Akarui allowed her feet to dip into the river below her. Her thin and nimble fingers began to braid her long brunette locks as she observed her broken reflection.
"How does one acquire beauty?" She wondered aloud. No one answered, as expected. Hinamori Akarui sat alone in the deep forest that laid at the very edge of her village. She came to this place, to this strong force of rushing water, whenever she needed to collect herself and her thoughts. Coming from a family of perfection and being the youngest of seven daughters, she couldn't understand why she wasn't all she was expected to be.
"What makes something beautiful?" She asked her reflection. The reflection only mimicked her perplexed expression.
"It's ability to last forever." A monotone, cold voice said. Akarui pulled her feet out of the water and turned herself around, still sitting on the dirty ground. Her eyes frantically searched the trees on all sides of her as her hands began to tremble. She gripped the hem of her kimono to try and stop their shaking.
"Hello? Is someone there?" She whispered.
Perhaps it was just my imagination… she thought. Just as her nerves began to calm, the voice spoke once again.
"You asked the question; 'What makes something beautiful?' and I answered you. I believe that what makes something beautiful, or at least what makes art beautiful, is it's ability to last forever."
Akarui stood up and wiped the dirt off of her kimono, turning in a full circle. Her heart began to pound faster each second the mysterious person was out of her view. Her head whipped back and she looked up into the branches. What appeared to be a young red headed boy was perched on one of the lower branches tinkering with a doll of some sort.
Akarui ignored his reply and made her way to the area beneath the branch which supported the strange boy. She watched him in curiosity.
"What are you doing up there?" Akarui questioned, moving to the left to get a better view of him. His eyes didn't leave the doll or whatever it was that he seemed to be fixing.
"Improving one of my puppets and talking to you. What else?" He said blandly. Akarui backed up against the tree trunk and leaned against it, still watching him.
"What's your name?" She pried as she turned around and tried to hoist herself up to a low branch so she would be closer and able to hear him more clearly. Her bare feet touched the bark of the roots that laid slightly above the ground and while she tried to find something to hold onto, her feet slipped and she began to fall backwards. A loud gasp escaped her lips as she plummeted towards the dirt. Before her body hit the ground, some invisible force took control of her and held her barely five inches above the roots and dirt below her. Her eyes flickered back and forth wildly as she tried to make sense of what was happening to her.
"Akasuna No Sasori. And what about you?" Sasori said. Akarui's eyes traveled to Sasori and she watched as he flicked his wrist and she began to climb involuntarily up the tree. Akarui was not a ninja and so had no ninja skills nor any supernatural physical abilities. Never had she ever learned how to climb a tree let alone that fast and that easily. Within seconds she was sitting cross legged in front of Sasori on the branch, but not of her own will. She cocked her head to the side and her eyes searched his face as she spoke;
"Akarui. Hinamori Akarui." His chocolate brown eyes bore into her soft caramel ones. An uneasiness overtook her and she forced her eyes to look elsewhere.
"What are you doing here in this lonesome forest, Hinamori-san?" Sasori's fingers twitched and immediately Akarui felt something like a weight being lifted off of her body. The ability to move again on her own accord shocked her and she wasn't prepared. She tilted to the side and grabbed the branch tightly to save herself from falling to her death.
"You haven't answered me yet. What are you doing here?" Sasori asked again impatiently. Akarui shook gently in fear as she glanced down.
"I-I come here to think and clear my head once in a while." she replied weakly. Her stomach began to twist as she continued to stare at the earth underneath her.
"What are you doing to that doll? And you may call me Akarui," She said, turning her attention to him in an effort to distract herself from her thoughts about falling. Sasori seemed to be completely absorbed in whatever he was doing with the doll thing and so without looking up from it he said;
"This is no doll. This is a puppet. One of my main weapons for fighting other shinobi. I happen to be a puppet master. That's how I was able to get you up here. I used my chakra strings to control you and have you climb up here to keep me company while I work."
Akarui's fear slowly faded as interest took it's place.
"A shinobi? A shinobi fighting with a puppet? Well I've never heard of such a strange thing before…" She stated, scooting closer to him on the branch and switching her gaze to the puppet in his hands.
"And why is that?" Sasori asked. He seemed bored. Melancholy even. Like he wasn't very concerned with what she had to say and she was in fact saddening him in some way. Akarui bit her lip and held onto the branch tighter.
"I guess it's because we don't have very many shinobi in the village I come from." She mused, allowing her imagination to form all sorts of different definitions and appearances for "shinobi". Akarui shrugged then added indifferently,
"I wasn't raised to be a shinobi." Sasori glanced at her briefly then continued working on his puppet.
"Then what were you raised to be?" He asked only mildly interested. Akarui cast him a sad smile that was seen from the very corner of his eye.
"I was raised to be a wife and a mother." She answered calmly. Sasori found this somewhat intriguing.
"And being a wife and a mother…this is not what you want for yourself?" he said this in more of a confirming manner, not a questioning one. Akarui looked at Sasori and nodded slowly.
"That's right. That isn't what I want for myself. I want to travel and see the world. I want to be free from this place." She responded confidently. Sasori looked her in the face for a mere three seconds, admiring her innocent beauty, before continuing with the puppet in his hands.
"But my fate is sealed. I am to be wed to the son of a powerful clan leader and bear his children for him." Akarui said with a long, exasperated sigh. An empty, almost painful laugh erupted from the puppet master.
"You're going to be wed? You can't be older than eighteen. It's a shame your beauty is being given up so early to someone so unworthy of it." Sasori's eyes never left his creation as he spoke. Akarui felt something she assumed to be happiness bubble up inside of her.
"I'm seventeen…But… you think I am beautiful, Akasuna-san?" she asked. Sasori nodded and looked over at Akarui.
"In my eyes you are beautiful. I think you have a rare type of beauty that can be harnessed and last forever. Call me, Sasori." he replied. Akarui's heart pounded.
Someone thinks I'm beautiful. Someone thinks I'm worth something. She thought. All of her life Akarui had been looked down upon and told her outer and inner beauty weren't up to par. The only person who ever believed in her at all was her second to eldest sister, Seikou, and even she never once noted that Akarui was even "pretty". Before Akarui could say another word, a bell from her village began to ring, signaling that the sun was beginning to set. She suddenly began to scramble on the tree branch looking for a way get down without severely injuring herself. Frigid yet strong arms wrapped themselves around her and Sasori jumped gently onto the ground, allowing her out of his grasp the second his feet touched the earth. Akarui turned around to face him and bowed in thanks.
"Arigato gozaimasu, Sasori-sama." Akarui grabbed her geta, slipped them on and began to jog towards home. Before she was completely out of ear shot, Sasori said;
"I trust I will see you tomorrow, Akarui-san?"
She turned back with a confused look on her face then waved.
"Hai, Sasori-sama!"
Akarui huffed as she struggled to fix an arm that had fallen off a puppet Sasori was allowing her to tinker with. It was Akarui and Sasori's fifth time meeting at that same spot near the river in the woods. Over their last few meetings they realized that they had little in common but both were able to respect the other's opinion on certain things. Sasori discovered that Akarui had known of her fiancé all of her life and had never thought of him as anything more than an acquaintance at best, stranger at worst. Akarui learned that Sasori was in the Akatsuki and that didn't bother her in the least because she had no idea who or what they were. The only thing she knew about them was that they caused many problems for most shinobi bearing villages that happened to be very, very far away from her native village.
She threw the marionette down on the dirt and brought her knees to her chest, not caring if Sasori saw beneath her kimono. She knew he was too respectable to make a perverted or inappropriate move on her.
"Sasori-sama, this is too difficult! I don't understand how to do this!" She wailed loudly. Sasori sighed and pulled Akarui to him gently.
"Akarui-chan, you're supposed to do it like this, not like that," He said as he placed his hand over hers and guided it gently, showing her the right motions.
Akarui blushed when she heard the honorific, chan. It made her feel as though Sasori was comfortable with her, relaxed and calm. Like they were close friends. Although Sasori was speaking to her like they'd known each other for a long time, Akarui couldn't bring herself to call him anything other than sama. Her respect and admiration for him were far too great for anything less than that.
She glanced over her shoulder at her mentor's nearly emotionless face and asked;
"Sasori-sama…why is your hand so cold? It's so warm and beautiful out today. You can't really be cold, can you?"
Sasori gave her a small smile, the first she thought she had ever seen from him in the short time they had been around each other.
"There's no easy way to say this besides just saying it. I'm a puppet myself. I wanted to become art…and so…I have." He said with a strange smile. The expression on Sasori's face caused Akarui to shift uncomfortably but somewhere inside herself she believed she understood what he was getting at or what he was trying to do. A slightly tense silence fell around the two as Sasori continued to guide Akarui in fixing the arm. They both turned back to the project in front of them.
Akarui was watching Sasori out of the corner of her eye when a question arose in the back of her throat and she cautiously began to speak.
"Sasori-sama, I know that your hand is cold and dense but is the rest of your body the same way…or is it fleshy? Like human skin?"
Without saying a word Sasori moved Akarui's hand from on the puppet to onto his other arm. Akarui caressed Sasori's arm slowly and a light pink blush appeared on her cheeks. She whispered,
"Your arm feels like your hand…but if I close my eyes," her eyes shut slowly and she continued to caress his arm as the blush grew darker.
"It feels just like real skin." She finished and reopened her eyes. Her gaze met with Sasori's and for a moment, it seemed as though the entire world had stopped and there was no noise at all. Sasori leaned forward slightly and moved his hand onto Akarui's lower back, pulling her closer. He placed his other hand on her cheek and stroked it gently with his thumb.
"Is it possible for someone who's not really alive to feel something like this?" His sweet breath fanned her face and she felt as if she blushed anymore, she would resemble a tomato or perhaps an apple.
"Feel something like-like what?" She asked, stammering a bit. Sasori searched her face for imperfections he knew he wouldn't find and then stared right into Akarui's eyes, the windows to her soul.
"Feel something like this," he whispered and hesitantly brought his lips to hers. The kiss was slow, gentle and almost pure in a way. Sasori pressed his lips slightly harder against hers. His lips moved slowly as he tried to part Akarui's. Akarui trembled slightly in his arms, opening her lips for him. As his tongue began to slither inside her mouth, she pulled away and hugged herself tightly. Sasori knew that if he had a beating heart, at that moment it would've been crushed. Akarui pried herself from Sasori's embrace and sat an arm's length away from him. Tears began to flow from her eyes and choked sobs made their way out of her mouth. Sasori placed a hand gently on Akarui's forearm. She shrugged it off and turned away from him, towards the direction of her village.
"Sasori-sama, I-I know that I feel something very strong for you but… I've told you before. I'm engaged. I'm going to be wed in seven days. If I don't go through with this, my whole clan as well as me will be shunned." She sniffed.
Sasori sighed loudly and moved to sit beside Akarui. He wrapped his arm around her tightly and kissed the side of her head.
"Akarui-chan. I know that I also feel something very strong for you. It's love. At least that's what I think it is. Anyway, you and I, we'll get through this. The only one who should be allowed to have your beauty forever is me."
Akarui couldn't bear to look Sasori in the eye. She stared blankly ahead of her then closed her eyes slowly. Akarui sighed and leaned her head against Sasori's shoulder.
She breathed in deeply as she permitted a foreign numbness to overtake her whole being.
Akarui glanced at her sister's reflection in the mirror. Her sister, Seikou, was adjusting a ceremonial headpiece in Akarui's hair. It was the day of Akarui's wedding and there was a large, rock like lump clogging her throat. She wrung her hands in her lap as she diverted her eyes to her own reflection which stared nervously back at her.
"Aka-chan, you look great. Yuki-sama will be so pleased with you!" Seikou purred, petting her younger sister's hair lovingly. Akarui looked at Seikou in the mirror once again.
"Sei-chan…am I beautiful? Do you think that I am beautiful?" She asked, tilting her head slightly so she could see her sister behind her. Seikou glanced down at Akarui and placed her hands on her sister's shoulders.
Seikou's eyes watched the her sister's reflection and said to the mirror;
"If you don't believe it, then no one else will." She replied. Akarui reached up and placed one hand on her cheek as a clear and salty tear slid down to her chin and fell onto her lap. Seikou patted Akarui's shoulders then squeezed tightly.
"Be strong. Ganbatte, Akarui-chan." Seikou whispered before abruptly turning and walking out of the room.
"Arigato, Onee-chan." Akarui whispered in reply as she listened to her sisters light footsteps disappear down the hallway. A few more tears rolled down Akarui's face, dampening her wedding kimono.
After a few minutes of crying in shallow self-pity, Akarui clambered to her feet and sniffled.
Sasori-sama, where are you? She thought as she slipped out of the room and began to walk down the hallway towards the exit. Sasori and Akarui had come to the agreement days before that on the day of her wedding, Sasori would find a way in and steal her away. From there he said he would take her back to the Akatsuki lair and preserve her beauty for all eternity for him alone to possess.
The silence was eerie and it sent chills up her spine. She shuddered and within seconds broke into a run, allowing her head piece to jangle upon her head and her skirts to trail lazily behind her. She passed by many clansmen who only looked at her with disapproving eyes. Not one tried to stop her, though. Akarui ran out of the clan base and took off towards her meeting spot in the forest with her secret lover, hoping she would find him there.
She clumsily tripped over her own feet and fell to the ground. Her pristine kimono was now muddy and tattered. Akarui pulled herself up with much effort and slipped off her geta. She began to run once again. She ran as hard and as fast as her body would allow her to. The slapping of her bare feet against the mud was the only thing she could hear besides the beating of her heart within her ears.
Akarui sprinted by those she had lived and grown with her whole life without a second thought and without even looking back. Her legs began to tire and her feet were growing sore. Akarui's breathing was ragged and all of the work that had been put into her makeup and hair before she had run off was now destroyed.
She walked unsteadily towards the very edge of the forest. Akarui fell to her knees and wept in agony. Her heart ached for Sasori and her mind finally started to process the real tragedy she had just let happen.
Not under her own command, she felt herself rising and walking into the forest toward their meeting spot. She kept walking until she saw a splotch of red. As she neared the splotch became hair and beneath that hair was a face that she was all too happy to see. Sasori.
He continued to use his chakra strings to direct her into his arms. The two embraced lovingly and tears of joy leaked out of the corners of Akarui's swollen eyes.
"I'm so sorry I kept you waiting, Akarui-chan. There were a few things I had to straighten out at the base before I could come to get you. I feel so badly. I hope you're not too upset with me." He said. Akarui gave him a small smile and leaned her head against his chest while whispering;
"No…No I'm not. I'm just glad you're here now, Sasori-sama." Sasori and Akarui stood in comfortable silence for what seemed to be an eternity as Sasori affectionately stroked her hair, being sure not to let her go for a second. Akarui pulled away from him gently as she felt mud beginning to crust and dry on all parts of her body. Her mouth twisted into an ugly, disgusted scowl.
"Gomenasai. I just feel so gross and….yuck." She said. Sasori looked her from top to bottom then slowly began to undo her kimono. Akarui's face turned a brighter red than she ever imagined it could.
"Why don't you bathe in the river? I'll let you wear my cloak on the way back." Sasori suggested as he continued to pull off her garments. Akarui's blush deepened and she looked between the river and Sasori's cloak and came to the conclusion that the cloak would not look completely horrific on her as she first thought it might.
"Hai. I will." She said and by the time she had finished speaking, all of her clothes were laying on the ground and her head piece was resting motionlessly by her feet. Sasori leaned in and planted a delicate kiss on Akarui's lips while pulling her against his cloak.
Can puppets make love? Akarui thought as their kiss deepened and her fingers wove their way into his hair. Sasori broke the kiss all too soon and gazed adoringly into Akarui's eyes.
"Go clean yourself up. I'll be waiting right here for you." He said in an almost disappointed tone. Akarui pouted but pulled out of Sasori's arms and waded into the river. She let the water run over her sore body until she felt clean and relaxed. She swam to the edge of the water near where Sasori was sitting and laid her arms on the ground, with her head on top of them. Sasori watched her with curious eyes.
"You said you think you feel love for me. Are you truly in love with me, Sasori-sama?" Akarui questioned as her feet kicked about in the water behind her. Sasori stared at her for a long moment before he reached out and placed his hand on her cheek.
"I'm not sure I know what love is but if I had to guess, I'd say that this is it." He said cautiously. He was unsure if this answer was exactly what Akarui was expecting. Akarui mulled this over then smiled at Sasori and leaned her head against his hand lightly.
"Well I know that I love you, Sasori-kun." She said, addressing him in a more friendly and comfortable manner. The two gazed passionately at each other before Sasori helped pull Akarui out of the water. She shivered as the cold air hit her body and Sasori had to keep his eyes locked on her lips to prevent himself from feeling something he would describe as inappropriate for the current sitaution. Sasori shed his cloak and draped it over her. Akarui slid her hands into the sleeves and closed the front.
Sasori smiled at her and grabbed her hand. Their fingers intertwined and they began to walk deeper into the forest, somewhere Akarui had never been or thought to explore.
The sun soon began to set and Sasori pulled Akarui into his arms. He sat beneath a tree right against the trunk and Akarui situated herself on his lap. She let the side of her head lay on his shoulder and she kissed his neck softly. Sasori's eyes wandered to her face and he kissed her forehead in return. Akarui gave a small smile and her eyes began to flutter closed. She curled up close against Sasori's chest and her breathing began to even out. Akarui's body became limp in his arms and Sasori knew she was asleep. He caressed her hair and watched her fragile sleeping figure. Sasori brought his lips close to her ear and whispered quietly;
"Your beauty and your heart will be mine for the rest of time. You will be my personal piece of artwork."