--
It used to be difficult for Sasori to articulate his feelings. He had grown from then. He was sitting with his wife inside the greenhouse, their rocking chairs side by side. Their surroundings are filled with colors due to the various flowers planted. They were all harmless. A greenhouse built because of a whim. A show of his devotion. Not that his wife required it of him. He just liked to surprise her.
"I've waited all my life. I am most certain I have been waiting for you, long before I met you. My bond with you, my life with you has been filled with waiting, not in vain. Never. You made it so that life is all sweeter with the wait. But I will not wait for my time to come to reunite with you after death. This is the only time I cannot wait, Hatsue. It won't matter or change anything, I will soon wither away once you pass." The passing years only made Sasori long-winded, a complete deviation from his younger years.
"Is there anything I can say to change your mind?"
"None at all. I have long decided."
"Stubborn."
They were silent for a few moments.
"Wife." He called out, still getting a rush of warmth at getting to call her that even decades had passed. "I must confess, the masterpiece you proudly call, I do not think it should be called the greatest of your works."
"Oh? Confessing to me when my bones are weak for being old so I cannot give you the smacking of a lifetime." She jested.
"You... made my life a masterpiece. You paint my day. You paint my mood. You painted the rest of my life in your signature work."
"...Sasori." Hatsue would've teased him when they were younger, but when you have lived and have gotten to their age, words of affirmation won't bring that shot of childish embarrassment anymore.
"Do you still remember the flowers I gave to you when I told you I liked you?"
"Hemlock. I swear if this is some poetic interpretation you got in mind-"
"It means you will be my death."
"...I know. Only you would think it romantic."
"Hatsue, I am holding my vow true. You will be my death for I cannot stay in the living when you breathe your last breath."
"...I always thought it was metaphorical. Why do you have to make it literal?"
She sighed, staring at his blurred figure. Her eyes were failing her due to old age.
".. I feel like this would be a bad time to tell you that I made it from Hemlock."
"Of course. Because you had to make this all poetic."
"..."
"Sasori. . . I'm frightened."
"I'm here."
"I'm not scared of going. I'm afraid of what comes next. If there is a next."
"If there is, I will be yours again."
"What if in the next, there was no you that existed, or I?"
"Must you ask terrible questions, wife?"
"But what if."
Hatsue would ask these kind of questions from time to time, he could wave it away by reassuring her, however, it did make him think.
"I would pity myself having to live in a world you aren't. To not know what he'll be missing out. The great joy of knowing and loving who you are, most importantly, he'll never know the joy of waiting for you." His voice old and grey, deep and thick with affection.
Hatsue felt a lump on her throat. Years later, her husband's love and devotion only grew stronger. She felt lucky. "If I had to live in a reality without you, I'd be sad for her for not sharing the joys of loving unrestrainedly. To find someone yours and spend almost every waking moment since meeting."
"I love you."
"I have deep regards for you."
He sighed. "Still not letting that one go, huh?"
She laughed, her eyes shone with mirth. "I love you too."
"I could have turned us into puppets, we'd get to live forever."
"And miss out complaining about athritis with you?"
"Ah yes, because suffering from old age makes me all the more attractive to you."
"You are. When you were going through andropause , you have never looked more handsome."
"Hm."
"I'm happy, husband." Everyday she tells him, even when she's sulking, even when she's mad at him: she'd say something in outburst, stalk away, scowl then go back to him to tell him she's happy (sometimes he found this comical) but she needs some time alone. At that, he'd lie awake in bed on his side, wondering if he'll sleep alone only to feel her arms wrap his waist, he would turn to her wondering, and seeing only affection in her sickeningly sweet brown eyes which he loves.
"I am as well." The first time he brought up being human puppets and getting to live forever, she shot his idea before hearing it out. It hurt him at that time, and when he sulked, he really sulked. He'd keep maddeningly silent but she waited for him, coaxed him and drew him out. In retrospect, he was being petty with his anger. She tells him she never wants to outlive their children, he proposed in making them puppets too, she scowls at him, asks him: if their children have made their own family, will he turn them into puppets too and their grandchildren and so on and so forth? Besides, they'll never know what happens after a thousand years, they might grow resenting each other. He denies vehemently. He'll love her forever. His argument: a testament of him being a hopeless romantic. She would never take the chance. A lifetime of love is better than an eternity of alternately loving and resenting him. Her argument: a testament of her being a realist.
They treasured the silence, it speaks much of their bond in ways words would fail. Only, the rocking of Hatsue's chair, the creak of its wood, echoed inside the greenhouse. She felt lucid, as though she's in a trance. These past days, she dreamt of a small Sasori who became the loneliest person in the world. That loneliness drove him to pursue immortality. Only choosing to die out of loneliness yet again. A vision of puppets with the image of his parents, cheap imitations driving their blades in his heart as ligneous arms locked him in a wooden embrace. The dream left a haunting ache in the waking hours of dawn. She banished the thoughts away and gazed at the flowers. Really, to be surrounded with colors was...
Sasori watched his wife close her eyes, and then her body went limp as her chair stopped swaying. He reached over and fixed the peach blossom hairpin on her hair. Peach blossom. I am your captive. Her reply to his affection was to wear it. He slowly caressed the sagging skin on her cheek with his wrinkled hand. He takes out and uncorks a small vial from his poncho, and guzzled it in one go. Sasori leaned back against his rocking chair, his left hand on her lap; their fingers intertwined.
He was a boy who waited for his parents to come home. In vain.
A boy who, at that time without knowing, waited for someone to curb his loneliness. He found her. A friend.
Only to wait for her to come home. Or when he comes home. For the war to end. For peace to come. For them to grow. Or to give each other time. For forgiveness. For apologies. For falling in love. For reciprocating. For compromising. For building their own home. For their children to grow up. She taught him that waiting can accompany happiness. And he was. He is. Without a doubt. Happy. Indefinitely. Eternally.
He kissed her right cheek one last time and squeezed her hand.
"A reality without me would be kinder to the world..." Sasori of the Red Sand, genius puppet shinobi, sees his entire world painted in colors behind closed eyes. "...and a reality without you would be most cruel of the world."
End
--
Really, to be surrounded with colors was...
...fitting for a painter on her deathbed.
End
--
"What do you get from my happiness, Hatsue?"
"I get to share it. I get to share your happiness. When you're happy, Sasori, so am I."
End
--
afterwords
advisement:now that you read the ending, listen to Opera House by Cigarettes After and let it sink in.
i feel like Sasori would be the type to love someone in violence, not to Hatsue, but to the rest of the world and if Hatsue died in the war this is what I would write:
Memories of Hatsue is inside him like a cursed plague. Grief eats away at his ribs, making a gap big enough for him to sink into a quicksand of motionless hours and crumbling bones. He hates for having loved her in ardent desperation, but her memories beckons with ghostly arms and he shrinks to himself like a well-trained beast — step into his hollow chest and crawl farther and farther.
Sasori threw himself into making puppets. He found no gentleness within him. No kindness to offer himself. Hatsue took all of that away with her. His body is too corrupted with obsession, the pursuit of eternity, all because of intense longing, it burns him like shurikens to his neck. Flames on burning metal. Consumes him. The 'him before' is hidden away somewhere. Where the world had ended.
And if he loved Hatsue, he should've moved on. Instead, he infected his misery upon victims. Violent. All the same, he will love her with corruptions and bled out apologies. He is irredeemable. But he will not apologize. Even when he forced Grandma Chiyo to come after him.
He will never apologize for his bones will always love Hatsue like hell, like it was war, like the world needs to end in the process. He is beyond redemption, but he will always love her, in godless sacrilege. He will never be sorry that he doesn't know any other way.