Ino
Two days later, Ino woke to hearing her mother ask her father with a frantic, “But are you positive this has anything at all to do with Deidara? I thought it was well known by now that this entire event was Orochimaru’s fault!”
“We no evidence showing any outside involvement with Orochimaru’s plot, but there is something important about Deidara that I am being called in for.”
“Are they going to finally bring him back? Have they actually found a way to convince him to come back home?”
Holding her breath in hope, Ino waits in pure anticipation for her father’s response, perhaps being too optimistic because what she heard had felt like a let down, “I’m sorry, but they haven’t. I don’t know what they want to see me for, and I don’t know when I will be back. Please, don’t tell Ino of this. I don’t want her getting involved any more than she already tries to be.”
“I won’t. Be safe, okay?”
“I will be, there’s no need to worry.”
As he said this, she is getting dressed right away and crafting a plan to sneak out of her room to get outside to follow her father to his meeting about Deidara that he, apparently, had the nerve to not say a word to her about.
Inoichi, for his part, was genuinely curious as to what Jiraiya would want to speak to him about regarding Deidara. All he knew was that it had nothing to do with him coming home any time soon. Outside of this, he had no clue what he’d want to see him for.
Upon arriving to the meeting spot, he is met with not only Jiraiya, but Kakashi and Asuma as well, each one appearing rather somber as they watched him come onto the rooftop of a partially destroyed building in a desolate part of the village.
Jiraiya has a crestfallen expression to him, his eyes struggling to meet with the father of the young man they brought him out here to talk to about, “Inoichi…your son really was one of the prides of this village. His beauty was said to have been unmatched as much as his passion for the things that mattered most to him.”
He has a feeling then this conversation isn’t what he would want it to be.
In the cool morning air, Jiraiya gives him some of the worst news he could ever expect to hear from anyone: “Your son is alive, but he is in the S-ranked criminal group, the Akatsuki. It appears from what we have seen that he is not being held there by force nor is he being forced to commit the crimes of arson he has across the land.”
“Where’s your proof of this? What reason do you believe my son is a criminal by his own free will? How do you know the Uchiha didn’t use his eyes to manipulate him?”
It was only what a good father would say when faced with such news. Honestly, no one could blame him for being so defensive when it came down to Deidara after everything that’s been said of him over the years in the form of cruel rumors and criticisms of his clan’s traditions.
However, there was nothing that could beat the evidence as is: “I have a bingo book with his face in it, and there’s been numerous documented evidence of the young man using his jutsu in a criminal way.”
“I need to see it then.”
Kakashi hands him the bingo book in silence whereas Asuma hands him the files containing the documented evidence of his attacks on others, “I’m sorry, sir.”
At least Asuma gave him something because what he saw next only served to break his heart.
Deidara’s face is indeed in the bingo book…in there, he is listed as a member of the Akatsuki. In the files, he finds photo after photo of the young man who he knew to be his son using his jutsu to commit crimes. Reading the reports on his crimes has him knowing for fact that the young man he knows to be his son is nothing more than a stranger to him now because, “…It’s him, I know in the pictures it’s Deidara but—at the same time, it doesn’t feel like my son is there anymore. The Deidara I knew would never use his jutsu like this—”
“Except he did to alphas and betas he would wrongly accuse of trying to harm him or being sexist towards him.” Kakashi reminds him, “Your son had a chip on his shoulder towards alphas and betas that didn’t get better with age. Tell me Inoichi, why didn’t you stop it when you had the chance?”
“Are you blaming me for this, Kakashi?” he asks with narrowing eyes, “Because last I checked, a man who’s never had a child of his own should be criticizing the parenting of one who does.”
“He’s right on that end, you know.” Asuma points out with a side glare at Kakashi, “You ought to remember you’re not the one with the child here, he is. Any criticism you make will be seen as invalid by anyone and everyone who knows you too well.”
“What, I can’t ask him what everyone’s been thinking all of these years? Don’t tell me you never thought it yourself, Asuma.”
He says nothing to this while Inoichi goes on the defensive, “You think I didn’t try to stop him from doing that? I tried, but Deidara wasn’t like other omega children! He was silent, with no friends of his own, and a strange love for his art that I honestly believed would have driven him mad over time if I didn’t force him to get out of his tent and art studio at least once a day!”
“Then what exactly was his relationship with Itachi Uchiha?” Jiraiya speaks up in partial frustration to what he’s hearing, “Do not take offense to this, but I’m starting to believe he left with the Uchiha boy by choice, not by force.”
Inoichi himself isn’t too certain anymore after the evidence he’s seen for himself, “His relationship with Itachi Uchiha was one of pure antagonism. He hated that boy more than he hated anything or anyone else alive. Deidara used to be so quiet, but when Itachi came around, things changed for the worst.”
Deidara had always been a good kid. Inoichi can attest to this: as a child, he needed minimal discipline since he tended to listen to the rules very well the first time around, yet when he did break a rule, he would be reprimanded for doing so which would lead into him learning his lesson. He was always kind, always friendly, and yet around strangers he simply clammed up. He never quite knew the reason why the boy was so shy, though he suspected it always had to do with being in the spotlight for his beauty as opposed to the one thing he considered his passion: his art.
Yes, the omega boy was so preoccupied with his art, it left him wondering if this was the reason why he didn’t make friends anywhere he went. Whilst other omegas his age were playing house and dreaming of the day they’d be mated, Deidara was too busy perfecting his sculptures and declaring his wish to be an artist. When asked how his future mate would feel about this, his son would grimace and speak with such disgust, “Mate? Eww, I’m never getting mated, un! Alphas and betas are gross! I wanna be an artist, not some person’s slave, un!”
(…Looking back on it, that could’ve been a great reason for other omega children to not want him as a friend…as well as alphas and betas for that matter. While he's sure jealousy over the praise he received for his beauty could have played a role in it, he honestly believes it's his personal views put into a standoffish manner that really made others put off from wanting to be his friend.)
He did his best to help Deidara try to understand the other kids, only for it to go nowhere and for his son to remain friendless. Oddly enough, he was happiest alone and having no real social life or friends bothered him in the slightest.
No, all Deidara ever wanted was to be left alone to make as many sculptures as possible and perfect his craft enough to become an artist. It wasn’t what he wanted for the boy, but he wouldn’t deny him the one thing that made him happy. Besides, as long as he was friendly to people in general and didn’t do anything to hurt them, he was fine with leaving him be. He’d come to have friends and a social life one day—or so he told himself.
His son’s life really had been one of relative monotony: school, sculptures, art, babysitting his sister after she was born, and taking over some business hours at the flower shop when he was old enough. Other than this, there was nothing really unusual about Deidara he could think of.
He can the say same about Itachi Uchiha: the kid was a prodigy back then, someone who was very popular in the village with a line of beta and omega suitors wanting to have him as a mate. There was nothing truly unusual about him other than his lack of desire to mate anyone in general. In fact, Inoichi can recall the first time Itachi ever spoke to him about something outside of work after he was done interrogating someone he caught, “Inoichi, you have a son, correct?”
“Yes, I do.” he didn’t know why he was asking this at first—he figured that maybe the guy needed a new friend or something, but then he got a calm, “He’s an omega, isn’t he? Long blonde hair, blue eyes, and a penchant for all things art…isn’t that your son?”
He found this to be a bit awkward of a conversation to have, and yet he answered him honestly because he figured he would find out the truth anyway from someone else, “Yes, he is all of the above. Why are you asking me about him? Are you interested in being his friend?”
Itachi shook his head, his answer clear enough to make him think nothing of what had been said until that point, “No, not at all. I was only wondering if this Deidara Yamanaka I have heard about so much truly was related to you as they say or if it was all a rumor.”
Inoichi didn’t think much of it since Itachi had changed the subject immediately afterwards, “Did you manage to get anything useful from your interrogation?” and to top it off, he never brought up Deidara again to him at work when this conversation had been held between them.
It wasn’t until Deidara came home one day, beyond angry as all get out, muttering underneath his breath a mile a minute while rushing over to the fridge to get his favorite snack, that Inoichi had first heard him mention Itachi Uchiha, “Deidara, what’s wrong? Did Itachi do something to make you upset?”
He grunted with an angered expression on his face, “How would you know, un?”
“…I heard you say ‘fucking Itachi’ under your breath just now.” Inoichi pauses, waiting for Deidara to tell him what’s wrong since that’s what he usually did in situations like this.
Except this time, he didn’t. He grabbed his favorite snack and headed over to the basement to get some clay, with his father following him closely, “Do you want to talk about it? I can talk to him if you want me to.”
“No, I’m fine… Damn Uchiha, un! Won’t leave me alone!” he went back to grumbling under his breath and Inoichi knew better than to talk to him any longer, “Alright, but if he gets to be too bothersome for you, then come to me and I’ll make him leave you alone.”
Deidara didn’t say much after that. All he did was grab the amount of clay he wanted and headed up to his art studio where explosions were heard one after another.
Inoichi left him be, believing he would come to him if his issues with Itachi escalated. He had reason to believe he would; he hadn’t hesitated in coming to him in the past when he had been on the brunt end of some undesired attention from alphas and betas in the past. Which is why he had thought at first that Deidara didn’t need his help again because he believed he had gotten the Itachi issue under control by himself, thinking this is why he never spoke a word of him to him again.
That is, until he learned of the incidences in public where Deidara would snap at Itachi and at times try to get violent with him in bursts of pure rage that were—by witness accounts—unjustifiable.
Talking to Deidara afterwards never went anywhere either, “Why would you get that violent with him? Don’t you know getting angry and violent won’t solve anything? Deidara, please, let me handle this for you! I can get Itachi to back off—”
“No, un! I can handle him myself, I will defeat him myself and he will regret ever pissing me off!”
“Dei—”
“Dad, I know what I’m doing—don’t you believe me, un?”
He couldn’t tell him the lie no matter how badly he wanted to, “I don’t know anymore. Your outbursts are getting out of control and there’s only so many times I can beg the Hokage to not make you suffer any punishment for it before you do. Please, let me handle Itachi; I know he’ll listen to me.”
His defiant son refused nonetheless, “I am handling him myself, no questions asked.”
“Fine, you can try this one last time but if you mess up then I’m taking over.”
His son was quick to use his own clan’s views against him in that moment, “And invalidate my strength as an omega, un? I thought our clan was supposed to progressive on omega’s rights, not backwards regressives like that one poor clan.”
“That’s not what I—”
“But’s that you’re doing when you say stuff like this to me, un! It’s like you’re saying I’m not capable of protecting myself because I’m an omega! So which is it, dad: am I capable or not, un?”
“You are, you always have been—”
“Then why try to invalidate that?”
He tried to work his way around it, only to have it fall flat, “As your father, I have a right to keep you safe from anyone trying to hurt you. If Itachi really is upsetting you this much, it must be because he’s hurting you and I have a right to protect you from him. That’s not invalidating your strength, Deidara, it’s being a good father.”
He was about to retaliate when his mate intervened, “Inoichi, what’s going on? Why are you arguing with Deidara?”
“He’s been snapping at Itachi in public and having these violent outbursts of rage at him. I’m trying to offer him help, but he doesn’t want to take it.” he explains to her, but then Deidara spoke up, “I’m only snapping at him because he makes these stupid comments and gets under my skin to the point where he makes me want to blow him up, un.”
His mother—as always—took his side immediately, “Inoichi, there’s no need for you to get involved here! It sounds like Itachi is only annoying Deidara and Deidara needs to learn how to handle it better.”
He could agree to that one though he is a bit apprehensive on where she’s going with this, “Okay, I agree with you there. Maybe Deidara needs to go to someone to teach him to better handle his anger towards Itachi.”
“Let my son learn how to do that from some alpha or beta? Not a chance! He needs an omega to teach him how to do that!”
“There’s no omega in the village qualified to do that.” he tried to reason with her, but with Deidara being her favorite child, she naturally had her mom goggles on and refused to see much reason anywhere else, “Nonsense, I will find one myself right now for him! Come, Deidara, we’re going to get you real help for your Itachi problem.”
It’s easy to blame his mate for this, though he knows at the forefront of his mind he’s more to blame for not setting his foot down back then and doing something more about Deidara’s obvious anger when he had the chance.
“I didn’t want to upset my mate or make Deidara resent me. I tried to keep the peace in my home while trying to get Deidara to keep his angry outbursts at home only, but it wasn’t exactly easy when we hardly ever spoke at a certain point before he left.”
Jiraiya muses then on what he’s heard, “So you said he hates Itachi, correct?”
“His relationship with him was nothing but one of pure hate.” Inoichi reiterates, “Believe me, if he could have killed Itachi back then and gotten away with it, he would have.”
“But it sounds as though Itachi didn’t do anything outside of annoy Deidara at best by your own account of events. In fact, no one has ever seen or heard of him mistreating Deidara either.” the Pervy Sage then asks him, “Do you remember any moment at all where Itachi got violent with your son?”
“None at all—even when defending himself, he showed nothing but restraint when knocking Deidara out by hitting a pressure point instead of using any weapons or jutsu on him.”
Asuma can confirm this as well, “My father never had a bad word to say of Itachi. Had he ever been violent towards Deidara, I would have heard of it.”
Kakashi can confirm this as well, “I have never heard of him getting violent towards Deidara either. I have heard of Deidara snapping at him, but never of it happening the other way around. No offense, Inoichi, but your son had a lot of anger problems that needed to be sorted out instead of brushed under the rug.”
He groaned while rolling his eyes, “I know that—don’t you think I knew that better than anyone else? I tried to get him help, but my mate fought me every step of the way whenever I tried. It wasn’t worth creating an unhappy home for Ino, so I let her take the reigns when it came to Deidara.”
“You said he never brought up Deidara to you at work ever again. How about outside of work? Did he ever approach you to talk about Deidara?” Jiraiya wonders, hoping to come to a conclusion on his suspicion sooner than later.
Inoichi can answer this one confidently, “He did once and only once. It didn’t end well.”
The men in the group listen intently, hoping this answer will help to shed more light on what led the omega to leave with Itachi in a manner that is appearing more and more to be consensual as opposed to forced like Ino had long claimed.