still frowning and looking grim. Although it probably wasn’t because he was bothered as to why Deidara didn’t ask for his change back, as much as being worried over Deidara spilling the giant bowls of ramen because of the precarious way he was walking around the chairs and tables.

I have to get to work on my novel for NaNoWriMo now, so this is all I'm writing for this chapter, but have no fear, there's more to come!

If there's any discrepancies in my writing style, it's because I did the first half of this chapter like...2 months ago? and finished the rest today.

Also, Lemony Snicket is an awesome person. I met him last weekend as I got my book signed :DDD and we chatted and it was awesome. His personality is exactly like he is in the books but funnier.