Chained Angel (Deidara Story) Chapter 1

Chapter 18

They kept walking, and their pace never changed.

It was still slow, still reluctant, still hating every step they both took. But they couldn’t stop. If Angel thought it best that they leave, then they knew they should. They trusted her. When it came to the area, the town, the house...she knew best. She did live there. Even if it seemed so wrong to Deidara, if she was resolute in her decision for them to leave, and leave now, then he would comply. She would never do anything to hurt him. She wasn’t like that. She was kind, and sweet, and...

And everything he ever wanted.

Shaking his head and clenching his fists, Deidara glared furiously at the ground. He had to force her from his head. Smother memories of them together away from the surface of his subconscious and into a locked room in his mind. Just...forget about her completely. Even though—with a sigh and a relaxing of his muscles—that it would never happen. He could go anywhere, travel to the opposite ends of the earth. But it wouldn’t stop how he felt about her. Just alter the way he saw things. Alter the choices he made in the future. All things that would be without Angel, but still be influenced by her. At least that way he could salvage some of her essence to always be with him.

Trudging on, heavy rain began to fall, and the static electricity like feeling he had experienced upon entering the area and the town came back, stronger than ever. Maybe it was feeding off all his emotions, maybe it was a way of trying to make him go back to see her, he didn’t know. But he had to ignore it, and walk side by side with Sasori through the darkened buildings and continue out through the town, and out into the wilderness, where they’d find the rune and go back to the nearest hideout to get their next assignment. All without a second thought to Angel.

“She’ll be fine, Deidara. She has ninja abilities; amazing ones. You’re the one who saw them first hand. If there’s any trouble, she can deal with it,” Sasori suddenly spoke up, the sentence almost bursting out of him with venom, only for him to realise it was night time and pretty much the entire town was asleep, and quietened down to a not-quite-whispering sound.

Now looking up at Sasori, finally managing to drag his gaze off the floor as they walked, he looked at him in complete confusion as to what the hell he was thinking. Rolling his eyes at his utter ignorance and lack of ability to comprehend emotions, he shook his head and scowled at him, saying simply in return, with his voice showing all of the amount of anger that was everywhere else on his body and in his eyes,

“Even people with tons of power can be taken for granted, Sasori-danna. Even armies, un. Take the Uchiha clan, for instance. They were the most powerful clan in Konoha, with an extremely powerful kekkai genkai. Then came Itachi, and look what happened then, un. Angel might have untold abilities, some that might even be greater than the ones she told me, but if someone takes you from behind, then there is no hope for anyone, un.”

After his snarling return to Sasori’s words, Deidara’s gaze once again returned to the ground, the anger in his eyes slowing fading and becoming apathy. Narrowing his eyes at Deidara’s sudden aggressiveness, Sasori threw his hands up in the air and looked away, hiding his uncomfortable feeling that came with Deidara’s abrupt change in attitude. Nothing was going to work for him as the mission—and the ones that came after—went on, and he’d still remain the same. He’d either be incredibly aggressive or morose and melancholy to the max. The silence did nothing to help it, and trying to convince Deidara that Angel was fine wasn’t working either. Deciding that maybe a little honesty would be better, Sasori lowered his voice even more and tried again,

“I’m hating this too, Deidara. Don’t think I don’t have more suspicions about Angel than a murder suspect with blood all over him and a knife in his hand. But we can extend a hand to help her—”

“You mean you would, un?” Deidara abruptly cut in, looking up quickly with hope in his eyes, only for Sasori to continue,

“Yes, but extending a hand to help someone only works if they take it. And from the looks of it, Angel isn’t going to be taking that help any time soon. She might not feel fine with the situation, but she must feel certain of something if she’d going to push us away. Literally.”

Sighing once more, Deidara reunited himself with the ground, the anger coming back better than ever as he shoved his hands in his pockets while he went on with his journey, nothing Sasori was saying making anything better in the slightest. If anything it was making it worse. He knew all that stuff, and he didn’t want to be reminded of it. Being reminded of it didn’t help him accept the entire situation. It just made him feel so guilty about it. Made his pace slow and his mind race. And he couldn’t be that way. The only move he made was to glance to the side for a second as Sasori added one last remark,

“She won’t let us find out, Dei. We could go back and do something, but while she’s around and trying to keep us safe, there isn’t anything we’ll see. Even though I wish otherwise.”

Blinking in surprise at his use of a nickname and the use of ‘I’ instead of ‘we’, Deidara lost all fury that he might have contained before, nodding along this time to his words. He even managed to say something back that appeared slightly more upbeat, stating,

“Well at least we’ll be staying in the area.”

“Yeah, but the mission doesn’t help. I don’t want to wait around to see what we can find. If we can find it in the first place. Because all this mission involves is ifs. All this effort for one thing.” He shot back, pulling out a torn page of a book and unfolding it, revealing it to be the picture in the first book Deidara had found that was to do with the rune. Unable to hold back, Deidara slowed to a halt while looking at it, having seen it somewhere, and seen it recently. Sasori stated his name to get him moving again, but Deidara clearly wasn’t in the same reality as he was. He was completely lost to the world.

Glancing up, he thought over everything over the last few days, looking towards Sasori but at the same time past him. Only doing so brought him something else that he would never have thought would affect him, a huge blast of the electricity feeling hitting him like a physical blow with his sense of Déjà Vu. A candle stood in a little niche in the wall, a name engraved below it in memory of the deceased. The flame was protected from the rain, but the slight wind was making it flicker. And soon all Deidara could focus on was the flame. In the darkness it shone out brightly, a light in the dark. Almost like a sign of hope. Like the light of a light bulb pinging on inside his head. Because now it all came together. Now it all made sense. Angel, Bokun, the house, the weird things going on, her abilities, her wings...it all became clear. He’d seen the candle in his dream. It symbolised his realisation of everything that had happened. The picture of the rune—or better yet, where he’d seen it—pieced together in his mind and reminded him of sitting behind Angel as she furled her wings back into her back, spotting the tattoo on the back of her neck.

It was of the rune.

“A gem, a treasure, an underestimated might,

With the power of darkness, but also of light.

Although unbreakable, it’s more fragile than it seems,

To truly work, it needs its own beliefs and dreams.

With its help, you are stronger than the hardest steel,

In mind and body, though always concealed.

The scars and wounds will always be felt,

But to be strong, it will need to turn its healing unto itself.” Deidara breathed, causing Sasori to narrow his eyes at his memory of one of the riddles. But why he was saying it, he didn’t know, until Deidara came back to the present and stated undisputedly, without anything that would be changing his mind,

“We have to go back, un.”