Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I am merely playing around with some ideas that came into my head after reading 274 about Sasori's past.

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Forlorn

She looked at him from the threshold. Her aging, wrinkled hands were closed into fists. She felt helpless, unable to help that boy inside the room who was crying. For all the powerful jitsu she possessed, for all the battle experience and wisdom she had been endowed with; Chiyo did not know what to do. To kill a person, to mend physical wounds…those was things that she knew and comprehended. However, to bring comfort and security to him…to whisper in his ear encouraging words…how does one that lived, one that was brought up as a warrior, know how to do something like that?

She could teach him how to control puppets. She could teach him all she could on how to kill adversaries, but she could not teach him love or compassion.

All she could do was watch…watch him grow into a beast.

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"Mother" and "Father" never were with him even when they were alive. They were always busy with their missions. They cared more for the village than they did him. They left him alone. That was why they became his first creations. Now they would always be with him.

Young, fully human Sasori looked at the picture in his small room. There, in the photograph, his parents were smiling and embracing him. Wishing for warmth, he controlled them: mother and father. Obediently to their master, they complied. They came closer; they held him in their fake arms. He closed his eyes, pretending that they were real.

For a moment he felt himself give into his dream. He felt at peace. He relaxed; a tiny content smile was on his childishly round face.

"Mother" and "Father" fell to the ground when his control waned.

He was alone.

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Like many days before, Chiyo never stepped into his room. She merely watched him fall continually deeper and deeper into darkness. Today he was crying, sobbing so hard that he started to hiccup. His pudgy hands covered his eyes, tears ran down his face. Everyone looked at him oddly. Everyone knew about the boy whose parents were turned into puppets.

The only thing that followed him was anguish.

She saw one of his hands raise, chakra strings attaching to something. "Mother" came into her sight and she watched the puppet go down on its knees, hands bringing the little boy closer. Like all those times before, Chiyo felt her hands become fist. She had to do something.

So she did what she knew could do best: jitsu. At night she started working furiously on some kind of technique that could restore the dead, to breathe life into a lifeless puppet. Yet during the day she continued to teach him all he ever wished to know about destruction.

Sasori: he was a prodigy, a heaven sent genius that astounded many of the Hidden Sand and other villages. She should've of seen it. She should've seen the transformation that made the child's tearful round eyes narrow into cold indifference. But she didn't. Not until it was too late.

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His hands were in blood again. Not that he cared. In fact, he liked it. The very idea of creating such works of art excited him. He found humans boring, their imperfection offended him. His artworks would be everlasting, beautiful.

His apathetic eyes gazed up from his hands. Sandaime lay before him, not dead but unconscious. That man would become his greatest work yet.

"Sasori!" His head turned to see his teacher.

"What have you done?" The wrinkled, heavily lined face of Chiyo was upon him. Her eyes were hard, militaristic—like they always were.

"What I've been meaning to do," he said, shrugging his shoulders. He bent down to pick up the unconscious body. Reaching behind him, he took from his scroll pouch two scrolls. With one hand he tossed them to her. The old kunoichi caught them with ease. Her eyebrows were raised when she realized what was contained in them.

"I don't need them anymore."

And then he left. It wasn't like he would look back.

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For years he traveled, searching for the perfect bodies to turn to his playthings. Small villages were plundered with relative ease through his travel. He started to research ways to immortalize himself, to cast away human weakness.

He was happiest when he was peeling skin off of still living ninjas, encasing, recreating them in a divine image. They became his weapons, his toys. He had long since shut his heart to humanity, closing the door on unimportant emotions.

He found a group whose interest did not conflict with his own. They formed an alliance in the search of greater power; each one infamous and deadly in their own right. And for years it continued so.

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A clash of metal sounded like a raging symphony to his ears. Puppets collided with puppets, waging their own war. Fingers danced in the air, nearly invisible strings connected them to their dangerous dolls. Traps were sprung, powers were invoked. To think that he was going all out against a decrepit woman and some other girl…how far had he fallen?

Yet they had the advantage. That old woman knew his techniques well. Combined with that furious explosive power of the younger one—he was having trouble. Already some of his favorite, prized pieces of work had been smashed into pieces. He had revealed his most potent masterpiece: himself.

Sasori conducted the battle with the same detachment he had for life. Yet he felt his pride being repeatedly injured as the impromptu tag-team continued to survive one after another of his attacks. Even more, his ingenious poison that he had full confident in—that girl had created an antidote.

It continued, their masterful dance of puppets; a theatre of offensive power and sheer talent of the puppeteers. At last he found a hole.

He had been able to switch out of that puppet body before his grandma was able to seal him. The puppeteer lunged forward, katana in hand.

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Chiyo fingers twitched. Too late. He had been distracted.

"Mother" and "Father" were before him, hand outstretched. Their double blades pierced him. Two were in his "stomach" and two had gone through his "heart". Blood flowed freely from his remaining human part. For once his eyes were open wide. It was like a grotesque reenactment of that scene…so many years ago.

Mother and Father Puppet was with their nearly Puppet Son, embracing him with hold of death for eternity.

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Chiyo looked at the scene before her. She could not hold back a single tear. A tear for failing miserably at saving the agony and grief of a boy who had never really grew up, a tear for a monster that she was unable to stop those many years ago.

She gave her life to save another.

The bright daylight shone as if mocking the broken dreams that would never be fulfilled by the dreamers.

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A/N: A little ode to my Naruto obsession. It's the first anime that I've seen that counts as an anime (other than Pokemon). I'm in love with the manga and I think Sasori was/is an awesome villain.

Thank you for reading. Comments would be greatly appreciated.