‘Whuh?! Where am I?”

Kagome fought against the bonds, desperately peering through the darkness. Last thing he remembered, he’d been in the wilderness, securing an escape route while Hazō and the others carried out the mission. He’d been aligning a Force Wall when… when… no, his memory was a blank.

“Welcome, Kagome Yū.”

Kagome flinched at his full name. “Who are you? How do you know who I am?”

“Welcome… to the hidden fortress of Akatsuki.”

“Akatsuki?!” Kagome’s flailing redoubled. “You’ll never take me alive, you evil bastards!”

“Uh,” the voice hesitated. “We kinda already have?”

The speaker lit a lamp, showing Kagome her face. It was narrow, with a blond ponytail and one visible blue eye. She’d have been pretty if it wasn’t for the creepy mechanical thing over the other one. And her being a twisted fiend about to torture him to death.

The ropes weren’t giving an inch, and they’d done something to him, because he could barely feel his chakra. Kagome was going to have to talk his way out of this.

He was doomed.

What would Inoue do? Make them give away information. Look for openings. Fortunately, he knew the hidden movers and shakers of the world better than anyone, and instantly drew the obvious conclusion.

“You must be Akatsuki’s master telepath, the one who can steal people’s minds and bend them to their will just by looking them in the eye.”

“Uh, no, that’s Itachi. Sort of.”

“Then you’re the one who’s building an army of chakra-resistant golems to rampage across the continent.”

“That bastard Sasori! ‘I am not working on anything your feeble human brain can comprehend’, my ass! But no, still not me.”

“Hmm…” Kagome racked his brain. “Oh, you’re the shapeshifter, the one who can use the Transformation Technique to turn into any chakra beast and use its powers.”

“Uh. We don’t actually have one of those. Unless Kisame’s been holding out on me. He would, the fish-faced git.”

The woman grimaced. “I feel like we’re getting off track. Kagome Yū, we’ve brought you here because we want you to become one of us. Our great plan needs a sealmaster, a gifted and careful sealmaster. We’ve done the research—well, Itachi has, anyway—and you fit the bill perfectly.”

“Betray my team?” Kagome roared. “Never!”

“Oh, you don’t need to worry about that lot,” the woman laughed. “Their half-assed efforts to make the world a better place are doing a great job of drawing attention away from our preparations to do the same. The headaches they’ve been giving Jiraiya alone are worth keeping them alive for. No, once you’ve got a bit of seniority under your belt, our Leader will probably let you fold them into Akatsuki as your personal minions.” She paused. “You know, I have seniority. How come I don’t get minions? Itachi gets ravens, Sasori gets puppets, Kisame gets sharks, the Leader gets Konan—”

She glanced around warily. “I, uh, didn’t say that last part.”

“You can’t buy my loyalty, Akatsuki scum. I’ll join the likes of you over my dead body!”

“That is an option,” the woman agreed.

“But it won’t do us much good. Purely mental skills don’t carry over, and turns out being able to control gravity and eat people’s souls doesn’t mean you can scribe a seal worth a damn.

“You’ve got us all wrong, though. It’s a rule of the Society that all members must serve Akatsuki of their own will. We can’t exactly let you go, but the Leader’s sure that if you stick around long enough, you’ll come to see things our way. And since it’s my turn to recruit, I’ll be in charge of you until you do.”

Kagome barked out a laugh. “You’re getting nothing out of me. Not as long as my heart is my own.”

“I’ll make a note to ask Kakuzu about transplants,” the woman said. “Sleep tight for now.”

There was a blur of motion, a flash of pain, and then the darkness covered everything.

-o-​

“’morning, Kagome. How’re you finding the guest quarters?”

Deidara of Akatsuki, supposedly a man after all, handed Kagome a breakfast tray. The food would be filled with mind control drugs, but Kagome had his own ideas on what to do about that.

“Lousy,” he sneered. “I’ve seen better security in civilian nurseries.”

“Oh, really?” Deidara raised an eyebrow. “And yet I notice you’re still here. Checked out the front door yet? Solid chakra-forged steel. My C4 couldn’t make a dent in it.”

Kagome grunted. “I’ve seen worse. So why’d you leave me untied? Trying to lull me into a false sense of security, you treacherous stinkers?”

“I keep telling you, that’s not how we do things,” Deidara said. “If we wanted you dead, we’d cut your throat and get on with the rest of the day. Or if we didn’t want to get our own hands dirty, we’d give you a kunai and ask Hidan to proselytise at you.

“You’ve got the wrong idea about Akatsuki, Kagome. All we want is to make a better world. We want a world where nobody has to be afraid of anyone or anything, where you don’t need traps or combat seals. And where art can flourish without worthless little plebs constantly standing in the way of creativity.”

“Oh, sure,” Kagome drawled. “Akatsuki wants to make a better world. Next you’ll be telling me there’s no such thing as scorch squads, and Leaf’s never had a Tailed Beast Breeding Programme.”

“A what?!

Excuse me, I need to talk to the Leader.”

Deidara swept out of the room, leaving Kagome alone with his breakfast.

-o-​

Deidara stared at the sizeable dent in the wall next to the armoured front door, and a stunned Kagome lying in a crumpled heap on the floor a few metres away.

“What happened?!”

“Stupid idiot somehow managed to make chakra ink from his cranberry juice, and a brush from a fork and his own hair.” Sasori gravelled. “Turned a napkin into an exploding seal. He’d have succeeded if I didn’t make my walls to last.”

Deidara facepalmed. “That’s it. He’s eating in the common kitchen with the rest of us.”

-o-​

Deidara spun around at the sound of yet another explosion.

“Hey, nice reverb on that one—I mean, shit, what has he done now?!”

“Used the whetstone to sharpen a kebab skewer into a stylus, and etched a seal bomb into a structural weak point,” Kisame grumbled as he staggered into view. The edges of his robes were still smouldering. “It’s your good luck I was around the corner enjoying my snack box. You’ve got to keep a better eye on him, Deidara.”

Deidara groaned. “New rule. Kagome’s only allowed in the kitchen when there’s somebody there to watch him. Also, for the last time, Kisame, the aquarium is a decorative feature and it belongs to everyone.”

-o-​

“I saw your work downstairs,” Deidara commented casually. “Over-torqueing the mechanisms in the exercise machine to make it blast its weights into the load-bearing pillar was sweet. Sasori is so pissed right now…”

Kagome shrugged. “It’s a trap. I know traps. Didn’t expect the Lightning-electrified fence outside, though.

“You’ve got some nice tech,” he said after a reluctant pause.

“I know, right?” Deidara grinned. “You join us, you can have the blueprints. Hell, maybe we can put you in charge of security. Unlimited budget, no pesky ethical restrictions… don’t you wonder what you could craft under those conditions?”

“Unlimited budget… no ethical restrictions…” Kagome echoed distantly. “I could finally protect them properly…”

His eyes snapped back onto Deidara’s. “No! You think old Kagome is that easy to seduce? A few promises here and there, and I’m diving headfirst into the dark side? Well, you’ve got another thing coming, you effeminate scumbag!”

“Effeminate?” Deidara’s voice rose an outraged octave. “Effeminate?! I’ll have you know that where I come from, a finely-groomed ponytail is a mark of refinement and sensitivity for either gender, you… you uncouth, mop-headed mudcrawler!”

Deidara strode out, slamming the door behind him.

Kagome looked blankly after him. “There was no need to be rude.”

-o-​

“Right, you uncultured ignoramus, I’m going to show you what real hair styling looks like!” Deidara stormed into Kagome’s room, eye blazing and haircare kit brandished like a katana.

The sheets on the bed were tied into a makeshift rope—Kagome must have done it before discovering that the window was chakra-reinforced crystal.

The legs showed signs of tampering, but of course the wood had proven too strong.

The door hinges were oiled to be silent with… was that hair grease? Deidara mentally moved his styling plans up a notch in priority.

But of Kagome himself there was no sign.

“Oh. Oh, shit. Where is he?”

Deidara sprinted down the stairs, screeching to a sudden halt in the kitchen doorway so as not to crash into Itachi.

Itachi gave him a puzzled look. “Deidara? You’ve returned already? I only let you out a minute ago.”

Balls.

Deidara ran for the door, reaching into his clay pouch as he went.

-o-​

“How the hell did you pull this off?” Deidara demanded, hefting a tied-up Kagome onto the back of the C2 dragon. “We’ve taken away all your gear, we’ve suppressed your ninjutsu, you don’t know how to do genjutsu, and even if you did, Itachi’s got his bullshit immunity. How did someone like you outsmart Uchiha freaking Itachi?!”

“Hmph,” Kagome snorted. “Remember those blackout curtains I asked for a few days ago because it was too bright to sleep?”

“Yeah?”

“Wrapped those into a robe, brewed up some food colouring for the cloud patterns, and tied a load of pasta together as a wig. Then I told him I was you and I needed help opening the front door because I’d chipped a fingernail.”

“What.”

“Serves you right for making fun of Itachi’s bad eyesight where I could hear you.”

“No, not that,” Deidara scowled. “Pasta. You thought you could replicate my hair with pasta. Dammit, Kagome.”

He flicked his hand with more force than was necessary, and the C2 took off.

After a few seconds, Kagome gasped.

“Pretty impressive, huh? Join us, and you can see a view like this any—”

“Shut up, Deidara.”

The two watched in silence as the world scrolled beneath them.

-o-​

After a week of concerted pleading (and reminders that if he was out to murder Kagome, he’d have done it after the Exploding Oven Incident), Deidara stood triumphantly over the man with a pair of scissors and some of the finest product in his collection, trying to turn his oily thornbush of a hairstyle into something remotely acceptable. It made Deidara’s aesthetic senses scream, how all the potential of those sharp eyes and that fair skin was being eclipsed by hair that made him look like he’d been electrocuted to death.

Speaking of which…

“You know,” Deidara said, “you never did explain what you did about the fence.”

“Hmph. Trying to weasel my techniques out of me so you can set me up to fail next time? You wish. Old Kagome’s going to beat you again and again, and I only need to escape once.”

“No,” Deidara said, massaging Kagome’s scalp, “I was just curious. Obviously Sasori isn’t going to replace the fence now he knows it’s less than perfect.”

“You idjits gave me a chakra current to work with,” Kagome said bitingly.

“Blood and grass. Ugh. Worst seal I’ve ever made. I don’t even know what it would have done if it’d worked.

“But it didn’t need to work. It only needed to react to Lightning chakra. Throw a rock, fence goes zap, seal thinks it’s a failed infusion, and boom! Undefined behaviour.”

“You made a C7-tier explosion with improvised inert materials,” Deidara said in a mesmerised voice. “That is the most beautiful thing I’ve heard in years.”

“Yeah, well,” Kagome muttered uncomfortably. “Explosions are what I do. I’m not going to forget my trade just because some Akatsuki stinkers ply me with great food and let me sleep on a real mattress.”

“Mmm,” Deidara reached for a finer pair of scissors. “Now hold still. You’ll love the new look I’m putting together for you.”

Kagome winced. “Why the hell did I let you badger me into this? The kids are going to have a field day when I finally pull off my jailbreak.”

“Hush. You’re the one who spent a decade and a half on the run, and never once thought of getting a makeover to disguise yourself.”

Kagome winced again, but didn’t argue the point.

-o-​

“Nonono,” Deidara wagged a finger, “I know where you’re coming from, but you’ve got to go with miniature bombs for granite armour. This size tops.” He reached into his clay pouch and pulled out a marble-sized dollop of clay.

“Are you crazy? Who cares about ‘imperfections in the structure’? You fragment it too much, and before you know it you’ve got shards of rock zooming at you while the enemy’s still behind cover. And what are those things, anyway?”

“These?” Deidara smirked. “Special clay with an Earth Element base. Once I infuse it with my Bloodline Limit, it makes for the most devastating bombs in human history. Even your sealing can’t hold a candle to them.”

“Oh, yeah? And how do you put a conditional release on your clay? Or give it a space-time-warping delivery system? Or maybe it can keep you untouched while everything in a one-mile radius gets incinerated, like a good seal can?”

Deidara’s face fell, but only for a second.

“Ah, but my clay can be primed in the blink of an eye. How long’s it take you to draw a seal? What if you don’t have what you need on you, or you don’t know the seal for this exact situation? What if you get it wrong? I heard all about sealcrafter lifespans back in Hidden Rock—

“Shit,” he said. “That came out wrong. I didn’t mean… I’m not saying… shit.”

Kagome shrugged. “It is how it is. I’ll fight to survive till my very last breath, but in the end, a sealcrafter goes out with a bang. Maybe it’s better to have it end on your own terms, watching your enemies reduced to ash while your team gets to safety, instead of lying in bed waiting helplessly for the Reaper to take his due.”

Deidara gave a wry smile. “I’m with you there all the way. Life is transient. Everything is transient. Rather than trying to hold onto stuff while it slips through your fingers anyway, you give it meaning by turning it into art. The full beauty of a thing can only be felt as you watch it disappear forever.”

Kagome gave him a funny look. “That doesn’t sound like art to me. I’m no expert, but real art is supposed to be something you make. You put yourself into it, and then other people can look at that piece of self and see things—things you’d never be able to put into words. That’s what I think of when I carve wood.

“Sure, as a professional I take pride in my demolitions. Every time I see something blow up just right, it warms the cockles of my heart. But only a psycho explodes things for fun instead of because they’re a threat.”

“A psycho?” Deidara hissed. “A psycho? I thought you of all people would understand, Kagome. I thought you’d be able to appreciate m—my art. But no, you’re just another pleb!” He spat the word out.

“What’d you call me?!” Kagome sprang up to face him. “You kidnap me, you take all my stuff, you force me to listen to your crap, you cut my hair, and then you look me in the eye and call me names?! Well, fuck you, Deidara! You’re just as up your own ass as the rest of these stinkers! Get out!”

“Fine! Akatsuki doesn’t need an ignorant mudcrawler like you anyway!” Deidara nearly broke into a run as he left the room.

-o-​

“Kagome Yū,” the redheaded man addressed him in a deep, resonant voice. They were the only people in the room except for a blue-headed woman who kept to the shadows behind the throne, as if ready to defend the man from assassination.

“I am the leader of Akatsuki. You may call me Pain. This is Konan, my second-in-command. I have summoned you here because—”

“What’s wrong with your face?”

“What?”

“You’ve got all that black shrapnel stuck in it. I’d have thought with all these S-rankers, somebody would have the med-nin skills to fix that for you.”

“I, uh… That is not relevant to the matter at hand,” Pain rallied. “Kagome, no one has ever come as close to escaping this fortress as you. In addition, Deidara begs to be reassigned from your case. You are truly a formidable man to have broken his will so swiftly.

“Thus, the time for you to make your choice approaches. Will you join Akatsuki, and aid us in saving the world?”

“Not this one too,” Kagome complained under his breath. “Fifteen years of peace and quiet, and then suddenly I’ve got every wannabe visionary and their border collie beating down my door.”

"What," Konan growled, "did you just insinuate about me, you little—"

“Ahem,” Pain said firmly.

“Allow me to explain. Understand, Kagome, that humanity stands on the verge of annihilation. With every generation, our weapons of war grow more powerful, while the hatred that binds the shinobi only deepens. Even now, while the Elemental Nations enjoy an outward peace, the world races towards a self-inflicted end. Instead of love, or hope, or even something as wondrous yet simple as curiosity, in the shinobi world there is no power greater than pain. In our struggle to escape it, we give birth to it again and again, stronger every time, a democratically chosen overlord that cannot be cast down until all of mankind makes the same right choice at the same time.

“I cannot yet tell you our plan, Kagome. Not until you are truly one of us. But I can tell you this. The time for words is over. Perhaps it was never here. We walked down this path once, we of Akatsuki. We gave it all that we were. But diplomacy cannot banish pain from a single country, much less the world. And if pain must rule, then let its power be used to bring about its own undoing.”

Pain cast his gaze over Kagome, waiting solemnly.

“I’ll be honest with you, I have no idea what you just said," Kagome admitted. "All I got out of it is that you’ve got a big vocabulary, you have a weird thing about pain, and you think you need to finish brainwashing me before I’m going to like your plan. No offence, but I know a thirteen-year-old kid who’s better at this kind of speech than you.”

Pain and Konan exchanged glances.

“Konan,” Pain said uneasily, “escort him back to his quarters. He will see our wisdom in time.”

-o-​

Kagome was lounging on his bed pondering his next escape plan when there came a sheepish knock on the door.

“Who is it?”

“It’s me, Deidara.”

“So, uh, I may have overreacted last night,” Deidara came in with his fingers interlaced in front of him like a child confessing to stealing from the cookie jar. “Just because you don’t get my art doesn’t mean you’re one of those critics. And I don’t get yours either, but that doesn’t mean we have to be at each other’s throats about it.”

Kagome swung his legs round into a sitting position. “I guess I let my temper get the better of me too. I know you’re plotting against me behind my back, but at least you’ve been decent about it.” Deidara had even kept his word about not trying to kill him, and Kagome had a feeling that when the time came, it would be an honourable attempt, with industrial doses of explosives to the face instead of underhanded tricks like poison or genjutsu.

“So are we cool?” Deidara asked tentatively.

“…Yeah.”

Deidara sat down next to Kagome on the bed. The proximity left Kagome ill at ease, but less so than he had expected. Deidara was always up-front about his evil schemes to corrupt Kagome, and always direct in his actions, and it was oddly relaxing compared to the strange and unpredictable behaviour he was used to from the people around him.

“I’ve been thinking,” Deidara began. “When you join, do you want to be my partner? I mean, I know it’s sudden, but I think you and I could get on, and at least I can talk to you, instead of Sasori always driving me up the wall, and I’d be happy to show you the ropes…”

“Hmph,” Kagome said with a touch of amusement. “You’re still acting like I want to join your batshit crazy organization.”

“Do you?”

Kagome tilted his head to the side thoughtfully. It should have been an easier question than it was, and he wasn’t sure why. “I admit I don’t hate you stinkers as much as I thought I would, but I still have somewhere I belong, and it’s not here.

“No hard feelings,” he added on seeing Deidara’s expression.

Deidara’s fists tightened around the bedsheets next to him. Kagome wondered if he was about to try to yank them away to put Kagome off balance for a coup de grace, but then decided it was too impractical.

“What if we brought the rest of your team in? They’ve got bloodlines, and they’re kids full of potential. Except the woman, but the Leader likes the cut of her jib anyway. If you could all be together… would you stay with us?”

But it wasn’t enough. Kagome had had plenty of time to think—the one upside to being a prisoner—and he’d come to his own conclusions. “I won’t lie, you people have great resources. But Hazō’s full of plans for getting hold of those. What have you got here that we can’t find somewhere else?”

Deidara leaned towards him. “Me.”

And then he kissed him.

After a second’s paralysis, Kagome shoved him back, then leapt away so violently his spine slammed against the wall.

“I’m sorry!” Deidara cried. “I… I didn’t mean…”

Kagome huddled in the corner. It was hard to breathe, hard to think. Something was wrong. Everything was wrong. Something wasn’t wrong, and needed to be. He was hyperventilating.

Gradually, he started breathing normally again. His brain took longer to reset. Why would Deidara kiss him? Was this the murder attempt he’d been waiting for all along? No, too bizarre for Deidara. And Kagome wasn’t dying. It was a real kiss.

He didn’t know what to do. Kissing belonged to another world, not Kagome’s world. It was something he could see but not touch. Maybe if he’d met this vibrant, quick-witted youth decades ago, before it was too late. Maybe if Ayako…

But that wasn’t the path his life had taken. The man he was now, Kagome Yū, was too broken to kiss.

“Deidara,” he said. “I can’t do this.”

“I’m sorry,” Deidara repeated.

“Not your fault.” Step by step, Kagome moved out of the corner. “But what you want, I can’t give you. I can’t let someone that close. Not even if I want to.”

“I’m sorry,” Deidara said one last time. “I’ll go.”

Kagome didn’t stop him.

-o-​

Deidara had slept badly. He’d probably screwed things up for good with the first man he’d been able to talk to properly since he joined this bunch of weirdos. No, that wasn’t fair to Kagome. Kagome wasn’t just handy for conversation. He was indomitable, he had strong principles without being preachy, he was a genius of destruction, and he had art in his soul even if he sucked at expressing it. The older man even had the classic combination of gaunt, pale looks and windswept black hair, and Deidara had so looked forward to bringing out their full potential. Instead, his impulsiveness and impatience had ruined everything as they always did.

“Deidara.”

Deidara looked up from his breakfast to see that Kagome had taken a seat across from him. His arms were crossed in front of him defensively, and he kept shifting in his seat, but even so, he was here.

“’morning, Kagome,” Deidara mumbled.

“Uh,” Kagome said awkwardly. “I was wondering… maybe you and I could go out and you could show me those special bombs of yours? I never did get to see what they could do.”

Deidara sat up and smiled. It was an olive branch, nothing more, but it was enough.

“I’d love to.”

-o-​

“And this one’s my C6,” Deidara boasted. “It’s for cracking underground bunkers.” He performed a chakra-enhanced throw, counted to three, then grinned as Kagome struggled to keep his footing against the shockwave.

Deidara glanced at Kagome’s face, seeking approval, maybe even awe, but what he found was an intimidating tension.

“Deidara, about last night…”

Kagome stepped up close. Deidara’s eyes widened.

“I can’t think of how to say… oh, the hell with it.”

He grabbed Deidara. The kiss was clumsy, as if coming from a beginner, but made up for it with its sudden passionate ferocity. Deidara was dazed when it ended.

Very dazed. He twitched as the electricity ran through his body, and collapsed bonelessly to the ground.

How?! They’d made sure Kagome couldn’t use ninjutsu…

Kagome looked down at him with a gentle expression that looked strange on the powerful, dangerous man.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “But if I stayed any longer, I would’ve started something I couldn’t stop. And even if I decided to join Akatsuki, Hazō and the others never would.

“In the end… my team will always come first.”

-o-​

The instant Deidara could make himself stand up, he reached immediately into his clay pouch. Kagome couldn’t have gone far, not as the C2 dragon flies. There was still time…

But the clay wouldn’t obey. No matter how he tried to catalyse it, he might as well have been handling common mud. Deidara felt urgently around the inside of his pouch, trying to figure out what was wrong. His hands closed on a foreign object.

It was Sasori’s Lightning generator seal from the electric fence, which Kagome had slipped in and activated while they were kissing. Lightning which disabled Earth.

A symphony of perfect explosions, Kagome’s true farewell, resounded from within the Akatsuki fortress. Deidara felt tears streaming down his cheeks.

The full beauty of a thing can only be felt as you watch it disappear forever.