Characters: Kankuro, Sasori, Karura (hinted at)
Summary: Kankuro hears voices when going to retrieve Sasori's puppet body.
Pairings: SasoKaru (hinted at)
Author's Note: I just had to write this.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
Footsteps send ripples across the water as Kankuro crosses the river that has cut a deep ravine in Kawa no Kuni with a definite intent and a morbid desire. Admittedly, it's occurred to him that it's more than a little inappropriate to have the ambition to utilize a fellow puppeteer's body as a puppet of his own, but Kankuro's never been very concerned with propriety.
It's all fair play, he asserts.
Kankuro pauses outside the cave where reports say Sasori's final battle with Chiyo and Sakura took place, frowning.
The echoes of voices reach his ears.
"So why are you here?"
This is a man's voice, Kankuro registers, slightly raspy and more than a little uncertain. He pauses, not sure what's happening. Have others come to claim Sasori's body?
"I came to bring you back."
The other is a woman speaking. She sounds familiar—both have Kaze no Kuni accents—but Kankuro can't tell from where. She has a light voice, heavy with concern.
"Why should you do this? Why not someone else?" The man challenges her sharply, an odd note rising and falling in his voice.
There's a pause after this, full of unspoken words and words probably better left unsaid.
Finally…
"I always waited for you to come back, you know." Her voice is barely audible. "Even after all the others said you were dead."
Another pause.
"…I am sorry."
The man groans in such a way that almost certainly indicates standing from a sitting position. "Okay, let's go on then."
Kankuro chooses this moment to run into the cave.
And finds that there is no one else there.
Just him, the slant of lights through the broken ceiling, and Sasori's unmoving puppet body.