Author's note: Eh, there's some implied-ish DeiSaso here, but whatever. :D First fan fiction I've written for Naruto, so if you have the time then I'd appreciate a review. I've tried to stay in-character but I'm afraid I mostly failed when Hidan makes an appearance.

Disclaimer: I do not own the Naruto series or any of the characters of said series. I am not making a profit from this story. I only own the story itself [By the way, I've occasionally in the past written things that later turned out to be, word-for-word, highly similar to pre-existing works I'd not seen or had forgotten I'd read. If anything here seems oddly similar to a pre-existing work (aside from, well, Naruto) then it is completely accidental and I apologize, but please inform me.

Deidara saw that it was kind of poetic, that when Sasori died he'd proved himself wrong in more ways than one. The problem when you tear yourself apart, pick out the pretty bits and turn yourself into something as cold as art, you lose the emotion needed to appreciate it. There's feeling, of course, but a cold, methodical feeling; not the passions so central to humankind.

This he had been told by Sasori, not in a rare moment of weakness but by the blank stare of his nearly dead eyes. It had been a month now since he had been killed, stabbed through the heart in a way similar to how Deidara felt as he attempted to smother himself with his pillow. Deidara was all about passion and spontaneity; it would make sense that he would fall into this odd, hyper haze of adoration and excitement and find himself soon shattered like dry clay.

He rolled onto his back and, feeling constricted, pulled the sheets away from his body. He touched his chest, felt the stitches there, noticed he was damp with the not-as-salty light sweat of stress but didn't fully care. His mind was on everything else. He wasn't as weak as Sasori; he would never give up on what he loved, ever, even in the end.

He got up, got half-heartedly dressed, and got out of the thick air of that room as soon as he realized the light was turning a haunting shade of blue-purple. As he shuffled up the hall, he stumbled, with force, into something - something that swore on contact.

"Hidan, watch where you're going, un!"

Hidan gave a short laugh that sounded decidedly like a "heh", before replying: "And just what were you doing?" Well, he didn't quite say that, but Deidara had gotten used to him a while ago and mentally filtered the rude bits out of habit.

"Thinking about art, un," he replied honestly. Art, he realized, could be summarized with the color red. Red was the quickest color to fade in the sun, the color of things dying, the color of life - of blood. It was the color of the most delicious apples (unless you preferred them quite tart) and the color of clouds before things get cold and before the warmth and light comes back so you can see people instead of running into them. The warm, dusty brown-reds of clay and the vivid, gorgeous sun-red of Sasori's hair - these were art.

"You know," replied Hidan, again in different words, "you really should stop wasting your time like - "

"Art is my god, un," Deidara replied for the twenty-eighth time. "Art is why I live."

"Exactly. Unlike me, you don't have forever to just wait around before you realize that you're wasting your time. Art isn't perfect. Jashin will be around forever. Unlike your art."

"Nothing is permanent anymore." Deidara's voice was a low, bitter tone. "Some day everyone will forget about your Jashin, maybe, un - maybe it'll be when. . . Someday, even you will die, maybe when everything falls apart, un."

"...at least if that happens I won't be going to hell."

End kinda sucks, doesn't it? XD Review!