Violent Plans :: Naruto :: PG :: no pairings
Title: Violent Plans
Fandom: Naruto
Pairings: None
Rating: PG
Genre: AU, general
Word count: 2,805
Spoilers: None
Summary: It was only a matter of time until Sasuke was caught -- and it was a matter of irony that saved him after.
Note: Yet another based-on-a-dream-I-had!fic. But I'm positive I only had that dream in the first place due to reading alory_shannon's much better Sasuke + Deidara prison fic, which somehow unconsciously inspired... this... thing.
Note #2: ...I think this -- the latter half, especially -- reflects the fact that I was keeping Prison Break in mind while writing it. Minus the southern pedophile. And except that, if I were going to actually do something more with this fic, I would have had Sakura as the prison doctor, and-- Yeah, no. One-shot.
“Wait here.”
Sasuke stopped, grudgingly obedient, but refused to sit when he was gestured towards the row of cracked, plastic chairs lining the wall. When he ignored a verbal order, he allowed himself to be forcefully shoved into one of the seats, only adjusting slightly so that his handcuffs were more lenient on his wrists. After watching him a moment more as if checking to make sure he wasn’t going to bolt, the older man turned and opened the office door, leaving it ajar once he’d disappeared inside it. Through the crack, Sasuke could see a ceiling fan trembling on high, a reminder of how humid the rest of the building was. A small improvement from the sticky summer outside, the long halls seemed to radiate heat in their stifling closeness.
Glancing down the corridor, Sasuke double-checked his memory - Third door on the right, left, right, past the receptionist, down a flight of stairs, first door on the right, past the guard - before returning his blank focus to the wall in front of him and disregarding the officer standing a few yards away. All the halls looked the exact same. Yellowed plaster and tiles, thick wooden doors; luckily, Sasuke had been led through at a slow enough pace that he was positive he had the path to the entrance down perfectly.
The building was an odd one, obviously ancient. A bronze plaque near the front doors had announced its opening day as August 1940. Over two hundred years ago.
It used to be a mental hospital in the days of the Second World War, the bounty hunter had told him. Eventually, they remodeled it into a prison. Two centuries of inmates. Two centuries of executions. Now, Sasuke might well join the numbers after several years of aimlessly drifting and running.
The door opened again and the bounty hunter appeared, rubbing his grey whiskers. “Sure you don’t wanna save time and give me your name?” he asked as he hooked a hand around Sasuke’s elbow to pull him up. Sasuke remained silent and the man sighed. “All right. Come on.” Guided into the office, he was pulled past an empty secretary’s desk and down another short hall. “They’ll have to ID you the long way, then.”
Past more doors, all with iced, translucent windows, all shut tight. Sasuke’s mind worked rapidly. How long would it take them to link him to his name? Once they did, once they pulled up his record, how long would he have before the execution? In a backwoods, abandoned town like this one, surely no more than a couple days. He would have to find a break in the security before then - or maybe his file was too recent to have been received here; he could try overpowering the worker, at the very least -
“Here we go.” The man pushed open the last door and entered with Sasuke close in tow. The room was tiny, holding a single desk and packed from wall to wall, ceiling to floor with dented, rusty filing cabinets. There were two people inside, one by the door and another in the desk chair. The former was another bored-looking officer who only spared a passing glance at Sasuke before returning to his magazine. As for the latter - Sasuke blinked, stared, and any hope of getting out of the institution alive flickered and died right there.
The bright uniform said he was an inmate, but he seemed so at ease, reclined in the chair with his legs across the desk, that for an instant Sasuke wondered. His hair was still long, still pulled back, but there was an odd scar over his left eye that hadn’t been there before, as though the skin there had melted. It appeared to have rendered him blind in that eye, because only the right reacted and turned to regard Sasuke - and then widened, making him look as surprised as Sasuke felt.
There was an instant in which they were both still, exchanging stares, recognition to recognition. Then, recovering, Deidara grinned that grin in the same second that Sasuke’s expression darkened.
Busy latching one of Sasuke’s cuffs around the arm of an empty chair, the bounty hunter didn’t notice the stare-off. By the time he finished, Deidara had covered his reaction and replaced that snide look with his previous bored. “This is him,” the man announced to the officer. Sasuke’s eyes didn’t leave that familiar face, but Deidara ignored him entirely, looking thoughtfully off to the side. The hunter and the guard had only a brief word, and then the older man clapped Sasuke on the shoulder. “Good luck, boy,” he said, tucking an envelope into his vest. With that, he was gone; strangely enough, only then did Sasuke really feel the weight of being completely alone.
“Sit,” the officer ordered at his back, and after a moment Sasuke took the vacant seat, putting himself across from the ex-mercenary. Only then did Deidara acknowledge him a second time, rising and moving around the desk to stand behind him. Sasuke kept looking straight, unmoved, and didn’t even respond when Deidara made a rough effort of grabbing a handful of his hair and forcing his head down, exposing the small, tattooed bar code and string of numbers on the nape of his neck. Deidara released just as roughly and returned to his chair, spinning around to one of the cabinets, opening it, and flipping through the folders inside.
Suddenly there was a squeal of static from the officer’s direction, a voice over a radio requesting assistance on the third floor. He answered it, and then when done told Deidara, “Take the file up front and then head back to your room.” Surprisingly, he left after that - or perhaps it wasn’t too surprising, considering the state of the government in general. Then again, if they left filing affairs as a chore to the prisoners, the place was in worse shape than Sasuke had thought.
“How many chances to kill you am I gonna get before you finally die, hmm?” Kicking the drawer shut, Deidara spun back around with a spiteful smirk in place.
“…You survived,” Sasuke noted coolly. “You brought down an entire office building and managed to avoid killing the only two people in it.”
Deidara laughed scornfully. “That’s more than can be said about you.” He held up a sheet of paper covered in text. “Wanted for murder, treason against the government, four counts of plotted assassination against a government official, arson, and assault,” he read, mimicking Sasuke’s calm tone. “Punishable by immediate execution.”
“And considered more guilty than a terrorist, apparently.”
Deidara turned aside, pulling the same drawer open. “Looks like you finally grew a spine in the last few years,” he commented, deaf to that last bit. “Or are you gonna act like Itachi was the only one who dirtied your hands?” Sasuke said nothing, but watched as his file was placed back in one of the folders. Standing, Deidara busied himself with the top drawer of a cabinet on Sasuke’s right. “You’ve come a long way from refusing to kill me,” he threw over his shoulder, his tone as laced with distaste as it was sarcastic. “Do all the lunatics in your family start out with such just intentions?”
“Do all the lunatics in yours become so passive under command that they’re allowed free reign in prison?” Sasuke countered evenly. Deidara made a sound, but only moved on to a cabinet behind Sasuke’s chair.
A second later there was the roll of another drawer and something slammed into the back of Sasuke’s head hard enough to make his vision dim. He staggered partway out of his seat, stood, whirled around, and lunged at Deidara, but the chair was bolted down and he stopped several inches short, only able to glare as the other stood just out of reach.
Flashing another, more strained grin, he waved a folder in Sasuke’s face. “You think you’re safe because you’re surrounded by guards?” he asked, annoyed. “They can’t give me much more than life, so sit your pretty ass down and stop acting like you’re the superior god you think you are, hmm.” Back around the desk, back to the chair, where he sat and began to peruse the thin stack of papers. Sasuke remained standing, ignoring the chafing of his cuff. Without looking up, Deidara went on with an irritating air of arrogance, “Considering I’m technically in charge of how fast you die, it might pay to be a bit more passive, don’t you think?”
Something like silence fell after that, with Deidara giving occasional, one-sided comments or insults that went ignored. Sasuke settled on the arm of his chair, staring absently at the wall, but once in a while he caught Deidara watching him almost studiously before returning to his task. After a couple minutes, Deidara stood, having apparently found what he was looking for. As he moved to the door, Sasuke turned his head just slightly, following him and thinking; there wasn’t anything he could say to this man, surely, who had finally found a foolproof way of killing him on top of simply hating his guts. Even if there was, Sasuke was better off putting the time and thought into devising an escape plan. He wouldn’t beg anyone for his life, let alone one of the last people who would give it.
“Still playing tough?”
Silent, Sasuke met that gaze steadily, and the look he gave alone seemed to send a brief, familiar flicker of anger over Deidara’s face - but it quickly twisted into a savage part-smirk, part-scowl. “Guys who wear a brave face are a dime a dozen, hmm. Care to see how unbreakable you are when you’re strapped down, watching death come right at you?” Sasuke didn’t budge except to narrow his eyes a fraction. He wasn’t going to play along. “That was a nice look on your face the first time, yeah?” Deidara sneered. “Let’s see how quick you snap these days.”
With that, Sasuke was left alone. He tugged again on his bonds, testing the chair arm’s strength more openly, but it was solid. He looked around one more time for anything vaguely useful. Nothing. Any cabinets he could reach contained nothing but papers. Eventually, he sat back down and turned his focus to his memorized escape route. They’d have to remove his cuff from the chair - he could use that opening, but how far would he get before being spotted, assuming he disabled the guard? Deidara seemed to be fine walking around on his own, so maybe if Sasuke just acted naturally - but maybe Deidara was fine because it was a long run to the exit and there was enough security to catch anyone before he made it halfway there.
If they really did schedule an immediate sentence, Sasuke could have as little as an hour to find a way out. He had to either act now or buy time to come up with something more solid. Either way was a gamble.
“Mr.… Gaun, right?” said a voice in the doorway. Sasuke looked over curiously, and it took him a moment to realize that the guard - a woman this time, probably a few years his senior - was talking to him. He blinked, puzzled, but she entered before he could answer, reading something in her hand. “J. Gaun,” she repeated, reaching for his left hand, and he saw that she held a laminated wristband like those used in hospitals. “You’ll be in D block, so that puts you under my watch,” she told him naturally as she slipped it onto his wrist and tightened it. She then introduced herself, but Sasuke was too preoccupied with reading the label - J. GAUN, as she’d said - to catch her name. “You’ve got eleven years ahead of you here, guy, so let’s get a few things straight.”
* * *
“Why did you lie?”
It was the next day, late morning. The inmates were scheduled for three meals daily, with breakfast and lunch having the option of being spent in either the cafeteria or courtyard, and Sasuke had taken the chance to have a look around as well as search for the one person he wanted to see. With a total of six blocks in the entire prison, mealtimes were rotated around two blocks at a time and at first he thought that perhaps they were on different schedules - but then, in the last place he looked, he got lucky. Sitting atop one of the rotted, wooden picnic tables in the furthest corner of the yard, ignoring the blistering sun that most seemed to be avoiding, Deidara hadn’t looked up as Sasuke approached, and at the question he only threw a lazy glance over.
“These bastards have kept me here for six years, hmm. If I get a chance to shove their ignorance up their asses, I’ll take it.” He stopped picking at the long scar across his palm to finally raise his head, grinning. “Besides, lethal injection is so… monotonous. The day I blow that disgusting apathy off your face, it’s gonna be something worth remembering, hmm.” He held Sasuke with that one bright eye a moment longer before returning to his doing nothing.
Unmoved, Sasuke stared, sure that something so juvenile wasn’t - couldn’t be the only reason. Even so, he’d take it, he figured, and decided that not pressing further was something of a repayment for the surprising debt he owed. Looking aside, he swept the courtyard once: high fences, two lookout towers. No guards within the grounds.
As he went on scanning the area, something odd came to his attention - and then it abruptly occurred to him that the rest of the prisoners weren’t evading the sun after all. Now that he looked, there was a very distinct, very wide belt of space around Deidara’s table. Given how no one stepped very far past its border - given how no one looked straight or openly at them - and given the peculiar looks Sasuke had received as he made his way over, it was clear that the other prisoners were avoiding Deidara.
He looked back to the blonde, who went on ignoring his presence. “…You faked your name, too,” said Sasuke at length.
“Heh. Took you that long to realize?” At the lack of a reply, Deidara added, “If you thought I was the kind to kiss ass to get to where I am, you’re more blind than your dear brother ever could have been.”
Jabs aside, knowing that much was almost… reassuring, somehow. That someone had managed to one-up the system, however dilapidated a system it was - it said the place was susceptible. Susceptible to what, Sasuke would have to find out.
Six years, Deidara had said. And yet he’d spared - risked sparing the life of someone he had once willingly tried to take down at the cost of his own. Not only that, but he’d basically spared -
…An equal.
The thought made Sasuke turn his head a little, considering. Of course there had to be a purpose…
“…Hn.” He sat on the warm bench, placing the two of them back-to-back as he reclined against the table. “You want out of here badly enough that you’d accept my help?”
There was only the briefest of pauses before Deidara said, snappishly at first, “What’re you, deaf? I said I’m gonna kill you either way. I can’t exactly do it how I want while stuck in this hole, hmm.”
“How many guards total?” Sasuke asked indifferently, earning an annoyed growl and a tch.
“Doesn’t take you long, hmm. Count ‘em yourself.”
“…There’s one on each block,” Sasuke mused after some half a minute, unfazed by the stubborn sarcasm. “…That’s six. Two at the front entrance, two patrolling the halls. I’m guessing at least one more on top of that. …Eleven,” he deduced tentatively. That received a condescending snort.
“One patrolling,” Deidara corrected haughtily, as if dealing with the world’s biggest moron. “…Ten.”
“Ten?”
Deidara then did a double take, shooting a narrow glance over his shoulder. “Don’t look at me like that! There were eleven before I got here. Feel free to eat a couple shells trying to take more out.”
“…” Filing that detail - all of those details - away, Sasuke didn’t pry.
This could work. Something could always work, and ironically, Deidara was his latest stroke of fortune. Sasuke leaned forward, his mouth against his interlocked fingers. He didn’t trust the guy by a long shot, but he trusted that identical desire for freedom, a desire led by an obvious intellect beneath the outer levels of crazy. That was enough.
What was more, he figured, watching the some two-dozen men still keeping their distance in the corner of his eye, at least he had the strongest choice on his side.
Fandom: Naruto
Pairings: None
Rating: PG
Genre: AU, general
Word count: 2,805
Spoilers: None
Summary: It was only a matter of time until Sasuke was caught -- and it was a matter of irony that saved him after.
Note: Yet another based-on-a-dream-I-had!fic. But I'm positive I only had that dream in the first place due to reading alory_shannon's much better Sasuke + Deidara prison fic, which somehow unconsciously inspired... this... thing.
Note #2: ...I think this -- the latter half, especially -- reflects the fact that I was keeping Prison Break in mind while writing it. Minus the southern pedophile. And except that, if I were going to actually do something more with this fic, I would have had Sakura as the prison doctor, and-- Yeah, no. One-shot.
“Wait here.”
Sasuke stopped, grudgingly obedient, but refused to sit when he was gestured towards the row of cracked, plastic chairs lining the wall. When he ignored a verbal order, he allowed himself to be forcefully shoved into one of the seats, only adjusting slightly so that his handcuffs were more lenient on his wrists. After watching him a moment more as if checking to make sure he wasn’t going to bolt, the older man turned and opened the office door, leaving it ajar once he’d disappeared inside it. Through the crack, Sasuke could see a ceiling fan trembling on high, a reminder of how humid the rest of the building was. A small improvement from the sticky summer outside, the long halls seemed to radiate heat in their stifling closeness.
Glancing down the corridor, Sasuke double-checked his memory - Third door on the right, left, right, past the receptionist, down a flight of stairs, first door on the right, past the guard - before returning his blank focus to the wall in front of him and disregarding the officer standing a few yards away. All the halls looked the exact same. Yellowed plaster and tiles, thick wooden doors; luckily, Sasuke had been led through at a slow enough pace that he was positive he had the path to the entrance down perfectly.
The building was an odd one, obviously ancient. A bronze plaque near the front doors had announced its opening day as August 1940. Over two hundred years ago.
It used to be a mental hospital in the days of the Second World War, the bounty hunter had told him. Eventually, they remodeled it into a prison. Two centuries of inmates. Two centuries of executions. Now, Sasuke might well join the numbers after several years of aimlessly drifting and running.
The door opened again and the bounty hunter appeared, rubbing his grey whiskers. “Sure you don’t wanna save time and give me your name?” he asked as he hooked a hand around Sasuke’s elbow to pull him up. Sasuke remained silent and the man sighed. “All right. Come on.” Guided into the office, he was pulled past an empty secretary’s desk and down another short hall. “They’ll have to ID you the long way, then.”
Past more doors, all with iced, translucent windows, all shut tight. Sasuke’s mind worked rapidly. How long would it take them to link him to his name? Once they did, once they pulled up his record, how long would he have before the execution? In a backwoods, abandoned town like this one, surely no more than a couple days. He would have to find a break in the security before then - or maybe his file was too recent to have been received here; he could try overpowering the worker, at the very least -
“Here we go.” The man pushed open the last door and entered with Sasuke close in tow. The room was tiny, holding a single desk and packed from wall to wall, ceiling to floor with dented, rusty filing cabinets. There were two people inside, one by the door and another in the desk chair. The former was another bored-looking officer who only spared a passing glance at Sasuke before returning to his magazine. As for the latter - Sasuke blinked, stared, and any hope of getting out of the institution alive flickered and died right there.
The bright uniform said he was an inmate, but he seemed so at ease, reclined in the chair with his legs across the desk, that for an instant Sasuke wondered. His hair was still long, still pulled back, but there was an odd scar over his left eye that hadn’t been there before, as though the skin there had melted. It appeared to have rendered him blind in that eye, because only the right reacted and turned to regard Sasuke - and then widened, making him look as surprised as Sasuke felt.
There was an instant in which they were both still, exchanging stares, recognition to recognition. Then, recovering, Deidara grinned that grin in the same second that Sasuke’s expression darkened.
Busy latching one of Sasuke’s cuffs around the arm of an empty chair, the bounty hunter didn’t notice the stare-off. By the time he finished, Deidara had covered his reaction and replaced that snide look with his previous bored. “This is him,” the man announced to the officer. Sasuke’s eyes didn’t leave that familiar face, but Deidara ignored him entirely, looking thoughtfully off to the side. The hunter and the guard had only a brief word, and then the older man clapped Sasuke on the shoulder. “Good luck, boy,” he said, tucking an envelope into his vest. With that, he was gone; strangely enough, only then did Sasuke really feel the weight of being completely alone.
“Sit,” the officer ordered at his back, and after a moment Sasuke took the vacant seat, putting himself across from the ex-mercenary. Only then did Deidara acknowledge him a second time, rising and moving around the desk to stand behind him. Sasuke kept looking straight, unmoved, and didn’t even respond when Deidara made a rough effort of grabbing a handful of his hair and forcing his head down, exposing the small, tattooed bar code and string of numbers on the nape of his neck. Deidara released just as roughly and returned to his chair, spinning around to one of the cabinets, opening it, and flipping through the folders inside.
Suddenly there was a squeal of static from the officer’s direction, a voice over a radio requesting assistance on the third floor. He answered it, and then when done told Deidara, “Take the file up front and then head back to your room.” Surprisingly, he left after that - or perhaps it wasn’t too surprising, considering the state of the government in general. Then again, if they left filing affairs as a chore to the prisoners, the place was in worse shape than Sasuke had thought.
“How many chances to kill you am I gonna get before you finally die, hmm?” Kicking the drawer shut, Deidara spun back around with a spiteful smirk in place.
“…You survived,” Sasuke noted coolly. “You brought down an entire office building and managed to avoid killing the only two people in it.”
Deidara laughed scornfully. “That’s more than can be said about you.” He held up a sheet of paper covered in text. “Wanted for murder, treason against the government, four counts of plotted assassination against a government official, arson, and assault,” he read, mimicking Sasuke’s calm tone. “Punishable by immediate execution.”
“And considered more guilty than a terrorist, apparently.”
Deidara turned aside, pulling the same drawer open. “Looks like you finally grew a spine in the last few years,” he commented, deaf to that last bit. “Or are you gonna act like Itachi was the only one who dirtied your hands?” Sasuke said nothing, but watched as his file was placed back in one of the folders. Standing, Deidara busied himself with the top drawer of a cabinet on Sasuke’s right. “You’ve come a long way from refusing to kill me,” he threw over his shoulder, his tone as laced with distaste as it was sarcastic. “Do all the lunatics in your family start out with such just intentions?”
“Do all the lunatics in yours become so passive under command that they’re allowed free reign in prison?” Sasuke countered evenly. Deidara made a sound, but only moved on to a cabinet behind Sasuke’s chair.
A second later there was the roll of another drawer and something slammed into the back of Sasuke’s head hard enough to make his vision dim. He staggered partway out of his seat, stood, whirled around, and lunged at Deidara, but the chair was bolted down and he stopped several inches short, only able to glare as the other stood just out of reach.
Flashing another, more strained grin, he waved a folder in Sasuke’s face. “You think you’re safe because you’re surrounded by guards?” he asked, annoyed. “They can’t give me much more than life, so sit your pretty ass down and stop acting like you’re the superior god you think you are, hmm.” Back around the desk, back to the chair, where he sat and began to peruse the thin stack of papers. Sasuke remained standing, ignoring the chafing of his cuff. Without looking up, Deidara went on with an irritating air of arrogance, “Considering I’m technically in charge of how fast you die, it might pay to be a bit more passive, don’t you think?”
Something like silence fell after that, with Deidara giving occasional, one-sided comments or insults that went ignored. Sasuke settled on the arm of his chair, staring absently at the wall, but once in a while he caught Deidara watching him almost studiously before returning to his task. After a couple minutes, Deidara stood, having apparently found what he was looking for. As he moved to the door, Sasuke turned his head just slightly, following him and thinking; there wasn’t anything he could say to this man, surely, who had finally found a foolproof way of killing him on top of simply hating his guts. Even if there was, Sasuke was better off putting the time and thought into devising an escape plan. He wouldn’t beg anyone for his life, let alone one of the last people who would give it.
“Still playing tough?”
Silent, Sasuke met that gaze steadily, and the look he gave alone seemed to send a brief, familiar flicker of anger over Deidara’s face - but it quickly twisted into a savage part-smirk, part-scowl. “Guys who wear a brave face are a dime a dozen, hmm. Care to see how unbreakable you are when you’re strapped down, watching death come right at you?” Sasuke didn’t budge except to narrow his eyes a fraction. He wasn’t going to play along. “That was a nice look on your face the first time, yeah?” Deidara sneered. “Let’s see how quick you snap these days.”
With that, Sasuke was left alone. He tugged again on his bonds, testing the chair arm’s strength more openly, but it was solid. He looked around one more time for anything vaguely useful. Nothing. Any cabinets he could reach contained nothing but papers. Eventually, he sat back down and turned his focus to his memorized escape route. They’d have to remove his cuff from the chair - he could use that opening, but how far would he get before being spotted, assuming he disabled the guard? Deidara seemed to be fine walking around on his own, so maybe if Sasuke just acted naturally - but maybe Deidara was fine because it was a long run to the exit and there was enough security to catch anyone before he made it halfway there.
If they really did schedule an immediate sentence, Sasuke could have as little as an hour to find a way out. He had to either act now or buy time to come up with something more solid. Either way was a gamble.
“Mr.… Gaun, right?” said a voice in the doorway. Sasuke looked over curiously, and it took him a moment to realize that the guard - a woman this time, probably a few years his senior - was talking to him. He blinked, puzzled, but she entered before he could answer, reading something in her hand. “J. Gaun,” she repeated, reaching for his left hand, and he saw that she held a laminated wristband like those used in hospitals. “You’ll be in D block, so that puts you under my watch,” she told him naturally as she slipped it onto his wrist and tightened it. She then introduced herself, but Sasuke was too preoccupied with reading the label - J. GAUN, as she’d said - to catch her name. “You’ve got eleven years ahead of you here, guy, so let’s get a few things straight.”
* * *
“Why did you lie?”
It was the next day, late morning. The inmates were scheduled for three meals daily, with breakfast and lunch having the option of being spent in either the cafeteria or courtyard, and Sasuke had taken the chance to have a look around as well as search for the one person he wanted to see. With a total of six blocks in the entire prison, mealtimes were rotated around two blocks at a time and at first he thought that perhaps they were on different schedules - but then, in the last place he looked, he got lucky. Sitting atop one of the rotted, wooden picnic tables in the furthest corner of the yard, ignoring the blistering sun that most seemed to be avoiding, Deidara hadn’t looked up as Sasuke approached, and at the question he only threw a lazy glance over.
“These bastards have kept me here for six years, hmm. If I get a chance to shove their ignorance up their asses, I’ll take it.” He stopped picking at the long scar across his palm to finally raise his head, grinning. “Besides, lethal injection is so… monotonous. The day I blow that disgusting apathy off your face, it’s gonna be something worth remembering, hmm.” He held Sasuke with that one bright eye a moment longer before returning to his doing nothing.
Unmoved, Sasuke stared, sure that something so juvenile wasn’t - couldn’t be the only reason. Even so, he’d take it, he figured, and decided that not pressing further was something of a repayment for the surprising debt he owed. Looking aside, he swept the courtyard once: high fences, two lookout towers. No guards within the grounds.
As he went on scanning the area, something odd came to his attention - and then it abruptly occurred to him that the rest of the prisoners weren’t evading the sun after all. Now that he looked, there was a very distinct, very wide belt of space around Deidara’s table. Given how no one stepped very far past its border - given how no one looked straight or openly at them - and given the peculiar looks Sasuke had received as he made his way over, it was clear that the other prisoners were avoiding Deidara.
He looked back to the blonde, who went on ignoring his presence. “…You faked your name, too,” said Sasuke at length.
“Heh. Took you that long to realize?” At the lack of a reply, Deidara added, “If you thought I was the kind to kiss ass to get to where I am, you’re more blind than your dear brother ever could have been.”
Jabs aside, knowing that much was almost… reassuring, somehow. That someone had managed to one-up the system, however dilapidated a system it was - it said the place was susceptible. Susceptible to what, Sasuke would have to find out.
Six years, Deidara had said. And yet he’d spared - risked sparing the life of someone he had once willingly tried to take down at the cost of his own. Not only that, but he’d basically spared -
…An equal.
The thought made Sasuke turn his head a little, considering. Of course there had to be a purpose…
“…Hn.” He sat on the warm bench, placing the two of them back-to-back as he reclined against the table. “You want out of here badly enough that you’d accept my help?”
There was only the briefest of pauses before Deidara said, snappishly at first, “What’re you, deaf? I said I’m gonna kill you either way. I can’t exactly do it how I want while stuck in this hole, hmm.”
“How many guards total?” Sasuke asked indifferently, earning an annoyed growl and a tch.
“Doesn’t take you long, hmm. Count ‘em yourself.”
“…There’s one on each block,” Sasuke mused after some half a minute, unfazed by the stubborn sarcasm. “…That’s six. Two at the front entrance, two patrolling the halls. I’m guessing at least one more on top of that. …Eleven,” he deduced tentatively. That received a condescending snort.
“One patrolling,” Deidara corrected haughtily, as if dealing with the world’s biggest moron. “…Ten.”
“Ten?”
Deidara then did a double take, shooting a narrow glance over his shoulder. “Don’t look at me like that! There were eleven before I got here. Feel free to eat a couple shells trying to take more out.”
“…” Filing that detail - all of those details - away, Sasuke didn’t pry.
This could work. Something could always work, and ironically, Deidara was his latest stroke of fortune. Sasuke leaned forward, his mouth against his interlocked fingers. He didn’t trust the guy by a long shot, but he trusted that identical desire for freedom, a desire led by an obvious intellect beneath the outer levels of crazy. That was enough.
What was more, he figured, watching the some two-dozen men still keeping their distance in the corner of his eye, at least he had the strongest choice on his side.