#and madara has a bad habit of leaving feathers behind

[starswallowingsea]

thinking about angel/demon madashu now

[eat0crow]

So, Sasori is his soulmate?

Huh, Deidara didn't think his karma was that bad. But, he really must have pissed Fate off if it took dying, being resurrected against his will, and forced to fight along side Kohona, to realize, he's been partnered with his soulmate for years.

~~~

My gift for @paigyloli, as part of the @akatsuki-gift-exchange gift exchange.

(I didn't know your AO3 handle, feel free to shoot me a message so I can gift this to you.)

I hope you like! I took your prompts 'anything with Sasori' and 'something like red string of fate, or soulmate', and welp, here we are. Sorry, it's a bit late!!!

Jump Ship

Deidara really, really hates the Edo Tensei.

Because Deidara had died, he had lived, and died, exactly how he always wanted to. Existing in a single moment, more beautiful than anything this mockery of life could create. Sure, it might be marginally better, now that he’s free of Tobi-Madara-Obito-whatever’s control, but it still sucks.

Tobi stole his death from him, his most beautiful creation. His masterpiece. He stole it, and forced Deidara into a cold, unfeeling, empty bastardization of everything he believes in.

Deidara really hates Tobi. Sure, he hadn’t liked him much before, but now? Now, there aren’t words to describe just how much Deidara wants to murder him. Even if the thought of allying with Konoha shinobi kills him, he’ll do it. He’ll do anything to increase his chances of going toe to toe with the masked bastard. Deidara wants to make him beg for death.

Sasori is his partner again. It’s not a surprising development. Most of the former Akatsuki—the ones who switched sides—had been kept together. Naruto might be convinced there’s good in them, but that doesn’t mean there’s any trust between the Allied Shinobi Forces and Naruto’s group of undead missing nins. Deidara thinks it’s funny, in some weird, twisted way, that even in death, he’s still stuck with Sasori.

They work well together, years of relying on each other, and only each other, pay off. They could be soulmates, well, assuming Deidara had ever seen his mark reflected across Sasori’s chest. The delicate interweaving lattice, intersected with small shapes that could have been scorpions for all Deidara knew, had never been anywhere on Sasori’s vessel. Deidara knows, he’s seen Sasori naked enough times.

At thirteen Deidara had torn the mark open, cutting into his chest without a second thought, creating his most beautiful work of art. It was only fitting for him, after all, to tear apart the one thing on his body that never changed.

It made coming into his new vessel a shock, because, while his jutsu is gone, his soulmark lays flat over his heart. Deidara guesses that makes sense, in some bizarre, twisted way. He’s a soul inhabiting a paper husk, Sasori hadn’t come back as a puppet. Instead, he came back as the shadow of flesh and blood he was, before he started experimenting.

~~~

“I hate it here, yeah,” Deidara says, throwing himself down onto the cot in Sasori and his shared tent. His body doesn’t need sleep, it just makes everyone feel better to have the former Akatsuki members cordoned off at night. “Honestly, I don’t know how anyone does it. Hell, I don’t know how I did it, but answering to a Kage is bullshit. I’ll take being a missing nin any day.”

“I hardly find that surprising,” Sasori says, not even bothering to turn around or look up from where he’s bent over his desk. “You’re much too wild to serve under any real authority.”

“Harsh, Danna. I served under Pein just fine.”

“Please, even when Nagato was maintaining the illusion of leadership, it hardly qualified. He demanded tasks of us, yes, but he was more than happy to leave us alone between assignments.”

“Ugh, why do you always have to be right,” Deidara whines. “I can’t even say that if I lived my life over again, I would do things differently, because I'm living my life over again, and I’m dying to desert, yeah.”

“Yeah,” Sasori says sarcastically, turning around to face Deidara with one brow lifted. “I commanded a network of spies, I can tell when someone won’t submit to orders. You’re one of the few shinobi who truly has no master.”

Deidara feels his mouth dry up the second Sasori turns to look him fully, it’s the first time he’s seen him shirtless since they’ve come back. It hasn’t come up, and Deidara can’t be more thankful that this moment happened in private. He wouldn’t have been able to handle an audience. He’s not sure he’ll even be able to handle it now when it’s just the two of them. Because, standing out against the stark, white of Sasori’s skin is his mark, mirrored perfectly back to him.

Swallowing the lump in his throat, Deidara forces himself to ask, “How long have you had that mark for?” It may seem stupid, but Deidara has been partners with Sasori for years, and he’s never seen it before.

Sasori looks puzzled for a moment, before following Deidara’s line of sight to his chest. “You mean my soulmark?”

“No, I mean your kidney scar. Of course, I mean your soulmark, you fucking idiot!” Deidara says fervently, carefully keeping his voice lowered to avoid drawing an unwanted audience.

“Forever, I suppose.” There’s a pause, before Sasori continues, “I forgot about it.”

“How can you forget about a soulmark?” There’s a lot of thinly, veiled anger in his voice, Deidara might not have poured much faith into the system, but it still burned to hear that he could be discarded without a second thought.

“I didn’t feel the need to include it into my puppet’s body,” Sasori says, carefully neutral. “It was an unnecessary reminder of the humanity I wanted to leave behind. It hasn’t been a part of me in almost twenty years, and even before then, my soulmate hadn’t been born when I transferred vessels.”

“Oh.” Deidara hasn’t thought about their age difference in—ever. Maybe at first, he did, but Sasori’s stuck in a sixteen-year-old’s body, it’s unspeakably easy for Deidara to forget that Sasori had stopped aging the year he was born.

Things make a lot of sense now, Deidara’s always felt a form of stasis from his mark, it’s not the cold, empty feeling of a severed bond, it’s perfectly numb, the one thing in both of Deidara’s lives that’s unchanging.

“It’s hardly of consequence,” Sasori says, a hint of frustration creeping into his voice. “I can’t feel anything from them, the connection is numb, and I don’t understand it. They’re not dead, the bond isn’t empty, and they’re alive now. I can tell, but everything is static. I hate it.”

“I thought true art was enduring, yeah. You know, something that stays perfectly the same forever,” Deidara says cheekily. He’s being a bit of a bastard, but Sasori deserves a taste of what Deidara has had to live with for nineteen years.

“This isn’t art, this is annoying,” Sasori bites back. “If anything, this is proof of the Edo Tensei’s inferiority.”

“You’re missing the obvious, my man,” Deidara says, pushing himself up into a sitting position. He picks at the scratchy fabric of the blanket. It’s not easy to say, despite having years to have crafted the conversation in his head. “Clearly, your soulmate’s jumped ship and gotten himself another vessel. Hey, maybe he decided to follow in your footsteps, and get a nice puppet one, yeah. That would be cool. Karma, you know?”

Sasori scowls, it's cute now that Deidara can see his brow pinch. His puppet was never great at facial expressions. They always fell flat, the wood refusing to move much past it’s carefully neutral, resting face. Deidara gets up, kicking a discarded pile of puppet parts aside, Sasori’s frown deepens at the action, but he doesn’t say anything.

“Listen,” Deidara starts, tugging off his cloak, and throwing it down. It lands somewhere next to a pile of rejected legs. He’ll have Sasori get it for him later, he might not be able to be poisoned anymore, but his touch is nowhere near gentle enough for the puppets. “You can’t make a big deal out of this. It doesn’t change anything, okay?”

“I’ve seen your mark Deidara,” Sasori says, turning his head away in dismissal. He reaches down, grabbing the third Kazekage’s puppet, turning its glassy, unseeing eyes on him.

There’s history there, Deidara doesn’t want to get into it. Especially now, when he can see the small wistful expression that crosses Sasori’s face as he handles the puppet. Everyone has their flaws.

“You really haven’t.” Because, Sasori has seen his mark, yes, but he’s only seen the bastardized version of it. The mark looks completely different, now that it's not being held closed by stitches and lacks a mouth. “Like I said, it changes nothing.”

Slowly, with careful, precise movements, Deidara lifts his shirt over his head, letting it fall to the ground.

There’s a moment of dead silence, the tension in the air painfully thick as Sasori takes him in, as he closes the gap between them. Tentatively, Sasori reaches out, and traces over the mark on Deidara’s chest, skimming the edges with feather-light touches. Deidara lets him. He can't feel anything in this body, this vessel, the sentiment is still there though.

“It’s different,” Sasori says.

“It’s a match,” Deidara says back, reaching up to grab Sasori's hand, placing it more firmly against his heart—against where his heart was. “We’re dead, that’s why it feels numb. Our corpses are decaying, well, yours is. Mine’s disintegrated.”

“You felt this.” Sasori pulls back, just a little, enough to meet Deidara’s eyes without straining to look up. “You felt this static for years. No wonder you’re insane.”

“Ouch. That hurt.” Deidara lets Sasori’s hand fall, instead, he brings his own up to run through his hair, it’s a nervous habit. “But, yeah, it sucked ass. I hadn’t thought about it before, but the numbness was probably because your puppet’s body didn’t exactly feel things. Now, it’s probably because these husks are glorified paper mache.”

“Right,” Sasori says, and this time Deidara swears he sounds sad. “That would make sense. As shades, we lack a physical presence to influence the bond. My previous vessel was very much the same.”

“Hmm,” Deidara hums, it doesn’t do either of them any good to focus on the past, all they’ll do is dwell on regrets. “Well, you live and learn. Though, I guess, we’re not exactly living at the moment. We’re just sort of possessing vessels, yeah.”

“Possessing vessels.” Sasori chews on the words, rolling them back and forth across his tongue. His eyes drift down to the pile of parts Deidara had kicked less than five minutes ago.

Deidara sees the gleam in Sasori’s eyes as he reaches down into the pile, and reflexively, takes a step back. The tricky thing about Sasori is, that at first glance, he doesn’t appear dangerous, but then you see the ruthless look of pure, chaotic energy bubbling in his eyes, and you realize, Sasori is as morally bankrupt as they come.

Deidara gulps as Sasori takes a step closer. “Sasori, my man—”

Sasori is undeterred, pausing only minutely to toss Deidara a spare arm. Deidara catches it, if only thanks to years of practice dodging puppet parts. “Do you think you could transfer your kinjutsu into that?”

He weighs the hand, turning it over with a critical eye. “Maybe, if it wasn’t wooden. You might not know this, but explosives don’t exactly play nice with chakra infused timber.”

“Porcelain, then,” Sasori says, moving toward his workbench. “Maybe a non-conductive metal.”

“I’m missing something here,” Deidara proclaims, throwing the arm at the back of Sasori’s head. He doesn’t bother catching it, instead, Sasori lets it rip through him.

“You very rarely aren’t.” Sasori dismisses.

The Third Kazekage loses an arm to Sasori’s hunt. Deidara gets far more satisfaction than he should watching Sasori disassemble the puppet. He’s on a hunt, it’ll be awhile before Deidara can pull him out of whatever project he’s just thought up. Hell, with these new vessels—ones that don’t require even the pseudo rest Sasori’s last one did—it might be weeks before he’ll be able to steal any attention.

“Why must you insult me?” Deidara asks rhetorically. “Can you, at least, fill me in? Before you jump down whatever rabbit hole your brain’s decided on.”

Sasori seems to debate for a moment, but Deidara’s not the only one who knows his partner well. Sasori knows that if he doesn’t tell Deidara something now, he’ll never get any peace later.

“You said you wanted to be a missing nin again.”