Choice

"Choices are what make us. A man will walk many miles in his lifetime- an actor will play many parts. But which fork in the road you take, what mask you choose to wear, will change the journey or the play. It isn't how we are born; it is how we are made."

oOo

"So it's true. You're leaving."

Sasori slowly took a step back from the wall he had been studiously tapping and turned around.

"I knew you'd figure it out." He told the ten year old, who looked at him with emerald eyes and clenched fists.

"Why are you leaving?"

"You know why."

And the boy did. He'd been inside the underground workshop. He'd seen the sluices filled with dark red stains, helped to scrape away the buildup sometimes when he couldn't sleep.

"You don't have to go." He said. "You could stop."

"Stop?" Sasori had to smile. "Have I taught you nothing? Learning is a never ending cycle, child. I cannot stop; not when I am so very close. It would be cowardice and tomfoolery." He looked the boy up and down, as though making a decision. With a sharp nod of his head, he put his pack down.

"Come with me." He said softly. "Leave this place behind."

The boy didn't say anything, only stood there in the street, looking at him quietly. Sasori approached him, arms held out beseechingly. "You've got the most talent I've seen in the last ten years. You've got the strength, the skill.."

He knelt down, brushing his thumb across the boy's cheek. "And just the slightest touch of darkness. Come with me and learn."

A small pale hand came up to cover his own. They looked at one another, grey eyes to green. The boy smiled slightly in a way that echoed sorrow a child his age shouldn't know; a smile that he would someday learn how to hide.

"If you stay here," Sasori said with a tinge of desperation, "they will kill you. The cage will constrict and you will sicken and die. Your feathers will fall off and you'll never see the sky again, can't you see that? They always destroy people like us. They always do."

He knew what the Fourth had put in his youngest child; he knew why this tiny genin had followed in his shadow when all else knew to stay away. He'd been at the funeral.

"I can protect you." He said. "But we have to go."

He didn't know why he was arguing so harshly; he should have just killed the boy and been done with it. It would have been one more body among the hundreds he'd already taken; a cute little boy, untouched and unsullied, to battle alongside the Third. He'd just finished work on the Third. The child had helped.

The boy shook his head. "you don't have to go."

"you don't have to stay." Sasori retorted.

"I can't." The boy said quietly. "I can't leave him."

"And why not?" Sasori said cruelly. "Once he grows into that monster he'll begin killing. Your mother is dead now because of him, and she won't be the last. He'll crush you, and your sister, and anything else that gets in his way. That is his curse."

"I thought so." The boy said.

"What?" Sasori asked.

"You don't have a heart, do you?" The boy patted his chest. "I'd always guessed so. But I know now."

Sasori said nothing, but stepped back. His footprints were the barest impressions in the sand; come morning there would be no evidence that either of them had stood there at all.

"Fine, then. Stay here and rot. It's not like it matters to me either way."

"I'll remember you."

Sasori paused. "Why would you bother?" he asked bitterly.

"I'll remember you, like this, like you are now. Beautiful and heartless and cold. I'll remember you when stories are myth and facts are ashes and forgot. I'll remember you the way you want."

The boy turned away. "But I doubt you'll remember me."

Sasori stared at the boy and the tiniest part of him mourned the fact that he would miss the moment this boy became a man. In some faraway vision he thought he could see the echo of the puppeteer he would someday be.

Sasori put his hands on the sandstone; the hidden brick moved back with a grinding of sand-laden gears, revealing a deep tunnel blacker than pitch.

He shouldered his pack.

"There are presents for you." He said, not turning around. "In the Playhouse. You're the only one I'd trust with them."

"They won't miss you."

Sasori couldn't help but laugh.

"Perhaps they won't. Will you, Kankuro?" he asked.

But there was no answer, and when he turned to look the genin was gone. With a shake of his head, Sasori of the Red Sands stepped further into the tunnel, which closed with a groan behind him.

oOo

"The choices we make create us, more than anything within our nature. The lion can become the lamb; the meek can grow strong. Wherever we walk, we leave behind the shadows of who or what we were, and with each movement forward we become something else entirely.

But in making those choices, we must remember those shadows; because they are also a part of us.

Good and evil are separated by no more than a hair.

Believe me.

I know.

-From the private journals of Kankuro Sabaku, Red Sands Troupe Master, Jounin of Sunakagure and Master of the Thousand Wooden Forms, fifth century.

oOo

A/N: It only says 'fifth century' on the end because I felt like it should say something. So no, that's not a real Naruto-world time increment, it's just what I put there to amuse myself. If you looked very carefully, then yes, you saw hints of Psycho!Kankuro in there- what, Sasori killed people and stuffed them full of gears all by his onesies? it's not like he kept DOING it...You know the drill- read and review.