"As of today you are genin of Sunagakure. Make our village proud." I still remember his words, my academy instructor's words. These words were a part of them, mind you, but they weren't the ones that stood out to me.
"Your life is now the village's. You will fight, to the death if need be, for the sake of our village. You will follow every order given to you. We are in the midst of war. You are soldiers. You are tools. You are killers in the name of Sunagakure and the Honored Kazekage. You would do well to remember it."
And we were. He was right. Our lives were for our village, and we would do anything to save it from falling to it's doom.
We would do anything, because we didn't know how or why to do anything else.
Is it a 'choice' if we were never taught what choices are?
I assume most would call it propaganda.
Needlessly, we all fell for it.
That didn't quite stop me from having emotions, but it did stop some others. A couple of my so called 'friends' pretended that they didn't have any.
Frauds, the lot of them.
Emotional attachment is what spurs on the dying and the makes the desperate so vicious. The ones truly without emotions are the broken ones, the monstrous ones, the inhuman ones. The ones who want to die, because they have no reason to live.
"Remember the Will of Wind. Flow around obstacles, fly before victors, slay our enemies and scatter their blood in the sand. We adapt, and we survive, because that is what we have done for centuries, and that is what we will do now."
I didn't pretend.
I didn't hide.
There wasn't any point, when we could die any day from a stray jutsu, from a saboteur on a suicide mission, from suspected betrayal, which lead to a visit from the T&I.
However, there was one thing that terrified me.
One minuscule thing that sent me over the edge, the edge we were all tensely balanced on.
That 'thing' was Sasori, or rather, as his new moniker stated, 'Sasori of the Red Sands'.
He was in the academy. Until the second year, I recalled, before he was promoted to genin. An early graduator.
He seemed so sad, his grief distancing him from his classmates far more effectively than his 'prodigiousness' did.
But I couldn't talk to him, no matter how much I debated and argued against myself . It was incredibly hard to simply maintain the 'friends' I had now. It would be nearly impossible for me to talk to him. It was impossible, improbable, complete and utter blasphemy.
At least, that was how I rationalized the situation.
In my heart, I knew the truth.
I was a coward.
It was plain and simple, like the Academy instructors teaching us how to kill.
What I didn't notice was his glances. He looked toward me, almost confused.
One day, I noticed he cheered up. Quite a bit as well.
I was... curious, for lack of a better word. I wanted to know what happened. That didn't mean I was brave enough to ask him.
I catched him glancing toward me a couple times, but brushed it off.
Soon enough, I grew fond of this new Sasori. I guess you could say I had a crush on him; a petty, nebulous infatuation.
But of course, boys were always oblivious, and I wouldn't blame him for this one either, not having said a word to him.
And yet I noticed my days grew brighter.
My eyes a little bit softer.
The world a bit more colorful.
I suppose you could say that I had a spring in my step, trite as that sounds..
But we were ninja.
Of course none of that lasted.
In due time (I would venture to estimate about three weeks), he changed.
He was… colder.
Detached.
As if nothing mattered. As if he had lost everything, and had just come to terms with it.
And yet my seven-year-old heart still clung desperately and silently to whatever vestiges of childishness I had left. Somehow, I still liked him.
Maybe it was his carmine hair, or his delicate, spidery artist's fingers, or even his hazy, eternally half-lidded mauve eyes, but kami-sama knows I was utterly and completely lost before his gaze.
In fact, I grew more attached.
In some distant, echoing part of my mind, I realized it was a borderline obsession.
I grew disgusted with myself, and went through a phase of avoidance, and although I knew he hadn't ever taken note of me, and that he would never know I was avoiding him, in that same distant part of my mind, I dearly hoped that he would.
I never saw him look at me with kind eyes.
It wouldn't be until much later that I realized my tangle of immature feelings were something else entirely.
Either way, he graduated the academy the next year.
I highly doubted he would remember me, the girl in the back of the class with average marks, and that doubt made my eyes blink faster and my palms itch uncomfortably.
That's when I realized I would graduate as well..
Graduate early, that is.
Why?
Simple.
I wanted to see him again.
That is how I ended up graduating the next year, at the grand old age of eight.
I was another early graduate, another wartime drone, another piece of cannon fodder.
A prodigy?
Hah. No.
I was as far from a prodigy as you can get, while still remaining just good enough to be kept alive, just good enough to be churned out of the academy, just good enough to be stamped and sent out to the gore infested battlefields.
I wasn't anybody special, and I wasn't ready for the true horrors of a ninja life.
But none of that mattered. It never did.
Eventually I would find out the horrors, and soon I would find something to be special in. But of course I didn't know that.
What I did know was that I would not die before I finally got to talk to the prodigy with the carmine hair and hazy eyes.
Selfish, foolish, call it what you will.
I would not die, and I would kill to do so.
And so I killed. I realized what I signed up for.
It wasn't until I was a chūnin that I saw him again. I was twelve at the time, not yet a teenager. He was in the Kazekage's office when I entered.
I am ashamed to say that I stared. It wasn't until a couple seconds had passed that I moved, entering the office.
I couldn't mistake him for anyone else. It sealed the deal when the Kazekage's raspy voice filled the room.
"Komushi, Sasori, and Nori, you have been summoned to complete an A-ranked mission."
No more words were spoken. He threw the scroll to Sasori, making him the leader of the mission.
It was relatively simple. We were being sent to the frontlines as backup. It was the same mission everyone else got. All we had to do was keep them from crossing our border, and invade their village instead.
I wasn't particularly surprised, and neither were the others.
We talked little, for we may be discovered, however we traveled quickly.
I found out Komushi was Sasori's best friend.
Needless to say, many lives were lost the next day.
The sands were painted red the next week.
We pushed. Soon enough, there weren't any survivors left in the East Sector.
There were no enemy left.
I wonder when I lost my innocence. I guess it doesn't matter anymore.
It was on that mission that Sasori officially became Sasori of the Red Sands.
It was also when I realized that he remembered me, and he remembered me well.
We came back a little after three months. Sasori's birthday had passed.
But then, two more years passed.
I saw him leave the village, tears streaming. And yet, I would never forget the he said to me before he left.
"I will always love you." He then pressed his soft lips to my forehead, and ran through the gates of Suna.
He left me standing there with my glassy blue eyes and blonde hair slipping out of my once elegant ponytail.
It's been almost thirty years since he said those words to me. I would never forget his carmine hair, or his delicate fingers, or even his hazy eyes.
I felt a tear slide down my cheek as the Fourth Ninja War began.
AN: First one shot! How was it? Feedback is always appreciated. R&R? Hopefully?