Chapter FIFTEEN

"Hey, Sakura-chan, wanna spar?"

Ever since Sakura's chakra collar happening, the limitation

on her movements had unofficially been loosened. She still did not venture out, though Sasori wasn't sure if that was due to restrictions or if she simply did not want to, and she often visited the training grounds to mess around with Deidara.

Sasori followed to make sure nothing went wrong. Of course that was the only reason.

He and Deidara also began receiving more missions and patrols, and it was only then that Sasori realized just how much is workload had been lessened as Sakura adjusted to the hideout. Most of the members were willing to keep an eye on her while he was gone, and Sakura herself was more comfortable in the presence of those not him.

A large part of him was glad about that, and he ignored the tiny voice within him telling him that he might be a little jealous.

Because he wasn't.

The next step of Orochimaru's capture was slowly but surely planned. The intel gained from the Northern hideout had been fully analyzed and catalogued and there had been no retaliation from Orochimaru. here had been several raids on smaller bases and hideout they had managed to track down by other divisions within the nation.

However, after one massive operation, Orochimaru was sure to be cautious, and the wait was making everyone, not only Sasori, begin to feel impatient. He wasn't about to mess up their chance of capturing the snake, though, and he carried out his daily tasks and missions as diligently as he could.

Sasori sighed at the thought of his former partner. Up above the clouds, on the back of a flying bird and with the wind gently caressing his face, his thoughts often wandered to things he usually tried to not waste his time thinking of. The border he and Deidara had been assigned to was just as usual, and there was nothing to report.

They should be returning to the base soon.

Deidara was standing a little to his right, humming, arms crossed and looking straight as though he had conquered the world. Sasori had to admit, standing way above and looking down on the world did give one that feeling, but he was never going to tell Deidara that, especially because if he got too into the mood his blond partner started monologuing.

Sasori himself often just laid down. He never let his guard down enough to nap, but at least the wind felt nice enough for him to relax.

A while later, Sasori realized Deidara had stopped humming. He cracked an eye open, wondering if he had simply finished his tune.

"Hey Danna, do you see that?"

Sasori sighed and took a deep breath before he dragged himself up. "What?" He moved to stand beside his partner and scowled at the clouds obscuring their way.

"That...thing." Deidara pointed and Sasori squinted. He frowned.

"Why is there a house in the middle of a desert?"

"No idea, un. Is it even a house? It wasn't there the last time we flew over here."

"When was the last time again? Three weeks ago?" Sasori tried to remember if anyone had mentioned something like this, but nothing came to mind.

"Should we check it out?"

Sasori sighed. "Yeah."

Deidara changed the direction of his bird and they flew downwards. Sasori hopped off the moment it was safe to and he peered at the large structure standing a little away from them. "Is it made of sand?"

"Looks like it, un." Deidara landed behind him. He was tossing and catching a small ball of clay. "Should we explode it?"

Sasori fixed his partner with a blank look. "What if there's someone inside?"

Deidara shrugged. "Right."

The two of them did a quick circle around the structure and quickly realized that there was no entrance.

"This is so weird," Deidara muttered. "What is this thing?"

Sasori carefully placed a hand on one of the walls and channelled chakra through it. "It's solid," he said.

"Wow." Deidara held up his clay. "Should we explode it?"

Sasori frowned. "We should repo-" Suddenly, the ground beneath him seemed to shake. He quickly channelled chakra to his feet in order to keep his balance and grabbed Deidara, who didn't have such a skill, to keep him grounded as well.

"What's happening?" Deidara asked. The blond reached into his pouch and pulled out what Sasori recognized to be one of his birds. "Let's get out of here?"

Sasori nodded, but before his partner could transform his clay piece into a carrier the earth beneath them exploded. Both of them instinctively launched themselves into the air and Sasori raised his arms to his face to shield himself from the dust. Suddenly he felt a surge of killing intent and he saw something shoot out towards him. Before he could even react, the something grabbed him by the middle section and yanked him up into the air.

"Danna!"

Sasori could hear Deidara frantically calling his name, but it suddenly sounded far away. The thing around him squeezed, and he found himself struggling to breathe. He was tugged forward rather harshly, and he soon found himself danging before a young redhead. A redhead with green eyes and sand floating around him.

Sasori opened his mouth, but the hold around his middle tightened even more. He could not concentrate enough to call upon his chakra. He knew the sand should be manipulated through chakra, and he knew his control was good enough to disrupt the commanding flow. His lungs were screaming for air, and he struggled to even look up at his attacker.

Green eyes glared up at him and if Sasori hadn't been slowly dying, he would have been impressed with the thick eyeliner surrounding the boy's eyes. Now that he was closer, though, perhaps they were eyebags?

Finally, just as he thought he would lose consciousness, the hold loosened. Sasori took in a greedy gulp of air before he began to cough. He was roughly shaken, and he looked up with a glare. "I don't appreciate being manhandled," he wheezed out.

The boy's eyes flashed in rage, and Sasori wondered if he had met him before.

"Shut up," the boy snapped. "You have her! You took her! He told me all about it!"

Sasori blinked, thrown off. "What? Who?" He glanced down nervously noting that he was hanging a good distance from the ground and that his attacker was perched on a platform of sand.

His reply seemed to displease the male before him, for the grip of the sand tightened once more. "Do not play dumb," he seethed. "Give. Her. Back."

Sasori could see flashes of white before his eyes. "No idea what you're talking about," he managed to get out.

The grip loosened once more and he hung limply from its hold. "Give her back," came the one-sided reply, but it was the sudden softness in his tone that made him lookup. He didn't get to fully look, though, because there was a loud noise just to his right and the sand holding him up exploded. Sasori felt himself falling, and he landed unceremoniously on a familiar white surface.

"Danna?" Deidara asked.

"Look out," he breathed out, and they swerved suddenly to the side to dodge a huge sandy hand that swiped at them.

"What is that?" Deidara demanded as they sped away.

"A dangerous man looking for his ex," Sasori said, finally managing to catch his breath. "No idea, really."

From behind them, they heard a monstrous roar that slowly diminished in volume the further they flew, but the distance did nothing to take away from the pain within.

Sasori and Deidara remained in the air for a while longer, wary of being followed, but soon after the redhead vanished in a swirl of sand. With no way of tracking him, they flew back to base soon after and reported in with Nagato the moment they returned.

Whoever the redhead had been, he was dangerous and was most probably a threat.

"Is there anything in the archives?" Konan asked. She and Yahiko had been present when they had barged in.

"Nothing specific," Nagato said, flipping through a file. "Red hair is pretty common, though there isn't much about sand manipulation."

"He either looked like he could use a good nights sleep or needed to tone down on the eyeliner," Deidara said. "He looked insane."

"He was looking for a girl?" Yahiko asked. "Is there any chance he's related to Orochimaru?"

Sasori mulled over his thoughts for a while. "There is a possibility he was waiting to ambush us," he said slowly. "With his abilities, I doubt making a massive sand structure would be much of a problem."

Deidara frowned. "You think he set up where he knew we'd be flying over? Did he know we'd come down to investigate?"

"Maybe." Sasori took a deep breath. "You think he was after Sakura?"

"We could ask her if she knows any sleep-deprived redheads who have a thing for makeup," Konan suggested.

"You talking about Danna, un?" Deidara asked.

They found Sakura sitting on Sasori's bed with a leaf in her mouth.

Sasori watched Deidara pause before he shot forward in panic. "Sakura-chan!" He exclaimed. "You can't just put everything in your mouth! Most of Danna's plants are poisonous!"

Sasori scoffed when Sakura eyed the blond before she pointedly swallowed the green. "If you were hungry, you could have gone to the kitchen," he said.

Sakura turned to him before she hopped off the bed and hurried over to his side. "Welcome back," she said quietly. "How was your mission?"

Sasori ruffled her hair, before nudging her to sit back down. "It was interesting," he said. "There's something we need to ask you."

Sakura sat down and looked expectantly up at him.

"On our way back, we were ambushed," Sasori said, carefully observing the pinkette's expression. "Our attacker was a red-haired male who controlled sand."

Sakura blinked, then slowly looked away from him. She wrapped an arm around her stomach, and he saw the way her hand came up to rub at her wrist.

"You know him?" He asked.

The girl hesitated before she nodded. "Gaara," she said.

"What?" Deidara asked.

"His name," Sakura elaborated. "His name is Gaara."

"One of Orochimaru's?" Sasori guessed, though they all probably knew the answer.

Sakura nodded and hesitated again. Sasori saw the way her grip on her own wrist tightened to the point he worried she would bruise herself. He could feel the pressure through their bond, so she must have been hurting a little. "Gaara and I, we are very close," she said. "He was beside me from the very beginning. He was my," Sakura swallowed hard, "my first-ever friend."

Sasori watched her forcefully release herself, then run her hand over her wrist again. She was nervous.

"Orochimaru-sama knew this," she said. "When I disobeyed, he didn't hurt me."

"He hurt him," Sasori said slowly.

Sakura nodded, not looking up. "Yes."

"And when he disobeyed, he hurt you?"

Sakura nodded again. "At the beginning, Gaara and I were assigned partners. We were sent out on missions together. We were one of Orochimaru's best."

"You-both of you are so strong though," Deidara said in disbelief, and Sasori thought of the Gaara they had momentarily faced off against. "Why didn't you try to escape?"

"Because by the time we realized, Orochimaru long knew. We were each other's chain."

"He seemed to think we took you," Sasori said.

"I don't know why," Sakura replied. "He was probably told so to turn him against you."

"He was insane, un."

Sasori glared at his partner but Sakura did nothing more than wince. "Gaara cannot control himself," she told them. "There were quite a lot of people like that. The chakra they wield is so overwhelmingly powerful and no one helped them through the process of learning how to control it."

"More powerful than you?"

Sakura looked thoughtful. "I was one of Orochimaru's strongest, but Gaara...Gaara is an army by himself. "

Sasori nodded. "Will we have to worry about him coming after us?"

Sakura looked torn, and Sasori felt torn himself. Sakura had a companion when she was with Orochimaru. That thought itself put him at ease.

"If I can talk to him-" Sakura cut herself off. She took a deep breath, then tried again. "If I can just talk to him."

Deidara looked over the girl in worry, then turned to him. Sasori placed a hand on Sakura's head and gently ruffled her hair. "I'm going to report this, okay?"

He would have to regardless of Sakura's consent, but he felt himself relax when Sakura nodded without much hesitation.

I like redheads.

Just a notice that 'The Gift of Sight' is currently going through a rewrite, so if you haven't yet, do check it out!

Here's a summary of it for those interested:

Morino Ibiki is recognized if not by his name, then by his face. His scars disturb many and children run at the sight, so when he meets a pink haired girl he doesn't know what to do with her, especially when she takes an instant liking to him. Maybe it's because she is of a clan that gave up sight for chakra vision, but sometimes, only those who cannot see can truly understand.

Raven is still MIA so it's just me still. Catch me on Tumblr at Darquedeath4444! Or discord /dNYU2kV

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