Title: Katamari
Author: tsubaki-hana
Series: Naruto
Rating: T
Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Kishimoto Masashi.
Summary: Deidara has always liked to watch things fall apart. One-shot ficlet, slight Deidara/Naruto.
Seaside is heaven/ Neverside is go
Suicide is heaven/ New blood is go
-Buck-Tick, “Aikawarazu no are Katamari”
He watches, he always watches when others are around, but most people don’t realize it until much later. That strange clicking and whirring noise, the sound of cicadas and wind, hidden by his blonde hair; it is an eye, and it is always, always, -always-...watching the others. Deidara has never properly understood it, but he can feel it in the little electrical impulses, in the grease he puts around his eye socket, and by the monotonous shuttering on his camera’s eye.
For something that is so perfect in its function, it lacks aesthetic, something that Deidara is woefully aware of. He has tried everything to hide its mechanical gleam, to eliminate it as a part of face. He has distanced himself from it, covered it where no one will remind him that it is there; it is a separate entity that has stolen his artist’s vision and replaced it with the coldness of the machine. It’s unnatural, it’s preposterous, for something to last so long with no sign of age or decay. He has half a mind to rip it, pry it, -pull- it from his skull, feel the wiring stretch and flicker along his empty eyelids and bleed over into his immaculately pale blonde hair. He can hear the suction it would give off, the squelch of unraveling from his spine and sinuses.
Such ruin is beautiful unto itself to him. The human form is amazing, and perhaps can only be seen as such when each piece of it is presented separately.
He does not know how long he will be able to go without an itching hand destroying his face. (That’s right, isn’t it, because even you must fall apart someday; you want to, feeling the gunpowder and nitrate laced clay in your different pockets and press against the whorls and arches of your fingerprints. The end is seeking out your every line and space.)
From the depths of a mirror, the red lens of his not-eye will narrow with octagonal plastic and click at him. It had bothered him the first time he had seen it. He’d like to think that it is taking pictures of moments, ones that he cannot see, like some creature that has placed its link to the world into his very vision (and if it is an animal, might it be your humanity? It has been strangely quiet lately). The light always seems much rosier from that eye, and Deidara would like to think that it is his hot blood leaking into the wires like water in roots, turning the flowers to decay.
How quaint, Deidara thinks disgustedly; he must crush this inorganic life form, because even the vision of something thriving off of him makes him angry.
Nonetheless, this eye sees more than he does, and he accepts that, feeling his vision tilt on occasion, letting his gaze be both before and next to him. Very little about the others escapes him, whether it be the way that Kisame taps his foot and reeks of violence in the still frame of him, or how Hidan grasps his pendant between his fingers when nervous about something. If anyone notices, it is Sasori, who always seems to know when the eyes are upon him, any eyes are upon him. Deidara does not look at Sasori if he can help it.
(A man with his consciousness strapped to a doll through cork and pine; you think Sasori as the modern-day kugutsujin, the puppet man that is seeking out his ability to feel but destroying anything that might help him. Even now you know he is killing his grandmother, and you laugh at the irony.)
On more than one occasion he has felt it shift and while he does not acknowledge it, he knows that whatever photograph it has taken will be brutal and honest in his mind’s eye. (You don’t sleep very well because of it, do you, Deidara? Oh no, you feel it, -feel- it like nothing else you have experienced, the looks of people that have died near you, the little granules of sand on the ground, the sun westering...you see in more than one point of view, one in glassy organic blue and the other in steel and laser cutting, and you’re running out of room to keep it.)
Deidara lives in these moments.
To see the whole story, to feel everything that happens between, above, and beyond the lines would surely send him over the edge (and of what, you wonder, as people always treat it like a cliff, some precipice that people simply fall over and into. Oceans drown, valleys crush, and an abyss starves; which would you choose for yourself?)
This time, this time when he feels the sudden change in his vision without being able to perceive what it is exactly, he is running from the remnant of the Akatsuki meeting, his partner far behind him and facing the two ladies that come from Sand and Konoha to recover the deceased Kazekage. In his own fashion does he escape, on the back of a false eagle, an imitation (which is the closest you’ll ever get to life; do you feel like cheap god yet?). It is not that he is particularly afraid of Hatake Kakashi and his student, but he is no fool, and without his partner, he would likely be defeated or killed.
Sparing a glance behind him, he sees the quickly moving ninja, blurs against the foliage that barely disrupt the surroundings. Hatake is as unshakable as rumored, simply locking his gaze onto his target with ease. But it is not Hatake but his young student that catches Deidara’s eyes (both of them, something that you are not accustomed to and are slightly afraid of because already your vision is doubling. Even if they look at the same object, your eyes see two very different things.)
The first thing he notices is the garish orange and black outfit, seeking attention. (You suspect that it is intentional.) There is a brashness written in every flex of his muscle, an undeniable reckless drive that makes each step a little quicker, a little more substantial than the one before.
This boy, no, this man is more -real-, more physical than anything that he has ever properly seen before. Uzumaki Naruto, as he had introduced himself, was a thing entirely of flesh and blood, driving himself to somewhere that he could not determine, but felt that it did not exist.
Itachi does not speak often to the other Akatsuki members, even less of the conflicts involving his family and Konoha. Deidara does not ask, but he does hear. It is fully known that Uchiha Sasuke now lives with Orochimaru, the traitor from their ranks. (You see no beauty in his art, because he always draws it out, makes you wait to see the finish. They are so quiet, these finishing moments, that you cannot see the value in it. It is not poignant to the viewer, only the subject.)
It is also known that the very same Kyuubi vessel that chases him now hinges everything on Uchiha Sasuke, lets his mind and body work for one person; it is not himself. How pitiful it is to Deidara, who looks through the analytical fake gaze. ( You know nothing of selflessness and why start now?)
He has a strong heart, he thinks to himself, that thing of rhythm and meat that he wishes he could tear from his own chest, just to see it wind down. He’s never seen a heart explode, but there is a certain aesthetically pleasing feeling that it gives him. The world will end by fire; he’s heard it spoken in every culture.
He turns forward again smiling to himself, thinking of how beautiful it would be to rip the boy open, to see everything still connected and living and thriving, because contrary to the saying, Deidara is quite certain he can see inside of someone easily; he only needs a very sharp knife.
What a useless thing the heart is, a lump, a mass of muscle that simply pushes fluid through the body. It is not very appealing to see, all veins and openings that he can still feel beating around his fingers (the vena cava felt strange did it not, choking you out of the body of that enemy, fighting the intrusion even when it is useless? You laughed at that time, pointing Sasori over to it, telling him that even when closed off.
“How foolish the heart is, isn’t it? The mind gives up and yet here it is, trying to be stronger even when it cannot, un.”
Sasori had said nothing, but said that for a person with a beating heart, you were cruel to others and gentle on your own.
You said nothing, but tried to ignore that squeezing from inside.)
He could destroy it, in this moment he could turn around and crush whatever it is that this kid is running for (it is certainly not for him, and it is certainly not for the dead Kazekage, no matter what he might say otherwise. It has been written in his face for a long time, a crease between the eyes and hurtful blue eyes that are far more expressive and deep than Deidara’s own.) He could squeeze the life out of him, bruise his heart with his own hands. He is an S-class criminal for a reason, and he will not hesitate.
The notion, the idea, the thought of it fills Deidara with a vague sense of ecstacy. He could revere this boy with his hands, watch as death gave a transient glory to the blonde boy with icy hooks that Deidara can sometimes see with that inhuman eye. (You’ve always loved how they change from unbearably hot, searing to that calm chill that comes post mortem. As an artist, you’ve always made it a point to set their faces in something resembling happiness; it is a hollow smile you make for them.) He is an artist, and it is his calling to watch all things change as dramatically as he wishes.
You love something that you will never have, he thinks, and you will burn out because of it. May I watch? And he wants to watch it all, in the cavity of the boy’s chest and in his fathoms deep eyes. (The ocean drowns, didn’t you say so yourself?) He is in love with the action, the concept of bursting with ache and need. He does not love the boy, but he loves what he has the potential to become.
His inorganic eye focuses, clicks, and hums, as though developing the image. He hopes that he will be able to look back on it, replay it constantly.
(May you watch?)
Uzumaki Naruto gives a shudder and runs headlong into the arms of art divine.
Deidara smiles, feeling the clay beneath his hands, and feels the metal wrapped around his skull and into his spine, pulling like a living thing. He sees the shudder, and feels a matching one of his own.
He always watches the others.
He likes to see them slowly fall apart.
Finish
The word “katamari” means lump or mass.
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