This fic was first posted on my DA: http : // chainsling22 . deviantart . com
Disclaimer:
I do not own the great Akasuna no Sasori, Chiyo, Deidara and other characters. They belong to Masashi Kishimoto.
Weakness
by: Konohafled
.
It's the third night I had the same dream. That same pink haired bitch hit me with her fistful anger. At the same time you both hugged me, and the bitch was gone.
It's been years since the real ones. The same hugs that used to touch my skin. My real skin. I used to feel content, as I was in those dreams. Now that I had this wooden skin, why did I still feel it? And somehow, I don't know which part of my wooden body, I long for it. Longing for something. Feeling for something. It's just wasting time. Human feeling is useless.
But it was both of you who taught me to feel. It's your embrace, sweet words, pat in the head, daily nice meals, and everything that's swept out in a day. But not in my head. And it's you who took me to the path where I am now. A path of art. It was you that turned me to Grandma Chiyo, to not ignore her lesson anymore. I made you out of my childish curiosity and daring experiment. It was you who taught me the importance of controlling chakra strings. And surely, it was you who showed me how fun it was.
You did show me how bearable it was to be alone. You taught me how beautiful it was to spend all my time to work, to create art. You were my first art. My first puppets. You were the art and audience at the same time. You were my reason to capture beauty of human.
But this village had no respect for it. Well, I've done nothing but working and creating art. Of course, you wouldn't have imagined your only son would grow like this. You must've thought I'd be another ninja like you, maybe a stronger one. You'd think I'd go risking my life to guard noblemen, the Kazekage, or merely the rich ones. No. I would not waste my time for serving them, just because they had more money and political power, while I lack both. I would not choose that kind of life. Not only it lacks art, it's also disgusting.
I craved for art. I sought them from my opponents, dead opponents to be precise. I captured their beauty and power. I made them eternal. But people call it merciless killing and contempt of corpses. So I fled. I had to leave you behind. You reminded me of Sunagakure, of its artless people and ignorant accusation. Yet, memories of you came and went. The days of us consumed me. Memories of good days, love, or whatever you freak call it, consumed my precious time. They just led me to grieve, to stop working, and to distract me from my purpose in life. They became less than useless.
From that day, I decided to reshape my memories. Old memories wasted time. Time is priceless, and art cannot wait. From that day, I told myself every single day and minute. "I'm over you. I'm over Sunagakure. Completely." From that day, I was a new man.
Akatsuki welcome me and treated me better than Sunagakure did. It supplied me with more and more powerful opponents for my art. It provided me a reason to expertise with poisons. Yet, it never required me to love, to care and to feel. It was almost like home for me, except for some reasons.
My first partner was quite like me. We were both poisonous and worship eternity. For me, eternity is the ultimate purpose of art. Human life is brief. Once you were singing lullaby to me, the next day you were gone. That night you kissed me goodnight, and the next morning you lay breathless on the ground. Lifetime is never enough for art. Art demands eternity, and I voluntarily gave my body and soul for it. This body would pass the test of time and not getting older or weaker. The problem was I still had to use chakra, and chakra needs human life to work. So I'd manage to live forever as long as my heart keeps beating. But it was a human heart, not a puppet heart. Sometimes it still carried human feeling and emotion. Often, it disturbed my work.
As for my former partner, eternity was different. He ranted about his mission of mastering all jutsus in the world, making deadliest poison, being invincible, destroying his old village, search for younger and stronger bodies, and once in a while saying I was cute and Itachi's body was perfect. When his ambition for eternity was high, so was his hunger for Itachi. "The Uchihas are the strongest, don't you think? I can survive living hundreds of years just by being in Uchiha body. We both shall live together forever, cute."
My human emotion couldn't accept it. I shuddered at thought of it, not only because of the way he said it. More than that, it's because he reserved no place for arts in his obsession of eternity. I have no objection for anyone who has no sense of art. Itachi killed his clan for no apparent reasons, let alone for making artistic statement. Zetsu eats humans for his hunger. I don't mind. They just suffer artistic defect. But spending eternity in the name of mere ultimate power, it is contempt of time. His search for newer, younger and stronger body to inhabit his greedy soul is contempt of human corpse. It was this man whom Sunagakure should curse at, not me.
Luckily, he left Akatsuki before my disgust consumed my sane mind. Then another man replaced him. This one was better. He respected my art, called me "Danna", and at some level, I thought he admired me. It was alright if he wasn't a lunatic. He made clay creatures with his hand mouths and blew them. He could be a fine sculptor if he didn't destroy his creations in a split second. But he called his stupid explosion art. "Art is something fleeting, Sasori no Danna. It is so brief and uncapturable. And that what makes beauty, hm." That stupid brat. He could destroy all beauties in the world with his "Art is a bang" command.
But art is freedom. I'd let him express his artistic view until he got bored with those explosions. Beside, he was beautiful and skillful. He could make a wonderful puppet someday, unless he exploded himself before I made him into one. But I wonder, what a puppet with his explosive ability can do? It would explode my opponent and itself, leaving nothing for eternal art.
Art is everlasting, Deidara. Human life is fleeting and uncapturable. But I never said this to him. Because it only led me back to you. It would sink me into memories of your warmth and all the feelings you taught me. You were left in Sunagakure for years, yet I couldn't erase all the memories of what you taught me. It would do nothing but weaken me. I must destroy all these pointless and useless human feeling inside me. Human feeling and emotion are weaknesses. A thinking machine of art, that's what I should become.
.
-----------------------
.
"Here lies Sasori, the greatest puppet master,
in the loving embrace of his parents"
.
That was a dream. It had no visual, no beginning and almost no ending. It left me with contentment and warmth. It slowly crept into my head, making itself an obsession. And I had been sitting here and thinking about it for too long. Damn! I must get rid of this weakening human feeling quickly, and then devoted my entire mind and eternal life for art.
But I must save it for later. Now I and Deidara had this Jinchuuriki to capture. This time, art must wait.