The Mission

It was eleven on Saturday night when Ino and Sakura met up outside the village gates, Sakura being incredibly shocked the omega girl really could sneak out of the house as easily as she said she could.

“Your parents really are deep sleepers, huh?”

“They like to wake up early to start their day and get out of the house.” she shrugs, “Are you prepared to see my brother again?”

“Yeah,” Sakura then pulls out a twine necklace containing a little cloth bag at the center of it like a pendant, “spending two hours getting Deidara’s mixture for this just right was exhausting. I’d rather never have to grind something that finely by hand and pestle ever again.”

(Yes, they had to do that when she was over at Ino’s place earlier in the day. It was grueling and Deidara’s instructions weren’t exactly the clearest, which again, she saw coming somehow.)

“It wasn’t easy, but it will be worth it when we do see him again.” Ino comments and Sakura keeps her mouth shut because she doesn’t believe this visit will go over well.

Forgive her for thinking this, but there’s no way Deidara is some innocent victim in her eyes. Ino’s confrontation with Itachi all but proved it to her. Of course, she won’t be dumb enough to say it now, though it doesn’t mean she can’t think it.

“How are we going to find the exact meeting place to go to him? Our village does have more than one border…unless if being gone for so long made him forget that.”

This is a much nicer version of her initial thought of Deidara expecting Ino to be able to read his mind and know exactly where he wanted to meet.

Ino herself doesn’t seem to know either, leaving her to suggest, “How about we head to the border where the statues are and see if he’ll be there or not. Though we should be looking for any sculptures of any sorts in the forest. He could have hidden one somewhere with the exact location to meet up.”

“Fine, let’s try that then.”

Ino had known her brother would leave a sculpture somewhere with an exact location on the border to meet. What she didn’t expect was to find it on the first tree branch she happened to get on by the pure dumb accident of stepping on it. However, she didn’t complain, instead taking it as a lucky event whereas Sakura didn’t comment on it—though she had a wary look to her that suggested her skepticism of this meeting had grown.

She wouldn’t let that thought get to her, not when she finally has a chance to see her brother again.

What didn’t escape her was the one thing about the location when they arrived to it: it was near the exact same area they had gone looking for him the day he first went missing.

Maybe it was all a happy coincidence, who knows? Either way, none of that really mattered, not when she’s finally at the exact spot he said to meet, trying to catch her breath after rushing over in the hopes of being exactly on time so he wouldn’t leave again.

…Looking around in the clearing they are at, it doesn’t look like he’s here. Maybe she got the location wrong? Maybe he already left? Maybe she’s too late—

“Ino?”

…Deidara…that’s his voice, his scent, his body emerging from the shadows.

She couldn’t speak at the sight of him despite wanting to blurt out her joy, sadness, and outrage all at once. She finally got him back in her life and he’s here, right in front of her, in the flesh.

He looks a bit deflated but this is gone within a few seconds, “I guess I do look different, un. What, with the cloak and all…I’ve gotten taller, my bangs have gotten longer too, and my hair was long as dads for a while there before I cut it.”

That was when he suddenly shook his head and muttered out a small, ‘whatever, un’ before asking, “Are you happy to see me or not?”

To this, she’s finally able to speak, “I am, it’s just…it’s…I…it’s been so long. I-I’ve really missed you so much over the years and now…you’re here again…” she stops herself short of running over to hug him to instead make him a promise she should have made years ago, “Dei, I don’t know what that stupid Uchiha did to make you leave, but I can help you. I can bring you home, clear your name of any suspicion, and kill Itachi one day myself with my bare hands for being so evil as to force you to mate him. I promise, you’ll be free of him, you’ll be safe from him—I’ll keep you safe. Just…come back home with me…please.”

There were tears threatening to fall from her eyes, but she held it all back to focus on her brother…who…did not appear all too pleased with what he had heard.

No, he seems…annoyed somehow.

But why? He was forced to leave, he was forcibly mated by that evil Uchiha—why isn’t he running over to her arms or at least getting teary eyed like she is? Why is he just standing there, acting as though he’s unmoved by everything she’s just said?

“What the…didn’t he already tell you, un?”

Horror overcomes her while her brother runs his fingers through the ends of his bang, “Ino, I chose to mate Itachi. He didn’t force, coerce, or manipulate me into it, un. I mated him because I wanted to and if you do try to kill my mate, you’ll be dead to me.”

The way the gleam in his eyes became those of a hardened killer matched with the sudden turn of bitterness in his scent had her struggling with a cognitive dissonance she would never come to experience again for as long as she lived, “No, that can’t be right…you hated him! You always told me about how much you hated him, you always bashed his clan, and you’ve tried to kill him more than once in public yourself, how can you say you chose to mate him after all of that? How can you expect me to believe you on it!”

He groans loudly, rolling his eyes as he did so, “Things really aren’t that black and white, un…”

“How can it not get more black and white than you trying to kill him in public?”

“If I was trying to kill him for real, I would’ve at least managed to do some damage to him, don’t you think?”

“Um, no! It was Itachi Uchiha; no one could have done any amount of damage to him!”

Deidara doesn’t move from his spot, but he’s long since stopped playing with the ends of his bangs, instead using one of his free hands to grip the sleeve of his tunic, “Okay, point taken, un! Still…if I was trying to kill him, I would’ve done more than my basic attacks over and over again, don’t you think?”

Ino is not taking this well, her brain is simply not computing the thought of her brother actually choosing to mate Itachi without anyone forcing him into it, “That’s not the point of it all! If you really didn’t hate Itachi this whole time, that means you lied to me for years and the Deidara I know would have never done that!”

She doesn’t hold back on one other aspect of this that makes it so hard for her to reconcile this revelation, “You never believed in mating either, remember? You told me all the time growing up that mating was sexist and backwards, that I was better than to get mated, that we were better than to settle for something like that. Were you lying about that too? Did you lie to me about everything you ever told me? Because if what you’re saying is true, then that means so much of what I’ve come to believe from you is a lie and I don’t know you at all.”

He says nothing at first, his scent souring for a brief moment there before he finally took enough deep breaths to calm himself down, “Like I said earlier, it’s not that black and white, un.”

“Then what is it?”

“Complicated, like life in general.”

Sakura is in the trees, hiding herself from his line of vision, watching the two closely in case if Deidara does anything to endanger Ino.

Is she shocked by any of this so far?

No…but it doesn’t mean she feels good about being right. Instead, she’s more upset because it means Deidara hurt his sister by choice and didn’t give a damn all this time while he was living it up as a hot shot criminal with a mate many would kill to have.

She remembers what Ino said when they got closer to the meeting spot, “Stay here and don’t come out unless if things start to get dangerous, okay? I need to do this by myself; Deidara could come home tonight, and I cannot afford to mess anything up.”

That was all she said to her on the way here. She had been too silent, too focused on Deidara that she didn’t care if she was burning through a bit too much chakra to get here as quickly as she could, and for what? To learn that he was as crappy as Sakura always thought him to be? She couldn’t be angrier with him even if she tried.

“Ino, I don’t have time to get into the politics of it all, un. All I can tell you is I don’t want to come home and I don’t give a damn about this village. I do stand by everything I told you when I lived here with you, mom, and dad, but the mating one…that’s more complicated than you think it is, un.”

“Is it complicated like you saying your wanting to kill him and hating him isn’t black and white?” when he nods, she takes a heavy breath and asks with all of the anxiety building up inside of her, “Did you choose to leave the village with him or were you forced to—or is that one of those not black and white things too?”

He's unfazed at the sight of his sister’s own devastation, he was too collected and composed when answering her, “I wasn’t forced by him, per se…but it wasn’t that black and white either.”

He goes silent for a few minutes, the silence causing her distress to build until he decides to open his mouth to tell her something no one hadn’t really known before except for a select few people: the truth, “I’ll tell you everything right now, but all I want is for you to listen to me when I’m done, un.”

For Deidara, life was not easy.

He may have had a wonderful family and been lucky enough to be born into a progressive clan that would never treat him like property to be sold, but his beauty was more of a curse than a positive attribute.

Yes, it was a good year or two before Ino was born that he was named the most beautiful omega in the village by nearly everyone who happened to meet him, whether they be local or foreign. At first, the attention made him feel good because it was nice to be praised on something instead of being made fun of for the mouths on his palms by the other omegas and betas his age.

However, he quickly learned that this was nothing to feel good about.

Because of his beauty, he was never taken seriously in anything he did with his artwork. Because of his beauty, people tended to not see Deidara the person, but rather Deidara the beautiful image. Because of his beauty, far too many alphas and betas—both old and young—felt far too entitled to grab him, to corner him, to try to force a kiss or more on him, to attempt to kidnap him should he reject them and their advances simply due to the fact that they fetishized his looks so much to the point where they didn’t see him as a person…no, all they saw him as was nothing more than some beautiful doll to own and use as they please.

Yes, it wasn’t uncommon for Deidara to have to deal with alphas and betas trying to force a kiss or more on him. The first time it happened, he was so scared that he froze up and had it not been for Shikaku being there to get the girl off him, he knows more would have happened without his consent. After this, his father learned of it and decided to teach him how to defend himself from such attacks.

With increasing practice over the years, he got good enough to the point where such a thing didn’t really scare him anymore since he knew how to fight back. It helped with the kidnapping attempts as well.

Deidara had been almost kidnapped out of the village more than he’d like to remember by foreign alphas and betas who saw him, wanted him, and decided to take him for themselves without any strain on their conscious. However, as he got older and stronger in his self defense, this stopped happening as often.

Now, anyone would think that his fellow omegas would stand by his side, would want to defend him from such sexist attacks and remarks he heard daily whenever he dared to voice an interest in anything outside of being mated and having pups. This never happened: Deidara never received any support from the omegas his age. Many blamed him for ‘leading’ the alphas and betas on, for being so ‘difficult’ and ‘snobby’ to where they felt the need to talk down to him with their sexist remarks. It didn’t help that they always made cruel comments about his ‘deformity’, his ‘greatest flaw’ in their eyes: the mouths on the palms of his hands.

It was always brought up to him, but he never let it get him down. If of anything, he was glad it was seen as a flaw and deformity because that meant he could one day be left alone by the sexist creeps who wanted to own and use him should they ever really see them in their glory.

Thanks to the attention for his appearance and the mouths on his palms, he preferred to be alone than with anyone at all, choosing instead to focus solely on his art as opposed to attempting to make friends who would only backstab, betray, or bully him anyway.

Though it was thanks to the negative experiences he had gained from being deemed the ‘most beautiful omega’ in the village that he came to slowly despise the alphas, betas, and omegas in the village as a whole with very few exceptions: his clan was an obvious exception since they always stood by his side, Hinata Hyuga was a nice beta girl, Chouji was a good kid, Naruto seemed good enough, Shikamaru was surprisingly insightful for an alpha child, and Ino is his little sister. Naturally, he’d do all that he can to keep his only friend and confidante safe from the sexist creeps, while doing all that he could to be the omega friend support he never had growing up.

Yes, it was his culminative experiences that made him hate Konoha enough to want to leave it behind for good and find himself something better in another village or town that would give him the freedom and equality he desired. Though he wouldn’t learn of such a place until he finally got to do something he always wanted to do.

He got to go to Suna to see his aunt on his mother’s side. To him, it was a dream come true village: the perfect place for his sculptures, his art, and the village itself had far better laws and cultural norms for omega rights than Konoha ever could have. The trip was one of a lifetime, truly his most favorite place to be…

It was also where he first met Itachi Uchiha.

He had heard of him from his father who had always praised him and his skill. He had also heard of him from other omegas his age who openly lusted for the ‘perfect alpha’ that was apparently this Itachi Uchiha.

Deidara didn’t really care enough to get to know anything about the young alpha. He figured being an alpha in Konoha, working to keep the village up and running, meant he was every bit apart of the problem he had with that place and therefore, not worth his time in general.

He wouldn’t have ever spoken to Itachi when he was there if he had his choice in things. He didn’t mind being alone, with his only friend and confidante being his four-year-old sister back at home. Being alone was safe and it gave him a sense of control he couldn’t find being with others.

It wasn’t his choice in the end: Itachi had approached him himself when he was outside, working on a sculpture, and generally enjoying his time in the glow and breeze of the sunset not too far from his aunt’s home.

“That’s a nice sculpture. Who knew someone as small as you could make something so big?”

At this time he had been quite shorter than he is now, and his size was one of the things the many, many creeps commented on in the most disgusting of ways—needless to say, his first encounter with Itachi wasn’t exactly the best.

“I’m not that small, creep. If you’ve got nothing of substance to say, then you can leave, un.”

What was supposed to scare him off didn’t. No, Itachi was unfazed by his open hostility, choosing to instead focus on the artwork itself, “It’s an interesting piece of work…looks like a sparrow that’s excited for its inevitable death.”

Deidara didn’t bother to reply in the hopes he would go away like anyone else would. No, Itachi didn’t leave, choosing to try to talk to him no matter what, “This must have taken you hours to make. Aren’t you tired at all?”

“Go away.”

“Why should I?”

“Because I don’t want you here, un. I want to work alone without some alpha creep breathing down my neck.”

“Very well then. I’ll be sure to see you around before I leave.”

He had ignored him, expecting him to stay around to bother him some more, yet he was able to finish the sculpture without any interruptions from him. Upon finishing with his sculpture in peace, he thought he’d have to deal with this guy hanging around. Imagine his surprise when he saw that his wishes were respected, and the young alpha was gone.

He didn’t know what to make of the young alpha he’d heard so much about to the point where he didn’t have to ask his name to know who he had been speaking to.

He’s a Konoha alpha though and he’ll show his true creepy sexist colors soon enough. That much he had been convinced of…until life played out in a way he hadn’t seen coming.