Ino
In the end, the group of men couldn’t find Ino at the home, flower shop, or Sakura’s place like Inoichi had thought she’d be. All they could do was look around the Yamanaka home for any journal or diary of Deidara’s that could have been hidden anywhere. This led to nowhere, until Jiraiya asked, “What’s up with that tent outside?”
“Oh,” Inoichi began as Asuma caught wind of it as well, “Deidara lived in a tent outside to make his bedroom into an art studio…all he did was blow stuff up in there though.”
Looking inside the makeshift art studio and the basement had turned up nothing. Asuma could only state the obvious to them, “Let’s go see it then. I’m sure there has to be something out there.”
“Who knew we’d get so lucky to have this anyway? Most people would have gotten rid of that piece of junk a long time ago if their kid was Deidara.” Jiraiya then patted him on the back, “You’re a great dad to keep this up for him, Inoichi. I know I wouldn’t have if he were my kid.”
“No…I’m not a good father. I only kept it up all these years because Ino fought me so hard to keep it up in case if he ever came back.”
This is the truth and Inoichi feels like a horrible person for admitting to it out loud.
He won’t deny being iffy on Deidara’s innocence—there were certain things about his disappearance that didn’t sit right with him enough to dispel doubts on the theory Ino had of him being kidnapped by Itachi—but after everything he’s learned today from Sasuke and Naruto…he cannot see himself as a good father for as long as he lives. He shouldn’t have ever doubted Deidara or his innocence in all of this. He should have been far more loyal and trusting of him like Ino had been all these years he was gone.
If it were to come out that he did choose to leave, then he would have to ask himself if he ever did anything wrong to make him want to leave. Because perhaps he had never been a good father to Deidara at all if he could doubt his innocence in the slightest bit for a small moment.
When they arrived at the tent, all they found was a tent worn down from the elements over the years—holes from rain, hail, and insects that tore through the tent, dust on inside where animals had dug holes through the earth on the ground and chewed through the bottom of it along with the sleeping bag in there, and a sketch book, full of ideas for his sculptures, with a bag of his clothes and other miscellaneous belongings that were of no substance to their investigation into the missing Yamanaka.
All they got was nothing and it was frustrating as it was demoralizing, “Great…looks like we have to find your daughter then.”
Jiraiya’s grumbling didn’t stop him from obsessively thinking over every single little detail of each and every memory he has with Deidara…it didn’t stop him from wondering what he could have done to have stopped this in the beginning (outside of making Itachi leave him alone, that is).
“Inoichi, are you okay with doing this?” Asuma’s voice cuts him out of his thoughts before they grow too depressing, “If you ever want to stop, you can always leave this to us.”
“No, it’s alright. I want to come with you guys—Deidara is my son and I owe it to not only him, but my whole family to bring him home.”
And he means it when he says it: he owes it to not only Deidara, but his whole family to bring his stolen son back home.
As for Itachi Uchiha…if he ever sees him again, he’ll kill him for Ino and Deidara’s sake. Simple as that, really: because like hell he’ll allow that monster to get away with massacring his clan and stealing his son from him. No one messes with his family and gets away with it, that much he can still say with conviction and pride.
Ino finally—after all this time—had him in her sights.
Itachi Uchiha…the bastard who stole her brother from her years ago and ruined his life for his own selfish purposes.
Getting her hands ready in the position needed for her jutsu, she was getting ready to take over his body to kill the man beside him and leave his body just in time for Hinata to finish him off.
“Ino Yamanaka…it’s been a while, hasn’t it?” Itachi pauses in his steps and turns around with his partner to face the girls, “Are you mated now to a Hyuuga? I can only imagine how upset Deidara would be about such a thing if he knew.”
Her anger flared at the sound of her precious brother’s name leaving that monster’s mouth, “Don’t you dare say his name…not after you stole him from my home, not after you ruined his life! How dare you come back here after everything you’ve done to him!”
His partner turns to look at him oddly, seemingly unthreatened by the two girls in front of them, “Huh… You never said anything about stealing Deidara from his home—”
“Of course he wouldn’t, he’s a shameless Uchiha! My brother told me everything I needed to know, and I know better than to trust him.” she was clear in her wording when making direct eye contact with the man she’s wanted to kill for so long, “This will end here today. I will not allow you to keep ruining my brother’s life any longer. Your life will end here and I will bring him home with me, where he should’ve been this whole time!”
Hinata was about to grab her wrist while trying to get her to calm down, “Wait, Ino, don’t—”
“Don’t hold me back, Hinata.” she growled lowly, “If we’re going to be in this together, then we need to work together to kill him now so we can bring Deidara back.”
His partner chuckles low, the sound unnerving Hinata when he looks away from Itachi, “Ah, looks like you’ve got unsettled drama with little girls…let me know when you’re done and ready to get back on track with our mission. I’ll be sitting this one out; children are of no threat to me.”
Itachi didn’t lose focus from Ino once and it only made her madder, “I promised Deidara I wouldn’t lay a hand on you…I also promised him that I wouldn’t harm you or so much as use my Sharingan on you for any reason whatsoever. However, if you dare use any Inoichi-esque jutsu on me, then I will respond accordingly.”
She didn’t care anymore.
Hearing him speak about her brother in such an intimate manner…making it sound as though their whole relationship was consensually cordial…only provokes her to use her jutsu to go forward with her plan.
“Don’t!”
“Take care of my body for me, Hinata. I’ll need it after this.”
The last thing she heard?
A calmly spoken, “Very well then” from a too nonchalant Itachi.
When inside Sakura’s body, the greatest resistance she had faced was from the inner Sakura. She hadn’t taken too kindly to Ino trying to force her to forfeit the match and yet it was her grabbing her, shaking her, begging her to give her a fair chance that made Ino leave her body immediately.
She never brought that up to Sakura because well…she can only imagine how embarrassing it would be to hear.
Sakura was not at all suffocating or anxiety inducing to be in. Itachi, on the other hand, is.
His presence is strong, it’s clear that while she is the one who entered his body by force, he is the one who is totally in control of it still. Why he hasn’t kicked her out of it yet, she’s not sure…
“Tell me…” his voice is far clearer than Sakura’s was too, “were you wanting to find any information about your brother’s disappearance? Were you wanting to kill yourself and I in order to free him as you claim you want to do? Help me make sense of this, tell me why you did something so stupid that Deidara would rant at you about it if he could?”
She almost lost control then and ended up back in her body, “Will you stop talking about Deidara like you know him better than me already! You don’t know him, you never did, not even when you were in the village pretending to be a great person!”
He took a pause to this statement from her, finding it to be strange, “I never knew him? How odd of you to claim…”
“You didn’t! All you ever did was make him mad until he acted out in a way that got people to hate him!” she reminded him then, “I was his only friend and he was mine until Sakura came along. I knew him better than anyone alive, I know he wouldn’t be chummy with you after everything you did to make him look bad in front of everyone.”
She was met with his spirit—his far too powerful spirit, for what it’s worth—facing her in a manner that was similar to the inner Sakura, but different because he held her with his only visible hand and the grip was fairly loose, as though he were holding a doll as opposed to a person, “…You probably don’t know this, but only one person can be territorial over your brother and it’s me. Only one person can claim to truly know him, Ino, and trust me when I tell you: only I myself truly know your brother better than anyone else alive. You only ever knew him as a good brother, not the human being he was.”
“You’re lying…I know him far better than you! I know he wouldn’t ever get close to you for anything!”
Itachi didn’t so much as flinch when he pulled the corner of his cloak down, exposing a bite mark on his neck, one that she knows far too well, “You don’t know my mate better than me. You never have and you never will; it’s better to accept things as is between him and I—we’re mated and happy. He’d prefer it if you accepted it instead of trying to separate us like you wish to do.”
She doesn’t stop herself from going speechless, nor does she stop herself from leaving his body when he gives her the chance out of severe shock.
She knows her brother too well…he’d never be mated to Itachi. He hated him far too much—there’s no way he’d ever—
When she was back in her body, she was in Hinata’s arms and the other girl appeared to be terrified, “Come on, we have to leave now! They’re too powerful for us to take on!”
“…N-No, I’m not leaving…not after that Uchiha bastard lied about being mated to my brother.” she seethed, her pale eyes on the dark eyed man across from her, “My brother would never be your mate by choice…this is some Uchiha trick, some Sharingan shenanigan that you made up to mess with me—”
He did the same thing as he did when she was in his body: he pulled down the collar of his cloak, exposing the bitemark on his neck that she knew from anywhere, “No tricks or Sharingan, I’m afraid. Just Deidara and I getting along well enough to decide to be mated to each other.”
Hinata was devastated then, “N-No…Deidara was too kind and far too beautiful to ever settle for someone as cruel and evil as you! There’s no way—”
“I see he still has one too many fanboys and fangirls here…” Itachi muses, “It’s fine though, I know none of you can kill me and I know if any of you try to steal him from me, I can always take any of you out of the picture to keep him safe.”
Hinata was about to strike with her Byakugan, but was stopped by the intervention of a man with a commanding tone who appeared to be a bit too optimistic to one of the criminals in front of him, “Alright kids, take it down a notch! I can smell Ino’s ‘I’m gonna kill you’ scent all the way from the tea shop, there’s no need to go that extreme when you’re both at a clear disadvantage!”
They both paused while Itachi’s partner grunted, “This is the best that could come to save these dumb kids? How pathetic.”
“Don’t underestimate him; he may not look it, but he is plenty strong with his taijutsu alone.” Itachi warned the man, who appeared apathetic to such claims.
However, Guy wasn’t going to let them off so easy, “Aren’t you Akatsuki types supposed to be smarter than this? Making your scents so obvious and known—if I didn’t know what to expect from Itachi, I would have still came here anyway since Ino’s scent was so vicious it had me worried something was severely wrong.”
Ino was about to make a move towards Itachi when Guy grabbed her by the wrists, her drive to kill him far more powerful now that she’s seen him in person and knows about the forced mating between her brother and him, “Stop. I’ve already contacted the ANBU; they’ll be here shortly to help me deal with them, but for now, you two have to leave.”
“You really want me to leave? After I’ve found out he forced my brother to mate him?” she stared him wide eyed, disgusted by what all she had heard from the man she had seen as respectable thanks to Lee.
Itachi would give a small eye roll—the most expression and emotion he has shown so far—with an annoyed response accompanying it, “By force? …I may be many things, but a Konoha alpha with an ego too big I am not. Deidara and I mated consensually without any manipulation, coercion, force, or Sharingan interference. Despite what you believe or think of me, this is the truth.”
She was going to protest this, to call him out for every single lie he’s said in front of her in this moment, to end up denied this chance as he and his partner fled the scene.
The moment they were gone, Guy turned his attention to her, asking in an even tone, “Ino, are you okay?”
While Hinata was mentally applauding the man for choosing to hold back on his clear outrage for her reckless behavior just now, Ino could only clench her fists and shake her head, too upset at the lies she had heard just now about her brother from the man who had stolen him from her.
Somewhere outside of Konoha, Kisame asks Itachi, “How did the girl know that was Deidara’s mark on your neck?”
“In the Yamanaka clan, it is customary for immediate family members to give noncommittal bite marks to each other. Think of it as a form of familial love biting; before you think about it, there’s no sexual or romantic undertone to it. Deidara and Ino used to do this to each other all the time in the morning before they’d separate their ways to go about their days.”
“Really now? What would such a bite serve if there is no sexual or romantic undertone to it?”
“There is a good reason for it.” Itachi recalls as they make their way to a good vantage point for their mission, “Such bite marks are meant to show other alphas and betas that the Yamanaka is one from a family that will avenge or protect them should anything to happen to them. It’s more of a safety precaution and blanket than an actual love bite in that respect.”
Kisame took a while to absorb this fact and then commented with a sly grin, “She really thinks you forced him into being your mate, huh?”
He shrugged carelessly because it was truly no big deal to him, “She can think whatever she pleases. It doesn’t change the fact we are mated now and there’s nothing she can do to change this outside of killing me, which I won’t allow to happen and Deidara would kill her for if she ever got close to trying.”
He doesn’t say much in response for the longest time… That is, until he said, “You think Sasori finds him to be as desirable as those in that village do?”
Itachi says nothing to this, but it doesn’t stop his scent from flaring as the sour notes of burnt roses and carnations flooding the air around them.
After hearing a good lecture from Guy about not letting her anger get to her to the extremes it did today, Ino is alone with Hinata, still simmering in outrage at everything she’s heard that damned Uchiha say.
“Ino…do you really think Itachi was telling the truth when he said it was something consensual between them?” she was taken out of her revenge fantasies for a moment to look at the heartbroken beta girl by her side, “I’m hoping it’s not because I…I’ll always love your brother no matter what. He will always be so precious to me, but if he did, you know, mate him…by choice…then what can I do? What am I supposed to do now that I know there’s a chance that if we save him, he’ll never be mine?”
…She forgot about her. In all of her anger and hatred towards Itachi, she forgot about the one person she’d ever want to mate Deidara, the only one she’d ever say could be good enough.
Hinata is nearing tears, trying so hard to hold it all together, and here she is, only focusing on herself.
She’s a crap friend and the beta girl deserves better, “I don’t believe it for one second.”
She pauses in her motion to wipe away the tears that had fallen so far from her eyes, “I refuse to believe it. He’s an Uchiha and my brother hated him so much for it. If Deidara did choose to mate him, it’s probably because he was being threatened by him or forced by him using some Sharingan mind trick on him. I know my brother too well…he wouldn’t ever agree to be mated by someone as cruel and evil as that Uchiha.”
It took all of her focus on Hinata to not go after that monster on the spot, but she managed for her friend’s sake, “I know that when we do save him and snap him out of that creeps control, you will be the only one to sweep him off his feet. No one else here in the village really could, not in my eyes at least.”
Hinata gives a warbly, “T-Thank you, Ino… I really do love him and I really wanna be his mate someday. I just…I wish I knew where he was now so I could see if he’s okay or not. All I want to know is if he’s safe.”
…She didn’t know Hinata cared so much about Deidara to wish for the same things she does, “I do too, but we won’t know that for now, not until we find the Akatsuki hideout and save him ourselves.”
Her friends nods numbly and hugs her tightly, crying quietly onto her shoulder while Ino herself does her best to process everything said to her by the man she blames for her brother’s disappearance.