Chapter Text
"Not a lot of animals can survive in Suna."
Sasori is five years old, watching a dark green lizard breathing in a glass bowl, when his father told him this. He didn't fully understand, of course, and he merely continued to watch the reptile crawl and look around what space it had.
But it is true. Only few animals can survive the desert weather; mostly insects and reptiles, some amphibians, very few mammals, even fewer fish. These animals are quiet, solitary, much like him. So his parents decided to give him a pet. Tama; they named it after the jade color of its eyes. His mother showed him how to write it and told him it also meant "king" and "rule" as if it was prophetic.
"Tama."
He called it and it looked at him with its beady eyes.
"Tama."
He repeats it as he drops an insect into the bowl.
"Eat."
So the lizard eats, not on command, but on instinct, like everything else.
Later in life, he will learn that instinct is what tells one to survive and greed is what tells one to thrive. He will also learn that animals are rarely ever greedy. They will only ever appear to be. He will learn that animals will never be as greedy as people.
He watches the lizard eat, and listens to the faint crunch of the insect in its mouth.
"Tama," he asks. "Are you still hungry?"
The lizard doesn't answer him, because how could it? So he drops another insect, then another, and another. All of different species. He watches the insects scamper to get away, but the lizard eats them all. This isn't selfishness or greed to his young eyes, it is only instinct. It is only natural. He continues to feed Tama for three days, watching and listening the truths of nature unfold before him.
Some days later, Tama is dead. There is no reason he understands, perhaps this is only natural. A lizard from the desert has no place in a shinobi's home. A lizard that learns to hunt should not be fed so easily. This care is unnatural. This care is unnecessary. Sasori buries Tama in the same sand he supposes it should have lived in, and imagines it coming back to life. It doesn't.
This is Sasori's first experience with death and he realizes it is only natural.
"Not a lot of shinobi survive long enough to live."
He is six years old when he overhears this at the funeral, but it is no grand affair. Those people arrived dead in Suna earlier that day. According to hearsay, they were murdered by Konoha shinobi. This is the third time this week. He is already used to this. They live in a time of war, and death and survival come naturally. Sasori's second and succeeding experiences with death are in the funerals of other people. Images and idols of gods are put on display, for protection, for prayer, for guidance. Sasori has already memorize their faces, their prayers.
"Sasori."
His grandmother embraces him. Her hands are cold; she is shivering.
He listens to her sniffle. She smooths his hair and soothes his non-existent tears. This, he knows, is the only time his grandmother ever cries. Shinobi rarely ever cry; this is their trained instinct, their manufactured nature. This is what differentiates them from everyone else. And even later on, he will realize this makes most shinobi weak.
"It's going to be all right."
His grandmother tightens her hold on him, and he thinks this is more for her than it is for him. Sasori doesn't feel a thing for these people who came back to Suna as corpses in caskets and barrels. Later, these bodies will be burned, turned to dust and mixed with the sand in the desert. Such is the tradition here in Kaze no Kuni; from the sand they came, and to the sand they will return. This is the shinobi's final offering to whatever gods they praise, life.
Sasori realizes this is a cruel irony of their existence as human beings, to have such freedom and intelligence and will, only to die like the animals they look down on. He has always been smart, many people have told him, and it's not beyond him to think of things like this; the cycle of life and death, the gods and the people who worship them, his inherited title and his otherwise unimportant lineage.
He was not born into a family with secret techniques, and everything his family became known for was done through thankless and tiring work in the field of puppet ninjutsu, which is by no means a secret. Puppet ninjutsu just so happens to be extremely difficult to learn well and nearly impossible to master, and he just so happens to be a prodigy. If there was anything natural about it, it's his silence. So quietly, as he observes funerals with dry eyes, he thinks it's a waste for some talents fade to dust and sand. If there was only a way to preserve them…
Today he is eight years old, clutching his hands and keeping quiet. He has found out that his parents have died long ago. Chiyo lied. Chiyo has lied for a long time. Maybe she's still lying now. He isn't crying or whimpering, and he doesn't understand why. He should be sad. He should be the one crying. He is still a child after all. He should still be free to express all these emotions. He is no shinobi. His parents never wanted him to be a shinobi, and he…
And now he doesn't know what is there for him.
"It's going to be all right." The mother in his head says, holding him closer.
He takes comfort in the ghost.
Later that day, a man he will later know as the Sandaime Kazekage approaches him at his parents' graves.
"You will make a fine shinobi one day." The man says.
He thinks it's because he hadn't shed a single tear.
"Not all shinobi are strong enough to survive."
He is nine years old when he hears this. No longer a fresh academy graduate, but a chunin, a full-fledged shinobi in the eyes of his village. This makes him disposable. Every shinobi is. They graduate the academy with this drilled into their heads. It is their strength and intelligence that decides their survival.
He is a prodigy, a genius, the top of his class, and the sole survivor of a scouting mission gone wrong.
"It's not your fault." His superior tells him during the debriefing, "I'm glad you survived, Sasori."
It doesn't surprise him that they're trying to reassure him. In their eyes, he is still a child and he needs to be taken care of. His grandmother couldn't do it on her own, with her being on the village council, so they take turns, in a way. They try to reassure him of his place in this village. They want to make him believe that he is needed, important.
"You always say that." He says, "You want me to believe you."
His superior looks at him carefully. "The decision is always up to you, whether you believe us or not doesn't concern me personally."
Of course. This is just protocol. He is still a child and they should ensure that any sign of trauma or stress should be addressed immediately. This is a time of war, and they should ensure their forces, no matter their age, must be in prime condition to fight, survive, and win.
"You've always been strong, Sasori." His superior adds, "It'd be best if you stay that way."
The next week, he is sent on a scouting mission with his superior.
"Survive, Sasori."
His superior sacrifices himself, making him the sole survivor yet again.
"Survive." He spits at his superior's bloody face. "I disagree."
He wipes the sweat from his brow and stares the single enemy in the eye. It's down to just the two of them now, the young chunin from Suna and the middle-aged jounin from Kumo.
"I will become."
"Not all shinobi are strong enough."
He is thirteen years old now, and the war that threatens to swallow them whole is looming above their heads. There's talk, there always is, and there's so much noise. Suna has never had as much noise as it does now, with weaponsmiths and mercenaries coming in and out of the village. Deals are being made every day, alliances are being forged in ink and blood, blood pacts as they were known, and promises are being sworn.
It is then he meets the samurai again, for the first time.
"Sasori!"
Amakuni Shikai is bright and lively in this otherwise bleak atmosphere, but still naïve–as she runs to embrace him without a care. She is a friend from Yuukou no Sato, a samurai nation located north of Kaze no Kuni, which is allied to Sunagakure. Her father is a blacksmith, one of Chiyo's friends, and he taught Sasori how to craft a sword.
"Do you want to spar?"
She moves wildly, like an animal fighting for its life. Struggling. Desperate. Like how she would drag him along with her on small-scale adventures around Yuukou. He can easily take her down. He can easily defeat her. He can tell she's hesitating. He can think her weak and unimpressive, but she floors him with a quick draw–faster than anything he's seen–and he acknowledges it.
"You're faster now."
She laughs. "I've always been fast. We just never sparred until now."
He tells her about the time she led him through the crawlspace and into a small courtyard with a plum blossom tree, and the story she told him about the man who carved the ice around the Dragon God's palace with a bolt of lightning.
"I'm going to find that sword one day." She's promised him two things now. She would take him to the ocean, after all this, and he believes her. Beyond her naivety and her pride, there is an honesty in her he appreciates, desires even.
She wouldn't lie to him, would she?
So they head to war in the early hours of the morning, children bearing arms and wearing armor, ready to have blood on their teeth and nails. And she comes back broken and bleeding, a complete mess like many others, but still somehow alive. When he sees her, she is empty, all the light in her snuffed out and dimming. She is missing two-thirds of her arm. She couldn't possibly continue being a samurai now.
"You're going to be fine."
So he makes her a promise this time, his first promise, and crafts an arm just for her. But before he could finish it, she is taken away by her family, her sweet, protective family, but not before she gives him a bracelet, tarnished silver but still shining in the light.
"I promise I'll come back."
When she leaves, he realizes that she, like all the others, will break these little promises. She is only human, they are only human. As if it's any excuse. He looks at the incomplete arm and decides to smash it into pieces unidentifiable. At night, he dreams of Chiyo burning in fields, of Shikai's arm being ripped from her body, a desert wolf looming above him.
He looks at the silver moon, looks at the silver band on his wrist, and frowns. He looks at the puppet limbs laid around his room, and considers smashing and burning them. Wood and steel are not enough, not for her, not for him, not for anyone else.
It is years later, too many but not enough, when he hears news of another war approaching. There's distaste for the daimyo's current activities, his luxurious lifestyle, and his self-serving court. There's never been news about such things until now, when the previous war has been declared over, when Suna and all the shinobi countries have finally settled on a truce, albeit begrudgingly.
The shadow still looms beyond them, for wars never truly end until everyone who had participated in them has passed. To some, even such a thing wouldn't mean the end of a war. Sometimes, they live on. Sometimes, they're made to. In Sasori's growing collection, the dead find a place for them to live forever, in bodies made of hardened skin and steel-encased bone.
"You have a gift, Sasori." The Sandaime Kazekage approached him one day, "And you make good use of it."
The hand on his shoulder is heavy, with the weight of all Suna's secrets, those of which he had long known. More than anyone else, he knows of the Sandaime's willingness to bloody his hands–which is why Sasori knows no one else would understand him better.
"The dead find purpose here." He says, "A far better purpose than to serve those wretched fools in Heaven."
Neither him nor the Sandaime believe in the gods of higher, holier planes. For if they existed, no wars would have come to this land, no deaths would be wasted, no children would be left orphans, no parents would have had to die. His parents wouldn't have had to–
"All is justified in the end."
But if there was something he didn't agree on, if there was something about the Sandaime he loathed, it was this.
"All deaths are justified." The Sandaime continued, eyeing the discarded pieces of the collection. "You are doing good, Sasori."
If that was so, his death would be justified as well. Sasori scowls at the man's back, wishing to bury him in blood and steel.
And he did just that, weeks later, when news of the daimyo's death broke out. He doesn't know the specifics behind it all, how a man so protected and so powerful as the daimyo himself could just fall over and die.
Unless...
But he doesn't care, not right now, not when the needle pricks the Sandaime's iron-clad skin, not when the poison floods into the man's body like a thunderstorm, not when he's so close, not when he's won–
"Is this revenge, Sasori?"
Sasori watches the man choke on his own blood.
"It is only justified, Sandaime-sama."
War breaks out.
And it is during this war that Sasori is branded a traitor. Not for the kidnapping or assassination of the Sandaime Kazekage–not at all. No one had an inkling of what or who stole away their Kazekage in such a worrying time, but the war was more important. Without a leader, they would be done for.
So it is Rasa, the Sandaime's younger brother, who becomes the Yondaime and sentences Sasori, among many others, to prison.
"Of all times, Rasa? War is about to break out. We need him!"
And Chiyo, his long-suffering grandmother, defended him so openly that Rasa was almost tempted to remove her from the council.
"He's desecrated the dead. He's done enough."
There's a stiffness in him that's all too-reminiscent of his older brother. He's still grieving–they all are–and it's no surprise that Rasa has accused Sasori of being part of a conspiracy. He's always found the boy odd, strange, and sometimes murderous even.
"He's been accused of murder."
It's the way Rasa addresses the elephant in the room, the rumors of Sasori killing for his own gain and him using said bodies in his puppets, that makes Chiyo stutter. It's the sureness in his voice, the very tone of command used to wage war and sanction executions, that makes her afraid.
Everything her grandson had done was for the betterment of Suna.
"It is only right."
The council made their decision, all in favor of the arrest, except for her.
"This is for the betterment of Suna."
And it is later that night, that Sasori finds out.
"Leave, Sasori." Chiyo says to him as he busies himself with another puppet. "Leave Suna."
It's her wary and worried tone that shakes him. His grandmother had never sounded so meek in all her life, not even in his parents' deaths, not even during the war. He doesn't like it, doesn't like how she's been reduced to a wilting old hag.
"And where would I go?"
Sasori knows of the accusations made towards him, the rumors circulating about his method and his manner. He is not selfish, he is far from it, and everything he does, everything he says, everything he's ever experienced–
"It is for the betterment of Suna."
The explanation he gives for it all, his grand collection of corpses given new life and purpose, is the simplest explanation that can be given. It is no grand work of art, not just that. And it is no selfish work of pride, it is more. It always has been. If they could only understand, if he, if she could only understand that…
"They will have no mercy, Sasori." Chiyo pleads, tears forming in her eyes, "So leave. Leave and survive."
The first time he strikes his grandmother is also the first time he cries.
"I will do more than just survive, Chiyo-baasama." He says, rooted in his stance and his belief, his quiet fury raging beneath the surface, "I will become."
When he leaves Suna, he leaves everything behind. All his creations, all the spare parts and prototypes, and everything that would tie him to his barren desert home. He leaves Chiyo weeping in the dark. He leaves the samurai's letters on a high shelf. He leaves the child in him behind, leaving it with the Mother and Father puppets he made so long ago. He only took with him his pride, his strength, his cruelty.
There is no place for his grief.
So he leaves, he runs, out of Kaze no Kuni with no sure direction besides his ambition driving him forward. He runs through the sand, ignoring how the cold night wind bites at his skin and weighs on his body. He runs and he runs and he… he finds himself in Takamura no Kuni, the land of the samurai bordering Kaze no Kuni.
He runs and he runs and he runs again… until he finds himself approaching Yuukou no Sato, the village of tall bamboo and taller, loftier ideals, and remembers.
The first time Sasori ventures out of Sunagakure, it is to a nearby country of samurai and weaponsmiths. Takamura is a land lined with towering bamboo and large wisteria trees. At early mornings, there is mist from the mountains surrounding it. In the evenings, there is fog rising from the springs and the rivers that run through it. From that description, Takamura almost feels illusory and unreal, as if it was lifted from those fantastical stories of ghosts and those haunted by them.
But Sasori believes the description only helps the country deter any potential invaders. If what he's read about mist and fog are true, then nothing comes in and nothing comes out without the country's permission. Which makes sense, he thinks, because Takamura is a country ruled and inhabited by the higher class of samurai. And any shinobi familiar with the samurai know a visit to their domain is either a grand honor or a death sentence.
Sasori thinks it's lucky they're here for the former. In the very few instances his parents aren't away on missions, he thinks it's extremely lucky they're all here together, in the near-illusory land of Takamura. But for what reason? Right, his parents aren't just shinobi. They're among Sunagakure's elite. And perhaps it's also lucky for him that the high seat of the Kazegumo nobility is located in Takamura and his parents were assigned to escort the Kaze Daimyo to meet with his fellow nobles. Sasori doesn't understand much about nobility, but he understands enough that this means summit of the Kazegumo means that the war with the eastern country of Hi no Kuni grows fiercer.
The Kazegumo nobles meet in the gated estate of the Takamura Shogun in Yuukou, the country's capital. Sasori and his parents venture elsewhere, to another gated estate nearby. On the gates, there is the crest of clouds against a moonless sky. It appears strange to him. He'd never seen a family crest like this before, but then he sees the name plate and the characters are very familiar to him. These are the characters carved into his father's and mother's blades. Was this where they got them? Of course it had to be.
The gates open, and a man is there greet them, with him what seems to be a small entourage. He looks older than his father, but not so much. He is dressed in simple garb, albeit dirty and signed at the edges, and his hands are appear the same too. Sasori thinks he must be the weaponsmith his father had mentioned often; the rightfully famous swordsmith of this generation–
"Goyou!" The man greets.
"Sadamune!" His father greets back.
–Amakuni Sadamune.
Through observing their jovial manner and conversation, Sasori surmises that they are old friends, close friends. The Amakuni estate is grand too, with gnarly flowering trees and manicured gardens, but what catches Sasori's eye is a towering pillar of black smoke. The forge. He overhears Sadamune talk about a new method of crafting, imbuing chakra while folding the steel instead of after the sword has been shaped.
"It makes the process longer, it makes the swords stronger."
Sasori thinks he can apply the same knowledge to puppet ninjutsu.
"Come, come, my wife has ordered a feast."
Sadaume ushers them into a grand hall, overlooking a courtyard of white pebbles and a crystalline pond. Sasori thinks this land is more story-like than any other. How could they live in such lavish extremes while the world outside them lives in war and squalor? Does the reality not exist for them? Or do they actively ignore it? Shun it outside their thick walls and towering trees? Is that how the samurai managed all these centuries? Keep the war out of their lands and let it ravage the rest? How selfish.
Sasori looks at the meal served to him, listens to the chatter of his parents with the Amakuni heads, and pretends not to dislike the carelessness of it all. He notes the name of Sadamune's wife, Sumire, and notices her strict posture and hardy demeanor.
"She is an onnamusha, Sasori," his mother tells him. "Ranked highly among the Yuukou's samurai."
"More a teacher than a samurai now," Sumire laughed. "And I apologize if my children cannot join us."
"Oh!" His mother laughed. "I'm sure Sasori would love to meet them later."
And when Sasori does meet them in the afternoon, he feels envious of how carefree they are. The eldest is Shikai, and the first thing he notices about her is the dirt on the edge of her sleeves. The youngest is Kanemitsu, and the first thing he notices about him is… he's a toddler. Kanemitsu is clueless to the world around him and Shikai is too… naive.
Were they really descendants of the legendary swordsmith Amakuni Yasutsuna?
But he knows he won't find any refuge here. He cannot escape here.
He's tried before, before the second war he faced, to find the peace and solace he'd once experienced here as child. The Amakuni spoke of how welcome they are here, of how welcome he would be to apprentice under Sadamune himself, learn the ways of tempering iron and steel into something unbreakable. And yet when he needed them, their comfort, their warmth, to escape from the coldness and ruthlessness of Suna, they gave him away.
Seated under the shade of a tea stall, he sees the samurai again. He spots her, rather, a tall head in a crowd of children. She is dressed in a simple yukata and looked more like her younger self, the carefree heiress. But now she looked somber, sorry, matured in all the ways war can change someone.
"Shikai."
He approaches her, but she doesn't rush forward to meet him. She simply stands and waits. He notices her empty sleeve.
"Sasori. You're here."
He touches her empty sleeve and she looks away. The years between this meeting and their last extend far and wide. She smiles at him, but he doesn't think the meekness suits her.
"Are you visiting?"
He misses the bombastic, unapologetic girl from their youth. The one who pulled and dragged him everywhere. The one who would tell him stories about warriors and mythical battles under the shade of a plum blossom tree. The one who would make him feel wanted and needed, who gave him a childhood most shinobi children could only dream of.
"Yes."
He smiles back, and she leads him through the streets and into her family home, the grand Amakuni compound. As they pass the gates, the memory hits him like a sandstorm. It creeps on him, calling him from the back of his head, but he ignores it. When she does pull on his wrist, he knows she is trying to recreate them from before. She leads him through the compound, away from everyone else, and into they courtyard they once called their secret. But when he sees the plum blossom tree, the storm finally makes its descent.
She asks under her breath, "Are you all right, Sasori?"
The memories within the storm are rose-tinted and sweet-smelling, soft and shining in the sun. They're clear enough to make him weep, clear enough to make him blind, clear enough to make him forget why he came here–
But he accepts the welcome he's given, takes the hospitality he's offered, and reminds himself that this is only for the meantime, that this is only temporary. Her family are surprised by his presence, of course, but they don't ask questions. They don't tell him to leave. They don't treat him any different from before, but he notices their questioning gaze. They're wondering why he's here, why he's seemingly fled from his own village. They're wondering what he's done, but they don't wonder about the toll it's taken on him, to be this appointed prodigy…
He notices that Shikai doesn't talk much anymore, unlike before. But when she does, it's when they're alone and lying under the plum blossom tree. It's just like they were before, but her stories aren't so fantastical anymore. Her stories are quieter and more… mundane. Maybe she's learned now. Maybe it's because of the war, that she's realized the fault in her carefree, prideful nature. He thinks she's become mature, like the heiress she should be, and it's only right.
Under the plum blossom tree, she cries.
"Pity the prideful samurai who lost her arm in a war she shouldn't have been in."
Under the plum blossom tree, he promises to make her an arm.
"I'm going to complete it this time."
Under the plum blossom tree, she asks for the bracelet she'd given him and promises to make something better with it.
"I'm going to complete it too."
Under the plum blossom tree, he thinks that maybe they haven't really changed, they just… grew up. But he keeps his word, he makes her an arm out of the best materials he could find, the best materials he could afford with her father's help. He makes her an arm that can grow with her because he wants to give her something that will last, something that will be as strong as her.
He finishes the arm with an engraving, something just for her:
Boundless and everlasting.
Under the plum blossom tree, he gives it to her and she tells him to fit it on her arm.
"It doesn't fit perfectly, but it fits just right," she smiles at him. "I don't want to owe you a good story anymore."
She gives him back the bracelet, already shiner and smoother. Inside, he sees something engraved on it.
Niraikanai.
"Paradise beyond the ocean," she explains. "I'm going there, you know?"
Under the plum blossom tree, she tells him about an island beyond the ocean, and makes him another promise.
"I'm going to bring back that sword from Ryuujin's Palace."
He doesn't really believe she would, but he indulges her. He indulges her just like he has before; he listens to her stories, counts her promises, and feels a little lighter in his chest. Here under the plum blossom tree, there are no expectations or responsibilities or even a world outside. Under the plum blossom tree, there is only them. But they aren't the same as before. They're different people now, he's something like a runaway shinobi and she's like a lazy heiress. Instead of doing what they're told, they're idling in this quiet, cutoff space.
Maybe that's why she asks, "What are you doing here, Sasori?"
"I wanted some… peace."
She frowns.
"You came here… for peace? Nothing else?"
He looks away.
"I wanted… something like before."
Of course. They're different people now. He doesn't tell her about what's been going on in Suna because it has nothing to do with her. She wouldn't understand; she's samurai royalty. He doesn't tell her about his parents, about Chiyo, about the Sandaime, about everything, because he didn't want to think about it. But now that she's brought it up, now that he is thinking about it…
He tells her the truth.
"I'm tired of people lying to me."
When her frown deepens, he feels even worse.
"I'm tired of being used."
When she doesn't even reply, he feels… angry. He feels frustrated. Of course she wouldn't understand. They've been different people ever since. They're still different people now. She can only try to understand–
Under the plum blossom tree, she embraces him and he feels weak.
He cries against her shoulder.
He cries against someone for the first time.
So he doesn't understand why she remained quiet when the order for his return to Sunagakure is read the next day. If she was her younger self, she would throw a tantrum at why the elders are so selfish and boring. But she's no longer that, so she doesn't speak up or tell them she wants him to stay. Instead, she sits stiffly with her eyes brimming with tears.
She's a liar just like them.
Anger flares up in him, but he doesn't think badly of her. Instead, he just pities her.
Now he gazes at the tall, stone walls of Yuukou. There are samurai lined like shoji pieces atop the walls. The daimyo is dead. The Sandaime is missing. This is a heightened state of security in a time of war. It's an impossible breach. He shouldn't even dare–
He leaves Takamura no Kuni with a single question. If she was there, if she knew he was here , would she…
No. There is no space for him there. There is no space for him in Suna, in Yuukou. No space for him anywhere.
"I will become."
So if he can't find a space for himself, he will make one. He will carve a place for himself in this world, permanent and perfect.