Martyrdom is an Art
A/N: Revisions galore.
"He thought he would break her, but he was the one who broke in the end."
Akasuna no Sasori wanted to achieve immortality, not godhood.
At twenty-nine years old, she is the mother of sixteen children.
Armed thieves find all of them in an underground room, huddled together in the cold.
The blades, they think, are too reminiscent of their mother.
Steel encased in skin. The swords are wrapped in leather like a gift, each with its own name, its own story. One is unlike the other. They wonder how she has chosen the names of each blade, how each story came together, and how each one is related to the other.
She has named her children after the gods, and each kill will be a prayer sent to the heavens.
Yamenokaya and Kunishige, her siblings, they have found missing from her collection.
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At thirty-five years old, he is the father of a hundred and more.
Scouts find his body buried under rubble, under stone, and they are terrified.
He is not human, not entirely, as are the rest of the bodies they find in the cavern. With skin that does not bleed, and eyes that do not rot, they find themselves in the midst of a carnival of souls. It is cold. It is quiet. They are terrified.
And when they leave, one of them could have sworn that they heard him laughing, along with the rest.
He, the grand puppeteer, with all his finest creations had put on a spectacle of death.
Pity that they missed the show.
/
The scouts and the thieves meet at a crossroads. It was late and the afternoon, and both parties were equally terrified of what they saw earlier that day; the scouts with a mass grave of human puppets, the thieves with an underground chamber of whispering secrets and soul-infused sword. They've both had similar experiences with caverns filled with not-enitrely-human remains.
The scout sees that the thieves have brought a coffin.
The thief sees that the scouts have brought the same.
Suspicions arise and each takes offense at the other. A fight ensues and blood is shed, in the middle of it all, a coffin opens and a body falls.
It is his.
His unblinking eyes stare at her steel children, unmarred by age, and unsoiled by the dirt of their grave.
The thieves and the scouts continue their battle, and amidst the trees, a voice is heard and a gasp resounds.
"Where could you be all this time?"
They are still alive; she, the human weapon, and he, the living puppet.
A/N: Enjoy